Cerulean Sins

50

Belle knelt over Asher, her head lowered as if she were kissing him. But she held herself off his body, one hand on the floor, the other against the wall. The kiss looked so intimate, but she went to great pains to not touch him more than she had to. An intimate act ruined.

I should have been able to feel the power she was pushing into him, but I was shielding too tight. I wasn't good enough at shielding to filter out, and in, what I chose. When I shielded this hard, I shielded everything out. I wanted to feel what she was doing. I wanted to sense whether that faint spark inside Asher was growing.

I opened just a touch, like widening the shutter on a camera, only a little opening, only enough to reach out and touch that spark.

I tasted Asher's kiss upon my mouth, as if I had drunk a wine that tasted of him. The spark had become a flame, a cold flame that filled his body, and still Belle poured energy into him. Asher screamed through my mind, and that silent scream staggered me, would have knocked me to my knees if Richard and Jean-Claude hadn't caught me.

"Anita, what's wrong?" Richard asked.

"Ma petite, are you well?"

There was no time to explain. I pulled free of both of them, and they didn't fight me. I grabbed Belle by the shoulder and the hair, and it was almost shocking to feel Musette's careful curls crush under my hand as I jerked her back. I was expecting to feel Belle's waves under my hand, but Belle wasn't here, not really. She'd never been here. She was not illusion, but not exactly real either.

I flung her away from Asher, sending her sliding across the floor on the slick white cloth of Musette's dress. But it was Belle's voice that thundered through the room, "How dare you lay hands on me."

"You're trying to bind him to you again, as of old. He doesn't want to be bound."

"He will fade and die without the power that I can breathe into him." She looked around as if she expected someone to help her to her feet. The only people who would have been willing to help were under guard, and no one else made a move. She finally stood on her own, but with nothing near to grab onto, and an old-fashioned corset on, graceful it was not. Good to know that some fashions even a vampire can't make work.

Belle turned eyes that glittered with brown fire to me. "Asher will die without me. Look at him, see what is left of him, it is not enough to survive."

Her power had poured some flesh in under that dry skin, but not much. It was as if I could see the individual muscles and ligaments under the skin, like a physiology diagram, to show where all the attachment points are. But it was not like a person. The hair was still a dry nest of golden tinsel, and the skin like faded parchment stretched over an obscenely thin frame. But the eyes, the eyes looked human, except for that extraordinary ice blue color. Even when he'd been human, his eyes could never have looked anything but extraordinary.

Asher was there in those eyes. He was trapped in that fragile, half-dead shell. He gazed up at me, and I felt the weight of everything he was in his eyes.

"Blood may save his life," Belle said, "but it will not give him back what he has lost. Only his maker, or the one who has taken his essence, can give it back." She stood there with her shining darkness coming out of the eyes in Musette's face. She didn't add that since she was both Asher's maker and the one who had stolen his essence, only she could return him to his former glory. Belle Morte had a little too much class to point out the obvious. But it hung unsaid in the air.

"He just needs power," I said, "it doesn't have to be yours."

"If he had a human servant, or an animal to call, but he has nothing," Belle said, and there was a tone of satisfaction in her voice that she couldn't, or didn't try to, hide. "He is alone, and binding himself to me again is the only choice he has, unless you wish him to spend the rest of eternity as he is now." The note of satisfaction slid into cruelty without blinking an eye.

"You can't leave him like this," Richard said, and there was pity on his face, yes, but more, there was horror. "Being tied to Belle Morte isn't worse than this."

"If you had ever known her embrace," Jean-Claude said, "you might not be so quick to decide."

Richard looked at him, then back at Asher, then at Belle Morte. "I don't understand."

"No," I said, "you don't." Then I looked up at him, touched his arm, very lightly. "Think of yourself trapped forever with Raina."

A look of disgust and personal revulsion skipped across his face, before he could hide it. I still carried a piece of Raina's munin, her spirit memory, in me. She was a sexual sadist, but she'd also fiercely protected the very people she tortured. The woman had needed some serious therapy. In the end, the only therapy she'd gotten had been silver bullets. I never felt bad about killing Raina. Fu

Richard nodded. "I understand that, but..." he made a helpless gesture towards Asher, "this is not..." He seemed at a loss for words.

I couldn't blame him. I had no words at the thought of this being Asher's fate for the next few centuries. It wasn't bearable. It simply wasn't. But I couldn't make Belle give him the energy without strings attached. It was the nature of vampire energy that there were always strings attached. It was designed to bind a vampire to its maker, and through its maker, to the council, to the entire power structure of their world. Everything would fall apart if you didn't belong to somebody. There are masterless shape-shifters, but no masterless vampires. There are vampires who have lost their masters, but they are compelled to find a new master, to swear new blood oaths, to hunt someone else to rule them. A truly lesser vampire can even die without a master vampire to rule them. They go to sleep at dawn and never wake up again.

I knew all this. Knew all of it, and didn't care. I could feel Asher's-not thoughts-but will. He preferred a clean death to this. Or to being Belle's slave again.

I dropped to my knees beside him. I could give him a clean death. I knew all about death. I started to touch him, my hand hesitated. I didn't want to touch him. Didn't want to feel that once-living skin turned to this. Didn't want my last memory of him to be this. But I hate cowardice, almost worse than anything else, and if Asher could be trapped inside this body, then I could touch him one last time.

I laid my hand against his face, gently, oh, so gently. The skin felt thin as paper, dried, and brittle. I was afraid if I pushed, my fingers would go through his skin like the pages of an ancient book handled too roughly.

I'd forgotten that all vampire powers are stronger with touch. One second I was holding his face as delicately as I could, the next moment I had collapsed across his body, and was writhing with the memory of Asher's body on mine.

Hands grabbed me back, ripped me away from Asher, and I fought those hands, drove my elbow back into a groin. The hands didn't let go, but dimly I heard someone yelling my name, "Anita, Anita, Anita," over and over.

I blinked, and it was like waking, but I knew my eyes hadn't been closed. Richard's hands were still on me, but he was standing like something hurt.

I opened my mouth to apologize, but what came out wasn't an apology. "Why did you stop us?"

"I thought you were going to crush him."

Staring up into his so sincere face, I knew he meant it. Hadn't I just moments before been afraid I'd shove a ringer through Asher's brittle skin? But somehow I knew that wasn't going to happen. Somehow I knew he was a lot more durable than he appeared.

Jean-Claude came to stand beside me, and the look on his face said that he'd figured out what Richard hadn't. But Richard wasn't good with the dead. It wasn't his area of specialty. Jean-Claude touched my face, gently, as if afraid I'd break. "He fed from you. From your memory of him."