He nodded.
"I wasn't your servant when I killed Oliver."
"I would keep that bit of knowledge to ourselves."
"Why?"
"They may not kill me, ma petite, but a vampire hunter who killed a council member would be executed. There would be no trial, no hesitation."
"Even though I'm your human servant now?"
"That might save you. It is one of our most stringent laws not to destroy another's servant."
"So they can't kill me because I'm your servant."
"But they can harm you, ma petite. They can harm you so very much that you may wish for death."
"You mean torture?"
"Not in a traditional sense. But they are masters at finding that which terrifies you most and using it against you. They will use your desires against you and twist everything you are into a shape of their choosing."
"I've met master vampires that could sense your heart's desire and use it against you."
"Everything you have seen of us before, ma petite, is like a distant dream. The council is the reality. They are the nightmare on which we are all based. The thing that even we fear."
"Yvette and Balthasar didn't seem that scary to me."
He looked at me. There was no expression on his face. It was a mask, smooth, pleasant, hidden. "If they did not frighten you, ma petite, it is only because you do not know them. Yvette is a toady of the council because they are powerful enough to give her a ready supply of victims."
"Victims? You aren't talking about human prey, are you?"
"It can be human. But Yvette is considered perverted even by other vampires."
I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but. . "Perverted in what ways"
He sighed and looked down at his hands. They lay very still on the tablecloth. It was like he was pulling away from me. I could see the walls clicking back into place. He was rebuilding himself into Jean-Claude, Master of the City. It was a shock to realize that there had been a change. It had been so gradual that I hadn't realized that with me, on our dates, he was different. I don't know if he was more himself or more what he thought I wanted him to be, but he was more "relaxed," less guarded. Watching him put on his public face while I sat across from him was almost depressing.
"Yvette loves the dead."
I frowned at him. "But she's a vampire. That's redundant."
He stared at me, and it wasn't a friendly look. "I will not sit here and debate with you, ma petite. You share my bed. If I were a zombie, you would not touch me."
"That's true." It took me a handful of seconds to understand what he'd just said. "Are you telling me that Yvette likes to have sex with zombies, real rotting corpses?"
"Among other things, yes."
I couldn't keep the disgust off my face. "Good Lord, that's. ." Words failed me. Then I found a word. "She's a necrophiliac."
"She will use a dead body if nothing else is available, but her true joy is the rotted animated corpse. She would find your talent most appealing, ma petite. You could raise her an unending stream of partners."
"I wouldn't raise the dead for her amusement."
"Not initially," he said.
"No, not under any circumstances."
"The council has a way of finding circumstances that can force you to do almost anything."
I watched his face and wished I could read it. But I understood. He was hiding from them, already. "How deep is the hole we're in?"
"Deep enough to bury us all, if the council chooses."
"Maybe I shouldn't have put the gun up," I said.
"Perhaps not," he said.
The check came. We paid. We left. I made a stop at the ladies' room on the way out and retrieved the gun. Jean-Claude took my car keys, so I wouldn't have to handle anything but the gun. It was a short walk from bathroom to door. Black gun against a black dress. Either no one noticed, or no one wanted to get involved. What else was new?
9
The parking lot was a dark expanse of shining blackness with pools of light spotlighting gleaming cars. Jaguars, Volvos, and Mercedes were the dominant species in the lot. I caught a glimpse of my Jeep at the far end of a line. I lost sight of it as we walked between the cars. Jean-Claude held my car keys cupped in his hand so they didn't rattle as he moved. We weren't holding hands, or anything else now. I had the Firestar in a two-handed grip, pointed at the ground, but ready. I was scanning the parking lot. My eyes flicking back and forth. I wasn't coy about it. A cop would have known what I was doing from yards away. I was searching for danger, searching for targets.
I felt both silly and nervous. The skin across my bare shoulders was trying to crawl down my spine. It was silly, but I'd have felt better in jeans and a shirt. More secure.
"I don't think they're out here," I said softly.
"I'm sure you are right, ma petite. Yvette and Balthasar have delivered their message and run back to their masters."
I glanced at him before turning my attention back to the parking lot. "Then why am I in combat mode?"
"Because the council travels with an entourage. We have not seen the last of them tonight, ma petite. Of that, I can promise you."
"Great."
We came around the last cars between us and my Jeep. There was a man leaning against the Jeep. The Firestar was just suddenly pointing at him. No thinking, just paranoia—oh, sorry, caution.
Jean-Claude froze beside me, utterly motionless. The old vampires can do that-just seem to stop, stop breathing, stop moving, stop everything. As if, if you looked away, they might just disappear.
The man leaned on the back of my Jeep in profile. He was in the middle of lighting a cigarette. You'd have thought he hadn't seen us, but I knew better. I was pointing a gun at him. He knew we were there. The match flared, showing one of the most perfect profiles I'd ever seen. His hair shone golden in the light, shoulder-length, thick waves to frame his face. He tossed the match to the pavement with a practiced flick of his hand. He took the cigarette from his mouth and raised his face skyward. The street light played along his face and golden hair. He blew three perfect smoke rings and laughed.
That laugh trailed down my spine as if he'd touched me. It made me shiver, and I wondered how the hell I'd thought he was human.
"Asher," Jean-Claude said. That one word was spoken without emotion, empty of meaning. But it was all I could do not to look at Jean-Claude's face. I knew who Asher was, but only by reputation. Asher and his human servant, Julianna had traveled with Jean-Claude across Europe for a couple of decades. They'd been a mйnage а trois, the closest thing Jean-Claude had had to a family since he became a vampire. Jean-Claude had been called away to his dying mother's bedside. Asher and Julianna had been taken by the Church. Read witch-hunters.
Asher turned and gave us his right profile. The street light that had caressed the perfection of his left side seemed harsh now. The right side of his face looked like melted candle wax. Burn scars, acid scars, holy water. Vampires couldn't heal damage done by holy objects. The priests had had a theory that they could burn the devil out of Asher one drop of holy water at a time.
I kept the gun on him, solid, no wavering. I'd seen worse, recently. I'd seen a vampire whose face had rotted away on one side. An eye had been rolling in a bare socket. Compared to that, Asher was a GQ cover boy. The thing that made the scarring worse somehow was that the rest of him was so perfect. It made it worse somehow, more obscene. They'd left his eyes pure, and the midline of his face, so his nose, the fullness of his mouth, sat in a sea of scars. Jean-Claude had saved him before the zealots killed him, but Julianna had been burned as a witch.