"Why does Damian's touch make me feel less like killing things?" I asked.
"I have noticed that you seem to gain a measure of calm, an extra layer of thoughtfulness before you pull the trigger when he is touching you."
"Jean-Claude isn't one bit less ruthless when I'm around him."
"You can only gain from your servant what your servant has to offer," Asher said. "I would say that you have helped make Jean-Claude more ruthless, not less, because that is your nature." He looked at the vampire standing behind me. "Damian survived for centuries with a mistress that tolerated no anger, no pride. Her will and her will alone was allowed. Damian learned to be less angry, less ruthless, or she-who-made-him would have destroyed him long ago."
Damian's hands had gone very still against my shoulders. I patted one of his hands the way you'd pat a friend that was hearing bad news. "It's alright, Damian, she can't touch you now."
"No, Jean-Claude bargained for my freedom from her, and I will always owe him a great debt for that. But that has nothing to do with blood oaths or vampiric bonds. I owe him for bringing me out of a terrible bondage."
"If you can keep Anita from doing anything unfortunate tonight, then you will have paid part of that debt," Asher said.
I felt Damian nod. "Then let us go down to the underground, for I know Musette of old and I do not fear her, as much as I fear she-who-made-me."
I turned so I could see Damian's face. "Are you implying that you fear Musette only a little less than she-who-made-you?"
He seemed to think about that for a second, or two, then slowly nodded. "I fear my old master more, but yes, I fear Musette."
"All fear her," Asher said.
Damian nodded. "All fear her."
I laid the top of my head against Damian's chest, shaking my head back and forth, messing up my hair, but I didn't care. "Damn it, if you'd just let me kill her tonight, now, it would save so much trouble. I'm right, you know I'm right."
Damian raised my face so I had to meet his eyes. "If you slay Musette, then Belle Morte will destroy Jean-Claude."
"What if Musette does something really terrible?"
Damian looked behind me at Asher. I turned so I could watch the vampires exchanging glances. Asher finally spoke, "I would never want to tell you that under no circumstances are we to slay Musette, because there may come a time when she gives you no choice. I would not have you endanger yourself by hesitating, if that time comes. But I think that Musette will play the political game very well and will give you no excuse so awful as that."
I sighed.
"If you don't handcuff Damian to Anita tonight, she's never going to make it through Musette's little show," Jason said.
"I do not believe that will be necessary," Asher said, "will it, Anita?"
I frowned. "How the hell should I know? Besides, I'm fresh out of handcuffs."
Jason drew a pair out of his jacket pocket. "You can borrow mine."
I frowned harder. "What are you doing carrying around a pair of handcuffs?" I held up my hand. "Wait, I don't want to know."
He grinned at me. "I'm a stripper, Anita, I use all sorts of props."
On one hand it was good to know that Jason didn't carry the handcuffs around for his own love life. On the other hand, I wasn't sure I wanted to know that handcuffs were part of his props as a stripper. What kind of shows were they doing down at Guilty Pleasures these days? Wait, I didn't really want an answer to that question either.
We all trooped to the back door of Circus of the Damned. We didn't use Jason's handcuffs, but I did end up walking down all those stairs holding Damian's hand. There was a growing list of people that walking hand in hand with I would have found romantic or titillating. Damian wasn't on the list, more's the pity.
6
Deep under the Circus of the Damned were what seemed like miles of underground rooms. They had been the home of St. Louis's Master of the City, whoever that happened to be, for as long as anyone could remember. Only the huge warehouse above ground had changed. Jean-Claude had modernized the underground, redecorated some of it, but that was all. It was still room after room of stone and torches.
To soften the stone look, Jean-Claude had used huge gauzy drapes to make a sort of tent for his living room walls. The outside was white, but once you parted the first set of hangings the «walls» were silver, gold, and white. Jason had reached out to part the drapes, when Jean-Claude pushed through. He motioned us all back, a finger to his lips.
I swallowed my greeting. He was wearing skin-tight leather pants tucked into thigh-high boots, so it was hard to tell where the pants left off and the boots began. The shirt was one of his typical shirts, something sort of 1700s, with mounds of ruffles at sleeves, and neck. But the color of all that silk was something I'd never seen him in. A vibrant blue somewhere between royal and navy. The color made his midnight eyes bluer than ever. His face was as always flawless, breathtaking. It was, as always, like some wet dream come to life, too beautiful to be real, too sensuous to be safe.
My heart was hammering in my throat. I wanted to fling myself on him, to wrap myself around him like a blanket. I wanted all those black curls to sweep along my body like I was being caressed by living silk. I wanted him. I almost always wanted him, but tonight, I WANTED him. With everything that was happening and about to happen, all I could think of was sex, sex with Jean-Claude.
He glided towards me, and I held out a hand so he wouldn't touch me. If he laid so much as a finger on me, I wasn't sure what I'd do.
He looked puzzled, and I heard his voice in my head, "What is wrong, ma petite?»
I still didn't have the trick of talking mind-to-mind down pat, so I didn't try. I just held up my left hand and pointed at my watch. It was ten to midnight.
Like Cinderella, I needed to be home by midnight every night. I'd told my coworkers that it was a lunch break, and it was, sometimes I even got food. But what I had to feed every twelve hours didn't have much to do with my stomach. No, lower places, definitely lower places.
Jean-Claude's eyes went wide. In my head, he said, "Ma petite, please tell me you have fed the ardeur already."
I shrugged. "Twelve hours ago." I didn't bother to whisper; the vampires behind the curtains would hear it, so I used a normal tone of voice. It wasn't like I was going to be able to hide the ardeur from them anyway. The ardeur was one of the side effects of being Jean-Claude's human servant. In another age, Jean-Claude would have been considered an incubus, because he could feed on lust. Not just feed upon it, but cause others to lust after him. It was a way of making more of what you needed. In an emergency, he could feed off of lust and forgo blood for a few days. It was very rare for a vampire to have a secondary power like this. Damian's master had been able to feed off of fear. She'd been what they call a night hag, or mora.
Belle Morte, of course, held the ardeur. She had used it for centuries to manipulate kings and emperors. Jean-Claude was one of the few of her bloodline to inherit this particular power. And I was, to my knowledge, the only human servant to ever inherit it from anyone.
When the ardeur first awoke in a vamp, it controlled them just like the blood lust, then gradually they learned to control it. Or that was the plan. Since I'd had it, I'd fought like hell so that I only had to feed every twelve hours or so. The feeling didn't have to involve intercourse, but there did have to be sexual contact. All those old stories about succubi and incubi killing people by loving them to death were true. I could not feed off the same person every time. Micah let me feed off him. Jean-Claude had been waiting to share the ardeur with me for years, though he'd thought it would be him doing the feeding, not me. I'd been forced to make Nathaniel, one of my wereleopards, into my own version of a pomme de sang. Embarrassing as hell, but it beat the heck out of molesting strangers, which was entirely possible if you fought the ardeur. It was a hard taskmistress just like Belle Morte.