Jean-Claude's voice, soft, in my head, "You have done something to damage the bond between yourself and Damian. You must reopen it, ma petite. "
"A little busy right now," I said.
Richard wrapped his one arm around Damian's waist and helped me pull him off of Nathaniel. The three of us rode him down to the floor. I changed my grip on his neck to a choke hold that wouldn't have worked at all, if Nathaniel hadn't been pressing on his shoulder and chest and Richard sitting on the rest of him. My body was curled around his neck, using my own weight as an anchor to make it harder for him to rise and strike. But I'd tried this hold on large human males in judo class before, and it wasn't effective, not if they had the upper body strength to sit up with me dangling from their neck. I did it now, only to control his head, his mouth, those fangs, and because I had Richard and Nathaniel to help me.
He fought us, but three on one, we had some control. Not much, but some. My voice came breathy, but clear, "What do you mean I've damaged the bond between Damian and me?"
"Who are you talking to?" Nathaniel asked, through gritted teeth.
"Jean-Claude," Richard answered for me.
"Can you hear him, too?" I asked.
"Sometimes."
I wanted to ask, "like now?" but Jean-Claude was answering me. "You have put up shields specifically against Damian, why?"
"He woke up in a flood of sunlight. It seemed to terrify him. He was so afraid. The fear was choking Nathaniel and me."
"Both you and Nathaniel?" Jean-Claude asked. I could see him lying on the white silk sheets, his black hair spread out like a dark dream across the pillow. One hand idly touching Asher's bare back, the way you'd drum your fingers on a desk or pet a dog, if you were thinking about other things.
"Yes, both of us."
"I asked you when I woke, what had you done. Now, I may know."
For once I was at least up to speed on the metaphysical disasters in my life. I got to say, "We know already."
"Know what, ma petite? "
Damian gave a particularly violent movement, bucking me up off the floor, slamming me back down only after I felt, rather than saw the other two men, force him back down. I thought it, because I didn't have breath to speak at the moment, That we'r e a triumvirate.
"I heard that," Richard said, and there was a sullen note under his breathless exertion as if he'd thought I'd only thought it to keep it from him, or maybe I was just projecting. I was always willing to believe that Richard was being difficult. As he was always willing to believe I was being bloodthirsty.
Jean-Claude didn't ask stupid questions or try to discuss metaphysics. If we all knew that somehow I'd managed to forge a second triumvirate, then we could move on. "When you shielded from Damian's fear, you shielded too well. You have cut him off from your power, as you did by leaving once."
"I'm right here," I said, trying to turn my face away from the blood that had decided to trickle down Damian's face and onto mine.
"There physically, but not metaphysically, and your servant needs both."
"How do I fix this?" I asked.
"Drop your shields," he said, and even in my head, his voice was matter-of-fact.
It sounded so simple, so obvious. I remembered shielding from Damian's fear. I had thought of metal, hard, cold, solid, impenetrable . Not a metal wall, or door, but truly just the essence of metal. It had taken me months of work to understand how to shield not with an imaginary door or wall or building, but just to think, rock, water, metal. Block the things you don't want to get through, or drown them. Marianne could also shield with air and fire, but I didn't get that. Air just wasn't strong enough for shielding, and fire, well, fire's fire. I used the tools I understood.
How do you unshield? Once I'd had to picture the wall crumbling, or the door opening, but very lately, I'd understood something that Marianne had been saying, but I hadn't been understanding. I simply stopped thinking about metal. I stopped. It went away. Poof, gone. One second I was safe behind my thought of metal, the next I was drowning in Damian's rage. No, not rage, rage implies anger, human emotion, and that wasn't what roared through my head. I'd thought more than once that I was going crazy in a detached sort of sociopathic way, but I'd been wrong. That hadn't been being crazy—this was.
I forgot about holding Damian down. I forgot about why I'd dropped my shields. I forgot about everything. There were no thoughts. No words. There was just sensation, and impulse. The smell of fresh blood. The taste of our own blood in our mouths, bitter. Hands pushing us to the floor, crushing us. Hunger, hunger like fire in our gut, like something that would eat us alive if we didn't feed, and feed, and feed. The smell of fresh blood, the warmth in their hands pushing on us, all that was maddening. Pain, my body was just pain. Like a fire that was burning me up from the inside. I screamed, and the sound was loud and not loud enough. It didn't help. Only one thing would quench that fire, fill me up, stop the pain. Blood. Fresh blood. Warm blood.
My hands touched warm skin, and if it hadn't been Richard, I'm not sure I would have stopped. But the feel of Richard's muscled arm under my hands called something of me up through the hunger. I was staring into Richard's solid brown eyes from inches away, almost as if I'd moved in for a kiss, but it hadn't been his mouth I'd been aiming at. Even now, the long solid line of his neck beckoned to me. The smell of fresh blood overwhelmed the subtler scent of the blood that pulsed under his skin, but somehow lapping at the bloody wound wasn't enough. It needed to be fresh. I needed my teeth in flesh. I needed to make my own hole to tear at. Only that would satisfy. Only that would be enough.
I forced my gaze up to Richard's face. I looked into his wide eyes, made myself look at his face, trace the line of his jaw, the fullness of his lips. I looked on the face of someone I'd loved once, and I had to work harder than I'd worked at almost anything ever, to see him as something other than food.
Damian bucked, and Richard had to pay more attention to the vampire he and Nathaniel were still pinning to the floor than to me. A cool voice flowed through my mind. "I am helping you shield, ma petite. Forgive me, I did not understand what dropping your shield would do to you."
"He's a revenant," I said, and I don't think I said it out loud.
" Oui. "
"How do I help him?"
"You must rebind him as you did when he came out of the coffin. Let him taste your blood and say the words over him."
"Are the words really important?" I asked.
I felt him shrug, where he sat on his silk-covered bed. "They are the words that masters of the city have spoken over their followers for thousands of years. I would not want to chance that the words are not part of the magic that will bind master to servant, by leaving them out."
I nodded. "Did Richard hear this?"
" Non ."
"Tell him." A moment after I said it, I was still cool and a little distant from what was happening, but I could hear it again, see it. I was sitting on my living room floor, not too far from the door, and Richard and Nathaniel were still trying to keep Damian on the floor. They were mostly succeeding, though it was hard to tell through the blood if there were any new wounds. They were all three covered in blood.