“A choke hold won’t work on a vampire. They don’t breathe.”
That was half true, but I let it go. We could argue later. “I’m just trying to control his head, that’s it.”
He gave a small nod. He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t argue about it, and that was good enough. I slid in behind Damian, and he was so busy straining after Richard, that he didn’t seem to notice. I knelt behind the vampire, and for the first time was very aware that I was nude. The fight had sort of made it unimportant. What made it important now, was that Richard’s hand was still in Damian’s hair, and his hand had to stay there until I had my arm wrapped around the vampire’s neck. I needed to have one arm wrapped around Damian’s neck and the other arm holding my wrist, and I needed to be squeezing like a son of a bitch, while my face was buried against the back of his head, so he, theoretically, couldn’t reach me. Only Richard’s grip and the vampire’s desire to bite him would keep him from tearing into me during the process. So Richard had to keep his hand there, but now, suddenly, my bare breasts were going to be pressed into the back of his hand and arm. The fact that that bit of knowledge froze me for a second tells you how badly I behaved around Richard, or how screwed up about him I was. A life and death struggle and I was worried about pressing my breasts against his hand. Focus, Anita, focus. Survive first, be embarrassed later.
“Hurry,” Richard said, and there was strain in that one word.
Super strong doesn’t mean you don’t get tired.
I took a deep breath, let it out, and moved into both Damian’s body and Richard’s hand. I had to move fast and firm, no hesitations, because Richard’s grip wasn’t perfect control. If Damian noticed me before my arm was under his chin, I wasn’t sure there was anything Richard could do to save me some damage. My hand touched Damian’s blood-slick skin, and I had to follow through. I had to ignore the almost electric reaction I had when my bare breasts brushed the back of Richard’s hand. One small touch and my skin ran with goosebumps.
But it was more than just physical attraction. It was as if the world held its breath. Even Damian went still for that frozen moment. I felt Jean-Claude wake. Felt his eyes open, knew he woke in a welter of silk sheets in the sunless dark of the underground in Circus of the Damned.
He turned in that nest of silk and darkness and touched Asher’s body, found it still cold, still hours from waking.
Jean-Claude’s voice echoed through my head. “What have you done, ma petite? ”
I don’t know what I would have answered, because in that moment the world came back into focus. I could still feel Jean-Claude all those miles away, but I was back to the here and now.
Damian helped me concentrate on the here and now. He twisted in Richard’s desperate grip and lunged at me, mouth wide, fangs straining like a striking snake. I suddenly had my own grip on his hair and helped Richard hold him away from my skin by fractions of an inch. I snugged my right arm under his chin, tight against the front of his neck. And he reacted like the only danger was the arm sliding in from his right, so that he never tried to turn in against mine and Richard’s grip on the other side. There was no human thought to him in that moment. No human. No vampire. I wasn’t even sureanimal was the word. I had no word for what Damian had become. In a different century it would have beendemon, possessed, damned.
Jean-Claude’s voice in my head again, “He will be damned if you cannot bring him back.”
I had to shake my head, like his voice was an insect buzzing inside my skull. It distracted me. I thought very hard, stop talking.
I don’t know if he heard me or figured out on his own that he was distracting me, but he stopped.
I let go of Damian’s hair and used my arms to close around his neck in what would have been a choke hold, if he’d needed to breathe.
Vampires do breathe, but they don’t have to. My arm slid into place more easily because of all the blood, but the blood also made it harder to hold him still, harder to maintain my grip. I put my head down, tight against the side of his head, using all my upper body to simply control his head.
Richard let go of Damian’s hair, and the vampire sprang up off the floor. I tightened my grip around his neck, but was along for the ride. I could control his head from moving side to side, but I couldn’t choke him, and I didn’t weigh enough to slow him down.
Damian was on top of Richard, pinning the bigger man to the floor.
Richard had his good arm pushing out against Damian’s chest. I got my feet under me on either side of them. It was awkward, because I just wasn’t tall enough to do it comfortably, but I began to fight to pull Damian’s neck backward. I could feel that I could snap his neck. I was almost sure I could, but I could not simply fight him backward. I knew if you decapitated most vamps, they died. I’d never had the strength before to snap a neck this easily, so I’d never tried. If I snapped his spine would he die? Would he be crippled? Would spinal damage cripple a vampire?
Richard’s arm was beginning to shake and collapse at the elbow. I pulled backward, and felt Damian’s windpipe begin to give. I was going to crush his neck before I broke his spine. I looked past us and found Nathaniel bent over Gregory at the foot of the stairs. Gregory wasn’t moving, but one problem at a time. I screamed, “Nathaniel!”
He turned, and there was blood all over the front of his body. I didn’t think most of it was his. His face looked surprised as if he had lost track of our fight, but he came to me. He grabbed Damian’s arm, and it was as if he’d given the vampire another target. Damian leapt off of Richard and was suddenly on top of Nathaniel. I was beginning to feel positively useless. If I couldn’t choke him, wasn’t heavy enough to slow him down, wasn’t willing to break his neck, I was useless. I used what weight I had to stagger him, throw him off balance so that Nathaniel had time to get his arms up and a leg into Damian’s stomach. If Nathaniel had known how to fight, he’d have been able to do more, but at the moment just keeping the vampire from biting him was good.
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’re a triumvirate.