Kiss the Dead (37 page)

Damian let me see the second woman in front of him. She was tiny, shorter than me by inches, short enough that she fit under my arm, when I put my arm across her delicate shoulders. Her shining black hair fell like patent-leather water straight and perfect to her waist. Her uptilted eyes looked brown, but I’d spent enough time looking into them to know they were actually an orange so dark they looked brown. In the right light they were the color of fire when it burns deep into the wood and you think the flame is out, but if you don’t douse it with
water, it’ll flare up and burn the house down. Her Chinese name translated to Black Jade; to me she was just Jade, my Jade. She was my black tiger to call, and the first woman to change me from heterosexual to heteroflexible.

Jade looked frantic, and jerked away from Damian’s hand. She started running down the hallway. Damian looked up, as most of us did when we were “seeing” each other in our minds. “Someone told her you were hurt.”

“Shit,” I said, out loud.

“What’s wrong?” God asked.

“Someone told Jade I was hurt. She’ll have to see for herself that I’m healed.”

“Can’t you just tell her mind-to-mind?” God asked.

“She’s too scared, and panicking. It makes her head-blind.”

“No offense,” God said, “but for a ninja assassin super-spy she spooks easy.”

Domino said, “You try being abused by a master vampire for centuries and see how you do.” His beasts flared enough to raise heat around him like a breath of summer in the cave-cool corridor.

“Hey, no offense,” God said.

“None taken,” I said, and touched Domino’s arm. I was trying to calm him before Jade got here. He was very protective of her. Touching him made the heat of his beasts try to jump to me and call my matching tiger colors, but I understood how to soothe the energy now. Not shut it down, not trap the beasts, but soothe them like you’d pet and cuddle a big kitty. Of course these kitties would have happily torn my body apart so they could be on the outside with their own real fleshy bodies if it had been possible. We’d finally figured out it was Jean-Claude’s vampire marks that kept me from being able to shapeshift for real. Modern lycanthropy wasn’t contagious to vampires, and I was just too close to being a vampire thanks to his marks, and my own necromancy. Ancient-strain lycanthropy had been contagious to the undead.

“Ease down,” I said to Domino.

Jade had paid Domino the highest compliment she had for men; she
let him join us in bed. Nathaniel was tolerated in the bed, and Crispin, a white tiger and stripper at Guilty Pleasures, but she seldom slept with me because I kept insisting on all these men being there. Her abuser had been male and it had given her a bad opinion of them; the only thing she disliked more was male vampires. Damian had won her over with tales of his own abuse at the hands of She who made him. His vampire mistress made Jade’s master look sane. She’d had to accept that women could abuse, too. Jean-Claude and Asher had enough stories of Belle Morte, and then there’d been the Mother of All Darkness, and Nikolaos the first Master of the City of St. Louis had been one crazy bitch. Crazy didn’t discriminate on the basis of gender.

Jean-Claude had won her over by being himself. It had been interesting watching him work to gain her trust. He’d always told me the only woman who ever frustrated his plans was me; watching him charm Jade had made me believe that statement.

Jade came into sight running so fast she was a blur of black and white. I handed the weapons I’d been holding to Domino and then braced. She was small enough and I was strong enough, but running at that speed it was a lot of momentum to stop.

She slowed down enough for me to see the long hair sweeping out behind her, the pale face, eyes frantic, and then she leapt on me like a monkey. Jean-Claude put a hand on my back to help steady me as all that speed and energy leapt into my arms, and stopped. She wrapped her legs around my waist, arms around my neck, and buried her face into my hair and the side of my neck. I put my hands the only place I could to hold her, which was underneath her slender ass. It was the same way Nicky had carried me into the showers. That thought made my stomach clench tight.

She mumbled into my neck, but she was mumbling Chinese. Even after a year, the nuances of the language when muttered into my hair, or neck, escaped me.

I was already making soothing noises to her, but I transferred one hand up to stroke the incredible silkiness of her hair, while the other arm held her weight.

“Jade, sweetie, I can’t understand you when you’re this upset. Slow down and English, please, dearest, English.”

She raised her face up enough to look at me. Her eye makeup was smeared around her eyes, which probably meant I was wearing it on my neck and the blue silk of the shirt.

Her voice came out in a breathy whisper. “They said you were hurt.”

“I’m all better; all healed.”

She studied my face, serious as a child, as if she thought I might be lying. I’d tried doing that, but found truth worked better than comforting lies. She was way more girly than I would ever be, but liked truth the way that I did, and once lied to, she never forgot. Again, like me.

“Promise,” she whispered.

I nodded as solemn as she was. “Promise.”

She smiled and her whole face changed from serious beauty to a shining happiness. She glowed, and when someone looks at you like that, what can you do? I kissed her, and she hugged me, wrapping her arms around my neck again, and wriggling happily. I was suddenly glad the shirt hung to my knees; her enthusiastic cuddling had made more than one short skirt ride up and give way too much of a girl-on-girl show for the guards.

“
Ma petite
, should you and the lovely Jade come inside?” He was holding the door and motioning. Asher was already out of sight in the room.

I sighed, but Jean-Claude was right. Jade would never let me just put her down and tell her to go play elsewhere. I had been the one who rescued her from centuries of abuse, by simply being better at metaphysics than her abuser had been; in effect I’d been the better vampire, so he was still alive. The other Harlequin were hunting him and the few rogues left, but he wasn’t dead. Jade believed that if I died her old master would take her over again. I wasn’t just her rescuer, I was her continued salvation. We couldn’t even tell her that she was wrong, because you weren’t supposed to be able to cut the bonds between master and animal to call without killing the old master. But what I knew, and he hadn’t,
was that part of what made it work was Jade’s willingness. She had wanted freedom, and when I offered it, she’d thrown her free will into mine. It’s so much easier to rescue prisoners if they want to come with you. I’d offered love and safety, he’d offered hate and fear; who wouldn’t choose love?

J
EAN
-C
LAUDE’S CUSTOM-MADE BED
was still a four-poster like his last one, but the heavy wooden posts and crossbeams were too thick for the drapes that used to hang on the bed, making it a cozy nest. The wood also had heavy attachment points scattered here and there. The frame itself was reinforced steel. When you do bondage with shapeshifters and vampires, you need something sturdy to chain them to. The bed was also bigger even than a California king;
orgy-size
was what we’d started calling it. I was sitting with my back against the small mountain of black and white pillows in the middle of the headboard. Jade was snuggled lower on the pillows, so that her head tucked in between my waist and hip; one arm was across my thighs, the other was curled underneath her, the hand touching my calf. I had one hand on her shoulders, touching all that almost slippery shiny hair. Jean-Claude was on the other side of me. He had his arm across my shoulders so I lay back tucked in against the side of his body. My free hand was on his thigh, petting the silk and the muscles underneath it. Asher hadn’t even tried to climb on the bed with us. One, I was still mad at him, and he knew it. Two, Jade didn’t like him. She didn’t trust him, and she shouldn’t have. There was something
about her extreme victim vibe that made Asher want to do bad things to her, not really hurt her, but dominate her in that bondage-and-submission way, except that Jade wasn’t healthy enough for fun and games like that. She might never be. But Jade’s very fear of him made Asher want to seduce her, not necessarily tie her up and have his way with her, but make her say yes. Her issues and his: bad mix.

Asher paced at the foot of the bed like a big cat in a cage with too much energy and not enough room. I stroked the warmth of Jade’s hair, and then cuddled into the solidness of Jean-Claude. I let their touching me, and my touching them, help dissipate some of the nervous energy that Asher was having to pace away.

“If I had dreamed that you would make love to Nicky more than once so close together, I would have cautioned you,” Jean-Claude said.

“I know he’s a Bride, but I thought I was a danger to him only if I was gravely hurt; then I might accidentally drain a Bride to death. That’s what you told me.”

“Yes,
ma petite
, but…”

“I wasn’t that hurt.”

“No, but the Brides have no ability to protect themselves; they are designed to give anything that their master wants from them.”

“I didn’t use the
ardeur
the first time. It didn’t feel like I used it.” I tried to think. “I did heal enough to go down on Nicky the second time.”

“I cut you badly,” Asher said, stopping by the side of the bed. “That is a lot of healing unless the sex was magical.”

I frowned at him. “I know that the
ardeur
can drain a lover to death if I feed too often on any one person, but healing from sex has never come with that kind of price unless the
ardeur
is invoked.”

Jean-Claude laid his cheek against my hair. “Belle Morte drained her Brides to raise her own power, just before she would take us into a nobleman’s court and try to seduce them all.”

“I wasn’t trying to do anything but heal and feed the
ardeur
,” I said.

Asher said, “The first time she killed a Bride and stole all his energy, it was accidental.”

We looked at him.

He used his hair to hide almost all of his face, not just the scars, as if he didn’t want to see us while he told us. “The first time was like this, just sex, but there was no modern medicine to restart his heart. He died and stayed dead, but she wasn’t upset. She loved the power of it, and filed it away in that dark mind of hers. By the time Jean-Claude arrived in court she had made it just another piece of her power.”

“You have never mentioned this,” Jean-Claude said.

“I did not think that Anita would be able to do it. She is not a true vampire… She…”

“I am master here, Asher; you should have told me and let me decide what
ma petite
needed to know.”

“I see that now,” Asher said, and he looked up, letting the shine of his eyes gleam blue, made bluer by the robe he was wearing. “I’m sorry…” He reached out to us, a beseeching gesture, and something he’d done leaning against the bed had loosened the sash so that it fell open, giving a glimpse of his body, pale and perfect. The robe fell open only to show the unscarred side, the same way his hair often fell. I knew the hair was deliberate; was the robe? Could he “accidentally” make the robe fall open just so that he gave the perfect glimpse of his body to remind us, no, me, what I was about to give up? Jean-Claude had just finished having sex with him; it wasn’t him that Asher needed to re-seduce.

I turned so I could see Jean-Claude’s face, which made him have to lean back a little. “Tell me you didn’t give in?”

“What do you mean, give in,
ma petite
?”

“I mean tell him he doesn’t have to go. He has to go, right? No matter how good the sex is, he has to leave town for at least a month; right?”

“I have not said otherwise.”

I didn’t like the way he worded that. Jade rubbed her face against my waist like the big cat she was in her other form. She was trying to soothe me.

“Sin could have died tonight. His control over hyenas is better than ours, it’s one animal that neither of us has any control over, and Asher
used that to make Ares attack another guard. Asher meant for it to be Nicky with his broken arm, et cetera… and if Asher hadn’t hurt me to begin with, I wouldn’t have almost drained Nicky dry. We can’t let this slide, Jean-Claude, we can’t.”

“It is too close to dawn for him to leave tonight, but tomorrow night he will go, as ordered.”

“I deserve to be exiled for a month,” Asher said, and he had moved down the edge of the bed, so that he was standing opposite us; the robe was so open it was just a beautiful embroidered frame to his body. His hand slid down the edge of the robe so that it was just natural to follow where his hand moved, and his hand moved ever so slowly so that it was like a tour of his chest, the flat plains of his stomach, the edge of his hips, and then the groin, where he lay soft, and waiting. Until he took blood again, that would be all he had to offer, but I actually liked that about vampires. Most men, I started going down on them and they got big too soon, so that I couldn’t enjoy the texture and feel that they started with…

Jade uncurled herself and began to climb off the other side of the bed. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“I cannot,” she said.

“Cannot what?” I asked.

“You like his cruelty. I do not. Please do not order me to stay.”

“No one will force you to do anything you don’t want to do. I and Jean-Claude have both promised you that.”

“I believe you, but… May I go?”

I sighed. “Yes, but we’re not having sex with Asher.”

“You are within your rights to have sex with him if you wish.” She was already backing toward the door. One hand was holding her other arm tight enough that her fingers were mottled. It meant she was afraid. She was afraid of men, of sex with men, of vampires, and most especially afraid of male vampires. I was lying in the arms of one vampire with another nearly naked by the bed, and they were both decidedly male; as far as Jade was concerned I was about to do something terrifying.