Лорел Гамильтон - The Harlequin

I didn't know what she meant. I wanted to ask, Who won't die ? Then something cold and liquid seemed to flow through my veins. I'd had something like it before, and my last thought before a different kind of darkness took me was, why was Lillian giving me morphine?

I dreamed, or maybe I didn't. But if it was heaven, it was too scary, and if it was hell, it wasn't quite scary enough. I was at a ball, everyone in glittering clothes, centuries before I was born. Then the first couple turned to me, and they were masked. Everyone was wearing the Harlequin's white masks. I stumbled back from the dancers and found that I was wearing a silver-and-white dress that was too wide to be graceful, and too tight through the ribs to let me breathe well. One of the couples bumped me and my heart was suddenly in my throat. My chest was tight and tighter, as if some huge fist were crushing my ribs. I fell to my knees and the dancers moved wide around me in a spill of skirts and petticoats. Their dresses brushed me as they whirled faceless around me.

A voice came to the dream, Belle Morte's purring contralto: « Ma petite , you are dying.»

The hem of a crimson dress was at my hands. She knelt beside me. She was still the brunette beauty who had nearly conquered all of Europe once. All that dark hair piled atop her head, leaving her neck in that pale, white curve that we'd always loved. We … I tried to feel the rest of that we , but where Jean-Claude should have been was awful blankness.

She leaned over me as I fell to the floor. «He is almost gone, our Jean-Claude,» she said. Her amber-brown eyes didn't seem worried. She was simply making an observation. «Why do you not ask for my help, ma petite ?»

I wanted to say, Why would you help us ? but there was no air to say anything. My spine tried to bow in the tightness of the corset, as I gasped like a fish left to die on the shore.

«Oh,» she said, and with a flick of her will the dream changed. We were in her bedroom, on her huge four-poster bed. She knelt above me, with a huge knife in her hand. The world was going gray. I wasn't even afraid.

My body jerked, the corset gave, and I could suddenly breathe a little better. My chest still hurt, and I breathed too shallowly, but I could breathe. I looked down to find that she had cut the bodice of the dress all the way through the corset, so that there was a line of bare skin from my neck to my waist. She laid the knife beside her knees and spread the stays of the corset a little wider, as if she meant to skin me out of the dress, but she went back to kneeling beside me, in her red, red dress. Her skin seemed to glow against the crimson cloth.

«What happens in my dreams can be very real, ma petite . Corsets here made your breathing there harder. You don't have enough breath to spare.»

«What's happening?»

She lay down beside me, her head on the pillow I was lying upon. A little too close for comfort, but I didn't have the energy to spare for moving. «I felt Jean-Claude's light snuffed out.»

«He's not dead,» I whispered.

«Can you sense him?»

It must have shown on my face, because she said, «Shhh, you are correct, he is not gone completely, but he is close to the edge. You are keeping him, both of them, alive. You and your second triumvirate of power. Something Jean-Claude did in this new emergency has taught you better control of the power between you and your other triumvirate; your kitty and your vampire.»

I swallowed, and it hurt, though I couldn't remember why it should. «Nathaniel, Damian.» I was feeling a little better, well enough to be afraid. I'd almost drained both of them to death once, or twice.

«Do not fear for them. They are well enough, but they are feeding for you, giving you their energy as they are supposed to do in emergencies,» she said, and stroked my forehead, tracing down the edge of my jaw. It was an idle movement, like the way you'd stroke the curve of a couch you were sitting on. «The masks of the Harlequin were in your mind, ma petite . Have they come to your territory?»

I wanted to tell her to stop calling me ma petite , but air was precious, so I answered, «Yes.»

«Show me,» she said.

Not Tell me , but Show me . I said, «How?»

«You are of Belle Morte's line. How do we trade power?»

I frowned up at her.

«Kiss me, and but think of it, and I will know what you know.»

I don't know if I would have kissed her voluntarily, because I didn't get a chance to decide. She pressed those ruby lips to my mouth, and I was suffocating again. I couldn't breathe. I pushed at her, and she thought inside my head, «Think of the Harlequin.» It was as if it were an order, and my mind did what she asked.

I thought of the meeting with Malcolm and his fear. I went back through the date with Nathaniel and the mask in the bathroom. The second mask with the musical notes on it, and the meeting planned. The mark on me, and the scent of wolf, and Jake keeping me safe. Then the last memory, where I saw my men dying, and the ghost on Richard, and the feeding with Rafael. She slowed the memory there, lingering on the rat king's powers, then let the memories go back to speeding along, and using Rafael's power to attack the one that had attacked us. It was the last memory that she slowed down completely. She stared at the pale faces of the vampires, the long dark hair, the glowing eyes, brown and gray respectively. Belle Morte studied the faces of the other vampires. She whispered, «Mercia, and Nivia.» The memory ended, and Belle Morte was simply lying beside me, propped on the pillows.

I whispered, «You know them.»

«Yes, but not that they were Harlequin. It is a deep, dark secret who is, and who is not, one of them. They are spies, and secrecy is their life blood. By their hands the Harlequin have broken their most profound taboo.»

«What taboo?» I asked.

«They are neutral, ma petite , utterly neutral, or how can they dispense justice? Did they give you a black mask? I did not see it in your memories.»

«No, only the two white.»

She laughed, and her face shone with joy. My heart hurt, but not from a physical blow. It hurt the way it sometimes does when you see someone you once adored do something to remind you why you loved them, and you know that that laugh will never again be for you.

«They have broken the law then, the law they swore to uphold. Unless they deliver the black mask, they are not allowed to bring death. For Mercia and Nivia, it means true death, but for their fellow Harlequin it means something worse.»

«What?» I asked.

«Disbandment. They will be no more, and those who are not killed will be forced to go back to their bloodlines, their old masters. To be neutral the Harlequin are freed of their ties to their creators. They are a law unto themselves, but if they are breaking the law, then they will be broken.»

«Why does that»—I had to draw a breath to finish—«make you so happy?»

She pouted out that full lower lip and said, «Poor thing, so hurt. I will help you.»

«Appreciate the offer, but»—and I had to work for breath—«help us, why?»

«Because you alive are witness enough to destroy the power of the Harlequin.»

«Why,» breath, «do you care?»

«They were once the private guards of the Mistress of the Dark. She is waking, I know that now.»

«But when she wakes,» breath, «she won't have them.»

« Precisement ,» Belle said.

«But you need me, us, alive.»

«Yes,» she said, and she looked at me the way that a hawk must look at a wounded mouse, eager, anticipatory.

«Make you mad?» I whispered, and had to cough. It wasn't my throat that was closing off. I didn't think it was Jean-Claude's. Something bad was happening to Richard.