Лорел Гамильтон - Danse Macabre

Samuel nodded, and sat back down. «You're wondering, if you take her among nearly a dozen Masters of the City, whether the night will be even more interesting than this one.»

Jean-Claude nodded. « Exactement .»

«Are these questions that only a vampire can answer?» Sampson asked.

«It is from a master like your father that I need advice,» Jean-Claude said.

«Then, I could go back to the hotel and check on Mother and the twins.»

«I think they have enough watchdogs, Sampson,» his father said.

Sampson gave his father a look like he was trying to say something with his eyes, and his father wasn't getting it.

«You're leaving because you think it will make me less upset,» Richard said.

Sampson looked at him, with that open, honest face, and nodded.

«That's…«Richard's face struggled with his emotions, because a friendly gesture, honestly given, always touched him. «That's really… good of you.»

«You obviously don't like sharing Anita, and now here I am asking you to share her again. We need her to help us. I don't want to lose my mother and one, or both, of my little brothers.» Sampson shook his head, eyes staring off into space, but not seeing anything in this room. The look in his eyes was haunted as if he, like his father, had given up on avoiding the tragedy. As if he'd been picturing it all in his head for months, trying to make peace with it, and failing.

He looked up at Richard. «I won't give up this chance to save my family, but I am sorry that it's causing you pain.» He came out into the middle of the room, facing Richard. «If my going will make you feel better, I can do that.»

Richard hung his head, his newly long hair hiding most of his face. When he raised it again he looked like a man coming out of deep water, shaking his hair back from his face. «Insult to injury, damn it.»

«Did I say something wrong?» Sampson asked.

«No, nothing wrong,» Richard said. He sighed, and his arms started to unfold, stiffly, as if it hurt him to let go of the anger. «No, I just didn't want to like you.»

Sampson looked puzzled. «I don't understand.»

«If I can hate you, I can get angry, and storm out. If you'd acted like some kind of lustful asshole, I could have just gone. Wrapped my injured righteousness around me, and gotten the hell out of here.»

I stood up and faced him; Jean-Claude kept my hand lightly in his. «I've already told you, Richard,» I said, «you don't have to pick a fight to leave.»

«Yes,» he said, «I do. Because I know that I cripple us as a power by simply not being here when you need me. If I'd been here, Auggie wouldn't have rolled you. I have no one but myself to blame that you and Jean-Claude fucked Auggie.» His voice held the edge of warmth, and the first bite of his power flickered through the room.

I took a few steps, leaving Jean-Claude's hand behind. «Why are you responsible for everything?» I asked. «I deal with more undead than you do; I should have been able to protect myself. And maybe I should have seen it coming, but I'm not beating myself up about it. It happened, and now we deal with it.»

«Is it really that easy for you, Anita? It happened, now we deal with it, we move on?»

I thought about it, then nodded. «Yes, it is, because it has to be. My life wouldn't work if I wallowed in every disaster, every moral quandary. I can't afford the luxury of self-doubt, not to that degree.»

«Luxury,» Richard said. «This isn't luxury, Anita, it's morality. It's your conscience. That's not a luxury item, that's what separates us from the animals.»

Here we go again , I thought. Out loud I said, «I have a conscience, Richard, and my own set of morals. Do I ever worry that I'm a bad guy? Yeah, sometimes I do. Do I wonder if I've traded away pieces of my soul, just to survive? Yeah.» I shrugged. «It's the price of doing business in the real world, Richard.»

«This isn't the real world, Anita. This isn't the normal workaday world.»

«No, but it's our world.» I was facing him now, almost close enough to touch. He was controlling himself, because his power was only a warm pressure in the air.

He waved his hands around the room. «This is not where I want to be, Anita. I don't want to live where my choices are sharing you with other men, or having people die. I don't want those choices.»

I sighed, and let him see that I was tired, and sad, and sorry. «There was a time when I would have agreed with you, but I like parts of my life a lot, Richard. I hate the ardeur , but I don't hate everything it's brought into my life. I'd have liked to try that whole picket-fence thing, but I think even without the ardeur and the vampire marks, that it wouldn't have been my gig.»

«I think it would have been,» he said.

«Richard, I don't think you see me. I don't think you see who I am.»

«How can you say that to me? If I don't shield I share your dreams, and your nightmares.»

«But you're still trying to shove me in a box that I don't think fit me even when we met. Just like you're trying to shove yourself into a box that doesn't fit you, either.»

He was shaking his head. «That's not true. That's not true.»

«Which part?» I asked.

«I think we could have made it, our version of the white picket fence, without him,» and he pointed at Jean-Claude.

Jean-Claude was giving his most peaceful, empty face, as if he were afraid to do or say anything.

«Don't try to blame all our problems on Jean-Claude.»

«Why not, it's true. If he had left us alone, not marked us.»

«You'd be dead,» I said.

He frowned at me. «What?»

«Without the extra power of the marks with Jean-Claude you'd never have had the power to kill Marcus and keep the pack.»

«That's not true.»

I just stared at him. «Yeah, Richard, I was there, it is true. You'd be dead, and I'd still be living alone sleeping with my stuffed toys and guns. You'd be dead and I'd be dead inside, dying of loneliness, not just because you would be gone, but because my life was empty before. I was like a lot of people who do police work. I was my job. I had nothing else. My life was full of death, and horror, and trying to stay ahead of the next horror. But I was losing the battle, Richard, losing myself, long before Jean-Claude marked me.»

«I asked you to give up the police work. I told you it was eating you up.»

I shook my head. «You're not listening to me, Richard, or you're not hearing me.»

«Maybe I don't want to hear you. Or maybe I'm right, and you're not listening.»

We stood barely two feet apart, but it might as well have been a thousand miles. Some distances are made out of things bigger and harder to travel across than mere miles. We stood and stared at each other across a chasm of misunderstanding, and pain, and love.

I tried one last time. «Say you're right. Say if Jean-Claude had left us alone you could have your perfect picture. I still wouldn't have given up the police work.»

«You just said, it was destroying you.»

I nodded. «Just because something's hard doesn't mean you give up on it.» Somehow I thought I was talking about more than just police work.

«You said I was right.»

«I said, say you're right. Let's just pretend that without Jean-Claude here, we would have found a way. But we are bound to him, Richard. We are a triumvirate of power. What we would change if life were totally different doesn't really matter.»

«How can you say that?»

«What matters, Richard, is that we deal with the reality of our now, this minute. There are things we can't undo, and we all have to work together to make the best of what's true in our lives.»

His face was cold with his anger. I hated his face like this, because it was both frightening and more beautiful, as if the anger cleaned away something that distracted the eye from realizing just how amazingly handsome he was. «And what is true in our lives?» His power began to flow through the room, hot water, hotter than you'd want in the bath. The guards around the room shifted uneasily.