Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

Some of my own anger faded. “Fine, fine, you’re right on that one. Richard has been working on his issues, but not in time to fix it all.”

“Richard began working on his issues before I did. I made fun of him for it and I am ashamed that I, what is the phrase, threw him under the bus, to try to save myself.”

“You weren’t wrong,” I said.

“No, but it doesn’t lessen my larger part in the current crisis.”

“Come join us, ma petite .” Jean-Claude patted the bed between them.

“Why do you keep offering when I’ve already said no?” I asked.

“Because you are frightened and want comfort.”

“I’m not frightened,” I said automatically as if Jean-Claude couldn’t sense my feelings.

“ Ma petite , once I would have let the lie go, but as others in our life have learned to control their issues, I have learned to reach out and ask of you what I need rather than taking crumbs from the table of your love.” He patted the bed again.

“What does that even mean right now?”

“Can you not feel what I am feeling?”

“No, you’re shielding too tight.”

“And you are not,” he said.

“If I shield hard enough to keep you out that far, I cut off everyone and I risk cutting Nathaniel and Damian off so much that they start to die.”

“Then trust me, ma petite , when I say that it would make me incredibly happy if you would give this inch and join us.”

I crossed my arms as much as the shoulder holster would let me and scowled at him.

“I am not asking you to have sex with us here and now, ma petite , just let us hold you. Let us offer you the comfort that you crave, that we crave to give you, while we wait for the others. When they arrive, we will have our war council, but until then we may hold each other and gain comfort before the war begins.”

“You don’t mean Narcissus starting a war, do you?”

“ Non, ma petite , a master vampire has crept into this country when I am supposed to be the king of us all. My power is supposed to be absolute; even if we weather this threat and keep the wererats, the other vampires will learn that one of them found a chink in my armor, and just as Rafael cannot appear weak without bringing more challengers to his throne, so with my own. If I do not make an example of this vampire, then others will search for weakness and they will find it, because no one is unassailable.”

“You’re afraid, too,” I said.

“Yes, very much.”

“Why very much? What have I missed?”

“I know that there is a master vampire near us. I know who his moitié bête is, and I know where that person is, and yet knowing all of this, I still cannot sense the vampire. Do you understand the implications of that, ma petite ?”

I suddenly had trouble swallowing past my pulse, and yet my skin felt cold. “Shit, they have to be incredibly powerful.”

“And very old, perhaps far older than I am.”

I stared at him, my pulse still racing into my throat, so it was like choking, and just like that I realized I wasn’t choking on my fear, but on his. He sat there cool and calm like a smooth sea, but underneath he wasn’t just paddling as fast as he could, he was starting to drown.

Jean-Claude held his hand out to me. “Please, ma petite , let us hold each other and be comforted by the touch of each other before we have to put one or all of us in harm’s way.”

I looked at his hand still held out and then I looked at his face. If it wasn’t the face that launched a thousand ships, it was the one that opened my heart up to the possibility of love again. I looked from him to Asher. He was staring at his lap, his hair down like a curtain hiding his entire face as if he couldn’t bear to see me, or maybe couldn’t bear me to see him. If he’d been staring at me all bold and gorgeous, I might have hesitated, but he’d been saner and explained things well, and he was trying. Isn’t that all any of us can do?

I went to the bed and climbed up on the foot of it. It was still big enough that I had a ways to crawl to reach them. Jean-Claude smiled at me, his face alight with happiness in a way that he would never show in public because the older vampires thought showing soft emotions was a weakness. I started crawling toward them, still in all the weapons and the clothes, because the war council would start any minute. I didn’t even try to make the long crawl over the big bed sexy, I just moved toward them, but maybe that was enough, because Asher raised his head enough to look at me with one pale blue eye like a star lost in the golden cloud of his hair. I knew what the scars near that eye looked like, I’d kissed them often enough.

I took Jean-Claude’s hand and he pulled me the rest of the way between them. Asher stayed stiff and awkward beside me, keeping the hair like a shield between us. Jean-Claude put his arm across my shoulders and across Asher’s, but the other man didn’t look at either of us or try to hold us back. He sat with his hands in the lap of his brocade robe and wouldn’t look at me.

I cuddled in against Jean-Claude and just looked at all that golden hair and didn’t know what to do. I finally said, “You asked me up here, remember, Asher?”

“I’m so ashamed of how I behaved.”

I reached out and let myself touch the thick, shining hair until I could sweep it back and see the unscarred side of his face. I tried to sweep all the hair back so I could see all of him, but he grabbed my wrist and said, “Not yet, please.”

“Okay,” I said, and dropped my hand away from his hair. We ended up holding hands and looking at each other from inches away. The first tear slid down his face, and it was pink with the blood of whatever willing donor he’d fed from tonight.

I caught the tear on my finger before it could travel down his face. “Don’t cry,” I said.

He started to cry harder, and then suddenly Jean-Claude and I were holding him, and he was saying over and over again, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

I said the only thing I could say. “It’s all right, Asher, I forgive you.”

And that was how the rest of the “war council” found us. There was a time in my life when I’d have been embarrassed to be found in tears holding on to anyone, but there wasn’t anyone in the room who didn’t know the history between us all. They would either understand, or they could go to hell.

11

WE DRIED OUR tears and made our battle plan, but Narcissus surprised us by agreeing that the mystery vampire was a danger to us all. “I will step aside and let you make Rafael your rat to call, if I have your word that you will feed the ardeur on me later.”

“We’ve been through this before, Narcissus; you’re a gay man and I’m a woman—sex isn’t going to work for us.”

“If Jean-Claude is with us to distract me, I’ll do my best to close my eyes and think of England.”

The comment made me laugh. “Think of England, you mean close your eyes and it will be all over soon?”

“Yes,” he said, and he wasn’t laughing.

“I know you have both parts, but it’s the guy part we’ll need for me; won’t not liking lady parts mess with your concentration?”

“To bring more power to my hyenas and to me, I’m willing to try.”

Jean-Claude said, “To be very clear between us: for one feeding of the ardeur you will step aside and bring no reprisals when Anita and I bring Rafael over as her moitié bête ?”

“I’m not stupid, Jean-Claude, any vampire that could hide from you and Anita has to be incredibly powerful. For them to come to St. Louis in the heart of your power and expect to go unnoticed by not just you but all of us in the supernatural community, they are either insane, insanely arrogant, or so powerful they aren’t afraid of any of us. That means they’re ancient, Jean-Claude; I don’t want an ancient vampire to be in charge of St. Louis. Unlike Rafael and you, this is my only territory. I can’t leave the city to some new master vampire and regroup—if I’m taken out here, my clan and I are gone, dead, or enslaved. My clan and I lived through Chimera taking us over, but only because Anita and the wererats came to our aid. I know I have not behaved as if I remember that debt, but I do. I will try to be the leader my clan needs and not some love-crazed fool.”