Лорел Гамильтон - Dead Ice

I got dressed, and wanted to give them each a quick kiss, but that was me trying to pull away and blame everyone for the parts that were bothering me. I didn’t do shit like that anymore, damn it, so I forced myself to stop and look at them both. I took their hands in mine, took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

“I will do my best not to fuck up all the great things in our lives because I’ve hit some kind of personal issue.” I looked at Jean-Claude. “I won’t run away like I did before, I promise. I know now that I can’t run far enough, or fast enough, because most of the issues are inside me, and that travels with me.”

“You have grown wise, ma petite .”

I smiled, but wasn’t sure how happy it was; it didn’t feel happy. “Smarter, I’ll give you; I’m working on wise.”

“As you please, ma petite ; I will not argue semantics with you.”

I smiled for real then, and shook his hand a little. “That’s good, because I’d probably lose right now, and I hate to lose.”

That made them both laugh, which was good. I turned to Micah and had a second of getting lost in those extraordinary eyes. “You never saw me at my worst, but I’ll tell you, before you ask, that I will do my best to work my shit and not let it rain down all over us.”

“It’s not us I’m worried about,” he said.

I frowned at him. “I don’t understand.”

“You and I are solid; you, I, and Nathaniel are solid. I trust that. I’m going to ask you something that’s much harder.”

“What?” And that one word held a world of suspicion.

He gave a small smile, holding my hand a little tighter. “First, cut yourself some slack. You’ve just had a shock and you’re barreling forward like it didn’t happen, but it did, and we both know that ignoring it doesn’t unmake it, so please, take care of yourself tonight.” He put his free hand against my cheek and kissed me softly.

I drew back from the kiss with a smile. “I’ll do my best, and Nicky will be there to help.”

“He will. You are my highest priority, you know that,” he said.

“Yes, but once you say it that way I know you’re thinking of someone else, too.”

“Don’t blow up at Cynric when you see him next. He doesn’t know what’s going on inside your head, and he loves you.”

I closed my eyes and counted a very slow ten. “Why did you have to say that? I was regrouping, and now I feel raw again.”

“Because I love you and I know you; if you lose it and lash out at him you’ll feel good for a few minutes while the rage finds a target, and then you’ll feel worse. You’ll beat yourself up, because you’re taking your anger out on the other victim.”

“Why aren’t Crispin and Domino victims, too?” I asked.

“Because they don’t see themselves as victims, and you don’t see them that way either.”

“That makes no sense; either you’re a victim or you’re not.”

“Not true,” Micah said. “You can experience trauma without getting stuck as the victim forever. You can choose to work the shit and rebuild yourself, or you can sit in the ruins and mourn forever. You and I both chose to rebuild.”

I remembered then that he’d had his own share of trauma, first surviving a wereleopard attack that made him one, and then years of being abused by Chimera, the man who took over Micah’s leopard pard. Chimera had been a sadistic bastard who had worked his personal issues out by torturing and killing those under his power. He’d been the one who had forced Micah into animal form so long that his eyes had stuck in leopard form and never went back to human. He could have been trapped in animal form forever, and never been able to regain human shape again, but he’d been powerful enough to survive intact, except for his eyes. Sometimes there isn’t enough therapy in the world to fix a person, and that’s when you have to find another cure. In Chimera’s case dead was the cure, and I’d helped him find it. I never felt bad about that, but then he’d been trying to kill me at the time, and self-defense assuages guilt like a son of a bitch.

Jean-Claude stepped closer to us. “We all build upon our ruins.”

I looked up into that almost unreal face, because no one was that beautiful, and remembered that he had endured hundreds of years of abuse at the hands of more powerful vampires before he’d been able to break free and be his own master. I’d met his last master, Nikolaos. She’d looked like a twelve-year-old girl but had been the first vampire I ever met who was over a thousand years old. She’d also been a sadist, and completely careless about the harm she did to those around her. She’d murdered a friend of mine, Phillip. He’d been everyone’s victim, and was just starting to try to change that when Nikolaos had made him the ultimate victim and taken the last thing anyone can take from you: your life. I didn’t feel guilty about killing her, but I still felt guilty about getting Phillip killed. Maybe she would have done it anyway, but he helped me solve some murders and she didn’t like him tattling to me. I’d known he was weak, and scared, and everyone’s victim, and I’d used him just like everyone else. Maybe it was for a good cause to save other lives, but in the end I doubted it mattered to Phillip. I’d told him I’d be back. I’d told him I’d keep him safe. They’d torn his throat out.

Jean-Claude touched my face. “What has put such a solemn look in your eyes, ma petite ?”

“Do you remember Phillip?”

Something moved through his eyes, and then he blinked and gave me bland, empty, pleasant face. “Of course I do; he worked at Guilty Pleasures, and I could not protect him.”

“You feel guilty about his death, too?”

“Oh, yes, ma petite , I feel guilty, because I was one of the vampires who took blood from him. I ran the club where he worked. I got him off street drugs, because I won’t allow such things in my club, or on my stage, but he became addicted to being bitten, addicted to giving up his blood to us all. I thought I had saved him from an early death as a drug addict, but I only took him from one addiction to another, and it killed him.”

“I didn’t know that you got Phillip off drugs.”

“We needed a handsome victim for one of our vampire dancers to feed onstage. He was brought to me as that. He cleaned up well, but it was because he had replaced one addiction with another, not because I cured him.”

“Nikolaos killed him, because he was helping me solve the vampire murders.”

Jean-Claude nodded. “That was her excuse. Phillip should have been mine to protect, but I was not powerful enough to help him. I was not powerful enough to help myself, until you came into my life and helped me break free of those who tormented us all.”

I went to him, and Micah let me go so I could wrap my arms around the other man in my life. “I didn’t realize you’d been that close to Phillip,” I said.

“I wasn’t close in the way that most humans mean, but he was my responsibility and I could not keep him from the monsters.”

I nodded. “Me, either.”

“But you killed the monsters that hurt him, and I could not even do that.”

“Revenge is cold comfort when the person you’re avenging is already dead,” I said.

“That is true, ma petite , but it is still comfort, no matter how cold, or how late it is served.”

I went up on tiptoe and put my arms around his neck. “Fuck revenge, here’s to getting there in the nick of time.”

He smiled and leaned down to whisper above my lips, “Yes, very yes.”

We kissed and it was soft, and long, and full of as many shared tears as smiles, but that didn’t lessen it; that made it more.