Cerulean Sins (23 page)

When my vision cleared, Caleb's eyes were unfocused, his lips half-parted. Through me, it was almost as if Belle herself touched him, and her touch spread lust, lust of every kind.

I was in my own head, my own skin, but Belle's hunger was inside me, too, and I couldn't push it out. She was right; the blood hunger was not death.

I tore my arms through Caleb's shirt, popping the buttons loose, baring his upper body. When I channeled Jean-Claude's blood lust, I was always attracted to neck, wrist, bend of the arm, sometimes the inside of the groin, all nice major arteries or veins, but Belle didn't look high, or low. She gazed at Caleb's chest like it was a prime piece of steak, cooked just right.

My own logic tried to argue. There were other places where there was more blood, much closer to the surface. The sheer surprise of not going for someplace more usual helped me push her back.

Caleb's voice came heavy, “Why did you stop?”

“I don't think it's sex she's wanting,” Nathaniel said, voice quiet.

His voice turned my gaze to him. If what was driving me had been the
ardeur
, it might have been enough to have me crawl to him. But Nathaniel was right, this wasn't about sex, this was about food, and Nathaniel wasn't food. Did that mean that Caleb was food? Not a pretty thought.

“What do you mean?” Caleb asked.

I gazed up at Caleb's bare chest, that young, half-finished face. He looked so puzzled. I said it out loud, though I wasn't talking to anyone in the car. “He doesn't understand.”

Belle's whisper, “He will soon enough.”

“It looks like it's your turn to take one for the team,” Jason's voice from the front.

“What?”

“You're going to get munched on,” Jason said.

The combination of my own moral dilemma with the fact that Belle had picked an odd spot for taking blood, one that just didn't make sense to me, was helping me swim to the surface. I knelt back in the floorboard, pulling a little free of Caleb's body.

“No,” I said out loud, and none of the men answered me, as if they'd all caught up to the fact that I wasn't really talking to any of them.

Belle's voice in my head. “I have been gentle until now,
ma petite.”

“I am not your
ma petite
, so stop fucking calling me that.”

“If you will not take kindness from me, then I will cease to offer it.”

“If this is your idea of kindness, then I'd hate to see . . .” I never finished the thought, because Belle showed me that indeed she had been kind.

She didn't roll over me, she crashed into me, in a mind-numbing, breath-stealing, heart-stopping, swat of power. For an instant, or for an eternity, I hung suspended. The Jeep was gone, Caleb was gone, I couldn't see, or feel, or be. It was neither light, nor dark, nor up, nor down. I'd had near-death experiences, I'd fainted before, passed out, but that moment when Belle's power fell through me, that was the closest to true nothingness that I'd ever experienced.

Into that nothingness, that void, Belle's voice fell, “Jean-Claude has begun the dance, but he has left it unfinished between you, the wolf, and himself. He has allowed sentiment to cloud his judgment. It makes me question how well I taught him.”

I tried to speak but couldn't remember where my mouth was, or how to draw a breath. I couldn't remember how to answer her.

“I discovered this with the wolf, but could not mend it, for he is not my animal to call. I do not understand dogs, and a wolf is very much a dog.” Her voice whispered through me, low and lower, trembling through my
body, but for her voice to dance through my body, I had to have a body for her to use. I fell back into my body as if falling from a great height. I was left gasping on the floorboards, eyes staring up at Caleb's startled face and Nathaniel's worried one.

Belle's voice glided through my body like a knowledgeable hand. I suddenly knew who had trained Jean-Claude to use his voice as a tool of seduction. “But you,
ma petite,
I understand you.”

I drew a deep, quaking breath and it hurt all the way to my chest, as if I'd gone a long time without breathing. My voice came hoarse, “What are you talking about?”

“The fourth mark,
ma petite
, without the fourth mark, you are not truly Jean-Claude's. It is like the difference between engagement and marriage; one is permanent, the other not necessarily so.”

I understood what she meant a second before I saw two dancing honey-colored flames appear in the air over me. I knew it was the second mark because I'd had the second mark three times before; twice from Jean-Claude, and once from a vampire I'd killed. I'd never been able to protect myself from it before. I knew from experience that nothing physical would save me. It wasn't something you could hit, or shoot. I hated things you couldn't hit or shoot. But I had other skills now that weren't exactly physical.

I reached down that long metaphysical cord to Jean-Claude. Belle's voice floated over me, she was delaying her moment, drawing out her pleasure and my fear. “Jean-Claude is hours dead, he cannot help you.”

The dark flames of her eyes began to descend, like some evil angel coming to eat my soul. I did the only thing I could think to do. I reached down the other half of our metaphysical cord. I reached out to a place that hadn't helped me for months. I reached out to Richard.

I had an image of Richard in the hot bath water, cradled in Jamil's arms. Richard looked up as if he could see me. He whispered my name, but either he was too weak to push me away, or he didn't try. For a moment, it was as if it was meant to be, then I was yanked back, shoved into my own head, my own body again. Richard hadn't cast me out this time. Dark honey flames hovered over my face, and there was a vague outline, a ghost of long dark hair, the mist of a face.

Caleb was yelling, “What's in the car with us? I can't see anything, but I can feel it. What the fuck is it?”

Nathaniel's voice came hushed, and strangely loud, “Belle Morte.”

I had no time to look up, to see the others, because those phantom lips were speaking. “I will not allow you to gain strength from your wolf. I have given you the first mark and you did not even know it. I will give you the second mark here and now, and tonight with Musette as my proxy I will
give you the third. When Jean-Claude and I are equal within you, three for three, then you will come to me,
ma petite.
You will travel the world if I ask it, do anything, simply to taste my sweet blood.”

That phantom mouth lowered towards mine. I knew somehow that if she laid a ghostly kiss on me that I would be hers. I did what I always did, I tried to hit at that face, and there was nothing to touch. I screamed wordlessly, and sent out a metaphysical cry, “Help me!”

Suddenly, I could smell forest, trees, fresh-turned earth, wet leaves underfoot, and the sweet musk of wolf.

Belle could stop me from reaching out to Richard, but she couldn't keep him from reaching out to me.

Richard's power rose like a sweet-scented cloud above me, pushing back those glowing eyes, that phantom mouth.

She laughed, and it slid over my body, made me shudder, my breath catch in my throat. It felt so good, so good, even while my head screamed that it was bad.

“Did you hear someone laugh?” Caleb asked it.

Jason said no. Nathaniel said yes.

Belle whispered along my skin, and even Richard's power breathing against my body couldn't keep her voice out. “With the touch of your wolf's flesh, you might keep me at bay, but not from a distance. The closer the flesh, the closer the ties, and the more powerful. You are already mine,
ma petite,
you cannot win free of me.” Those eyes began to float lower again. Richard's power rose above me like a soft shield. Belle's power floated on the surface of that energy like a leaf on a pond, then she began to push into it, through it.

“Help me!” I screamed it out loud to everyone, anyone, and no one. I felt Nathaniel's hand on mine, and that phantom kiss did hesitate, did turn and look at Nathaniel. I felt her call him, like a deep thrumming down my bones. Leopard had been her first animal to call. If she owned me, she'd own my pard.

Nathaniel reached out his free hand as if he could see her.

“No!” I jerked free of him and the moment I broke physical contact it was as if Nathaniel was less real to her. She turned those dark-honey eyes back to me.

“I will have them all,
ma petite
, eventually.”

“No,” I said it, but my voice was soft, because I believed she was right.

“You will give them to me, all of them.”

Fear poured through me as if I'd been plunged into ice water. The thought of what Belle would do to my pard, my friends. No, I could not let this happen.

“Fuck you, fuck you, Belle, and the horse you rode in on.” My anger, my fear, seemed to feed Richard's power. The sweet, nose-wrinkling musk of wolf was so thick it was like being wrapped in invisible fur.

The Jeep slewed to one side. The angry honking of horns and squealing brakes followed it. Jason had given up on finding a safe place and just stopped against the concrete median. Nathaniel and Caleb were thrown across the seat and into the passenger side doors. I didn't have time to worry about the fact that no one seemed to be wearing their damn seat belts.

Belle's eyes pushed through Richard's power. It wasn't effortless. He made her work for every inch, but those burning eyes, that ghostly outline got closer, closer . . . until I held my breath as if afraid, if I breathed in too hard it would bring her against my mouth.

I caught movement from the corner of my eye. Jason was between the seats. He'd stopped the Jeep, thrown off his seat belt. He shoved his hand through the ghost thing above me, as if he couldn't see it. He grabbed my shoulder and the moment he touched me, Richard's beast welled up inside me. I'd always thought it was my beast that moved through me, but this, whatever this was, was Richard, not me.

His wolf poured into me like scalding water rushing into a cup, filling me to the brim, emptying my skin of leopard or death, until my spine bowed, my hands flailed, my mouth opened in a soundless scream. I could feel fur rubbing inside my body, strong nails, digging. The wolf was struggling to find some way out of my body.

Belle hissed at me like some great ghostly cat. The eyes retreated, hovering in the air near the Jeep roof, as Jason pulled me into the front seat and cradled me against his body. His closeness seemed to quiet the wolf, so that I felt it sit, panting, eager-eyed, staring up at the shape by the ceiling with hungry, arrogant eyes. Jason's eyes were his wolf's eyes, and today they seemed perfect for his face. But it was Richard's power, the power of the Thronnos Rokke clan that wrapped around both of us. I had never felt Richard's beast so thick inside me. It was as if I was a purse, a bag, holding his beast, feeling it pace inside me as if my flesh were a cage it could not escape from.

Belle's voice floated down upon us, and this time it stung, hot with her anger. “You can ride all day in the arms of your wolf, but there is still the banquet tonight. Musette will be there, and through her,
ma petite
, I will be there.”

My voice came out with a low edge of growl, “I am not your
ma petite
.”

“You will be,” she said, and the eyes slowly faded, until only the lingering scent of roses remained to remind me that we'd won this round, but there would be others. Jean-Claude's memories knew Belle too well to think otherwise. She would never give up, not once she decided to own something,
or someone. Belle Morte had decided that I would be hers. Jean-Claude had never known her to change her mind about something like that. That was so unfair, wasn't it a lady's prerogative to change her mind? Of course, Belle wasn't exactly a lady.

She was a two-thousand-year-old vampire, and they weren't known for changing their minds, their habits, or their goals. The last time a Master Vamp had come to town and tried to steal me from Jean-Claude, I'd ended up in a coma for a week. Richard had gotten his throat torn out, and Jean-Claude had nearly died for real. Vampires were always either trying to kill me, or own me. God I hated being popular.

N
ATHANIEL HAD GOTTEN
one of the extra crosses out of the glove compartment. I always carried spare crosses, just like spare ammo; when you hunt vampires, running out of either one is really bad. It was sheer stupidity on my part to have put crosses around the Circus of the Damned, but not on me. Some days I'm just slow.

I was back in the front seat, but I was shaking. No, that didn't quite cover it. There was a fine tremble in my hands; small muscles in my body kept twitching at odd moments. I was cold, and it was one of those glorious end of summer days, sun-warmed, sparkling, bright, and soft at the same time. We drove through a wash of blue sky, and sunshine, and I was cold—a cold that no amount of blankets was really going to help.

Nathaniel was curled over my lower body like a living blanket, wedged between my legs and the floorboard. I'd bitched about how dangerous it was, but I hadn't complained too much. I didn't have any real blankets in the car. I was spending so much time in shock lately, I'd have to remedy that. The trees along 44 had given way to houses and an occasional old school being rehabbed into apartments, churches, buildings of no discernable use, but old, tired. OK, maybe that last was just me.

I stroked my hand over Nathaniel's head, over and over, on the warm silk of his hair. His head in my lap, his arms wrapped around my waist, his body wedged between my legs. Sometimes Nathaniel made me think about sex, but sometimes, like now it was just comfort. Just closeness. You can't have that with most people, because they're busy thinking about sex. I think that's why dogs are so damn popular. You can cuddle a dog as much as you like and the dog never thinks about sex, or pushing your social boundaries
in any way, unless you happen to be eating. Dogs will invade your social boundaries for table scraps, unless trained to do otherwise. But hey, it's a dog, not a person in a fur suit. Right now, what I needed was a pet, not a person. Nathaniel could be both. An uncomfortable, but truthful fact.

Jason drove. Caleb had the backseat to himself. No one spoke. I don't think anyone knew what to say. I wanted Jean-Claude awake. I wanted to tell him what Belle had done. I wanted him to tell me there was a way to keep her from doing anything else, short of giving me the fourth mark. The fourth mark would make me ageless and immortal as long as Jean-Claude didn't die. Theoretically, he could live forever, and with the fourth mark, so could I. So why had I refused it so far? One, it scared me. I wasn't sure as a Christian how I felt about living forever. I mean, what happened to heaven, and God, and the judgment thing? Theologically, what would it mean? On a more mundane level, how much closer would it bind me to Jean-Claude? He could already invade my dreams, what would it mean if I took that last step? Or was refusing the fourth mark just another way to not give myself completely to anyone? Maybe. But if the only way to keep Belle from taking me was to let Jean-Claude have me, I knew which choice I was making. I wondered, if I called my priest now, could he get back to me on the theological implications of the fourth mark before full dark tonight? Father Mike had answered questions equally as weird for me over the years.

“Anita,” Jason said, and his voice held a note of anxiety.

I glanced at him and realized he'd probably been trying to get my attention for a while. “Sorry, thinking too hard.”

“I think we're being followed.”

That raised my eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“When I nearly caused the four-car pileup so I could touch you, I caught a glimpse of a car in the rearview. It was close, like tailgating close. It was one of the cars that nearly hit us when I slammed on the brakes.”

“So, we're in heavy traffic, a lot of people tailgate.”

“Yeah, but everyone else that was close to us when I stopped got away from us as fast as they could. This car is still behind us.”

I glanced in the side mirror, and saw a dark blue Jeep. “Are you sure it's the same car?”

“I didn't get a number, but it's the same make, same color, and there are two men in it, one dark-haired, one blond with glasses.”

I studied the Jeep that seemed to be following our Jeep. Two men, one dark, one light; it could have been a coincidence. Of course, maybe it wasn't.

“Let's go on the theory that it is following us,” I said.

“What?” Jason said, “I lose them?”

“No,” I said, “cut across traffic and take the first exit as long as it doesn't take us to the Circus. I don't want to lead them to Jean-Claude.”

“Almost every monster in St. Louis knows that the Master of the City's lair is under the Circus of the Damned,” Jason said, but he changed lanes, moving us a little closer to the exit row.

“But the guys behind us don't know that that's where we're headed.”

He shrugged and moved over two more lanes, setting up for the exit. The blue Jeep waited until we were actually exiting with two cars between us before it crossed over. If we hadn't been watching for it, or there had been a taller car between our Jeep and theirs, I wouldn't have seen them exit. But I was, and there wasn't, and I did.

“Shit,” I said, but I was feeling warmer. Nothing like action to ground and center a person.

“Who are these guys?” Jason asked out loud what I was wondering.

Caleb glanced behind. “Why would someone be following us?”

“Reporters?” Jason made the word a question.

“I don't think so,” I said. I'd lost sight of everything but the top of the Jeep floating above the car roofs behind us.

“Which way do I turn?” He'd come to the bottom of the exit ramp.

I shook my head. “I don't know, dealer's choice.” Who were they? Why follow us? Usually when people start following me I know that I'm into something. Today, I had no clue. Neither of the current cases that I was helping RPIT with should have had people following me. I wished they were reporters, but the situation didn't have that feel to it.

Jason turned right. One car turned left, one turned right, and the Jeep pulled in behind it. There were little flags on the street signs, Italian flags with the words, “The Hill,” on them. People on The Hill always let you know you were there and they loved their Italian heritage. Even the fire hydrants were painted green, red, and white like the flags.

Nathaniel raised his head off my thigh enough to say, “Is it Belle?”

“What?” I asked, vision still glued to the side mirror.

“Are they daytime help for Belle?” he asked in his quiet voice.

I thought about that. I'd never run into a vamp that had more than one human servant, but I'd run into several that had more than one Renfield. Renfield is what most American vamps called humans that served them not through mystical connections, but because they acted as blood donors and wanted to be vampires themselves. Back when I hunted vampires and didn't sleep with them, I'd called all humans associated with vamps human servants, now I knew better.

“They could be Renfields, I guess.”

“What's a Renfield?” Caleb asked. He was turned in the seat looking directly back at the car between us and the blue Jeep.

“Turn around, Caleb. When that car turns off I don't want the Jeep to know we've noticed them.”

He turned around immediately without arguing, which was unusual for Caleb. I didn't approve of threatening people to gain their obedience, but there were some that nothing else seemed to work with. Maybe he was one of them.

I explained what a Renfield was.

“Like the guy in Dracula who ate insects,” Caleb said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“Cool,” he said, and seemed to mean it.

I'd once asked Jean-Claude what they called Renfields before the release of the book
Dracula
in 1897. Jean-Claude had said, “Slaves.” He'd probably been kidding, but I'd never had the heart to ask again.

The car behind us pulled into one of the narrow driveways. The blue Jeep was suddenly revealed. I forced myself to not look directly at it and only use the side mirror, but it was hard. I wanted to turn around and stare. Knowing that I shouldn't made it all the more tempting.

There was nothing ominous about the Jeep, or even the two men visible in it. They both had short hair, clean, well groomed; the Jeep was even shiny and clean. The only thing ominous was the fact that they were still behind us. Then . . . it turned into a narrow driveway. Just like that, not a threat.

“Shit,” I said.

“Ditto,” Jason said, but I saw his shoulder sag, as if tension drained away with that one word.

“Are we becoming too paranoid?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Jason said, but he was still spending almost as much time staring back in the rearview mirror as straight ahead, as if he couldn't quite believe it. Neither could I, so I didn't tell him to watch the road. He was watching forward okay, and I, too, was expecting the blue Jeep to pull out and start after us again. Just a ruse, guys, not really harmless after all. But it didn't happen. We drove down the long car-crowded street, until the Jeep's driveway was hidden by trees and parked cars.

“Looks like it was just driving our way,” Jason said.

“Looks like,” I said.

Nathaniel rubbed his face against my leg. “You still smell scared, like you don't believe it.”

“I don't believe it,” I said.

“Why not?” Caleb asked, leaning in between the seats from the backseat.

I finally turned around in the seat, but I wasn't looking at Caleb, I was staring past him at the empty street. “Experience,” I said.

I smelled roses, and a second later the cross around my neck began to glow, softly.

“Jesus,” Jason whispered.

My heart was thumping painfully in my chest, but my voice came solid. “She can't roll me while I'm wearing a cross.”

“You sure of that?” Caleb asked it, as he moved back away from me into the far reaches of the seat.

“Yeah,” I said, “I'm sure of that.”

“Why?” he asked, eyes wide.

I blinked at him as the soft, white luminosity grew brighter in the tree shadows, almost invisible in full sunlight, over and over again. “Because I believe,” I said, voice soft as the glow around my neck, and as sure. I'd seen crosses burst into a white-hot light so bright it was blinding, but that was when I'd been face-to-face with a vamp that meant me harm. Belle was far away, and the glow showed that.

I kept waiting for the scent of roses to grow stronger again, but it never did. It stayed faint, definitely there, but didn't grow on the air.

I waited for Belle's voice in my head, but it didn't come. Every time she had spoken directly in my mind, the smell of roses had been thick. The sweet perfume stayed faint, and Belle's voice was gone from me. I squeezed the cross with my hand, feeling the heat, the power of it, skin prickling up my arm, thrumming like a continuous heartbeat against my hand. Caleb asked how could I believe. What I always wanted to ask, is, how can you
not
believe?

I felt Belle's anger like warmth on the air. Power filled the Jeep, in a neck-ruffling, breath-stealing tide, so much effort and all she could send was an image of herself sitting in front of her dressing table. Her long, black hair was unbound, like a cloak around a dressing gown of gold and black. She watched herself in the mirror with eyes full of honey-fire, like the eyes of the blind, empty except for the color of her power.

I whispered out loud, “You cannot touch me, not now.”

She looked into the mirror as if I were standing behind her, and she could see me. Rage changed her beauty into something frightening, a mere mask of pale beauty that looked as false as any Halloween mask. Then she turned and looked past me, beyond me, and the look of fear on her face was so real, so unexpected that I turned, too, and I saw . . . something.

Darkness. Darkness like a wave, rising up, up over me, over us, like a liquid mountain towering to the impossibly tall sky. The room that Belle had constructed of dreams and power collapsed, shredded like the dream it was, and what ate at the corners of that bright candlelit room was darkness. Darkness absolute, darkness so black that it held shines of other colors, like an oil slick, or a trick of the eye. As if this blackness was a darkness made up of every color that had ever existed, every sight that had ever been seen, every sigh, every scream, since time began. I had heard the term
primordial
darkness
, but until this moment I had never understood what it meant. Now I understood, I truly understood, and I despaired.

I stared up, up at an ocean of darkness that rose above me as if the earth and sky had never existed. This was darkness before the light, before the word of God. It was like a breath of an older creation. But if this was creation, it was nothing I could understand, nothing I wanted to understand.

Belle screamed first. I think I was too awestruck to scream, or even to be afraid. I looked into the primordial abyss, the first darkness, and knew despair, but not fear.

My mind kept trying to find words to describe what it was. It did loom over me like a mountain, because it had weight and that claustrophobic feel of a mountain poised to come crashing down, but it was not a mountain. It was more like an ocean, if an ocean could have risen up taller than the tallest mountain and stood before you, waiting, defying gravity and every other known law of physics. Like with an ocean, I knew—could sense—that I only saw that wide glimpse from shore, that I could only begin to guess at the depth and width, the unthinkable fathoms of darkness that lay before me.

Did strange creatures swim inside it? Were there things within the dark that only nightmares or dreams could reveal? I watched the flickering, liquid dark and felt the numbness of despair begin to wear away. It was as if the despair had been a shield to protect me, to numb me, so that my mind wouldn't break. For a few moments I had been intellect, thinking,
What is it?
How can I make sense of it? The numbness began to recede as if that huge blackness sucked it away, fed on it. I was left standing before her, her . . . trembling, shaking, my skin running cold, and I felt that darkness sucking at me, feeding off my warmth. In that moment I knew what I faced. It was a vampire. Maybe the very first vampire, something so ancient, that to think of human bodies or flesh to contain this darkness was laughable. She was the primordial dark made real. She was why humans feared the dark, just the darkness, not what lies in the dark, not what hides there, but why we fear the darkness itself. There was a time when she walked among us, fed on us, and when darkness falls, somewhere in the back of our skulls, we remember the hungry dark.