Flirt

I breathed his name over and over, as that warm pleasure built deep in my body. “Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, Nicky, Nicky.” One last thrust and he spilled me over the edge, bowed my spine, and made me scream my orgasm to the sky. But my pleasure didn’t let me feed; it was only as his body released inside mine that the ardeur fed. And then that was when I truly fucked him. I fucked him in every sense of the word. I fucked him until he brought me screaming again and his body shoved itself one last deep thrust, and the ardeur did what it did best, brought him again, made him mine as he cried out my name.

I felt his power, his beast, his essence, his everything offered up in that moment, and the darkest of thoughts came to me. That I could take all he had and leave him dead underneath me in one massive feeding. I fought the urge, because killing him wouldn’t help me save the others. Then a thought, not so dark, came-that he could be ours. Ours not just for this moment but for as long as we wanted to keep him. The ardeur had accidentally bound men to me before, but I’d never done it on purpose, until now.

I’d meant to make him my lion to call, but in that moment the ardeur of the vampire in me understood there was another option, an option that would make him my slave. Animals to call had free will to a point, they had choices. I needed Nicky’s choices gone. I needed his choices to truly be mine. I did to Nicky what I’d had vampires do to me when I was just beginning to hunt them. I did to him what I’d seen vampires do to police officers and other executioners. I chose my free will over his. I chose the lives of the men I loved over Nick’s freedom. I chose my life over his, and I took him. I took his body, his mind, the heat of his beast, and all the power that gave him. I drank him down through the sweat of his body, the release of him inside me. I drank him down. But there in the dark there was his need. A need to belong, to be held, a need for gentler things than Jacob had ever allowed him. Belle Morte’s line deals in sex, love, and power. I was still too new at it to guard myself from the one weakness. We could only control as much as we were willing to be controlled. Only love as much as we were willing to love. Satisfy lust only as much as we were willing to be satisfied. If I had been thinking better, I would have kept to the sex. I knew how to do that now, but I needed him to risk his life for me. I needed him to maybe kill his king, his friend. Men don’t do that just for sex, but for love… for love people will do terrible things. I needed Nicky to be willing to do anything I asked, and for that I was willing to damn us both.

When it was done, we got dressed. Nicky said, “Jacob will kill me before he lets me go.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I said.

“I can’t love you,” he said.

“Do you mean you aren’t capable of loving me, or that you can’t possibly love me yet?”

“The second one.”

I held my hand out to him. “Take my hand, Nicky.”

He put his hand out immediately and took mine. “I can’t refuse you?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

He frowned. “Why doesn’t that scare me? It should scare me.” He sounded afraid, but he kept my hand in his, rubbing his thumb over my knuckles like an idle gesture of long practice. I doubted he even knew he was doing it.

For my part, I didn’t just feel healed, or full, but better. I felt energized, as if rolling Nicky so thoroughly had fed the ardeur more completely than simple sex. Was this what it felt like to truly embrace the power? Was it just better this way, or was there something about Nicky that made him yummier? Was this how Jean-Claude felt when he used his powers fully? I’d ask him when I got home, if I got home. There were still a lot of problems between me and surviving the night. One of those problems was striding toward us through the tombstones.

Jacob’s energy rode before him like the promise of lightning on an edge of storm. “What the fuck did you do?”

“I fed like we agreed.”

“I felt what you did and it was more than that.” He had a gun out now, pointed very steadily at me.

“You said you knew what I was, Jacob,” and I felt something when I said his name. I felt that thread that the ardeur had attached to him pull, as if I could call him by simply saying his name.

“Jacob, put the gun down.”

He actually started to lower it, and then caught himself. “Do that again and I will shoot you. We’ll eat the second half of the money before I let you roll us all.”

“Then let me raise Bennington ’s wife, so we can all go home.”

“We don’t have a home,” Nicky said, “we have hotel rooms. Places we rent.”

“We keep moving so we don’t have a territory, Nicky, you know that.”

“We’re lions, Jacob, we need a territory. We need a place to be.”

“You’ve witched him,” Jacob said.

“You gave him to me for food, Jacob. What did you think would happen?”

“Not this,” and he sounded pained, as if he took it as a personal failure that he hadn’t understood. “This is how you have all the men. You feed on them and they’re yours. I’ve seen male vampires do that. Brides they’re called.”

“You mean like the Brides of Dracula?” I said.

“Yes,” he said, and the gun was still pointed at me.

“The Grooms of Anita just doesn’t have a ring to it, Jacob.”

“No, it doesn’t, but Nicky is looking at you like you’re his whole world. It’s not just sex, is it?”

“No.”

“I should shoot you for this.”

“Jacob, you wanted me well enough to raise the dead. You wanted me to feed on Nicky. You wanted me to have enough power to do what Bennington wants. You wanted to earn the second half of your money, Jacob.”

The gun began to tilt toward the ground again.

“I’ve done exactly what you wanted, Jacob.”

“Lying bitch.” And the gun came back up, but it wasn’t steady now.

“You took his guns after he barely touched me. You and he nearly fought to the death over me, when I’d barely touched either of you. What did you think would happen if you gave him to me to fuck, Jacob? What did you think would happen to Nicky if you gave him to me?”

He rolled his lower lip under, and bit it, I think. “Fuck,” he said.

“I don’t mind, Jacob,” Nicky said, “it’s okay.”

“No, she’s right. She barely touches us and we fight. She didn’t even kiss you and I didn’t trust you with a gun anymore, then I let her fuck you over.” He lowered the gun to point at the ground. “Raise the zombie, Anita; we’ll sort out who’s guilty of what later.”

I threaded my way through the gravestones with Nicky still holding my hand. In a way it wasn’t just him that had been rolled, because it felt very good to touch him. It had that familiar feel to it, his hand in mine, like an old lover that you’d just found again. It was a lie, but the ardeur could make lies seem like truth. It was part of the gift, or part of the curse, depending on how you wanted to look at it. If it got us all out alive, I’d call it a gift, at least until I had to take Nicky home with me, and then I was going to have some explaining to do. He followed me home, can I keep him? had never worked for puppies when I was a child, and it seemed totally inadequate for a whole human being.

The grave with the crowd around it was bathed in moonlight distant from the tall trees. Bennington ’s pale face was turned toward us. Someone was sitting propped against the gravestone, and there was a body crumpled on the other side of the grave. I couldn’t see many details, but I’d seen enough bodies by moonlight to know that much.

Ellen was walking toward the grave from farther out in the cemetery. Had she been checking on her circle of power? Did she need to be that close to it to check it? If she couldn’t just think and know, then she really wasn’t that powerful. Being a werelion should have made her a more powerful psychic, so either she was that insecure or she’d sucked before becoming one of them.

Nicky and I got close enough and the figure sitting by the grave turned and looked at us. I saw the dark hair and the angular face. Silas was too hurt to stand, so why wasn’t he at a hospital?

I asked Jacob, who was just behind us. “Why isn’t Silas at a hospital?”

“We can’t explain the wound, and we don’t want the police involved.”

“That was a silver blade,” I said.

“We figured that out,” he said, and his voice was unhappy enough that I didn’t have to know the nuances of it to hear the tone.

“You damn near gutted him, Anita,” Nicky said.

“We’ll get him to a doctor, but not until after the job is done.” There was a thread of anger that I didn’t quite understand.

“You’re punishing Silas, why?”

Ellen answered as she came up on the other side of the grave. “He overdosed the hooker. He was only supposed to give her enough to make her compliant.”

“What?” I asked.

“He was supposed to get the human sacrifice,” Nicky said.

I stopped walking and turned to see Jacob. I’d forgotten about Silas’s errand. How could I have forgotten? “So some poor working girl gets into Silas’s car and never goes home again?”

“Would you rather we pick some random stranger off the street for it?” Jacob asked.

I let go of Nicky’s hand and stared at them all. “What kind of people are you to have agreed to this?”

“She’s a meth-addicted hooker. Dying quick and easy tonight is better than what she’ll do to herself.” Jacob said.

“Fuck that,” I said, and was up in his face. “That was not your choice. You had no right.”

“I am the Rex of this pride; I have every right.”

I looked at him, and he met the look, and then dropped his gaze. “You didn’t feel right about this one, and the more you learned the less you liked it.”

“Get out of my head!”

“I’m not in your head, Jacob; I’m looking at your face. It must be a lot of money.”

He glared at me. “It is.”

“Enough money?” I said.

“Raise the zombie, and we’ll find out.”

“ Bennington ’s wrong, you know. I don’t need a human sacrifice to raise his wife.”

“He thinks you do.”

“Jacob,” someone said, and it was the first time I’d heard Silas’s voice. It was deep to match the size of him. He was more than a head taller than either of the others. “Why are you talking to her?”

“I am Rex, not you. You don’t get to question me, with your mistakes while you’re dying on the ground and bleeding out your gut.”

Silas struggled to his feet, using the gravestone to help him stand. Bennington backed away from him with a look of disgust. I wasn’t sure if it was the bloody bandages on the front of him or something personal about Silas that he didn’t like.

“She’s rolled you both.”

“She’s rolled Nicky.”

“No, she’s rolled you both.” Silas pushed himself away from the grave, one big hand tight to his stomach, just above his belt, as if he were holding something inside.

“How’s the stomachache, Silas?” I asked.

Jacob gave me a look. “Don’t help,” he said.

Bennington said, “Oh, my God!” We all looked back and found Silas raising a gun. Ellen screamed, “Silas, no!”

He was pointing it at me as Nicky moved in front to shield me. “Put it down, Silas,” Jacob said. “I won’t ask twice.”

“She has mind-fucked you both,” Silas said. I couldn’t see around Nicky’s body, but he was looking behind us, and suddenly we were headed for the ground, him riding me down. Gunshots sounded, and I couldn’t see who was shooting. I was trapped under Nicky’s body, completely shielded from whatever was happening. The guns were thunderous in the silence. For a second I wasn’t sure how many guns had gone off, and then I heard Jacob cursing. “What the fuck, Silas? What the fuck?”

Nicky rose up enough to look behind us, and then he was on his knees and offering me a hand. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

I shook my head, and we stood up together, turning toward the grave. Ellen was beside Silas, her face silvered by tears in the moonlight. Her hands were bloody as if she’d tried to stop the wound, but the look on her face said it was too late for that. Jacob knelt beside his fallen man. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Nicky knelt on the other side of Silas. The three werelions huddled around their fallen man, only Bennington and me left standing, untouched by the tragedy of it all. Jacob pointed the gun at me. “He’s alive, but he won’t be for long.”

Nicky stood up and started moving toward me.

“Don’t do it, Nicky,” he said.

“It’s not her fault, Jacob,” he said, and kept moving toward me.

“Don’t shield her!”

“If you want the second half of your money, Mr. Leon, she needs to be alive to raise my wife from the dead.”

I think the lions had forgotten about Bennington, or maybe he’d stopped being important. It was his money and his desire that had begun everything, but he was strangely not part of the tableau between Jacob, Nicky, Ellen, and me until he spoke. Then it was as if Jacob remembered why he was there, what had made him risk so much: money.

“The prostitute died while they were screwing,” Bennington said; “we don’t have a human sacrifice.”

“We have something better,” I said, and I looked at Jacob.

“No,” he said.

“You said it yourself: he’s dying, and it’s his fault the woman is dead. I think it has a nice symmetry to it that Silas is our sacrifice.”

“Symmetry,” Jacob said, and he sounded like he was choking; “is that what you call this?”

“If you let him die without me raising the dead, then this is all for nothing. You won’t even get your money.”

Jacob lowered his gun and nodded. “Do it, do it before I change my mind.”

Ellen grabbed his arm. “No, don’t let her do this.”

He jerked away from her. “Can you raise the dead?”

She stared at him with large dark eyes, and just started to cry again.

“Can you?” He screamed it into her face, so that she recoiled from him.

“No,” she yelled back.

“Then shut the fuck up.”

I moved forward, and Nicky moved with me like a big blond shadow. “What can I do to help?”

“Stay close,” I said, and dropped to my knees on the grave, beside the dying werelion. Jacob looked at me across the body of his man. “You need to put up a circle of power,” he said, in a voice that was dull with all the shocks of the evening.

“Ellen’s put a circle up so wide and deep that I can’t feel anything from my vampire master or the men I’m tied to metaphysically. I think her circle will keep out any damn thing.”

“Which means what?” he asked.

“It means give me a blade so I can finish him and raise the dead.” I held my hand out, and he lifted a hunting knife out from under the back of his shirt. It was almost as big as the one they’d taken from me. It gleamed in the bright moonlight, and you just knew it would be sharp.

I looked at the crying woman who was huddled beside the weathered tombstone. “Can you hold the circle?”

She glared at me, some of the heat of the look ruined by the tears. “I can hold my end up.”

“Good.”

“You’d better be as good as your reputation,” she said.

I nodded. “Yeah.” I knelt on the grave, knife in one hand, and grabbed Silas’s hair. I bent his neck back, and it was Nicky who said, “You only bend the neck back in the movies; it’s actually easier if you don’t hyperextend the tendons.”

I didn’t argue, just put the neck back to a more natural angle, and then put the blade against the throat. I dug the tip in and pushed deep as I pulled the blade across his throat. I’d forgotten what kind of power you got from killing a person. I’d only done it once before. And I had forgotten the kind of power you got from killing someone who wasn’t a person, but something more than human. I’d only done that once before, too. The power poured over me, through me; my skin vibrated with it, my bones ached with the thrum and beat of all that POWER. Oh, God!

The knife dropped from my hand to the grave, and I dropped to my knees with it. I put my bloody hands on the grave and visualized reaching down through the dirt and pulling her free of it, as if it were water and she were drowning and only I could save her. I screamed her name, “Ilsa Bennington, rise, come to me, come to me, Ilsa!” The dirt moved under my knees, against my hands. I shoved the power into the grave, into the pieces of body, and there was so much power. I felt her re-form, felt pieces come together that weren’t in the grave. The power remade her into something perfect and whole, and that something grabbed my hands through the dirt, and I pulled it from the grave.

She rose blond and dressed in white, her face in perfect makeup. Only her blue eyes were empty, and it took more than power to fill those up. I touched the still-bleeding neck wound on Silas and drew fresh blood across Ilsa Bennington’s lips. She blinked, and then a delicate tongue flicked out and licked that blood. She licked her lips, then she blinked again and she was suddenly in there.

She looked at the grave, and at me, and the body, and started to scream. Tony Bennington came and took her from the grave, comforting her, as she asked, “Why are we here? That’s a dead man? Tony, what’s happening?”

He walked his dead wife away from the grave, but the power from Silas’s death was still there, still in me, and now that the zombie was raised, the power beat through me again. It pulsed through me, hammered along my bones; I’d never felt anything like it. I fell onto the grave, writhing in the pain of it. The power wanted to be used. It was as if my necromancy had become something closer to the beasts inside me, or the ardeur, as if the power had a will of its own and that will wanted the dead.

Nicky knelt by me. “Anita, what’s wrong?”

“Too much power from the one death for just one zombie. Too much power for just that.”

“We’re in a cemetery; why raise just one?”

I looked up at him, and thought, why not? I got to my knees and put my hands back on the earth and I knew what the power wanted. I knew exactly what to do with it. I put my hands back on the grave and I cast the power down and out. I sent it out and out and out in an ever-widening circle until I touched every grave, every body, and I called, “Rise, rise to me. Rise!”

Ellen screamed, “No!” But she was too late, so too late.

The ground moved under our feet, like a small earthquake. The zombies crawled from their graves, but there were hundreds of them and even this much power couldn’t bring them back like I’d brought Ilsa Bennington back. These were the shambling, rotting dead, and they pulled themselves free of the earth.

The power hit Ellen’s circle and shattered it. I could suddenly feel Jean-Claude and knew that he was closer than two hours away. Every connection I had was suddenly back in place, and I could sense, smell, taste the skins of my men. They were all safe, and some of them were on their way. They’d followed the trail, but now I’d put up a metaphysical bonfire to guide them to me.

But it was Jacob who was yelling, “You stupid bitch. You didn’t just shield her from her people; you cut me off from ours. They were captured hours ago.” He hit Ellen hard enough that her body spun and lay still on the ground. He screamed his rage to the stars.

Ilsa Bennington was having hysterics. Only her husband’s soothing voice finally quieted her shrieks. She was screaming, “Ugly, they’re so ugly. Take me home, Tony, take me home!”

Jacob called out to Bennington as he moved through the cemetery of watching dead. “ Bennington, you have your wife just like you asked.”

“I do, she’s perfect.”

“Then transfer the rest of the funds.”

“I will once my wife is safely home.”

“Three of my men are captured. One of my men is dead; the other is lost to me, and I just hit Ellen harder than I’ve ever hit a woman before. Make the damn call now.” There was an edge of a growl in his voice.

Bennington looked offended, but he also looked a little scared. Maybe he was scared of Jacob, or maybe it was the zombies. There was plenty to be scared of in that cemetery. Bennington got a cell phone out of his expensive suit and made the call. “It should be in your account now.”

Jacob used his own phone to check on that. He nodded. “It’s in the account. Take your wife home.”

They started walking out between the silent watching dead. He was talking to her. “It’s all right, Ilsa. Don’t be afraid.”

“You have your money,” I said.

“Yes,” Jacob said.

“She will rot, Jacob. Even with this much power she won’t hold together. She can’t, because she’s a zombie and no matter how good she looks now, it won’t last.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“Absolutely, and how do you think a man like Tony Bennington will take it when his flirty wife starts to forget she’s alive and starts to rot?”

“He’ll go to the cops,” Nicky said.

“Or he’ll hire someone else expensive to hunt you down, and he’ll kill my flirty boys if he can’t have his flirty girl.”

“What are you asking me?”

“I’m asking you not to interfere, that’s it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Something symmetrical.”

“Symmetrical,” he said, and then I watched as understanding crossed his face in the moonlight.

“Very,” I said.

He looked past the waiting dead to Bennington and his pretty dead wife. A look came over his face, and he nodded. “I won’t stop you.”

“Stand near me, both of you. Zombies aren’t particularly smart.”

Nicky moved close to me, and I offered him my hand. Jacob picked up Ellen’s unconscious body and joined us. I spoke to the dead. “Kill him.”

There was a moment when they all looked at us, a moment when I felt them hesitate, and then I pointed toward Bennington and his blond wife. “Kill him.” I thought it at them. I pictured his face and I wanted them to move forward, to surround him, and they did.

He yelled, “Mr. Leon, what’s happening? What are they doing?”

Jacob called out, “It’s symmetry, Bennington.”

Then Bennington screamed, “Ilsa, Ilsa, what are you doing! Oh, my God!” The zombies closed around him and began to feed. Bennington shrieked for a long time, and then there were hands reaching for the dead hooker and Silas’s body. The sounds were not good sounds. The visuals were graphic. It was like every horror movie you can imagine, but worse. Real bone is always both whiter and wetter. Real blood is darker, thicker, and you don’t get the smells on a movie screen. You can always tell when they perforate a bowel by the smell.

One zombie grabbed at Jacob’s pants leg. “Back up,” I said, and it bowed low to the ground, crawling back to the feeding frenzy that had become Silas’s body.

I offered Jacob my other hand, and he took it, balancing Ellen’s body in his arms. I stood there in the midst of the dead I had raised, and the living they were eating. I stood there holding on to the two werelions, and it was to keep them safer, but it was also because I needed to hold on to something warm and alive. I needed to be reminded that I wasn’t just this.

When all the bodies were eaten they turned to me, and I watched, and felt that there was more home in them. There was something in there now that hadn’t been there before they tasted flesh. There are things that wait in the dark, that wait for a chance to find a body that they can walk around in, things that were never human. Sometimes you can feel them on the edge of your mind, the shadows that flit out of the corners of your eyes, and aren’t there if you look directly at them. The dead that stood there in the moonlight with blood decorating their mouths held the shadows in their eyes. I could finally see what hid just out of sight, just out of thought, and I knew that I could keep the dead. I could keep them animated. They could be the beginning of my own private army. An army of the dead that knew neither pain, nor fear. It would be an army that no bullet would slow, no blade could kill, and only fire would stop.

Nicky squeezed my hand and whispered, “Something’s in there now.”

“Their eyes,” Jacob whispered, “there’s something in their eyes.”

“I see it.”

“What is it?” Nicky asked.

“Shadows,” I said, and then I spoke loud, in that ringing voice that you use in ritual. “All of you, hear me, go back to your graves. Lie down and be what you were. Rest, and walk no more.”

Their eyes flickered almost like a television that wasn’t quite on station, like two channels trying to be on screen at once.

“Tell me you brought salt,” I said, voice low and even.

“ Bennington wouldn’t let us bring any, because salt is for putting zombies back in their graves and he didn’t want you to do that to his wife.”

“Fine,” I said. I knelt, very carefully, keeping my eyes on the zombies the way I did when I was on the judo mat. You never take your eyes off your opponent because if you do they can rush you. I knelt and found the blade I’d dropped into the grave dirt. The blade still had Silas’s blood on it. Salt would have been good, but I had steel, and grave dirt, and power. It would be enough, because it would have to be.

I stood up, slowly, deliberately, and called my necromancy. I called it in a way I hadn’t before. I called it to use against the shadows in their eyes, the shadows that were promising me power, glory, conquest. Just let us stay, it seemed to whisper. Just let us stay and we will give you the world. I had a moment to envision a world where the dead truly walked, and moved at my will, but I knew better. I could see it in their eyes. I had animated the dead, but I hadn’t filled their eyes with dark power, or had I? Something about them eating human flesh without a circle of power had caused this, and I remembered the third reason for putting up a circle of power before raising the dead. It kept things out. It kept the shadows away.

I’d been arrogant, and I prayed for forgiveness for that particular sin. I was heartily sorry for it. Killing Bennington didn’t bother me. “By steel, blood, and will, I command you to go back to your graves and walk no more.”

There was another moment of that eye flicker.

I put power into the words, all the power I had, and willed it to work. I called the dead to me. I called them with the power that had made my dog rise from the grave when I was fourteen. I called them to me with the power that had put a suicidal professor in my dorm room in college. I called them with that part of me that made vampires hover around me like I was the last light in all the darkness. I called the dead to me, and bade them to rest and walk no more.

I shoved my power into them, and felt something else in there. Something else that shoved back, but the bodies were too much mine. Too much of my power animated them, and one by one their eyes emptied and they stood like shells waiting for orders.

“Rest and walk no more; by steel, grave, and will, I command thee.” They shambled back to their graves in a silent mass; the only sounds the shuffling of feet and the brush of cloth. Ilsa Bennington came to stand in front of us. She was still the lovely flirt that her husband had been willing to kill for, but her blue eyes were as empty as all the rest. Her mouth was smeared with redder things than lipstick.

Nicky whispered, “God.” But when I moved to the side of the grave, he and Jacob moved with me. Ilsa lay down on the grave and the dirt flowed over her like water. I’d never had so many zombies lay to rest at once. The dirt made a sound like waves crashing as it covered them all back up.

We stood in a silence so deep I could hear the pulse in my own body thundering in my ears. Then the first night insect called, then a distant frog, then the wind blew through the clearing, and it was as if the world had been holding its breath. We could all breathe again.

“You almost got us eaten alive,” Jacob said.

“You kidnapped me, remember?”

He nodded, and he was pale even by moonlight. Ellen made a small moan in his arms. “She’ll be all right,” he said, as if someone had asked the question.

He looked at the gun that was still in his other hand underneath her body. I watched the thought run through his eyes. “Don’t do it,” I said.

“Why not? You don’t have any more zombies to eat me.”

“Jacob,” Nicky said, “don’t.”

“You’ll kill me for her, won’t you?”

He just nodded.

Jacob looked at me. “I wish I’d turned down this job.”

“Me, too,” I said.

He looked at Nicky, then back to me. “They tortured our lions to get this location.” I didn’t know who he was saying it to.

“We’d have done the same,” Nicky said.

“You’ve destroyed my pride,” he said.

“No, Jacob,” I said, “you destroyed it when you put yourself on the wrong side of me and mine.”

He looked at me then, his eyes so wide there was a flash of white to them. “I’m going to try to leave before your people get here. Oh, yeah,” he said, “I feel them like something hot riding closer, so much power coming to your rescue, as if you need rescuing.” He laughed, but not like it was funny.

“Go, Jacob,” Nicky said.

Jacob looked at me. “If your name ever comes up in connection with another job, I’ll turn it down.”

“No matter how much money they offer you?” I asked.

He nodded. “There isn’t a price big enough to get me to come near you again.” He actually looked at the gun in his hand under Ellen’s body. I watched him think about it. “I’ll make you a deal, Anita Blake. You don’t come near me, and I will leave you the fuck alone.”

“Deal,” I said.

Nicky hugged me. “I don’t think I’m leaving, Jacob.”

“I know that.” He looked at me then, his eyes so wide there was a flash of white to them. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to leave. I’ll gather everyone up, and we’ll leave you and your men alone. I’d put a sign above St. Louis for all the hired thugs, if I could.”

“What would it say?” I asked.

“Here is a bigger motherfucker than you are.”

Jacob returned my weapons and trusted me not to shoot him in the back. He walked to the edge of the cemetery with Ellen in his arms and only when he was about to enter the trees did he turn and look at me. Maybe I should have shot him, but my lioness was content with beating his ass and letting him go. In the world of lions, he wouldn’t be back. Here was hoping my lion knew what she was talking about.

The first hint of dawn showed above the trees, making them look even blacker against the growing light. I felt Jean-Claude’s frustration. He could not come for me, but there were others who could. Others that daylight worked just dandy for, and as if I’d called them just by thinking of them, Micah and Nathaniel came out of the woods with guns, and other dark figures came with them. The cavalry had arrived.

They held me while the other guards made sure there were no more bad guys. They had Nicky at gunpoint, on his knees with his hands behind his head. He looked like he was familiar with the position. I was holding them, and crying, which I never did. “I thought they’d kill you.”

“When you didn’t come back from lunch, Bert called us to see if you’d gone home,” Micah said.

Nathaniel put his forehead against mine. “Then we couldn’t find you, and you missed the call from the other marshal about the vampire execution. We went back to the restaurant you had lunch in and Ahsan, the cute waiter, told us about two men and you getting into an SUV with them.” He began to kiss his way down my face. “Then you were gone, all our connections to you were broken. I thought you’d died.” He hugged me so tight I could hear the beating of his heart against my body.

I hugged him, and Micah kept my other hand. “Jean-Claude kept Nathaniel and Damian going with energy, but we knew you were hurt; that much we felt before it all went black.” He came to us both and Nathaniel opened his arms, so we did a group hug.

Jason’s voice came. “I almost die for you and I don’t even get a hug?”

I pulled away enough to see him, and he joined the hug. “Sorry I missed the party but I had to be in charge of finding sunproof housing for the vampires.”

“I felt his frustration that he couldn’t get here before dawn.”

“Frustrated is one word for it. Insanely angry is another,” Jason said, and wiped at the tears on my face.

“What do we do with this one?” one of the guards asked.

I turned to look at Nicky, still kneeling at gunpoint. “He’s with me,” I said.

Everyone looked at me. “I needed help to heal from the injuries, and I needed enough power to raise the dead so they didn’t kill you guys. I rolled him. The dead Rex said that he’d seen male vampires that could do what I do; Brides of Dracula.”

“Brides of Anita?” Jason asked.

I shrugged.

“Are you sure you can trust him?” Micah asked, and the look he gave Nicky wasn’t friendly.

“I don’t know, but I do know that he protected me from his own pride, and almost took a bullet for me.”

“Would you have survived without him?” Micah asked.

I thought about it, and then said, “No.”

Micah went to Nicky and offered him a hand up. The guards didn’t like it, but they knew not to argue with all of us. Micah stared up at the taller man, studying his face. “Thank you for taking care of her for us.”

“I helped kidnap her, you know,” Nicky said.

Micah nodded. “I know.”

“Is he coming home with us?” Nathaniel asked.

“I hadn’t actually thought that far ahead,” I said.

Then Nicky looked at me, his eyes stricken. “Don’t leave me, Anita. Please, don’t leave me.” His face seemed to struggle for an expression, but finally he collapsed to the ground and crawled toward me. He extended one hand. “Please, please, Anita, I don’t understand everything, but the thought of you leaving me behind feels like dying.”

I looked at the other men. Micah nodded. Nathaniel hugged me. Jason said, “I don’t live with you guys, so I don’t think I get a vote.”

I hugged him with the arm that wasn’t around Nathaniel. “They threatened to kill you; you get a vote.”

He came to stand with us and looked down at the man with his hand still out. “Touch him and let us feel the power.” That was Jason, so much smarter than he pretended he was.

I reached out and took Nicky’s hand. The moment we touched, the power jumped between us, climbed over my skin in a warm, tingling rush that caressed Nathaniel’s skin and crossed to Jason. Nathaniel made a small sound. Jason said, “Tasty.”

Micah came to us, rubbing his hand up and down the goose bumps on his arm; the other hand still held the gun. “You mind-fucked him.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He kissed my cheek. “I’m sorry you had to do that.” And in that moment I realized that he understood what it had cost me to take Nicky the way I did. I kissed him back and moved into the circle of his arms. I buried my face against the warm scent of his neck and let him hold me. The gun dug into my back a little.

Nathaniel and Jason were helping Nicky to his feet. The bigger man was crying, crying at the thought that I would cast him aside. Fuck.

I looked at Nicky watching me with frightened eyes while Jason tried to comfort him and Nathaniel came to join us, his gun peeking from the side of his jeans and ruining the line of his shirt.

I went to Nathaniel and kissed him, thoroughly and completely, so he melted in against me, our bodies, our hands, pressing against each other. He drew back laughing. “I love you, Anita.”

“I love you, too.”

“Let’s go home.”

I nodded. “Home sounds great.”

We started walking toward the woods. Jason jogged to catch up with us. I realized that Nicky was still standing back by the grave. I looked at him, so tall, so muscular, and so lost.

“What do I do with him?”

“What do you do with any of us?” Micah asked.

“He’s a stranger, and he tried to kill us all.”

“He would do anything you told him to do, Anita,” Jason said. “He seems to have even less free will than the rest of us do.”

“I did it on purpose, Jason. I took everything from him on purpose.”

“You did what you had to do, so you could come back to us,” Micah said.

“I really wanted a puppy,” Nathaniel said, “but I guess we could say he followed us home, too.”

“I told you we’d think about a dog.”

“In the meantime can we take the kitten home?”

“He’s not a kitten,” I said.

“He looks like one.”

I looked at Nicky by the grave and knew what he meant. He looked so alone, but he made no move to follow us, as if he’d simply stand there by the grave until I told him to do something else. Had I told him to stay by the grave? I couldn’t remember.

“We can’t leave him like that,” Micah said.

I sighed. “Nicky, come on.”

His face lit up as if I’d told him tomorrow was Christmas, and he jogged toward us. We slept in the motel that Jason had settled Jean-Claude and the other vampires into so that dawn didn’t find them and do something unfortunate. The four of us shared the king-size bed, and Nicky slept on the floor beside us. He’d started to shake at the thought that he couldn’t stay in the same room with me. God help me.

But in the morning, I woke with Nathaniel’s vanilla-scented hair across my face, and Micah’s warmth pressed against my back. Jason’s arm and leg were across Nathaniel’s body, touching me even in his sleep. I heard movement on the floor and Nicky sat up, rubbing his face clear of sleep. He smiled at me, as if whatever he saw was the most beautiful thing in the world. I knew that was a lie, but with all my men around me in a warm puppy pile I couldn’t be unhappy. I’d taken Nicky’s free will; I’d eaten his life on purpose. He could never be free, never be his own person again.

Micah moved against my back and laid a kiss on my shoulder. “Good morning,” he whispered, and that was enough. Did I regret what I’d done to Nicky? Yes, I did, but as Nathaniel blinked those lavender eyes up at me through a veil of his own hair, Jason mumbled, “It’s too early to be up,” his hand rubbing along my shoulder. I could live with it.

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