9

Nathaniel 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 discernible 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 Draculain 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 notbelieve?

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 primordialdarkness,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.

That shining ocean of blackness reached out towards me, and I knew that if it touched me, I would die. I couldn't turn away, couldn't run, because you can't run from the dark, not really. The light does not last. That last thought wasn't mine. Wasn't Belle's.

I stared up at the darkness as it began to bend over me, and knew it lied. It's the dark that doesn't last. Dawn comes and slays the darkness, not the other way around. If I could have found enough air, I would have screamed, but I was left with only a whisper. The darkness bent towards me, and I couldn't shoot it, or hit it, and I didn't have enough personal psychic power to keep her at bay. I did the only thing I could think of, I prayed.

I whispered, "Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee . . ." the darkness hesitated, "Blessed are you among women, and Blessed is the fruit of thy womb," the faintest of shivers ran through the liquid dark, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us . . ." There was suddenly light in the darkness. My cross was around my neck in the dreamscape. The metal shone like a captive star, shining and white, and unlike in real life, I could see beyond the brilliance of it. I watched that pure, white light chase back the dark.

I was suddenly aware of the car seat, the seat belt across my chest, Nathaniel's body wrapped around my legs. The cross around my neck was glowing hot white even in sunlight, so that I had to look away from it, and still the white, white light blurred my vision. The cross wouldn't have still been burning if the danger had past. I waited for the Mother of all Darkness to make her next move.

The air in the Jeep was suddenly soft, sweet, like the perfect summer night, when you can smell every blade of grass, every leaf, every flower, like a scented blanket that wraps you in air softer than cashmere, lighter than silk, a sweet blanket of air.

My throat suddenly felt cooler, as if I'd taken a sip of cold water. I could feel it coating my throat, and there was a faint under-taste, like jasmine.

Nathaniel buried his face in my lap to protect his eyes from the light. It was like wearing a white sun around my neck.

"Shit," Jason said, "I'm having trouble seeing the road. Can you tone it down?"

The world was full of white halos, and I didn't dare turn my head to look at him. The scent of night was all I could smell as if everything else had vanished. I could almost redrink the cool, perfumed water that coated my throat. So real, so overwhelmingly real. I managed to whisper, "No."

I kept waiting for words in my head, but there was nothing but silence, and the smell of a summer night, the taste of cool water, and the growing sense that something large was drawing nearer. It was like standing on the train tracks, when you feel that first vibration down the metal lines, and you know you should get off, but you can't see anything. As far as you can look, the tracks are clear, there's only that metallic vibration, like a pulse beat against your feet, to let you know that several tons of steel are hurtling towards you. People die every year on train tracks, and often their dying words are I didn't see the train.I've always thought that trains must be magical that way, or otherwise people would see them, and get the fuck off the tracks. I could feel the vibration of her rushing towards me, and I would gladly have gotten off the tracks, but the tracks were inside my head, nailed across my body, and I couldn't figure out how to run from that.

Something rubbed against my skin, like some large animal pressing its body along the length of mine. I felt Nathaniel draw back, but I couldn't see him through the white light. His voice came, breathless, frightened, "What is that?"

I opened my mouth, not even sure what I'd say, when that roll of invisible animal hit my chest, and the cross. The cross flared so bright that most of us screamed, cried out. Jason had to hit the brakes and stop the jeep in the middle of the street, blinded by the light, unable to see to drive, I think.

The light began to dim. For a second I wondered if the brilliance had fried my retinas, then my vision began to clear through a veil of spots. I could still feel it, her, pressing against me, pinning me to the seat, pressing over the cross, as if she were eating the light.

Nathaniel stared up at me, his lavender eyes gone leopard, a deep, deep gray, that had a hint of blue in the sunlight. "She's a shifter," he whispered. And I knew why. Shape-shifters could not be vampires, or vice versa. The lycanthropy virus seemed to be proof against whatever made you a vampire. You could not be both. It was a rule. But whatever pressed against me now was animal not human. I couldn't get a sense of what kind of animal, but animal it was.

How the Mother of all Darkness happened to be both a vampire and a shape-shifter at the same time was a problem for another day. Right then, I didn't care what she was, I just wanted her to leave me the fuck alone.

The cross was still glowing, but only the metal itself, as if it were hollow and candles burned inside it. The light was white and flickering now. I'd never seen a cross look so much like fire before. But it was a cold fire. The shape pushed and rolled like it was trying to climb inside me, but the cross kept glowing, acting as a metaphysical shield to keep her out of me.

"What can we do to help?" Jason asked. The Jeep was still stopped in the middle of the street. A car trapped behind us was honking its horn. There were cars parked on both sides of the residential street leaving the car with no way to get past us. The neighborhood was nothing but small neat houses, none with driveways. Jason hit the blinkers, and the car began to back away, trying to turn around.

I was almost afraid to open my links to Richard and Jean-Claude, what if the primordial dark could spill down the ties and take them, too? Jean-Claude had no faith to fall back on. Richard did, but whether he was actually wearing a cross or not was debatable. It had been a long time since I'd seen Richard wear a cross.

While I was still considering, Jason grabbed my hand. The scent of night didn't fade, it was added to, like a layer of color painted over another. The clean musk of wolves filled the night. The cool water that seemed to have passed down my throat now tasted more of loam and forest than perfume.

I had an image in my mind of a huge animal head with long teeth, like the largest fangs I'd ever seen. The fur on the head was gold and tawny, and reddish, shaded, rather than striped, more lion than tiger. Eyes like golden fire stared into mine, and that huge mouth opened wide, and screamed its frustration, in a sound like a panther's scream, but octaves lower. Pioneers were always mistaking panther screams for a woman's cries. No one would have mistaken this for a woman--a man, maybe, a man being tortured and screaming for his soul.

I screamed back, as if that head were truly right in front of me and not thousands of miles across the world. My scream was echoed by two others. Nathaniel snarled up at me from the floorboard, his mouth showing teeth that were fast becoming fangs. Caleb had slid in between the seats, and his eyes were yellow cat eyes. He started to rub his cheek against my shoulder as if he was going to scent mark me, then stopped, snarling, as if he'd touched that other phantom cat.

Jason didn't scream, he growled, that low, fur-standing-on-end sound that has nothing to do with hunting and everything to do with fighting, not for food, but for survival. It was a sound for guarding territory, chasing out interlopers, getting rid of troublemakers. The sound that says get out or die.

She screamed back, a sound that should have frozen the blood in my veins, and reminded me that my ancestors had huddled around their small fires and watched in terror for the shine of eyes outside that flame. But I wasn't thinking like a person. I wasn't even sure thinkingwas the word for what was moving through my mind. It was more like I was in the moment, completely, utterly. I could feel the leather seat cupping my body, Nathaniel pressed against my legs, his hands tracing higher, Caleb at my shoulder, his cheek against my face, his jaw straining as he snarled, Jason's hand on my arm like it had taken root, become a part of me.

I could smell Caleb's skin, the soap he'd used that morning, and the fear like something bitter under that clean skin. Nathaniel moved up on his knees, higher, so that his face was superimposed behind the saber-tooth's head for a moment. But I could smell the vanilla scent of his hair, and there was nothing from the phantom cat.

Jason moved in closer, putting his face close to mine, sniffing the air, I smelled soap, shampoo, and the smell of Jason, a scent that had begun to mean home to me, the way the vanilla scent of Nathaniel's hair, or Jean-Claude's expensive cologne, or, once, the warm bend of Richard's neck affected me. I didn't mean in a sexual way, but the way fresh baked bread or your mother's favorite cookies make you feel safe and smell like home. I turned my head to Caleb, so that my nose touched his skin, and under the fear, the soap, the soft skin, he smelled of leopard, faint in his human form, but there, a nose-wrinkling, skin-prickling smell. I turned to the weight pressing against the still-glowing cross. I looked into those yellow eyes, gazed upon those fangs that were like nothing that walked the earth today, and it had no scent.

Jason was snuffling the air in front of me. His pale wolf eyes met mine, and I knew that he'd figured it out, too.

As a vampire she smelled of cool evenings and sweet water, vaguely like jasmine. As a wereanimal she had no scent, because she wasn't here. It was a sending, a psychic sending. It had power, but it wasn't real, not really real, not physical. No matter how much power you put into it, a psychic sending has limits to what it can do physically. It can frighten you into running into traffic, but it can't push you. It can try to trick you into doing things, but it cannot hurt you without a physical agent. When she was a vampire, the cross and my faith kept her at bay. As a wereanimal, she wasn't real.

Nathaniel had literally crawled up through the image I could still see hovering over my chest. He was the one who said it out loud, "It has no scent."

"It's not real," I said.

Caleb's voice came with an edge of growl so deep that it was almost painful to hear, "I feel it, some great cat, like pard, but not."

"But do you smell anything?" Jason asked.

Caleb sniffed along my body. Any other time, I would have accused him of getting too close to my breasts, but not now. He was as serious as I'd ever seen him, as he sniffed along my chest, pushed his face almost into that evil face. He stopped, staring into those yellow eyes from inches away. He hissed like any startled cat. "I can't smell it, but I see it."

"Seeing isn't always believing," I said.

"What is it?" he asked.

"A psychic projection, a sending. The vampire couldn't get past the cross, so it tried another form, but the kitty-cat doesn't travel as well as the . . . whatever the hell she is." I looked into those yellow eyes and watched that massive mouth roar up at me. "You have no scent, you aren't real, only a bad dream, and dreams have no power unless you give it to them. I give you nothing. Go back to where you came from, go back to the dark."

I had a sudden image of a dark, dark room, not pitch black, but as if the only light were reflected from somewhere else. There was a bed with a black silk cover and a figure lying under that cover. The room was oddly shaped, not square, not circular, almost hexagonal. There were windows, but I knew somehow that they did not look out upon the world. Windows to gaze down upon the darkness that never lifted, never changed.

I was drawn towards the bed, drawn the way you're drawn in nightmares. I didn't want to look, but I had to look; didn't want to see, and had to see.

I reached out towards that shining black silk, I could tell it was silk because of the way it reflected the light from down below, far down below outside the windows. The light flickered, and I knew it was firelight. Nothing electric had ever touched the darkness of this place.

My fingertips brushed the silk, and the body under the sheet moved in its sleep, moved the way someone will when they dream, but are not yet awake. I knew in that instant that I was a dream to her, too, and I couldn't truly be standing in her inner sanctum, that no matter how real or exact it was, I could not send myself to her, and pull the sheet away. Dreams could not do that. But I also knew in that same moment that all she had done to me today had been done in a sleep that had lasted long and longer, so long that the others sometimes thought she was dead, hoped she was dead, feared she was dead, prayed she was dead, if they had the courage of prayer left in them. Who do the soulless dead pray to?

A sigh moved through that close, airless room, and on that first breath of air, came a whisper of sound, the first sound that that room had heard in centuries, "Me."

It took me a moment to realize that it was the answer to my question. Who do the soulless dead pray to? Me,the whisper said.

The figure under the sheet shifted in its sleep again. Not awake, not yet, but she was swimming upwards, filling in herself, coming closer to wakefulness.

I jerked my hand back from that sheet; I stepped back from that bed. I did not want to touch her. More than anything else, I did not want to wake her. But since I didn't know how I'd gotten into her room, I couldn't figure out how to get out of it. I'd never been someone else's dream before, though people had accused me of being their nightmares. How do you stop being in someone else's dream?

That whisper echoed through the room again, "By waking them."

She'd answered my question again. Shit. I was beginning to have an awful idea. Could the darkness become lost in sleep? Could the dark become lost in the dark? Could the mother of all nightmares be trapped in the land of dreams?

"Not trapped," the whisper in the dark said.

"Then what?" I asked it out loud, and the body under the sheet rolled all the way over, feeling the silence with the hissing glide of silk over skin. My throat closed around the words, and I cursed myself for not thinking.

"Waiting," still the air breathing around me, not a voice, not really.

I thought really hard, waiting for what'?

There was no answer from the dark room. But there was a new noise. Someone beside me was breathing, deep, even breathing, as if they slept. Though I would have sworn that the figure on the bed hadn't been breathing a second ago.

I did not want to be here when she sat up, I so did not want to be here for that. What had she been waiting for all this time?

This time the voice came from the bed, the same voice as the wind, faint, long unused, so hoarse and soft that I couldn't tell if it were male or female. "Something of interest."

With that last, I finally felt something from that body. I'd been prepared for malice, evil, anger, but was totally unprepared for curiosity. As if she wondered what I was, and she hadn't wondered about anything in a millennia, or two, or three.

I smelled wolf, musky, sweet, pungent, so real I could feel it gliding over my skin. I suddenly had a cross around my neck, and the white glow filled the room. I think I could have seen the figure on the bed clearly by the light of the cross, but either I closed my eyes without remembering, or some things you shouldn't see, even in dreams.

I woke in the Jeep with Nathaniel and Caleb's worried faces hovering over me. There was a huge wolf sitting in the driver's seat, its long snout snuffling against my face. I reached up to touch that soft, thick fur, then saw the shine of liquid all over the driver's seat, where Jason had shape-shifted on the leather.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you couldn't have shape-shifted in the back in the cargo area. You had to shape-shift on the leather seats. It'll never come clean."

Jason growled at me, low and rumbling, and I didn't have to speak wolf to know what he was saying. I was being an ungrateful wretch. But it was so much easier to concentrate on my ruined upholstery than to think about the fact that I'd been in the presence of the Mother of all Vampires, the Mother of all Darkness, the Primordial Abyss made flesh. I knew through Jean-Claude's memories that they called her Mother Gentle, Marme, a dozen different euphemisms to make her seem kind, and, well, motherly. But I'd felt her power, her darkness, and finally, at the end an intellect as cold and empty as any evil. She was curious about me the way some scientists are curious about a new species of insect. Find it, capture it, put it in a jar, whether it wants to go with you, or not. It's just an insect, after all.

They could call her Mother Gentle if they wanted to, but Mommy Dearest was a hell of a lot more accurate.