6

The door closed, and like magic it was quiet. The backstage area was soundproofed, but it was more than that today. It was as if with the closing of that door I could think again, really think. I knew that proximity to Jean-Claude could make things worse, usually proximity meant touching. Tonight, in the same room was too close.

I shook my head. "What the hell is happening?"

"We have a first aid kit in the dressing rooms," Byron said. He tried to lead me toward one of the doors on the right.

I took my arm out of his grip and looked at Nathaniel. "Did I hear Jean-Claude tell you not to touch me?"

He nodded. "He's not sure what will happen right now." His face was very solemn, serious, closed. He was being careful around me again, and I didn't know why.

"Have I missed something tonight?"

"You're dripping blood," Byron said, and he motioned at my arm.

Blood was trickling down my hand to drop, drop onto the white floor. The hallway was so white and so empty that the spot of crimson seemed loud, as if color were sound. I shook my head again. "Something's wrong."

"You've lost more blood than you realize," Byron said.

"Anita," Nathaniel said, and it seemed like it took longer than it should have for me to turn and look at him. "Anita, come into the dressing rooms. We'll take care of you."

I nodded and raised my arm up to about chest high. It would help slow the blood loss. The sleeve of my jacket was a bloody mess, and I hadn't noticed until now. Something was terribly wrong, and I didn't know what it was. I knew that making a new triumvirate with Damian and Nathaniel was probably the cause, but that only told me why it was happening, not what was happening. Why didn't matter very much to me right that moment; what was happening, that mattered a great deal.

Byron touched my arm, only enough to guide me through the door that Nathaniel opened for us. As I walked past Nathaniel, I felt something open between us, as if there were a door in the middle of our bodies. A door that wanted to close around us, to press us tight together.

Byron literally put his body in front of mine and kept me from touching Nathaniel. I growled at him, and Nathaniel echoed me at his back. "Ease down, kitty-cats, I am only doing what the Master of the City ordered me to do." His eyes were a little wide, and I got a whiff not of fear but something close to it. "Do you remember what Jean-Claude's kiss felt like out there?" He grabbed my hurt wrist and ground his fingers into it.

"That hurts," I said, and I turned on him, angry, ready to be angry.

"But you can think now, can't you?"

That made me take a step back into the dressing rooms beyond. Byron followed, a hand still on my wrist, but loosely now, not to hurt, but more to guide.

"What's happening to us?" I asked.

"It looks like you've all hit a new power plateau," Byron said, as he led me between the little lighted tables scattered with makeup and bits of costume.

"Which means what?" I asked.

He stopped in front of a big gray metal cabinet that was at the far end of the room. "Which means, answer my question. Do you remember what the kiss felt like in the other room?" He opened the cabinet, and it seemed to be full of cleaning supplies and extra bits of things that people might need. On the top shelf, so he had to stand on tiptoe, was a first aid kit, a big one.

"It was like he drank my soul," and saying it out loud was too poetic for me. I blushed and tried again. "I thought he'd fed the ardeur during sex with me, but if that kiss was feeding the same thing, he's been holding back."

Byron tried to find enough clean space on the nearby tables to open the medicine chest, but gave up and asked Nathaniel to hold it, while he rummaged through it. "He's been holding back, luv, trust me on that."

"How do you know?" I asked.

He gave me a very flat stare out of his big gray eyes. "Jean-Claude liked London once, he liked it a very great deal, and I liked that he liked it." There was something almost unfriendly in the way he finished that sentence.

"Why do I feel like apologizing?" I asked.

"Just hold your arm up higher," he said. He had his hands full of things, but still wasn't satisfied. "Nothing to apologize for, duckie. Except for Asher, Jean-Claude prefers his meat of the gentler persuasion, always did. Ah, here it is." He held up an unopened package of gauze pads. He smiled at me, and the smile was so harmless, so not matching the situation. "Now, let Uncle Byron see to the big, bad boo-boo."

I gave him a look that wasn't entirely friendly. "I'm bleeding, not brain damaged, can the baby talk."

He shrugged. "Whatever you say, lover."

I started to correct him, but Byron used pet names, mostly the same pet names, for everybody. If I took it too personally, it would be impossible to have a conversation with him. I was tired tonight. I let it go.

"Why doesn't he want me to touch Nathaniel?"

Byron looked at me like I was being slow. "Because, luv, if Jean-Claude's kiss is suddenly more, then maybe yours will be, too. The servant rises in power with his master." He looked at everything in his hands, then shook his head, looked impatient and dumped it all back into the box. "Hand me things when I ask for them," he said to Nathaniel.

Nathaniel nodded, but he was looking at me. I found myself staring into those lavender eyes.

Byron snapped his fingers in the air between our faces. It made us both jump. "The two of you are so not touching right now. Dangerous is what it would be. Now take off your jacket."

I did what he asked, and it hurt to get the sleeve off, but it wasn't until I saw my wrist that I gasped, and Nathaniel said, "Oh, shit."

Most vampire bites are neat, almost dainty things. This wasn't. It was as if, even once his fangs sank home he'd used his other teeth to bite down, so that it looked more like an animal bite. A big, angry animal bite. Blood was seeping out of the two deepest fang marks, seeping in a nice steady line. The moment I saw it, I was dizzy, and it hurt like hell. Why does it always hurt so much more when you see the blood?

"You are lucky you're still standing," Byron said. He hooked a chair with one naked foot, and said, "Sit."

I sat. Because truthfully, I was a little shaken. It was a bad enough wound that I should have noticed it sooner. Really noticed it. A fraction of an inch better, or worse, or just deeper, and I could have bled nearly to death before I noticed it.

"Why didn't I notice sooner?"

"I've seen bespelled humans bleed to death from tiny wounds, a smile on their face all the way to the end, duckie." He ripped open the sterile gauze pads. "Put this on it, and press hard. You've lost enough blood for one night, let's see if we can save the rest." When he was serious, the nicknames vanished. He'd only been in town a few weeks, and already I knew that when the duckies, luvs, and crumpets disappeared, things were bad.

"What can I do to help?" Nathaniel asked.

"Find more gauze pads. That's the only pack in here, and she's going to need more."

Nathaniel put the first aid kit on a chair that he moved close to Byron, then he went for the door. Apparently he knew where they kept the extra gauze. "How bad do you guys get cut up here?"

"Usually scratches," he said, "though you'd be surprised the number of women that try to bite."

I looked at him.

He grinned. "Now, duckie, why would I lie?"

One second I was looking at Byron and thinking nothing really. My wrist hurt, and I wondered why I hadn't noticed it sooner, and then suddenly I was wondering if he was naked under the robe, and I was hoping he was.

I closed my eyes and tried to shield. Tried to nail anything and everything I had between me and Jean-Claude, but his voice came through. "I am sorry, ma petite, so sorry, but Primo is still fighting me, and I have not fed enough. I cannot feed and control him, but you can feed for me. You can give me what I need, ma petite. Please, please, do not deny me. If I lose control of Primo now, he will slaughter these women. He will see himself humiliated by them. Please, ma petite, hear me, and know that I speak only truth. Help me!" He cut contact abruptly, and I got a glimpse of Primo's rage stabbing at the lust that Jean-Claude had fed him. It was as if Primo were a human besotted, but still fighting, fighting to break free.

"Damn you, Jean-Claude," I whispered.

Byron touched my arm. "Don't faint on me."

I opened my eyes, and his gray ones were so close to mine. He was so close. I don't know what showed in my eyes, but he let go of me like I'd burned him. His eyes were a little wide, and his voice was breathy when he said, "I don't like the look in your eyes. It doesn't look much like you."

I leaned into him, and he leaned back. I kept moving forward, and he kept moving back, so that I slipped out of the chair, and he ended up on the floor for a second, before he rolled to his feet. I was left kneeling on the floor, but I had a handful of his robe. The cloth stretched away from his body, and I saw that he was wearing something under it, but not much. It was lust, but it was more than that. It was lust, as if sex were food. I'd thought the ardeur was the worst of it, but this felt... less, worse. Except for that first time I'd had some control over the ardeur. Not liking someone, or knowing someone helped me fight it off. This was different. It wouldn't have mattered. This was need so raw that it just wouldn't have mattered.

Jean-Claude screamed through my head, "Anita, help me!" He'd used my real name, and his desperation cut through me like a knife.

Some of that desperation fell into my voice. "I'm sorry, Byron, but Jean-Claude is about to lose control of Primo. He needs more food."

"And who gets to be the food?" he asked, and there was that edge of fear to him.

I had to close my eyes and take a deep breath. "There's no time."

"I won't let you tear my throat out, just because the master has bitten off more than he can tame."

I shook my head, eyes still closed. "Don't be afraid, Byron, please, that fuels the beast. I'm offering the ardeur." I opened my eyes and stared up at him. He still stood as far away as the stretched fabric of the black robe could take him. My voice had found an edge of growl when I said, "But it's a limited time offer. Either come across, or food won't be a euphemism."

A funny look crossed his face. "Do you mean sex? Real sex? Not a euphemism for anything?"

If I'd had time, it would have been funny. "Yes."

"Oh, duckie, why didn't you say so?" He came to me, undoing the sash of his robe and letting it fall away. He was wearing only the tiniest of black thongs, with his pale, pale body exposed everywhere else. The muscles that he'd managed to acquire in less than a month worked under his skin as he dropped to his knees in front of me. "Who gets to be on top?" he asked with a smile.

I put my hands on his bare shoulders, and the moment I touched his skin, the smile faded. "I do," I said, and pushed him to the floor.

37

Byron lay back against the floor with my body riding him, my hands on his wrists, pinning him to the floor. The only thing I'd ripped off my own body had been underwear. There was no foreplay, there was no time for it, no need for it. Everywhere I touched him, I could feed a little. Bare skin was all I needed now, but it was an incomplete feeding. It wasn't enough. I pressed our mouths together, slid my tongue into his mouth, and again I could feed, but it wasn't enough. I ground myself against him, but he was still trapped in the thong. I let go with one wrist, and his hand found the side of the thong first.

"Snap away," he said, in a voice that was deeper, more real than his usual.

I tore the cloth away, and he was suddenly naked against me, not inside me, but pressed against me, and he was warm. Warm with the blood he'd taken from someone else. The feel of him pressed against me made me cry out.

Nathaniel said, "Anita?" He came pressed as far from us as he could get and stayed where I could see him. "It's like the ardeur, but worse, more." He looked almost panic-stricken. He had an armful of gauze packets.

I wanted to say I'm sorry, or something civilized, but Byron moved his hips underneath me, and that one small movement brought my attention back to the man underneath me. His eyes had darkened like sky before a storm. And staring down into them, I wondered how I'd ever thought they were soft. He spent so much time being the charming youth, playing to the body he'd been given, but now suddenly out of his eyes I saw just how much grown-up I was dealing with.

"Fuck me," he said, and it came out softer the second time, "fuck me, fuck me." He whispered it over and over, softer and softer, until his breath itself whispered, "Fuck me."

I leaned over him, pressed my mouth to his, and it was as if I could feel his soul down the long tunnel of his body, as if I knew how to reach in and snatch it away. I knew in that instant that I could feed on everything that Byron was. I could feed on that divine or infernal spark that made him vampire. I could eat him up, completely and utterly, and leave only the lovely corpse behind.

I came off his mouth screaming, because the urge to do it was almost overwhelming. The hunger wanted it all. All of him. It couldn't have all of him. It couldn't. I wouldn't do that to him. I wouldn't do that to anyone. For the first time I understood just what they meant by a fate worse than death, or rather that sex wasn't it.

If I could feed the ardeur, then maybe this darker thing would go away, but even willing, I had trouble. I didn't know Byron's body. I tried to simply rock back onto him, slide him inside me, but twice we slid across each other but didn't go in. I finally yelled my frustration, and he said, "Let me have my hand, lover, and I'll help."

A hand appeared between us, and it actually took me a moment to realize it was Nathaniel. He had a condom in his hand. "We don't know where he's been."

I growled at him, but he growled back. "The only way you can catch something from a vampire or lycanthrope is if one of us has fucked someone who's got something, then fucks you after. You want to take that chance?"

"Let me have my hands, lover, and I'll put on anything you want."

I let go of his wrists, and he moved himself just enough so he could open the foil packet and slip it on. Then he slid himself back where we'd started, with him pressed against me, but not inside. He put his hands on either side of my thighs and lifted me at the same time that he shifted his own hips. He slid inside me, in one smooth movement that threw my head back and made him yell, "Oh, yes!"

When I looked back at him, his gray eyes had lost focus, his lips were half-parted. I wanted to cover his mouth with mine, I wanted that brief sweet taste of his soul again. I finally realized it wasn't the ardeur we were fighting, not entirely. Something else was happening, something darker, something worse. I'd thought the worst would be sex with strangers, but I was wrong. Byron wasn't my friend yet, I didn't make friends that quickly, but he wasn't a bad man. I liked him, with his "duckie" and "luvs." I liked that he had told me the first time we'd met, that no, he wasn't that Byron, and that actually Lord Byron wasn't one of us, that had just been a rumor spread by people that wanted an excuse to burn him at the stake in some backwater country. Though if he'd known the great poet was going to get himself drowned before the age of thirty, he'd have offered.

I liked Byron. He didn't deserve to die. There was an angry echo in my head. I thought it was Primo, and then knew it wasn't. He didn't have the kind of power it took to interfere from a room away, not through my shielding and Jean-Claude's. I asked myself the question, Where would the power go if I sucked Byron's life away? I threw the question out to Jean-Claude. I let him see that darkest of desires in my head.

"That is not our hunger," he said.

"Who is it?"

"She is the Dragon." He spoke in my head, and there was urgency there.

"She made Primo," I said, and it was only then that I realized I wasn't talking out loud.

"She's using him as a conduit for her own power."

"How do we stop it?"

Byron suddenly drew back and thrust himself inside me again, and did something with his hips and legs at the same time. It blew my concentration all to hell, and all I could do was stare down at him. "A man likes to know he's not boring a girl," he said, but there was no smile to go with the light-hearted comment.

Jean-Claude echoed through my head. "We stop her as we did Moroven, by sending her something she does not understand."

"Let me guess," I said, and again it wasn't aloud.

"Sex, or love, ma petite, what else is there for us?"

I don't know what I would have said, because Byron rolled me. He rolled us over in a sudden amazingly fast, fluid movement, and never fell out of me, which is harder to do than it sounds. I was suddenly on the floor staring up at him, my hands on his shoulders as if I'd grabbed the nearest thing to prevent me from falling. He grinned at the surprised look on my face and said, "You're not moving enough, luv, let me show you how it's done."

He did two quick thrusts that left me breathless, then he raised up on his hands like he was trying to do a bad push-up with his groin pressed tight against mine. His smile faded, and he frowned. "You're bleeding, luv."

I'd forgotten about my wrist again. I followed his glance and found that blood was seeping out from it. There was blood spattered across my blue top.

"Some gauze, please," he said.

I think it took both Nathaniel and me a second to realize who he was talking about, and why. Nathaniel fumbled a package open and handed it to him. It was acutely uncomfortable to be trapped under the body of a strange man while Nathaniel knelt beside us. It was more embarrassing than having Richard watch with Damian. It just felt worse, as if I should apologize.

I think I would have done just that, but Byron pressed the gauze to my wounded wrist, pinning it to the floor. It hurt, sharp and immediate, and I was left gasping and staring up at his face. He pinned my other wrist, so that he was pressed above me, and I was very, very pinned.

I might have complained, but Jean-Claude roared through my head. "Ma petite, I need to feed. You are not moving fast enough with Byron."

"You're a big vampire, feed yourself," I said, and that was out loud.

"Do you understand what you're giving permission for, ma petite?"

"Tonight, yes, help me, Jean-Claude. Feed, for God's sake, feed."

Byron hesitated, poised above me. "Something wrong?"

"We're not moving fast enough for him, apparently."

A nearly evil grin crossed Byron's face. "Oh, we can fix that, luver, we can fix that," And he fixed it. He moved himself in and out of me in long writhing waves of his body. It was as if the thrust started at his shoulders and danced its way down his body until he thrust himself inside me. Once inside me, he did something with his hips that seemed almost to make him roll inside me. It was as if that writhing dancelike movement went all the way down his body and inside mine. It wasn't fast, as in speed, but it was fast in other ways.

My breathing had sped up, and my body had figured out at what point in his writhing that he plunged inside me, so that my hips thrust upward to meet him. It began to be like a dance, except we were both flat on the floor, but when he realized that I wanted to move, he changed how his lower body pinned me, so that mostly only him sliding in and out of me pinned my lower body, and the rest of me was left to rise and fall against his body.

He kept my wrists pinned, and I kept thinking I should say something about that, but I kept forgetting, and I finally realized I didn't want to say anything.

Another British voice came from behind us. "Jean-Claude said I was needed in here, but it looks like you've got a queue."

I said his name, "Requiem," just that and nothing more, but he came to me. He knelt in a fall of black-hooded cloak. He pushed the hood back to reveal hair as straight and black as the cloak itself. His eyes were a deep, rich blue like startled cornflowers in the white skin and black hair of his face. The thin mustache and Vandyke beard were as raven dark as his hair and the eyebrows that framed those startling blue eyes. He'd once told me that Belle had wanted to buy him from his old master. She'd wanted a third blue-eyed lover. Asher had the palest blue, Jean-Claude the darkest, and Requiem had the brightest. His master had refused, and they had fled France.

He knelt by my head, kneeling over us on his knees like some dark angel in the cloak he would not give up for any modern coat. "What would you have of me, my lady?"

My voice came breathy, but clear. Good for me. "If you take blood at the same time I feed on him, then I'll feed on both of you."

He didn't argue. He simply laid down behind us, so that his face was close to mine. "As my lady wills it, so shall it be done."

"Well if it's to be done, do it fast," Byron said, and his voice sounded more strained than mine.

Requiem looked up at him, propped on his elbows by my head. "Are you implying that you won't last much longer?"

"Yes," and his voice sounded half-strangled.

"You're out of training," Requiem said.

"You haven't fucked her. Don't criticize until you've tried."

"Are you implying that she's such a good shag that she's going to bring you early?"

"Stop bickering," I said, and my body still rose and fell with Byron's. He was still fighting to keep the rhythm even and pretty, but he was beginning to lose that smooth glide, and I knew when he stopped dancing above me, that that would be it. "Hurry, or you'll miss us."

"As my lady bids." Requiem dropped to his chest, his stomach, and ran his hands through my hair. "Bad angle," he whispered, "may I improve the angle, m'lady?"

"Yes," and it was a strangled sound.

He dug his fingers through my curls and pulled my head sharply to one side, exposing a long line of my neck. He balled his fist in my hair and pulled it sharp. I gasped, and it wasn't a pain sound.

I found myself staring not into Byron's gray eyes, but at Nathaniel. He was still there huddled near, but not too near. He looked both afraid and eager, and I didn't understand the look. I wanted to, and I had an instant to feel how he saw this. One lover pinned my wrists to the floor, grinding his hand into a fresh bite, plunging himself into me over and over, while I writhed underneath him. Now another man had jerked my hair tight and painful, exposed my neck, and when I orgasmed, he would plunge his fangs into my neck. Both vampires would plunge inside me at the same time, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It didn't matter to Nathaniel that I'd given permission. It mattered that I was trapped and helpless and at their mercy, and the entire scene did it for him. It just flat did it for him. He was enjoying watching, because this was the closest he'd come to what he'd wanted in months.

I felt his need like a weight in my mind, and I knew that he would have given almost anything to be the one on the bottom.

Byron's body began to lose its smooth gliding rhythm, and he seemed to be fighting not to simply plunge in and out as fast as he could. "Close, very close," he whispered.

I started to turn my head back so I could see his face, but Requiem's hand tightened, and I couldn't move. His breath was hot on my throat, and I knew that he'd borrowed that warmth from someone else. "Are you close, m'lady, are you close?" His voice spread like heat down my skin.

Byron leaned heavier on my wrists, grinding them into the floor, and his body took on a more urgent rhythm. I felt that weight in my groin, that grew and grew and would spill out, would spill out. I whispered, "Close, almost."

Requiem's lips touched my neck, just his lips, as if he kissed me. Byron fought for something smoother, more controlled, but his voice was hoarse, breathless, "Almost, almost, almost."

That heavy warmth inside me burst outward, and I screamed. Fangs plunged into my throat, and Byron's body bucked over me, convulsed against me, inside me. Requiem's mouth sealed over the kiss of his fangs, and he began to feed. And it was as if every suck of his mouth brought a new orgasm.

Byron cried out above me, and his body rocked with mine. Requiem's hand convulsed in my hair, and his hand gripped my shoulder, dug nails into me, and I felt his body jerking, rocking with us.

I screamed until my voice went hoarse, and still he fed, and still Byron stayed pinned inside me, thrusting into me. It was like being caught in an endless loop of pleasure, one movement feeding the others, until we finally collapsed into a quivering heap. Requiem's mouth fell away from my neck. "I can drink no more." His perfect voice was breathless, barely a whisper.

Byron collapsed on top of me like a puppet whose strings had been sliced. He lay on top of me, and I could feel his heart thudding inside his chest like a trapped thing. His breathing was ragged and sounded painful, and mine wasn't much better.

He found his voice, hoarse, and shaking. "If I wasn't dead already, I'd say I was having a heart attack."

I tried to laugh and ended up coughing.

"Oh, don't do that," Byron said, "oh, please." The coughing fit had tightened me around him again, and it jerked him up on his arms, pushed him one last time against me, which made me writhe under him.

He collapsed again, and begged, "No, more, please, Anita, no more. I never thought I'd say that from just one time, but give me a moment to catch my... breath."

"Breath," Requiem said with his face collapsed next to mine, "not breath, pulse. I knew you had the ardeur, but you should warn a vampire if you can do things like that."

I found my voice, "Like what?"

He moved his head just enough so that he could look me in the eye with his face on my shoulder. "I knew you would feed from me, but I didn't know you would bring me."

"Bring us," Byron said, "bring us again and again." He was collapsed across my chest and body so all I could see was his brown curls. "I usually try and keep track of things like that, but I gave up when we passed five. Or was it six?"

"Eight," Requiem said, "or maybe more. I think if I could have kept feeding, we wouldn't have stopped." He closed his eyes, and a faint shiver ran through him. "I'd forgotten how many different ways the ardeur could be fed. I'd forgotten how good it could feel."

"I don't have anything to compare this to," Byron said in a hoarse voice.

"You never met Belle Morte, did you?" Requiem asked.

Byron seemed to want to look at the other man when he spoke, but he gave up when raising his head was too much effort. "No, never had the pleasure."

"It was a pleasure," he said.

If I could have moved, and been sure I wouldn't fall over, I'd have told everyone to get off of me, but I couldn't move, and if I couldn't, I knew at least Byron couldn't, either. He'd been using more muscles than I had. But it felt odd to lay there with them draped around me and talk as if I wasn't there. I asked him, "Why didn't you let Belle keep you, then?"

"Have you met her?"

"In a manner of speaking, yeah."

His blue, blue eyes, looked sad, the excited exhaustion fading in the light of memories. "Then you should know the answer. No pleasure is worth her price, and besides, I don't like men, not even a little, and if you aren't at least bisexual, you can't survive at her court."

"Why?" I asked.

"When she's not fucking the men, she likes to watch the men fucking each other. I don't think there was ever a waking moment at her court when someone wasn't having sex either with her, or for her entertainment, or the entertainment of her guests."

Byron managed to lever himself around so he could give gray eyes to the other vampire. "I like men, but you make it sound like I wouldn't have liked it, either."

"There is no pleasure without payment. No pleasure without some pain attached, and not the kind of pain you'll enjoy. First she finds what you most desire, she learns your body as no other lover can, then she begins to deny you that love. She begins to make you beg for it. She addicts you to her, if she can. Then when she has you, truly has you, she begins to pull away, so that you spend the rest of eternity gazing into the face of paradise, but you are locked outside the shining gates and can only touch glimpses of heaven."

I found that I could move my arm again. I reached around Byron's curls, and touched Requiem's face. "You didn't end up with Belle," I said.

His eyes lost their remembering look, but they didn't regain the shine of pleasure. "If Jean-Claude had not offered me a home when our old master got himself executed, Belle Morte would have had me. If any other master had offered for me, anyone less than a le sourdre de sang, then I could not have refused her. You have no idea how rare it is that Jean-Claude has gained enough power to be his own fountainhead of blood. Not more than three vampires in nearly eight hundred years have gained that kind of power. It protected all of us when our old master lost his mind and went against the council's orders. An entire court of nearly all Belle's line, when it fell apart, she tried to pick up all the pieces."

Britain was the only other country in the world where vampires were legal. They had rights, and you couldn't just kill one of them simply because they were a vampire. It was murder. But in America we'd been doing it almost four years, and the Brits were newer at it. There'd been some hitches. Hitches that the human media and powers that be didn't know about. The Master of the City of London had been very old. He'd been one of the first master vamps that Belle Morte made, oh, so long ago. Sometimes the really ancient vampires don't take well to newfangled ideas. You know, electricity, modern medicine, and the fact that they were supposed to expose themselves to public view in a very modern, rock star sort of way. London had had more of Belle's lovely vampires than any but three other groups, and that included Belle's own court. So when the vamps got legal, the vampire council wanted the Master of the City to play to the human media. He called himself Dracula, because once the real vampire Dracula was assassinated, the name was up for grabs. Only one person at a time can hold a name per country, and only one person per time can hold some of the more well-known names. Dracula wasn't really Dracula, but the news media didn't seem to understand that, and they'd enjoyed talking about how they had the real Dracula as their Master of the City. They'd only wanted him to be as politically correctly visible as Jean-Claude and a lot of the masters in this country, but the new Drac didn't take well to it. In fact, he went buggers and started slaughtering humans.

The council managed to hush most of it up. To assassinate Dracula again, and just to prove that vampires can be as superstitious as the next bunch, they declared Dracula a dead name. No other vampire was allowed to choose it, or hold it. There had been two of them, and both had broken council law and had to be assassinated. Two was enough.

Jean-Claude had offered the London vamps a home. Not all of them, but many of them. All of them that could trace their lineage to Belle Morte. Who better to be strippers and dancers than the most beautiful and seductive vampires in the world? I couldn't argue with his logic. But lying there trapped under the weight of two of those vampires, I had to wonder if part of what was happening was just too damn many of them in one place. Was there such a thing as vampire pheromones? Probably.

"You're safe now," I said, "so everybody off the animator. I need to get up."

"That I did not offer means I am no gentleman," Requiem said, and he came to his knees with more grace than I was going to manage.

Byron got to all fours, head hanging down like a tired horse. I could see down the line of his body, and he looked tired, spent. "I can't feel my legs below my knees, so I'm as far up as I'm getting for awhile. Sorry, luv."

His getting up even that far left me suddenly naked from the waist down, or as naked as mattered to me. I never felt dressed in just thigh-highs and boots, and still wearing the shirt complete with gun didn't matter either. My skirt was up so high that the front of me was totally exposed, and for me, that was naked. I know, I know, how middle-America, how small town. But truth is truth. If you gave me a choice of covering anything, that would be it.

I tried to pull the skirt down, but I was lying on too much of it. Requiem stood and offered me a hand, but Nathaniel was on the other side, with his hand out. There was a look I couldn't quite read on his face, and this time I fought not to read his mind. I'd had enough surprises for one evening. But I took Nathaniel's hand and not Requiem's.

Nathaniel had to take both my hands to pull me out from under Byron. When he got me standing, my knees wouldn't hold, and he had to catch me around the waist. I looked at Requiem, who had spilled his black cloak around himself. I thought he was insulted, so I said, "Nothing personal, Requiem."

He gave me a brief and rare grin. He smiled, but grinning was rare. "I am not insulted, my lady." He spread the cloak wide suddenly, so that the front of his body showed. The cloak was black, but his slacks were not. The pale gray slacks were stained on the front as if he'd not quite made it to a bathroom, but that wasn't really what the stain was. It wasn't the stain that got me, it was the fact that the stain ran from his groin down one leg of his pants nearly to his knees.

I gave him raised eyebrows.

I expected embarrassment, but didn't get it. "A task well done, m'lady, a task well done."

That made me blush, which made him laugh, that deep rolling chuckle that was all masculine. Byron joined it, and his was not as deep a sound, but had just as much maleness to it. He was finally on his knees, instead of all fours.

Nathaniel didn't join in the laughter. He was helping me pull my skirt into place. Something about his face, his silence, reached the vampires.

Requiem made a low sweeping bow that flared the cloak around him, like wings. He used the cloak, or one similar to it, on stage. "My apologies, Nathaniel, it did not occur to me to ask your favor when I entered. Jean-Claude is our master and hers, but not yours." He looked up at Nathaniel, giving him the full force of those startling blue eyes.

"Anita doesn't need my permission for anything," Nathaniel said, but his voice made the words not ring true.

I sighed. I guess I couldn't blame him. He'd spent a lot of time lately watching everybody else but him get so much more than just sleeping privileges. But I couldn't apologize in front of the vampires without explaining way too much. So I didn't try.

"You get to sleep with her every night, mate, don't begrudge us a few crumbs from your table."

He took a breath like he'd say something, but I stopped him with a hand against his lips. "It was a metaphysical emergency. Nathaniel wants to opt out of those for awhile."

He looked at me, and I felt his smile against my hand. A smile just for me, because no one else could see it. He kissed the palm of my hand and moved it away from his mouth, but some piece of unhappiness had faded from his eyes. It made me smile.

"Let's bandage that wrist."

I glanced at the wrist in question. The gauze had glued itself to the wound, and it had begun to close. Byron had put a lot of pressure on it. "And find my underwear," I said.

Byron lifted what was left of my black undies from under the tables. "I think they've had it, luver."

I sighed. Bert had been right, the skirt was too short, and it was certainly too short to wear without underwear.

"I might have something that fits you," Byron said.

"What?" I asked.

"A thong, but at least the front bits will be covered." He smiled when he said it.

I shook my head, but I took his offer. A little underwear was better than no underwear at all.