beside me, offered me his hand, and I took it. No one else moved with us. The wererats couldn't attack Musette. The wereleopards were doing their best, but it wasn't going to be enough. Only the wolves could have helped us, and Richard wouldn't let them.
In that moment I wondered how long it would be before I started hating Richard.
48
I couldn't figure out why Asher was screaming. There was no blood, no rending of flesh, but he screamed all the same. Then as we got closer I watched the flesh of his face begin to seep away. It was as if his skin collapsed around the bones of his skull, as if Belle's touch were draining him dry, not of blood, but of everything.
I risked a glance at Jean-Claude, and he looked stricken, a second before his face showed nothing. I felt him pull away into that emptiness where he hid. "She could drain him to death this way." His voice was remarkably empty.
"But you're immune to it, right? She didn't make you."
"She is our sourdre de sang,none of us are immune to her touch."
I stopped and pushed him back. "Then you stay. I don't need two of you to worry about."
He didn't argue, but his gaze went past me to Asher. I wasn't sure he'd even heard me, and there wasn't time to check. I was half-running, when Micah pushed Belle back, pushed her back, using his whole body, broke her touch on Asher's face.
Asher collapsed slowly down the wall, and Belle's glowing face kissed Micah. The moment their lips touched, I felt the ardeurfill the room like hot water, spilled in stinging drops across my skin. It froze me in mid-step, made me stumble. I stood there, caught between Asher against the wall and Micah lost in that glowing embrace. I knew that I could have drained Micah to death with the ardeurover a matter of days, but part of me knew that Belle could do it faster.
Asher's hand reached out to me, skeletal thin, like sticks in paper. Micah was trying to push himself back from Musette/Belle's body, but she rode him, arms at his back, glowing crimson lips like a red fog across his face. I had a moment of feeling Asher dying, fading, for lack of a better word. Jean-Claude went to him, but I knew that Jean-Claude had no life to share. Then the cross taped to my chest blazed to life.
It burned against my flesh as if the black tape held all the heat in. I half-screamed as I ripped the tape away and the cross spilled out into the light, white, hot, like a captive star on a chain.
Micah stumbled back from Belle Morte. Jean-Claude spilled the black velvet coat over himself and Asher. The other vampires hid their faces and hissed at the light. I saw movement from the corner of my eye, a second before Angelito slammed into me. There was no one to stop him now. The cross was a two-edged sword.
He grabbed me in one arm, completely off the ground, the other hand wrapping around the cross. I poked him in the throat with three fingers, stiffened to a spear point. He gagged and dropped me, but he held on to the cross, and as I fell, the chain broke, cutting into my neck as it came away. The moment the cross was his, the glow began to fade.
Musette's body turned to me, but her eyes were pools of dark gold fire, and it wasn't a ghostly image superimposed over her body this time, it was as if I were seeing double. My eyes saw Musette with the wrong color of eyes. But inside my head it was Belle. Belle in the flesh, a little taller than Musette, long black hair falling to her knees in waves, the dark gold of her dressing gown showing a triangle of white flesh, her face like something sculpted from a pearl, her lips a perfect red pout. She wrapped white hands around my arms, long dark nails, playing along the velvet of the sleeves. She pressed me against her body and leaned in to lay a kiss with that mouth upon mine.
A small voice in my head screamed, "Don't let her touch you." But I couldn't move, couldn't get away, wasn't sure I wanted to get away.
That red, red mouth hovered over mine. Her breath pushed against my lips. The world smelled of roses. Then, suddenly, I could taste Asher's kiss