but he’s not breathing.”
I felt lion, more lion, running down the hallway toward us. I knew it was Nicky still in lionman form. He was coming for the fight, coming toward the energy we were raising. I knew that the lions more than the other animal groups gave off energy to attract, or warn off, other lions, but I hadn’t understood until this moment that there were other things you could do with all that power.
Noel spat blood onto the floor, but he had to be breathing to do that. The blonde kept the energy concentrated on him as I turned to look at Nicky. The golden lionman burst through the curtains and started toward the fight, but I said, “Nicky, I need you.”
He never hesitated. He simply turned toward us and said, “Where do I go?”
I said the first thing that came to mind. “Puppy pile, touch as much as you can.” It was all I could think of; the kind of vampire we were worked better with touch, and more touch couldn’t hurt. He laid all that golden lionman across Noel’s lion, and put his arm around Travis, drawing the still form in with us. Nicky put one hand out and grabbed my belt, putting his big fingers inside it against my bare waist. My lioness flared into that bonfire of energy, and Nicky’s rose with mine. It wasn’t as bright as it had been with Haven, but it was bright, and it was power, and it joined all the other power seamlessly. I realized what we’d missed, what we’d needed, willingness without will of its own. Nicky gave himself to this as he’d given himself to everything I’d asked of him since he became mine.
Barriers broke that I hadn’t even known were still there. Richard stopped holding back, Damian stopped being afraid, Jean-Claude stopped being so careful, the blond woman let go of some deep anger, the dark-haired one let go of love searching for love, there wasn’t enough left of Travis to give up anything else, Nathaniel gave up the last of his fear that I’d grow tired of him, Micah gave up that hard, deep rage that I’d never even known was there, and I gave up my control. I wanted Noel alive more than I wanted to be in control.
The power flared around us in a dark rainbow of energy. It blazed toward the ceiling. If it had been real fire it would have burned the Circus to the ground. We took that power and shoved it into Noel. I’d worked with other animators when we needed to raise a lot of, or very old, dead. I’d been trained to share power with others with similar talents and work as a unit. One magic is surprisingly like another.
Travis grabbed hold of the nearest lioness. I thought he meant to be healed until I saw his own dim orange-gold lion flare and realized he was giving up his own energy to Noel. With all that energy he gave and did not keep for himself.
Nicky wrapped his furred arms around the two lions. His grip on me tightened and he gave everything to me, no holding back, no fear, no hesitation. He let me have anything, everything, and he helped the rest of us give up, give in, and feed it to Noel. Noel shuddered and then he began to breathe. His furred side rose and fell, and I could hear his heartbeat. I could feel the rush and flow of the blood in his veins, feel the rise and fall of his life that we’d fought so hard to give him, and on the heels of that was a desire to bite him. It was a desire to bury my teeth in that warm fur until I found blood, and I realized that we’d given up our control, all of it. I was kneeling in a pile of wereanimals and vampires who’d given up their controls. We wanted flesh and blood. We wanted to feed.
Richard’s voice, strained, said, “Anita, change it. Change it to something else, don’t let us.”
Jean-Claude said, “Change the feeding to something we can survive, ma petite. Change it or we will tear the lion apart after saving him.”
I was drowning in the scent of fur, the feel of flesh. I realized that Nicky was rubbing his face against Noel’s side. We so wanted to take a bite. “Help me, help us not do this. Jean-Claude, help me!”
“The ardeur, ma petite, like