Bullet Page 0,81
functional, and he does enjoy fear.”
I went to him, going on tiptoe, and putting my arms around his shoulders, drawing his head down to me. In that moment I wasn’t bothered by whatever was dried on the side of his hair. Nothing we’d done was as terrible as what he’d been through. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
Then there were other arms around us, tentative at first, and then Richard hugged us both. “I’m not happy about what just happened, and it reminds me why I stay the hell away from you, but nothing we’ve ever done, including today, is as terrible as the glimpses I get of your past.” Richard raised his head up, and it made me glance at his face. “Aren’t most of your worst stories things the council did to you?”
“Most,” he said softly.
“And now they’re going to try to take us over,” he said.
“It would seem so.”
“No,” Richard said, “whatever it takes, no.”
Jean-Claude looked back at the other man. Their faces were close, and I remembered the kiss, not as some visceral memory, but just as a memory. “You do not know what might be required to fight them, Richard.”
“You may be a manipulative bastard sometimes, but you’re our manipulative bastard.”
Jean-Claude actually smiled at that. “Such flattery will go to a man’s head, mon lupe.”
Richard smiled, but his eyes stayed serious. “Morte d’Amour is evil, Jean-Claude. I felt him in my head, I felt what he wanted us to do to Noel, and once we’d killed Noel it wouldn’t have stopped with him. He’d have made us kill each other and fed on every death.”
“That was his plan,” Jean-Claude said.
“Sex is not worse than that,” Richard said.
“What can we do to keep them away from us?” I asked.
“We can keep them away, I think, but I am worried for our poor country. There are weaker Masters of the City, ma petite. I am wondering how they fared this night.”
“You mean when he couldn’t roll us, he hunted for other prey?” I asked.
“The Mother wants us, but he has children of his own line in charge of cities here, not many, but a few, and more in Europe.”
Richard said, “You want to try to protect the entire United States from the Vampire Council?”
“If we can, oui.”
Richard and I exchanged a look, and then we looked back at Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude with all his fancy fetish yummy clothes, standing there nude and covered in more body fluids than a CSI episode. It should have seemed like whistling in the dark that he, that we, could figure out a way to keep the most powerful vampires in Europe out of the entire United States metaphysically, but we’d already chased out three of them, plus the remnant of the Darkness.
We looked again into each other’s brown eyes and then back to the blue of Jean-Claude’s. “I’m in,” I said.
“What do we do?” Richard asked.
“I believe we have freed Belle of the Mother’s influence for now, so all that is left them is death, terror, and violence. We will lose if we try to meet them on with their own strengths.”
“Are you saying we make love, not war?” I asked.
He nodded.
“I’d rather just kill them, but the Darkness will just jump to a different body, won’t she?”
“I fear so.”
“Can we really keep her out of the United States?” Richard asked.
“If the other Masters of the City are willing, there is a chance.”
“Why wouldn’t they want to keep this out of here?” I asked.
“They will want that, ma petite, but they will not like my plan.”
“Why not?” Richard asked.
“It would require that they give up much of their autonomy and run America more as Europe is run.”
“Why, what will that help?” Richard asked.
“It isn’t just political autonomy that they give up, is it?” I asked.
“Non, they would have to give us some of their power.”
“You’re talking about setting up a council here in America with you as its head,” Richard said.
He nodded.
“Didn’t some of the council try to kill us when they just thought we were trying to do that?” I asked.
“They’re going to kill us anyway, ma petite, don’t you understand that yet?” He looked at us, and his eyes held something I didn’t see much: fear. “If we cannot be conquered, then they must destroy us.”
“For fear that we’ll do exactly what you’re planning to do,” Richard said.
Jean-Claude nodded again.
“It’ll be a race to see if they can conquer us or kill us before we have enough power,” I said.
“Yes,” he