I believe what you did to Augustine required similar gifts between the two of you."
Jean-Claude gave a small nod, face still empty. "I believe so."
"She is now convinced that Anita could bring our sons into the full strength of their siren's powers." Something crossed his face, too faint to read, but with such an empty face, it was strangely noticeable. "I do not share her certainty. What I felt from you tonight, Anita, is a different element of passion. It is like the difference between fire and water. They will both consume you, but in very different manners."
I looked at Sampson's face, still softly amused. "What did your mother actually say?" I asked.
He glanced at his father before he answered. Samuel sighed, then nodded. Sampson grinned at me, and said, "I don't think you really want to know what she said, but what she meant was that if she had her way, Tom and Cris would both be here. She'd be here, too. She'd be offering us all to you any way you wanted us." His face sobered around the edges. "She can get carried away sometimes, our mother. She means well, but she doesn't think entirely like a human being, do you understand?"
"I hang around with vampires, so yeah."
He shook his head, his hands clasped on his knees. "No, Anita, vampires start out human, as do shapeshifters, and necromancers"--he said that with a smile--"but Mother was never human. She thinks like..." He seemed unsure what to say.
Samuel finished for him. "Thea is other, and she reasons in ways that do not always make much sense to those of us who began life as human beings." He didn't sound entirely happy about it, but he stated it as truth.
"That must make life interesting," Richard said.
Samuel gave him cool eyes, but Sampson nodded, smiling. "You have no idea."
"What did you think of the show, Samuel?" Jean-Claude asked.
The other vampire thought about it, face careful, and his voice was just as careful when he answered, "I thought it was one of the most powerful things I have ever seen. I think it is the kind of power that made me flee the great courts, and it is exactly the sort of power that made me avoid Belle Morte's court. It is the kind of display that made me flee Europe for fear of becoming nothing but a vassal of some great vampiric lord."
"Do you fear us now?" Jean-Claude asked.
Samuel nodded. "I do."
"I would not harm you deliberately," Jean-Claude said.
"No, but your power is growing, and growing power is a wild and capricious thing. I do not want my people, or my sons, near you while your power finds its way. I think you will be incredibly dangerous, by accident, for years to come."
"Yet, you come before me with your son. Why? Why not leave my lands, if we are so dangerous?"
"Because Thea is right in one way. If she and I could by some chance duplicate what the two of you did, it would be"--he licked his lips--"worth the risk. I also agree that there is a chance that your Anita could bring my sons into their powers, if they have them."
"Do you believe your sons are so human?" Jean-Claude asked.
"Sampson is well over seventy in human years, so no, not so very human."
I looked at Sampson. He looked somewhere in his early twenties, maybe thirty at most. By no stretch of the imagination did he look seventy. "My," I said, "you're holding up well."
He grinned at me, and I liked the grin. He seemed to find the whole power game a little embarrassing, a little funny. "Clean living," he said, still grinning.
Richard moved beside me, a small, uncomfortable movement. I glanced at him, and his face was beginning to darken. One of Richard's biggest problems with our new lifestyle was jealousy. Of all the men trying to be in my life, he was the only one who found jealousy a real problem. Until I saw that look on his face, I'd been able to ignore that they were still talking about Sampson and me being lovers. I'd gotten better at pushing away the uncomfortable bits until I had to deal with them. Richard was still working on that.
"Thomas and Cristos seem to be aging at a more normal rate."
"They are only seventeen," Jean-Claude said, "too young to be certain, surely."
Samuel shrugged, a normal shrug, not that graceful Gallic movement.
"But for this, I think they are too young, too human, whatever Thea