"One of them bit Nathaniel."
"I've been bitten by one of them. Jason's been bitten by one of them. Nothing like this happened to us." I glanced back and found Jason holding Nathaniel's hand while Cherry started cleaning the chest wounds. Somehow I didn't think bandaging the cuts was going to help.
Jamil and Damian joined us. We stood in a little circle, talking, while Nathaniel screamed. Asher said, "It is one of the rarest of talents. I thought that only Morte d'Amour, Lover of Death, the council member could do this. Colin chose his messages carefully. The slashes are harm from a distance with just a flexing of power."
"Jean-Claude can't cause harm from a distance," I said.
"No, and no one else can spread corruption from their bite. No one else in this country."
"You keep saying corruption," Jamil said. "What does that mean exactly?"
Cherry came to us with white gauze pads in her hands. Her pale freckles stood out like ink on her suddenly pale skin. There was yellow and green puss on the gauze. "This came out of the chest wounds," she said quietly. "What the hell is it?"
We all looked at Asher, even Damian. But I was the one who said it out loud, "He's rotting. He's decaying while he's still alive."
Asher nodded. "The corruption is in his blood. It will spread and then he will rot."
I looked back to the bed. Jason was speaking low and softly to Nathaniel, stroking his head like you'd comfort a sick child. Zane was looking at me.
"There has to be something we can do," I said.
Asher's face was as closed and careful as I'd ever seen it. One of Jean-Claude's memories of Asher went through me so forcefully that my fingertips tingled with it. It wasn't a memory of any one event. I recognized the set of Asher's shoulders. I knew his body language with a familiarity built up of years of observation. More years than I'd been alive.
"What are you hiding, Asher?" I asked.
He looked at me, pale, pale eyes blank, empty, lined with those amazing golden eyelashes like shining lace. He smiled. The smile was everything it should have been: joyous, sensual, welcoming. That smile went through my heart like a knife. I remembered that face whole and perfect. I remembered when that smile had made me catch my breath.
I shook my head. The physical movement helped. I shook off the memories. They faded, but it didn't change what I'd seen, what I knew. "You know how to save him, don't you?"
"How badly do you want to save him, Anita?" His voice wasn't neutral now, it was almost angry.
"I brought him down here, Asher, I put him in danger. I'm supposed to protect him."
"I thought he was supposed to be your bodyguard," Asher said.
"He's walking food, Asher. You know that. Nathaniel can't even guard himself."
Asher let out his breath in a long sigh. "Nathaniel is a pomme de sang."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"It means apple of blood. It is a sobriquet among the Council for willing food."
Damian finished the thought. "The vampire that feeds from a pomme de sangis duty bound to protect them, like a shepherd keeping the wolf from his sheep." Damian looked at Asher while he said it, and it was not a friendly look. They were fighting about something, but there was no time.
I touched Asher's arm. It felt stiff, wooden, not even alive. He was drawing away from me, away from the room, away from what was happening. He was going to let Nathaniel die without even trying. Unacceptable.
I made myself grip that wooden, unalive arm. I hated it when Jean-Claude felt like this. It was a reminder of what he was, and what he wasn't. "Don't let him die, not like this. Please, mon chardonneret."
He jumped like I'd hit him when I used the old nickname that Jean-Claude had used so many years ago. It meant literally, my goldfinch, which sounded silly in English. But the look on Asher's face wasn't silly. It was almost shocked.
"No one has called me that in over two hundred years." His arm softened under my hand, feeling warm, alive again.
"I don't beg often, but for this I will."
"He means so much to you?" Asher asked.
"He's everyone's victim, Asher. Someone has to give a damn about him. Please mon --" He put his fingers over my lips.