"But he knows we can't make war on him without the Council hunting us down."
"Which is why we cannot kill him." Asher held up his hand, which stopped me with my mouth open. I closed it. "The last master you killed was threatening your life directly. You killed her to protect yourself. Self-defense is allowed. But Colin has not offered us personal violence."
"That is cutting it pretty damn close, Asher."
He gave a graceful nod. "Oui."
"So if we kill him the Council comes back to town and cleans our clock."
Slight frown lines showed between his eyes. I don't think he understood the slang. "They will kill us," he said.
I'd met some of the Council, and I knew he was right. Jean-Claude had enemies on the Council and now so did I. No, I did not want to give the nightmares of all vampirekind an excuse to come back to St. Louis and wipe us out.
"What can we do? Because, mark me on this, Asher, they will pay for what they did to Nathaniel."
"I agree. If we do nothing to avenge the insult, it will be viewed as a sign of weakness and Colin may come against us and kill us."
"Why is everything so damned complicated with you guys?" I asked. "Why couldn't Colin just believe we'd come down here to rescue Richard?"
"Because we didn't leave town." Nathaniel's voice came thin but steady from the bed. He blinked lilac eyes at me. Cherry had bandaged his chest and the neck wound was covered with a large piece of taped gauze. I assumed the thigh wound was similarly covered, but the bedspread covered him from the waist down.
"When Richard got out of jail, Colin expected us to leave town. When we didn't, he thought we meant to take over his territory."
I went to stand by the bed. "Zane said you went off with one of Verne's werewolves. How did the vamps get hold of you?"
"Mira," he said.
"Excuse me?" I said.
"The werewolf's name is Mira." He looked away from me as if he didn't want to look me in the face while he talked. "She took me home. We had sex. Then she left the room. When she came back the vampires were with her." He looked up at me. I found myself staring down into his eyes and the need in them was so raw it made me flinch.
"There were too many of them for you to fight, Nathaniel," I said. "It's okay."
"Fight?" He laughed, and it was so bitter it hurt just to hear it. "There was no fight. I was already chained down."
I frowned. "Why?"
He let out a long sigh. "Anita, Anita, God." He put one arm across his eyes.
Zane came to the rescue, sort of. "You know that Nathaniel is a submissive?"
I nodded. "I know he likes to be tied up and ... " The light dawned. "Oh, okay. I get it. Mira invited you home for some S and M sex."
"D and S, dominance and submission," Zane said, "but yeah."
I took a deep breath, mistake. The room still stank of bodily fluids, the unpleasant kind. "So she wrapped you up like a present and gave you to them?"
"Yes," he said, softly. "The sex had been good. She was a good top."
"Top?" I asked.
"Dominant," Zane said.
Ah.
Nathaniel curled onto his side, drawing the bedspread around him. "The master, Colin, paid her to bring one of us to them. Anyone of us. It didn't matter who. It could have been Jason, or Zane, or Cherry. One of their animals, he said." He huddled down into the blankets, eyes fluttering shut, then open, then shut.
I looked at Cherry. "Is he alright?"