I kept walking. I had one of the knives out, held to the side of the dress. I wasn't sure if he'd noticed, or if I cared. I held my empty left hand out to him. "You're a big man when the lady's tied and gagged. How are you when the lady's armed?"
He smiled, and it was mocking. He touched Vivian with his foot, casually, like you'd poke a dog. "She's beautiful but a little too submissive for my tastes. I like them with a little more fight to them like your wolf-bitch." He finished fastening his pants, running his hands up his chest as if remembering. "C't'une bonne bourre."
I knew enough French to know that he'd said Sylvie was a good lay. I balanced the knife. It wasn't made for throwing, but in a pinch it'd do.
There was the faintest shadow in his eyes, as if for the first time he realized that there was no one here to save him; then something leaped over the railings. A blur of speed and motion that hit Fernando hard enough to roll him across the ground. When they came up, Richard was on top of him.
I yelled, "Don't kill him, Richard! Don't kill him!" I ran for them, but Jamil got there first. Jamil knelt by Richard, grabbing his arm, saying something to him. Richard grabbed Jamil by the throat and flung him across the ring. I ran to Jamil, kneeling beside him, but it was too late. His throat was crushed. His eyes were wide, frightened; he tried to breathe but it wasn't working. His legs spasmed, spine bowing, as he fought to breath. He grabbed my hand, his eyes screaming at me. There was nothing I could do. Either he'd heal it or he'd die.
I screamed, "Shit, Richard, help him!"
Richard plunged his hand into Fernando's stomach. He didn't have claws yet. It was only human fingers digging in the flesh, searching for the heart. He was strong enough that he'd dig it out unless we stopped him.
I stood and Jamil's hand slid out of mine. He let me go, but his eyes would haunt me. I ran for Richard, screaming his name: "Richard!"
He looked at me with amber wolf eyes in his human face. He reached towards me with one bloody hand, and the mental shields that kept us safe from one another crashed.
My vision went black, and when I could see again, I was kneeling in the ring. I could feel my body but I could also feel Richard's fingers pushing their way through thick flesh. The blood was warm but there wasn't enough of it. He wanted to use teeth to open the belly and was fighting the urge.
Thomas knelt beside me. "Use your marks to calm him before he kills Fernando."
I shook my head. My fingers were tearing through flesh. I had to press my hands against my eyes to remember what body I was in. I found my voice and that helped separate us. Helped me know who I was, what I was. "Shit, I don't know how."
"Then take his rage, his beast." Thomas touched my hands, gripping them tight, not to hurt but to help me anchor myself in this body. I gripped his hands and stared into his face like a drowning woman.
"I don't know how, Thomas."
He made an exasperated sound. "Gideon will have to intervene until you can calm him." It was almost a question.
I nodded. Sure, I'd been about to kill Fernando myself, but I knew that if we killed him, we would never see another dawn. Padma would kill us. Kill us all.
I kept looking at Thomas's face, but I felt Gideon grab Richard. Felt him pull him off Fernando. Richard twisted and hit Gideon, knocking him to the ground, then leaped on him. They rolled over and over on the ground, each trying to get on top. The only thing that kept it from being a killing fight was that both held onto their human forms and still tried to fight like they had claws. But Richard's beast was growing inside him. If he shifted, short of killing him we'd never keep him from killing someone else.
Thomas touched my face, and I realized that I hadn't been seeing his face. I was seeing Gideon's strange eyes from inches away as my hands tried to crush his throat. But they weren't my hands.
"Help me," I said.
"Just open to his beast," Thomas said. "Simply open and it will fill you. The beast is seeking a channel of escape. Give it one and it will flow into you." I knew in that instant that Thomas and Gideon were part of a triumvirate just like we were.
"I'm not a lycanthrope," I said.
"It does not matter. Do it, or we will have to kill him."
I screamed and did what he said. But it wasn't just opening to it. I reached out to that rage. That power that he called his beast came at my touch. I smelled like home to it, somehow, and it poured into me, over me, through me, like a blinding storm of heat and power. It was similar to the times I'd raised power with Richard and Jean-Claude, but this time there was no spell to use the power on. Nowhere for the beast to run. It tried to crawl out my skin, tried to expand inside my body, but there was no beast to call. I was empty for it, and it raged inside me. I felt it growing until I thought I would burst apart in bloody fragments. The pressure built and built and had nowhere to go.
I screamed, one long, ragged shriek after another, as fast as I could get breath. I felt Richard crawling towards me, felt his hands and legs move over the ground, felt the muscles in his body that turned crawling into a sensuous art, a stalking thing. He appeared above me, just his face, staring down. His long hair fell around his face like a shadowing curtain. Blood glistened at the corner of his mouth. I felt him want to lick the blood away but stop himself, and bound this closely, I knew why he stopped. For me. Fear that I would think he was monstrous.
His power was still trying to find a way out of my body. It wanted the blood, too. It wanted to lick the blood off his face and taste at his mouth. Wanted to wrap the warmth of his body around itself and become one. His power cried out like a frustrated lover for him to open his arms, his body, his mind, to it, and embrace it. Richard gave it a name apart from himself, his beast, but it wasn't separate. In that moment I realized why Richard ran so hard and so long from the power. It was him. Just as the furred shape of him was pulled from the matter of his own human body, so the rage, the destruction, was pulled from his very human psyche. His beast was formed of that part of our brains we bury, only dragging into our consciousness in the worst of our nightmares. Not the dreams where we are hunted by the monsters, but the dreams where we are the monsters. We raise bloody hands to the sky and scream, not from fear, but from joy. The pure joy of slaughter. The cathartic moment when we plunge our hands into the hot blood of our enemies and there is no civilized thought to stop us from dancing on their graves.
The power flared inside me like a hand stroking from the inside out, reaching out towards him as he knelt over me. Fear filled his eyes, and it wasn't fear for me or of me. It was the fear that the beast was the reality and that all the careful morals, everything he was or ever had been, was the lie.
I stared up at him. "Richard," I whispered, "we're all creatures of light and darkness. Embracing your darkness won't kill the light. Goodness is stronger than that."
He dropped from his knees, flat to the ground, only propping himself on his elbows. His hair brushed my face on either side, and I had to fight the urge to rub my face back and forth in it. This close I could smell his skin, after-shave, but underneath that was him. The warm scent that was his body. I wanted to touch that warmth, to wrap my mouth around it and try and hold it forever. I wanted him. The power flared at the thought, primitive thoughts excited it, made it harder to control.
He whispered, blood still trickling from his mouth, "How can you say goodness is stronger? I want to lick the blood off my own body. I want to press my bleeding mouth onto yours. I want you to feed off my wound. That is evil."
I touched his face, the barest trace of fingertips, and even that made power jump between us. "It's not evil, Richard. It just isn't very civilized." Blood was building into a single trembling drop on the edge of his face. It fell against my skin and it was burning hot. His power flared upward and took me with it. It wanted to--I wanted to--lick the blood off Richard's face. Part of me was still saying no while I raised my head just enough to run lips, my tongue, and lightly my teeth along his face. I lay back down with the salty taste of him in my mouth and wanted more. The more scared me. I was just as scared of this part of him, of me, as he was. That was why I ran from him the night of the full moon. It wasn't that he ate Marcus, though that hadn't helped, or that he'd handled it all so badly. The memory that haunted was the moment I'd been carried away by the pack's power, and for just an instant I'd wanted to drop to my knees and feed with them. I was afraid that Richard's beast would take what was left of my humanity. I was afraid for the same reason Richard was afraid. But what I'd said was true. It wasn't evil, just not very human.