Hot. Sharp. Rich and round and full-bodied, full of life. Sebastien moaned and caught Jack's wrist. "Jack."
"What do you think you prove by waiting?" Jack pushed him back, knelt up, let the covers slide down. "That you're its master? That you are more powerful than the hunger?"
"That I'm free," Sebastien said, though the scent of blood roared through him, brain and fingertips and quivering need.
"As free as I am of the need to breathe," Jack said, and freed himself entirely of the sheets. He kept pushing, his unbloodied hand on Sebastien's chest, until Sebastien lay on his back and Jack knelt over him. "Darling, you're ridiculous. Drink."
There was no resisting. Sebastien released Jack's wrist, wrapped his arms around the young man's thighs, and obeyed. And with the hem of Jack's nightshirt falling across his face, the thumping of Jack's heartbeat in his ears, the taste of blood and the weight of Jack's body on his chest, he wondered. He wondered if a werewolf's bloodlust, its passion, its compulsion, could possibly be more unendurable than his thirst.
Which of them was weaker?
And how on earth were ghosts grown solid enough to rend and tear?
* * *
Garrett knew as soon as she saw them what they'd been up to, and made a point of her pretense of equanimity. It wasn't exactly that she was jealous, though she was jealous, irrational as she knew the reaction to be. It was more that her pride had been worn down to the unyielding nubbin by years of playing the other woman, and what was left of it was adamant. Admit nothing. An iron dignity is the unbroachable defense.
Bloody but unbowed, she thought, packing her velvet carpetbag, and then laughed at her own pretensions. When Jack, wan and pale and gulping beef broth from a mug, arched an eyebrow at her, she laughed. "Me and Lucifer," she said, by way of explanation.
Jack set his mug aside. "Don't be ridiculous. You're much better looking, for one thing."
Out in the side streets, there was still a certain depth of snow, and in places even untrammeled. One tended to walk where another had broken trail, and so there were great muddy washes of slush in the middles of the streets, where gallant cart-horses had dragged the beer waggons through, and then along the walls were narrower trails like the winter paths of deer. Garrett was amused: six inches of snow would not have provoked more than a shrug and a shake of the umbrella, in New Amsterdam.
Of course, these streets had emptied out again with the dimming of the day as those afraid of the full-moon killer stayed close to home, and that made the going easier. And the ruts more apparent.
"So," Garrett said. "Who would want to train the citizens of Paris to stay off the streets on the night of the full moon?"
"The English," Mrs. Smith answered. "If they wanted to send in troops."
Garrett hmmed her answer, and wondered about New Amsterdam.
"The wolves were here when I saw them," Sebastien said, gesturing around the narrow street rowed with slouched Gothic buildings. Garrett noticed that, with his new identity, any trace of a Spanish accent had left him. It shook her; she never would have known it for an affectation, and usually she excelled at such things.
She thought of him shedding names and lives and lovers across the
centuries, and wondered how he bore it. And then he turned and caught her eye and smiled, and thought that rather, perhaps the shedding was how he bore it.
Open your hands and let go.
She went to stand behind him, where he crouched at the edge of the light, close by a patch of less-trammeled snow. He didn't need it. She
would, for a while yet. The moon wasn't over the rooftops, but merely silvering the East.