28

When more wolves arrived from Richard's pack, and the screams started, I left. He had a half dozen baby-sitters. He did not need me. Hell, he didn't even want me.

I didn't know what to do for Richard anymore. I could help the pack as a whole, but helping Richard seemed beyond me. He needed healing, and I didn't know how to do that. If you needed someone killed, or threatened, or even hurt, I was your girl. I did self-defense, murder wasn't beyond me in a good cause, but suicide, I did not do that. Richard had let himself grow cold, his energy sucked away, and he hadn't called for help. That was suicide, passive suicide maybe, but the intent was the same.

Jason drove. He pointed out that I'd had weird physical reactions all day, and it would be bad to have one of the fainting spells behind the wheel of the car. I replied that I'd fixed the reason for the fainting spells by putting crosses at the Circus. He'd countered with the fact that we weren't one hundred percent sure that was the only reason I'd been fainting. Wouldn't caution be better? With that, I couldn't argue. My pride was not worth crashing the Jeep with three other people in it. If it had only been my skin at stake I'd have probably taken my chances. I was usually more cautious of other people's safety than my own.

The fact that all three were lycanthropes and would probably survive a wreck better than I would had nothing to do with it. If you throw the furry through a windshield, do they not still bleed?

We were on Highway 21 turning onto 270, when I smelled roses. "Do you smell that?" I asked.

Jason glanced at me, his hair still damp from the shower, his white T-shirt dark in spots from water as if he'd dried in a hurry and missed places. "What did you say?"

"Roses, I smell roses."

He glanced behind us at Nathaniel and Caleb. Nathaniel I'd invited. Caleb had nearly cried when I didn't want to bring him. Whatever Merle had said to him had well and truly scared him.

I could taste the sweet, cloying perfume on the back of my tongue. And no one could smell it but me. Shit.

Belle Morte's voice whispered through my head, "Did you truly believe you could escape me?"

"I did escape you."

"What?" Jason asked.

I shook my head, concentrating on the voice in my head, and the thickening scent of roses.

"You did not escape, you fed me, and you will feed me again, and again, until I am sated."

"Jean-Claude says you're never sated."

She laughed in my head, and it was like having the inside of my skull rubbed with fur, as if she could touch things with her voice that no one should have touched with their hands. That purring, contralto laugh rolled through my body, raising goosebumps along my skin.

I had an image, a memory in my head. There was a huge bed, and a mass of bodies on it. It was a jumble of arms, legs, chests, groins, all male. Then one man raised up, only his upper body, and I glimpsed Belle underneath him. He lowered his body and she vanished from view. It was like watching a nest of snakes, so much movement, disconnected in the candlelit dark, as if each limb were something separate and alive without the body. Belle's arm rose above the mass of bodies, then she swam her way to the top, peeled the men from her naked body, until she stood in the midst of them, their hands reaching up to her, pleading with her. She had released the ardeur upon them, and fed, and fed, and fed, until she rose from the mass of flesh glowing with power, her eyes so bright with dark flames that they cast shadows as she half stepped, half floated from the bed. One man's body had fallen to the floor, forgotten. He lay very still as she stalked nude and ripe with curves, glowing with power. She walked over the body of the man who had given everything to satisfy her needs, while the other men reached for her, begged for her not to stop. The men began to rise to their knees, or fall off the bed in an effort to follow. At least two other bodies lay on the bed forever still, forever gone. Three of them dead, loved to death, and still the others begged her for more, still they tried to stand and follow her.

I knew it was Jean-Claude that she had tied to a chair and made watch. I knew it was him, and not me, that watched her with fearful, hungry eyes. But when she walked past him, without so much as a caress, I choked on his despair. Part of his punishment for daring to leave her.

"Anita, Anita," the voice seemed distant. Someone touched my shoulder, I gasped, and was brought back blinking, breath harsh in my throat. I was still seat-belted into the Jeep. We were still on 270, about to turn onto 44. I wasn't tied to a chair, I wasn't in Belle's lair, I was safe. But the sweet scent of roses clung to me like some kind of evil perfume.

Jason had been calling my name, but it was Nathaniel's hand on my shoulder. "Are you alright?" Jason asked.

I nodded, then shook my head. "Belle's messing with me."

Nathaniel squeezed my shoulder. I had opened my mouth to say, maybe you shouldn't be touching me right now, when the ardeur roared through me. The heat rushed over my skin in beads of sweat, brought my pulse pounding, rising like some ripe fruit to fill my throat, stop my breath, so for a moment I was drowning in the beat and pulse of my own body. I could hear my blood like a roaring flood. I could feel every pulse, every drop to the tingling tips of my fingers and toes. I had never been so aware of how very much blood was coursing through my veins as in that one heart-stopping moment.

I put my hand over Nathaniel's where it still gripped my shoulder. His skin was so warm, almost hot. I turned towards him. I looked into those lavender eyes, and just the intensity of my gaze, drew him closer, close enough to rest his cheek against my seat. I had enough left of me inside my head to think, dimly, he must have undone his seat belt, but there wasn't enough left of me to care for his safety. All I could think was that it brought him closer to me, and I wanted him closer.

"Anita," Jason's voice, "Anita, what the hell is happening? My skin is crawling with whatever it is, it feels like the ardeur. But it's not."

I never took my gaze from Nathaniel's face. Jason's voice was like a buzzing insect, noise, something I heard, but didn't really listen to.

I lifted Nathaniel's hand from my shoulder and pulled it gently against my lips. His hand cupped the lower part of my face, my breath was warm against him, and the heat of it brought the scent of him to me. His hands smelled not only of warmth, and blood, but of everything he'd touched that day. Faint traces that soap could not erase completely. His hands smelled of life, and I wanted it.

"Anita, talk to me," Jason said.

"What's happening?" Caleb asked, "why is it hard to breathe in the car?"

"Power," Jason said, "I don't know what kind yet."

I pulled Nathaniel's hand past my face, until my lips glided over his wrist, and there, there, just under the skin was a new warmth.

I flicked my tongue across the skin of his wrist, and he shuddered.

"Anita!" Jason said.

I could hear him, but it was utterly unimportant. The only thing that was important was the warmth of skin, and that faint pulse just below. I opened my mouth wide, lips pulled back to taste that pulse.

The Jeep swerved violently, throwing Nathaniel backwards and to one side, tearing his hand from me. He landed in Caleb's lap.

I looked at Jason then, really looked at him. In the back of my mind I knew it was Jason, but in the front of my mind, all I could really see was the pulse in the side of his neck. It beat against his skin like a trapped thing. I knew I could free it, make it rush red and hot into my mouth.

I unbuckled my seat belt. That froze me for a second, because I was fanatic about seat belt safety. My mother would be alive today if she'd used hers. I never rode in a moving car without one. Never. So deep rooted was that fear, it pushed Belle back, pushed back the blood lust she'd raised in me.