45

We'd made our plan for the rest of the night. When we'd recovered enough to walk, we'd throw on our clothes. Pick up Nathaniel and drive to the Circus of the Damned. We'd tuck Nathaniel in somewhere, and Jean-Claude and I planned on a nice, hot bath. But before we'd even gotten to the throwing the clothes on part, my cell phone rang.

I almost didn't answer it, because no one calls at three in the morning with good news. The number blinking in the little window was Detective Sergeant Zerbrowki. "Shit," I said.

"What is it, ma petite? "

"Police." I flipped the phone open and said, "Hey, Zerbrowski, what's up?"

"Hey back at you. I'm across the river in Illinois, guess what I'm looking at?"

"Another dead stripper," I said.

"How'd you guess?"

"I'm psychic. I assume you want me to come down and look at the body."

"Never assume anything, but in this case, yeah."

I looked down at my blood-covered chest and the wound that was still seeping. "I'll be there as soon as I get cleaned up."

"You covered in chicken blood?"

"Something like that."

"Well, the body isn't going anywhere, but the witnesses are getting restless."

"Witnesses," I said, "we have witnesses?"

"Witnesses or suspects," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Come down to the Sapphire Club and find out."

"The Sapphire, isn't that the high end club, the one that calls itself a gentlemen's club?"

"Anita, I'm shocked, I didn't know you frequented the titty bars."

"They wanted to use vampire strippers, and I got to go talk to them about it."

"I didn't know that was part of your official job description," he said.

If it had been Dolph, I would have let it go, but it was Zerbrowski, and he was okay. "The Church of Eternal Life doesn't allow its members to strip, or do anything else the church considers morally questionable. So the club needed Jean-Claude's permission to import vamps from the next territory over."

"He give it?"

"No."

"And you went with him to help decide?"

"No."

"You went alone?" he asked.

"No."

He sighed. "Oh, hell, just get down here. If you said vampires were supposed to stay away from this place, your boyfriend isn't going to be happy."

"Just no vamps on stage," I said, "other than that, not our business."

"Not on stage, at least not paid," Zerbrowski said.

"You said witnesses or suspects, and now you say no vamps paid on stage. Shit, are you sitting on some vamps that were in the audience?"

"Come and see, but I'd hurry, dawn's coming." He hung up.

I cursed softly.

"I take it a languorous bath is not going to be happening tonight," Jean-Claude said.

"No, unfortunately."

"If not a bath for you, then may I offer a quick shower here."

I sighed. "Yeah, I can't go see the police like this."

He looked down at his own blood-spattered body and smiled. "Perhaps for me, as well, tonight."

"We could conserve water, and share," I said.

He raised an eyebrow at me and smiled again. The smile said worlds.

"Okay, okay, I guess we'd get distracted."

"I am not sure I have the strength to be, as you put it, distracted quite so soon."

"Sorry, I keep forgetting boys don't recover as quick as girls."

"I am not human, ma petite, with another blood donation I could indeed recover."

"Really?" I said. My pulse sped just a little bit at the thought. Shit, I was too tired and too sore to be thinking of it again.

"Truly," he said.

"I think if I donate any more blood to anything tonight, it would be bad."

"It does not have to be your blood," he said.

I stared at him, and he stared at me. I said what I was thinking, which I'd almost broken myself of. "So what, you take blood from me, then we fuck, and you have a blood donor standing by, and we fuck. We could like, what, have a room full of donors and just screw until we were so sore, or so tired, we couldn't move?" I was sort of kidding. The look on his face wasn't. The look on his face, the expression in his eyes, made me blush.

I had a sudden image so strong, if I hadn't already been on the floor, it would have put me there. I saw Belle Morte stretched in the big bed, surrounded by candlelight. Asher and Jean-Claude were on the bed, too. There were men tied to the big posts of the bed, nude and pale, they were. Blood glittered in thin lines on their bodies, from neck, chest, the inside of their arms, down their legs. Not one bite apiece, or even two, but more than I could count. One man's head had slumped forward onto his chest, and he sagged against his bonds. If he breathed, I could not see it.

Jean-Claude pushed me out of his memory, it was almost a physical shove. I came back to myself, on the floor of his office, covered in my blood, the phone still in my hand.

"I would not have had you see that."

"I'll bet."

He closed his eyes and shook his head. "We were young and knew no better. Belle Morte was our God."

"You bled them to death so you guys could have some marathon sex session," I said it, and my voice wasn't horrified, in fact, it sounded empty. Because I could still see the memory, not in livid detail like it had been, but now it was in my head, too. God, I did not need someone else's nightmares.

"There are many things I have done, ma petite, that I would not have you know. Things I am ashamed of. Things that burn inside of me like bile."

"It was your memory, remember. I felt what you were feeling. There was no regret."

"Then I pushed you out too soon." He didn't pull me in, he simply stopped pushing me out, and I was back in that room. Back in that bed. I was inside Jean-Claude's head when he noticed the man on the bed that wasn't moving. He crawled across the bed and touched the cooling flesh. I felt his sorrow, felt his shame. Had his knowledge that these were humans that trusted us. Humans that we had promised to protect. Give us your blood and your bodies, and we will keep you safe. I looked back at Belle Morte stretched nude and luscious, under Asher's body. Asher's body before the human church had scarred him. I watched Asher's face lift up, meet our eyes, and in the middle of what Belle thought was the most sensuous of nights, the seed was sown that we must escape. That there were things that you did not do, and lines you did not cross, and she was not a god.

And I was back in his office, with my blood drying on my body, and my breast beginning to ache, and I was crying.

He stared at me, dry eyed, and he expected me to run. To turn away, and run. Like I had so many times in the past. Nothing was pretty enough for me, nice enough, clean enough. I didn't like messy people in my life, and once that had been true, until I woke up one day and realized that I was one of the messy people.

My voice was steady, and didn't sound like I could have tears drying on my face. "I used to think I knew what was right and what was wrong, and who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. Then the world got very gray, and I didn't know anything for a long time."

He just looked at me, his face closing down, hiding from me, because he was certain where I was going, what I would say.

"There are days, hell weeks, when I still don't know anything. I've been pushed so far outside what I thought was right and wrong, that some days I don't know my way back. I've done things in the name of justice, in the name of my version of justice, that I wouldn't want anyone to know. I can look a man in the eyes and kill him, and I feel nothing. Nothing, Jean-Claude, nothing. You didn't mean to kill, and you felt bad about it."