Richard let go of Damian's hair, and the vampire sprang up off the floor. I tightened my grip around his neck, but was along for the ride. I could control his head from moving side to side, but I couldn't choke him, and I didn't weigh enough to slow him down.

Damian was on top of Richard, pinning the bigger man to the floor. Richard had his good arm pushing out against Damian's chest. I got my feet under me on either side of them. It was awkward, because I just wasn't tall enough to do it comfortably, but I began to fight to pull Damian's neck backward. I could feel that I could snap his neck. I was almost sure I could, but I could not simply fight him backward. I knew if you decapitated most vamps, they died. I'd never had the strength before to snap a neck this easily, so I'd never tried. If I snapped his spine would he die? Would he be crippled? Would spinal damage cripple a vampire?

Richard's arm was beginning to shake and collapse at the elbow. I pulled backward, and felt Damian's windpipe begin to give. I was going to crush his neck before I broke his spine. I looked past us and found Nathaniel bent over Gregory at the foot of the stairs. Gregory wasn't moving, but one problem at a time. I screamed, "Nathaniel!"

He turned, and there was blood all over the front of his body. I didn't think most of it was his. His face looked surprised as if he had lost track of our fight, but he came to me. He grabbed Damian's arm, and it was as if he'd given the vampire another target. Damian leapt off of Richard and was suddenly on top of Nathaniel. I was beginning to feel positively useless. If I couldn't choke him, wasn't heavy enough to slow him down, wasn't willing to break his neck, I was useless. I used what weight I had to stagger him, throw him off balance so that Nathaniel had time to get his arms up and a leg into Damian's stomach. If Nathaniel had known how to fight, he'd have been able to do more, but at the moment just keeping the vampire from biting him was good.

Jean-Claude's voice, soft, in my head, "You have done something to damage the bond between yourself and Damian. You must reopen it, ma petite. "

"A little busy right now," I said.

Richard wrapped his one arm around Damian's waist and helped me pull him off of Nathaniel. The three of us rode him down to the floor. I changed my grip on his neck to a choke hold that wouldn't have worked at all, if Nathaniel hadn't been pressing on his shoulder and chest and Richard sitting on the rest of him. My body was curled around his neck, using my own weight as an anchor to make it harder for him to rise and strike. But I'd tried this hold on large human males in judo class before, and it wasn't effective, not if they had the upper body strength to sit up with me dangling from their neck. I did it now, only to control his head, his mouth, those fangs, and because I had Richard and Nathaniel to help me.

He fought us, but three on one, we had some control. Not much, but some. My voice came breathy, but clear, "What do you mean I've damaged the bond between Damian and me?"

"Who are you talking to?" Nathaniel asked, through gritted teeth.

"Jean-Claude," Richard answered for me.

"Can you hear him, too?" I asked.

"Sometimes."

I wanted to ask, "like now?" but Jean-Claude was answering me. "You have put up shields specifically against Damian, why?"

"He woke up in a flood of sunlight. It seemed to terrify him. He was so afraid. The fear was choking Nathaniel and me."

"Both you and Nathaniel?" Jean-Claude asked. I could see him lying on the white silk sheets, his black hair spread out like a dark dream across the pillow. One hand idly touching Asher's bare back, the way you'd drum your fingers on a desk or pet a dog, if you were thinking about other things.

"Yes, both of us."

"I asked you when I woke, what had you done. Now, I may know."

For once I was at least up to speed on the metaphysical disasters in my life. I got to say, "We know already."

"Know what, ma petite? "

Damian gave a particularly violent movement, bucking me up off the floor, slamming me back down only after I felt, rather than saw the other two men, force him back down. I thought it, because I didn't have breath to speak at the moment, That we'r e a triumvirate.

"I heard that," Richard said, and there was a sullen note under his breathless exertion as if he'd thought I'd only thought it to keep it from him, or maybe I was just projecting. I was always willing to believe that Richard was being difficult. As he was always willing to believe I was being bloodthirsty.

Jean-Claude didn't ask stupid questions or try to discuss metaphysics. If we all knew that somehow I'd managed to forge a second triumvirate, then we could move on. "When you shielded from Damian's fear, you shielded too well. You have cut him off from your power, as you did by leaving once."

"I'm right here," I said, trying to turn my face away from the blood that had decided to trickle down Damian's face and onto mine.

"There physically, but not metaphysically, and your servant needs both."

"How do I fix this?" I asked.

"Drop your shields," he said, and even in my head, his voice was matter-of-fact.

It sounded so simple, so obvious. I remembered shielding from Damian's fear. I had thought of metal, hard, cold, solid, impenetrable . Not a metal wall, or door, but truly just the essence of metal. It had taken me months of work to understand how to shield not with an imaginary door or wall or building, but just to think, rock, water, metal. Block the things you don't want to get through, or drown them. Marianne could also shield with air and fire, but I didn't get that. Air just wasn't strong enough for shielding, and fire, well, fire's fire. I used the tools I understood.

How do you unshield? Once I'd had to picture the wall crumbling, or the door opening, but very lately, I'd understood something that Marianne had been saying, but I hadn't been understanding. I simply stopped thinking about metal. I stopped. It went away. Poof, gone. One second I was safe behind my thought of metal, the next I was drowning in Damian's rage. No, not rage, rage implies anger, human emotion, and that wasn't what roared through my head. I'd thought more than once that I was going crazy in a detached sort of sociopathic way, but I'd been wrong. That hadn't been being crazy—this was.

I forgot about holding Damian down. I forgot about why I'd dropped my shields. I forgot about everything. There were no thoughts. No words. There was just sensation, and impulse. The smell of fresh blood. The taste of our own blood in our mouths, bitter. Hands pushing us to the floor, crushing us. Hunger, hunger like fire in our gut, like something that would eat us alive if we didn't feed, and feed, and feed. The smell of fresh blood, the warmth in their hands pushing on us, all that was maddening. Pain, my body was just pain. Like a fire that was burning me up from the inside. I screamed, and the sound was loud and not loud enough. It didn't help. Only one thing would quench that fire, fill me up, stop the pain. Blood. Fresh blood. Warm blood.

My hands touched warm skin, and if it hadn't been Richard, I'm not sure I would have stopped. But the feel of Richard's muscled arm under my hands called something of me up through the hunger. I was staring into Richard's solid brown eyes from inches away, almost as if I'd moved in for a kiss, but it hadn't been his mouth I'd been aiming at. Even now, the long solid line of his neck beckoned to me. The smell of fresh blood overwhelmed the subtler scent of the blood that pulsed under his skin, but somehow lapping at the bloody wound wasn't enough. It needed to be fresh. I needed my teeth in flesh. I needed to make my own hole to tear at. Only that would satisfy. Only that would be enough.