20

Jean-Claude called in my mind, " Ma petite, " but the fear swelled upward and covered his words. I knew he was talking in my head, but I couldn't understand what he said. The fear was drowning him out like one radio station overwhelming another. His words were like the ghost sound of a distant station, just under the sound of the terror, but all I could hear, all I could feel, was Moroven's fear.

Nathaniel collapsed against me, mouth still open, gasping as if the air were too thick to breathe. Me dying was one thing, but it wouldn't just be me. Nathaniel and Damian lay across my lap, their hair mingling like bright and dark ribbons.

Gregory knelt in front of me; I'd almost forgotten he was there. I usually had trouble reading his face when he was in half-leopard form, but this face, this face I could read. Even under spotted fur and yellow kitty-cat eyes, the hunger showed through. Not lust, hunger. He said in that growling voice, "They smell like food."

"I know." Richard's voice, and it turned me to him. I stretched my hand out toward him. He'd dragged us out of Damian's memory, maybe he could drag us out of this.

He looked... unhappy, angry. I let my hand begin to fall, but he took it, at the last minute, he took my hand in his. Instantly there was the sweet scent of forest and the musk of fur. The fear receded a little, like a wave of the ocean pulling back, but there was another wave just off shore, and you knew it was coming.

I could talk now, and what I said was, "Help me."

Jean-Claude's voice swelled inside me, pushed back the fear enough so I could hear his words. "You must raise the ardeur, ma petite, you must. She does not understand a clean lust, free of pain and terror. Use our Richard, and I will be able to join my powers to yours, and we can defeat her."

I stared up into the face of the man that Jean-Claude had so casually called "ours," and knew he wasn't. I could smell that wonderful musk, the calm of pine and leaf mold, but the look on his face was anything but calm. His brown eyes were full of a fine, shimmering anger. Touching his hand like this, I should have felt that anger dance over my skin, but I didn't. All I could feel was Moroven's power like a storm hovering over me. The only emotion left in me was terror.

" Ma petite, can you hear me?"

"Yes," I managed a whisper.

"Then what is wrong?"

I wanted to ask him, What am I supposed to do, wrestle Richard to the floor and ravage him? But all that came out was, "Can't, I can't."

"Can't what, ma petite? "

"Can't feed off Richard." It seemed silly to say that out loud while staring up into that handsome, angry face, but I couldn't concentrate enough to say it silently in my head. Talking was hard enough.

"Richard has agreed to this, ma petite. "

I shook my head. "Don't believe it, he's angry."

Richard looked even angrier, but he said, out loud, "Jean-Claude's telling the truth, Anita, I agreed to feed the ardeur. " His face was dark and frowning with his rage. He'd agreed, but he didn't want to do it. Come to think of it, neither did I. I did not want to go down this metaphysical path again. We'd worked so hard to separate ourselves out, and sex with Richard would bind us close again. I didn't want that, wasn't sure my heart would survive being broken again. There's only so much emotional super glue in a person's soul, after that everything just stays broken.

"I cannot hold Moroven's fear off forever, ma petite, you must act before my strength fails us all."

"Easy for you to say," and it almost sounded like my own voice, not breathy with terror, but nicely sarcastic. Good. "It's not your lily-white ass on the line."

"If I could fly to you, I would, but it is broad daylight, and I cannot. You and Richard must do this, for already I am losing against Moroven. I can feel her nightmare coming closer, and when it comes close enough, I will flee and save myself, in hopes that when darkness falls there will be something left to rescue. But if you and Richard do what I fear you will do, then darkness will come too late, too late for Damian, too late for Nathaniel, and if you do not survive the deaths of your servant and your animal, then Richard and I may never see moonrise again. Is it so horrible to feed from our Richard, ma petite, is that a fate worse than death?"

Put that way, no, but... damn it. Why did it always come down to sex? Why wasn't there ever another way to fight?

Jean-Claude answered inside my head, "Because we can only fight with the tools at our command. I am an incubus, ma petite, and seduction is both my curse and my greatest power. If I had another magic to offer you, I would, but it is what I know. It is almost all I know."

"If the only tool you've got is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail," I said.

Jean-Claude started to ask something, but he was swept away. Everything was swept away by terror. My heart was in my throat like I'd swallowed a fish. I was choking on my own heart. My skin was cold with the iciness of her power. So afraid, so very afraid.

Richard jerked away from my hand, stepped back from me, and I couldn't read his face now. It wasn't anger.

Gregory knelt closer to us and stretched his upper body out, over Nathaniel and Damian, stretched out until his half-leopard face was only inches from mine. He sniffed the air in front of me. "Smells, so good, so yummy. Fear and flesh," he let out a long sigh that tickled his breath along my skin, "fear and flesh."

I wasn't afraid of Gregory, I knew that, but I was afraid, and the fear was formless, but it didn't want to be. When Gregory drew his lips back from his teeth in what was supposed to be a smile, I gasped. The fear coalesced around that flash of fangs, that hungry gleam in those eyes. I was suddenly not just afraid, I was afraid of Gregory. Afraid of the claws, the teeth. I was afraid in a way that I'd never been of him, or any of my leopards. He licked my face, one quick movement.

I yipped, a small, high-pitched, frightened sound.

Gregory growled next to my skin, "Hmm, do it again."

Richard grabbed him and pulled him away from me. "Stop playing with her."

Gregory stayed crouched on the floor, as if he were half-thinking about springing up and turning it all into a fight. But what he said was, "Alright, I won't play with her." He turned and put his face next to Nathaniel's. Gregory snapped his teeth just short of his skin, and Nathaniel screamed. Our fear had found a cause to wrap itself around. There was no logic to it. Anything fearful would have done, we just happened to have a leopardman so conveniently at hand.

Gregory laughed.

Richard jerked him back and dragged him as far away as the bathroom would allow. "I said stop playing with them."

"You said, stop playing with her. I did."

"Leave them all alone," Richard said.

Gregory stood, and in leopardman form he was as tall as Richard. "Don't tell me you don't want to play with them, too?"