"And now?" He made it a question, with a lilt of his voice.

"I think a more direct assault on you, personally, is needed."

"If you are too direct, then you will simply be executed," he said, his voice mild.

"My power can be subtle, but do not be deceived. I too can be direct. As direct as the power you hold in your arms with your raven-haired servant."

She gestured with one slender hand, and the man behind her stepped forward. He took off one glove and laid his bare hand in hers. "You are not the only master whose touch awakens more power in their servant, Jean-Claude," she said.

"I did not think I was," he said. His voice was as mild as her own, but his power was not mild. His power riffled through us, as if we were cards in his hand. What should he play? I'd had Jean-Claude drive the metaphysical bus before, but I'd never felt it like this, never been so aware of how terribly aware he was of his power, of my power, of the power we all offered him. He was vampire, which meant he was a cold power, a thing of logic, because emotions do not trouble the dead. He shifted through our talents, like Edward would have looked through his gun safe. Which gun will do the job? Which will make this shot? I had a moment to feel a thrill of fear, a thread of real doubt. He squashed it, shut it tight away from me, from us, because it wasn't just my mind that had felt it. I knew that Damian and Nathaniel had thought it, felt it, too. He feared that we had no weapon to protect from this. We had already nearly been destroyed by her power without her servant's touch. He shut the doubts away, but they were there. It wasn't the coldness of vampire I was feeling, it was the coldness of necessity. Doubt was her weapon. You do not arm your enemy.

Her power hit us, staggered us, as if emotion could be a great wind to blow your world apart. It was like having your mind and heart ripped open, wide, so you had to feel, know, how you truly felt. Most of us live because we don't shine the light too brightly inside ourselves. Suddenly, Jean-Claude, Damian, Nathaniel, Asher, and I, were at ground zero of the brightest light in the world.

Columbine specialized in doubt and pain, but Giovanni, her man, he gave her a wider range. Loss, that choking sense of loss, when you think you'll die with the person who was buried. Somehow she knew that we had all suffered losses, and she made us suffer them all over again. But it wasn't just our personal losses; Jean-Claude had bound us together, so that instead of one loss, we got them all. I heard Julianna scream as the fire consumed her. I heard her scream Jean-Claude's name as she died. Asher screamed in the here and now, and Jean-Claude joined him. We stood before a pyre of cold ash and knew that it was all that was left of the woman who had been our heart. Damian watched his brother burn to death again. His screams haunted us. Damian fell to his knees as if he'd been hit. We were small again, and Nicholas was dying. The baseball bat made a sickening sound as it hit his head, a wet, crunching sound. He fell on the floor, reached out to us. Blood was everywhere, and the man like some dark giant above us. Nicholas said, "Run, Natty, run!" Nathaniel screamed, "No!" in the here and now.

As a child, he had run. He raised his face up, but he was a child no longer, and said, "I won't run." I looked into his eyes, those lavender eyes; they were real, not this memory of pain and death. Tears stained his face, but he whispered, "I won't run."

I was eight again, and my father was about to say the words that would destroy my life. My mother was dead. But I hadn't run then. Nathaniel had run because his older brother told him to run, but he wasn't little anymore. It had been my father who had collapsed. He had wailed her loss, not me. I did not run. I did not run then, and I would not run now.

I found my voice, and said, "We won't run."

Nathaniel shook his head, still crying. "No, we won't."

Jean-Claude and Asher had slid to the ground with Damian, crushed under the weight of sorrow. No one else was close to us on the stage. The guards, even Richard, had fled from us. Fled from the weight of horror and loss. Fled so it did not spread to them. I guess I couldn't blame Richard, but I would later, I knew I would. Worse yet, later he would blame himself.

I caught movement in the aisle close to us. Micah was the closest, the only one brave enough or stupid enough to get close to the emotional thermonuclear bomb that had just been set off. Then I caught movement just behind Micah. Edward was there. More surprising was that Olaf was beside him.

Nathaniel touched my arm. He smiled at me; with tears still wet on his face, he smiled. It made my heart hurt, but not in a bad way, in that way that sometimes happens when you love someone, and you just suddenly look up and realize just how much. Love, love to chase back the pain. It washed over my skin like a warm wind, love, life, that spark that makes us get back up. It poured down the metaphysical links between Nathaniel and me, and the other men. Love, love to raise their faces and make them look at us. Love to help them to their feet, love and our hands to steady them, to help dry their tears. We finally stood, perhaps a little shaky around the edges, but we all stood and turned to Columbine and her Giovanni.

"Love conquers all, is that it?" she said, her voice thick with disdain.

"No, not all," I said. "Just you."

"I am not conquered, not yet." The lights seemed to dim, as if something breathed in the light, ate it. Twilight filled the church, a soft edge of darkness, spread out from the Harlequin on the stage.

"What is that?" Micah asked. He was beside the stage now.

Jean-Claude, Asher, and Damian said, "The Mother of All Darkness."

Nathaniel and I said, "Marmee Noir."

That which we call the Mother of All Vampires, by any other name would be fucking dangerous.

Chapter Forty-six

THE VAMPIRES IN the audience made a panicked run for the far doors. It was as if even Malcolm's tame vamps understood what was coming. Their screams let me know that the doors wouldn't open. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised; the Queen of All Darkness was coming to eat us. What was holding shut one door to everything she could do?

Micah leapt upon the stage like grace over muscles, proving that he didn't have to be in leopard form to be inhumanly graceful. He touched my arm, and the emotion we'd raised to save ourselves leapt to him. He was no one's servant, no one's master, but the love spread to him in a warm rush.

Jean-Claude looked at us with tears still painting faint pinkish streaks on his face. "You love him."

Even with all the good feelings, I frowned at him. "Yes, I do."

Jean-Claude shook his head. "I mean, ma petite, that your love for him…" He waved a hand and let me see inside his head, so much quicker. Because I loved Micah, Jean-Claude could feed off the energy of that love. It was as if his powers through Belle Morte's line had found a new way to think. She and her vampires were all about lust, love, but no one had ever been able to use love like fuel, the way the ardeur could use lust. It was like an intuitive leap in math, or science. You start with this bit of reality and suddenly you understand how to make a leap to a larger reality. Love, love was power in more than just a metaphorical way.

"Love won't conquer her." It was Richard from behind us. He'd come back to the stage.

I looked at him and wasn't sure I wanted him to touch me in that moment. Would the love spread to him, or would it not? Had he finally hurt me enough that he'd killed my feelings for him? If he had, then he would be no help here. He'd hurt me, hurt this soft new magic.