Noel spat blood onto the floor, but he had to be breathing to do that. The blonde kept the energy concentrated on him as I turned to look at Nicky. The golden lionman burst through the curtains and started toward the fight, but I said, “Nicky, I need you.”

He never hesitated. He simply turned toward us and said, “Where do I go?”

I said the first thing that came to mind. “Puppy pile, touch as much as you can.” It was all I could think of; the kind of vampire we were worked better with touch, and more touch couldn’t hurt. He laid all that golden lionman across Noel’s lion, and put his arm around Travis, drawing the still form in with us. Nicky put one hand out and grabbed my belt, putting his big fingers inside it against my bare waist. My lioness flared into that bonfire of energy, and Nicky’s rose with mine. It wasn’t as bright as it had been with Haven, but it was bright, and it was power, and it joined all the other power seamlessly. I realized what we’d missed, what we’d needed, willingness without will of its own. Nicky gave himself to this as he’d given himself to everything I’d asked of him since he became mine.

Barriers broke that I hadn’t even known were still there. Richard stopped holding back, Damian stopped being afraid, Jean-Claude stopped being so careful, the blond woman let go of some deep anger, the dark-haired one let go of love searching for love, there wasn’t enough left of Travis to give up anything else, Nathaniel gave up the last of his fear that I’d grow tired of him, Micah gave up that hard, deep rage that I’d never even known was there, and I gave up my control. I wanted Noel alive more than I wanted to be in control.

The power flared around us in a dark rainbow of energy. It blazed toward the ceiling. If it had been real fire it would have burned the Circus to the ground. We took that power and shoved it into Noel. I’d worked with other animators when we needed to raise a lot of, or very old, dead. I’d been trained to share power with others with similar talents and work as a unit. One magic is surprisingly like another.

Travis grabbed hold of the nearest lioness. I thought he meant to be healed until I saw his own dim orange-gold lion flare and realized he was giving up his own energy to Noel. With all that energy he gave and did not keep for himself.

Nicky wrapped his furred arms around the two lions. His grip on me tightened and he gave everything to me, no holding back, no fear, no hesitation. He let me have anything, everything, and he helped the rest of us give up, give in, and feed it to Noel. Noel shuddered and then he began to breathe. His furred side rose and fell, and I could hear his heartbeat. I could feel the rush and flow of the blood in his veins, feel the rise and fall of his life that we’d fought so hard to give him, and on the heels of that was a desire to bite him. It was a desire to bury my teeth in that warm fur until I found blood, and I realized that we’d given up our control, all of it. I was kneeling in a pile of wereanimals and vampires who’d given up their controls. We wanted flesh and blood. We wanted to feed.

Richard’s voice, strained, said, “Anita, change it. Change it to something else, don’t let us.”

Jean-Claude said, “Change the feeding to something we can survive, ma petite. Change it or we will tear the lion apart after saving him.”

I was drowning in the scent of fur, the feel of flesh. I realized that Nicky was rubbing his face against Noel’s side. We so wanted to take a bite. “Help me, help us not do this. Jean-Claude, help me!”

“The ardeur, ma petite, like this it will be . . .”

“Do it!”

I wasn’t the only one that screamed it; Micah and Richard echoed me. We all valued our control above almost everything, but in this moment we were out of control. It was just a matter of what we lost. I wanted to sink fangs and claws into that soft, breathing form. It was as if the power had turned on itself and become about death instead of life.

I smelled flowers, jasmine. Oh, God. But it wasn’t her or not her alone, and not her voice that echoed through my head. It was a male voice that I’d never heard before. “Feed and I will feast,” and then he laughed, a manic, insane sound.

I heard Jean-Claude think it—“The Lover of Death, God help us all”—and I knew in the fast-forward way that he could communicate with his servants that the Lover of Death, Morte d’Amour, fed on death the way that Belle fed on lust. He was the creator of the vampires that rotted, but were the hardest to kill of all. He would feed on the energy of every life we took. He was the ultimate carrion crow, a psychic vulture.

Jean-Claude took that need to stab and tear and bite, to taste raw flesh and have fresh blood gush in our mouths and over our bodies, and turned it to the only other hunger we had. One moment I was kneeling there with the feel of him behind me. I knew where everyone was and what we were doing, and then the ardeur hit the energy we’d raised. Hit it and exploded all that power out into the room.

I had a moment to hear the Lover of Death wail, “No, I cannot feed on that.” I smelled jasmine and disappointment, because the Mother of All Darkness could only feed on what her host could feed on. Belle had escaped somehow and no one else could feed on the feast we were about to give them.

I had a moment of fierce happiness about that, and then there was nothing but hands and bodies and things to do with teeth that didn’t kill, but would leave a mark.

18

I DREAMED. I knew it was a dream, but I also knew I wasn’t alone in the dream. I walked through a building I’d never been in, turning on lights, but just behind me each room went dark again. I couldn’t turn the lights on fast enough and in the last room where I turned on the light, there was a moment of brightness and then darkness came.

I woke, pulse in my throat and the amulet around my neck glowing softly. The glow faded, but I knew it had been her. The Mother of All Darkness had hunted me in my dream. She wasn’t strong enough to talk to me without another vampire’s body or powers to help her. Alone she was just that shiver that makes you walk faster at night. You don’t know why you do it, but some part of you remembers that the dark is never really empty.

As my pulse slowed, and the glow faded, I saw and felt where I was, and my pulse went right back up into my throat. There was a weight across my shoulders and something across my lower legs and I was staring into Wicked’s face from inches away. What I could see of him seemed to be nude, and the only reason I couldn’t see below the waist was that there was a woman collapsed face down across him. Her long yellow hair hid just how nude he might be, but she was nude.

I raised my head on the white carpet, knowing we were still in the living room of the Circus. Raising my head showed me that the drapes that made up this side of the “walls” had been torn down. There were more bodies in the twisted drapes, arms and legs, hair, a face that I recognized as one of the female vampires who worked at Danse Macabre. She’d been in the coffin room last night getting ready to bed down for the day, which meant that the ardeur had spread outside this room. Shit.

I was almost afraid to rise up more. Almost afraid to find out whose arm was across my shoulders, because I could feel it was probably male and the line of body touching mine seemed to be nude, just like I was. Fuck. The weight across my lower legs was someone else’s legs, no, not just legs. Male, whoever it was. Crap.

Fuck this, I had to get up. I even had to see who it was, I couldn’t hide. Nope, it was too late for that. I rose up on my elbows. The arm across my shoulders rolled limply down my body. I took a deep breath and turned to see who belonged to the arm.