I was suddenly standing by myself not touching anyone. I had to blink hard to see the here and now. “What was that?” I asked.

“Memory,” Jean-Claude said.

“It stopped when I pulled away. I didn’t want to see what happened next.” Richard sounded so angry. What did he think had happened? Oh, and had it? All I remembered was them kissing and him helping me undress Jean-Claude, but I had a vague memory of other hands pulling at Richard, pulling him away.

“I don’t think you did what you think you did,” I said.

He glared at me, and I knew he was shielding as hard as he could so that his anger didn’t touch us with heat, or raise my beast. I appreciated the control, but I also knew that if he thought he and Jean-Claude had had full-blown sex, it could ruin all the positive work he’d done. It could throw everything back the way it had been. I liked us getting along better, but I wasn’t sure how to save it.

“We did not have sex, Richard,” Jean-Claude said.

“I saw us,” he said.

“You saw a kiss and a little petting, but it was Gretchen who touched you and pulled you away.”

“I woke up with her in my lap. She loves you in a stalker, obsessed sort of way. Shouldn’t her depth of love for you keep her safe from the ardeur? I thought love kept you safe.”

“She was likely pulling you away from me, but once she touched you the ardeur spread to her, and she likes men well enough that she did not have enough defenses to leave you for me. She does not love me; she is obsessed with me. Obsession is not love, Richard, it is a type of possessing. Love is not about owning someone, but about loving them.”

“If love makes us proof against it, then . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.

“Then does it mean that none of us love each other?” Jean-Claude said. “No, ma petite. This was not ardeur for feeding, but the feeding taking the place of the slaughter that the Lover of Death wanted us to perform. It was all the energy we had raised and more turning from the beast’s hunger, or the vampire’s thirst, to sex. It was a food that the Lover of Death could not stomach, so he was pushed away.”

“I heard him and I got your memories of him,” Richard said, and shuddered.

“I just got how dangerous he was and how he feeds on death the way Belle feeds on lust. Did you get something I didn’t?” I asked.

Richard looked at Jean-Claude. He wasn’t angry now. “Every time I think I’ve been abused, then I get another memory from your past and I realize that it could have been worse.”

Jean-Claude looked away, which meant he wasn’t sure he had control of his face. He almost always had control of his expression. He’d once told me that after a few hundred years of your facial expressions being used against you by bigger, badder vampires, you learned to hide your emotions so deep that sometimes it was hard to show them at all.

“What am I missing?” I asked.

Richard just looked at the other man. It made me look at Jean-Claude. I had a moment to think about it, then said, “The Lover of Death doesn’t feed on sex.”

“You met Yvette, his minion,” Jean-Claude said.

“She was a sadist and enjoyed rotting on people especially during sex.”

He nodded. “She wanted to do that to Jason because it frightened him so.”

“But you wouldn’t let her; we wouldn’t let her. You protected him from her,” I said.

He finally looked at me, and his face was empty, not charming, but just empty. “When I went back to Belle to save Asher’s life, she ceased to protect me from anything for a time.”

I just stared at him, and knew that my face showed the thought. “She gave you to . . .”

“He doesn’t truly like sex, but he still is functional, and he does enjoy fear.”

I went to him, going on tiptoe, and putting my arms around his shoulders, drawing his head down to me. In that moment I wasn’t bothered by whatever was dried on the side of his hair. Nothing we’d done was as terrible as what he’d been through. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

Then there were other arms around us, tentative at first, and then Richard hugged us both. “I’m not happy about what just happened, and it reminds me why I stay the hell away from you, but nothing we’ve ever done, including today, is as terrible as the glimpses I get of your past.” Richard raised his head up, and it made me glance at his face. “Aren’t most of your worst stories things the council did to you?”

“Most,” he said softly.

“And now they’re going to try to take us over,” he said.

“It would seem so.”

“No,” Richard said, “whatever it takes, no.”

Jean-Claude looked back at the other man. Their faces were close, and I remembered the kiss, not as some visceral memory, but just as a memory. “You do not know what might be required to fight them, Richard.”

“You may be a manipulative bastard sometimes, but you’re our manipulative bastard.”

Jean-Claude actually smiled at that. “Such flattery will go to a man’s head, mon lupe.”

Richard smiled, but his eyes stayed serious. “Morte d’Amour is evil, Jean-Claude. I felt him in my head, I felt what he wanted us to do to Noel, and once we’d killed Noel it wouldn’t have stopped with him. He’d have made us kill each other and fed on every death.”

“That was his plan,” Jean-Claude said.

“Sex is not worse than that,” Richard said.

“What can we do to keep them away from us?” I asked.

“We can keep them away, I think, but I am worried for our poor country. There are weaker Masters of the City, ma petite. I am wondering how they fared this night.”

“You mean when he couldn’t roll us, he hunted for other prey?” I asked.

“The Mother wants us, but he has children of his own line in charge of cities here, not many, but a few, and more in Europe.”

Richard said, “You want to try to protect the entire United States from the Vampire Council?”

“If we can, oui.”

Richard and I exchanged a look, and then we looked back at Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude with all his fancy fetish yummy clothes, standing there nude and covered in more body fluids than a CSI episode. It should have seemed like whistling in the dark that he, that we, could figure out a way to keep the most powerful vampires in Europe out of the entire United States metaphysically, but we’d already chased out three of them, plus the remnant of the Darkness.

We looked again into each other’s brown eyes and then back to the blue of Jean-Claude’s. “I’m in,” I said.

“What do we do?” Richard asked.

“I believe we have freed Belle of the Mother’s influence for now, so all that is left them is death, terror, and violence. We will lose if we try to meet them on with their own strengths.”

“Are you saying we make love, not war?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I’d rather just kill them, but the Darkness will just jump to a different body, won’t she?”

“I fear so.”

“Can we really keep her out of the United States?” Richard asked.

“If the other Masters of the City are willing, there is a chance.”

“Why wouldn’t they want to keep this out of here?” I asked.

“They will want that, ma petite, but they will not like my plan.”

“Why not?” Richard asked.

“It would require that they give up much of their autonomy and run America more as Europe is run.”

“Why, what will that help?” Richard asked.

“It isn’t just political autonomy that they give up, is it?” I asked.

“Non, they would have to give us some of their power.”

“You’re talking about setting up a council here in America with you as its head,” Richard said.

He nodded.

“Didn’t some of the council try to kill us when they just thought we were trying to do that?” I asked.

“They’re going to kill us anyway, ma petite, don’t you understand that yet?” He looked at us, and his eyes held something I didn’t see much: fear. “If we cannot be conquered, then they must destroy us.”