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He actually laughed, and it was just a laugh, not that touchable sound of Jean-Claude, or Asher, or Belle Morte. It was just a laugh. "Perhaps I am so old that I have forgotten how to simply talk."
"Practice on me, ask your questions."
"Is she waking from her long sleep?"
"Yes," I said.
"How do you know with such certainty?"
"I've seen her in dreams, and in..." I hesitated, searching for a word.
"Vision," Asher supplied.
"But that makes it seem like some beatific otherworldly shit, and it wasn't like that."
"What was it like?" Merlin asked.
"She sent a spirit cat once, an illusion. It sort of climbed up my body in the Jeep once. She smells of night, soft and tropical, jasmine, rain. She damn near suffocated me once with the taste of a rainy night. Belle Morte does it with the perfume of roses."
"Do you equate their power with each other?" he asked.
"Do you mean, are they similar in power?"
"Yes."
"No," I said.
"How is it no?"
"I've seen her rise above me in vision, or dream, or whatever the fuck it was, like a huge black ocean. I've seen her rise like living night, made into something real, and separate. As if night wasn't just the absence of light, but was something real, and alive. She is the reason that our ancestors huddled around the fire at night. She's why we fear the dark. She's a fear in the very fiber of our beings, something going back to the lizard part of us. We don't fear her because we fear the dark; we fear the dark because of her."
I shivered, suddenly cold. Asher took off his tuxedo jacket and laid it around my bare shoulders. It put Damian's hand against the back of my neck, under my hair, so he could keep contact. I didn't argue about it.
"Then it is true," Merlin said, in a voice that held a sliver of fear, "she is waking."
"Yes," I said, "she is." I took Asher's hand in mine. I needed the comfort.
"Belle Morte believes it is her power that has raised the mother's servants."
"That isn't it, and you know it," I said.
"They wake, because she is waking," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Why is she so interested in a human servant?" Adonis asked, not rudely, but like he truly wanted to know.
"I believe it is not the human servant who interests her, but the necromancer." He looked at me, and again I fought not to meet his eyes. I didn't think it was mind tricks, just habit. You look in someone's eyes. You just do. "Did you know, Ms. Blake, that it is on her orders that the necromancers of old were slaughtered?"
"No," I said, "I didn't know that."
"It was her orders that all with your gifts be killed before they could grow to such power."
"I can sort of understand that."
"Can you?"
I nodded, and squeezed Asher's hand, and pressed Damian's hand closer to my skin. "I can roll a vampire's mind the way you guys roll us."
"Can you, truly?"
I realized that I'd said too much, overshared. "I am too tired to play games tonight, Merlin. When she mind-fucked us both tonight a well-meaning friend gave me a cross to hold."
"Oh, dear," he said.
I raised my left hand so he could see the new scar.
"How did you heal it so quickly? A holy item heals slowly for us."
I put my hand back on top of Damian's. "I'm not a vampire, Merlin, I'm a necromancer. It's just another kind of psychic gift. It doesn't make me evil."
"And are we evil, merely because we are vampires?"
The question was too hard for me with a vampire in each hand. "I'm too tired to debate philosophy with you. It took energy to heal this."
"We felt you feed," Adonis said.
I fought not to look at him again. "Yeah, I fed, but it wasn't enough. Dealing with Mommie Dearest takes a lot out of a girl."
"It takes a great deal out of everyone," Merlin said.
I wondered for the first time if the reason he hadn't done some major mind control after the mother left wasn't just to be polite, but because he was scared. Maybe he didn't have enough juice left. Maybe he, like me, was drained of energy.
"She can feed off other vampires, just by touching their powers, can't she?"
"Why do you ask?"
"She almost always comes to me after some other vampire has used major power on me. She used to follow Belle Morte's mind games. Tonight it was you that she followed. Does she feed off us when she does this?"
"Sometimes," he said.
"So she hasn't been asleep and not feeding for thousands of years. She's been like some kind of dark dream, feeding on energy, on power."
"I believe so."
"Why did she go to sleep in the first place?"
"How should I know?"
"Avoiding the question, aren't you?"
He gave a small smile. "Perhaps."
"Do you know why she went to sleep?"
"Yes."
"Will you tell me?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because it is not a story I wish to share."
"I can't make you tell me, can I?"
"You could try to see if you are necromancer enough to command me to tell you."
I grinned. "My ego isn't that big."
"More of the mother's servants have woken. Most of the council, like Belle Morte, believe it is their own growing powers that have broken the servants from their long sleeps."
"Which council members don't believe it?"
"Since I am forbidden to go near the council, how would I know that?"
"The same way you know what Belle Morte thinks."
He gave that smile again. I think it was his I'm-not-telling-you smile.
"You need to feed again, Ms. Blake, as do I. The good mother fed upon us both."
"She's not good, and she was never your mother."
He made that hand gesture again, the one that passed for a shrug. "She was mother to what I am now."
I couldn't argue with that, so I didn't try. "You wanted to know if she's waking; she is. You say you wanted to know whether Jean-Claude was a power strong enough for you to call him master."
"You do not believe that I seek a master?"
"I believe that the only master you've ever acknowledged is lying in a room somewhere in Europe, haunting my dreams."
He took a deep breath, sighing. Vamps didn't need to breathe, only air enough to talk, but I'd found that most of them sigh, from time to time, as if it's a habit that even a few millennia can't break.
Damian's hand tightened almost painfully on the back of my neck. I was being utterly calm; what was the deal? I started to look up at him, but I felt it. He let me feel it. I was sucking his energy. Taking back the energy I gave him to live. Shit.
There was a knock on the door.
Claudia looked at me. "See who it is," I said.
She checked before opening the door, good bodyguard. It was Nathaniel. She opened the door for him. He came through with his hair still back in its braid, but he'd lost his shirt and vest somewhere. His upper body gleamed with sweat, and the amethyst and diamond collar on his neck glittered as he glided into the room.
"How did you lose your shirt?" I asked.
"I got hot," he said, and grinned.
"I'll say."
He walked toward me still smiling, but there was worry around the edges of his eyes. A stranger wouldn't have seen it, but I'd spent months reading his face. He walked wide around the desk, so he'd be out of reach of Merlin. He'd learned to be a better person, and a worse victim, living with me. He came around, and put his hand on my arm, underneath Asher's jacket. Having them both touch me was as if someone had stuck an electric plug in my spine. It made me jump, but underneath the rush of power was the feeling that it was going just one way, into me. Shit. I was really, really going to have to get better at this energy thing.
"You are very new at being the center of this triumvirate of power," Merlin said, like he was certain of it, and like it was interesting to him.
"Yeah, there's a learning curve."
"There are ways to keep the good mother from feeding upon your energy."
"I'm all ears," I said.
He frowned at me.
"I mean, I'd love to hear it." Sometimes I forgot that slang does not travel well, not across countries, or centuries.
"A holy item hidden inside at least two layers of pillows will keep her at bay."
"That sounds risky," I said, raising my newly marked hand. The movement made Damian move, almost a stumble. I felt Nathaniel reach for him, knew when he had put an arm around the taller man's waist.
"Even vampires can sleep thus, if they believe and they do not call their own power."
I needed to feed, but I didn't want a mistake here. I bunked with too many vampires to want a holy item going off at the wrong moment. "A vampire can sleep with a holy item under his pillow?"
