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Richard caught me before I hit the ground, cradled me in his arms. He looked so worried. His hand touched my face. "Anita, are you hurt?"
I managed to shake my head, but even with Richard this close, his face soft and worried about me, I turned my head to look towards Asher. I couldn't help myself. Asher's hair was like golden Christmas tree tinsel, lifeless, hanging around a face that was more skull than flesh. His lips were a thin hard line around teeth that were mostly fangs. Only his eyes were still Asher, pools of pale blue fire, as if a winter sky could burn.
The moment I saw his eyes, I tried to crawl out of Richard's arms, tried to crawl to Asher.
"Anita, Anita, what's wrong?" He held me, turned me to look at him.
I found my voice, but all I could say was, "Asher."
He glanced at the fallen vampire, and the disgust was plain on his face. "I know, Anita, I'm sorry."
I wasn't sure what he was apologizing about, and I didn't care. There was something else I should have been more worried about, something I'd forgotten. But I couldn't think of anything except Asher's eyes and that I had to go to him. Had to.
Richard stood up, suddenly, with me still in his arms. I heard scrabbling as if of a thousand tiny claws. Rats, thousands of rats, flowed in a furry, squeaking wave across the floor of the cave.
Asher's power receded, and I knew it had cost him dear to let me go. Knew in that instant that I was the only one who could feed him enough energy to keep him alive.
Richard made a small sound of dismay and turned so that I could see what had paled him. The two vampires that had had the tops of their heads blown off were slowly rising to their feet. They were healed. Those strange cat-eyed faces were whole. There wasn't even a scar to mark where the bullets had struck.
"Fuck," I said.
One of the werehyena's nerve broke, and he fired into the squirming mass of rats. The next sound was a second gunshot, and he fell with a hole in his back, fell into the mob of rats. They boiled over him, and his body vanished from sight. The sounds, though, nothing masked the sounds. I hadn't been close enough to the gunshots to be deafened, and for the first time I was sorry about that. The sound of tiny teeth tearing flesh, squeaking voices squabbling over what used to be a man, seemed to drown us all.
One of the wererats was staring at the gun in his hand as if it had suddenly appeared. He turned a white face back towards us. I think he mouthed, "I'm sorry," before Bobby Lee's scream, "Guns down, guns f**king down, now. No one fire." He threw his own gun spinning across the room, and the other wererats followed suit.
Some of the werehyenas lowered their guns, but only one threw his away. Bobby Lee went to his knees and clasped his hands on top of his head. Claudia did it next, then one by one all the wererats followed. I knew why, they were afraid Musette/Belle would use them against us. But I wouldn't have wanted to be kneeling on the floor when the rats found me.
I finally could think enough to remember that Jean-Claude might be fighting for his life. But he wasn't. Belle held his beautiful face in her hands, but he was still standing. His own hands cupped hers, pressing her hands against his face. His face was still perfect, untouched. A soft smile played along his lips. It was Belle's eyes that were wide, her face that was unhappy. He couldn't eat her as she had Asher, but strangely, she seemed to be having trouble eating him.
I knew that Belle/Musette had called the rats. I didn't think she'd had a thing to do with the recuperative powers of the two children of the night. They were half crouched, one helping the other to stand, but they weren't looking at Belle, or anyone else. I had a moment to wonder if they were going to hold a grudge, when the wave of rats jumped on the first werehyena, tiny teeth trying to tear through the black leather. People were screaming, and the werehyenas began to fire into the small rats, blasting their bodies into red ruin. But there were so many of them.
The rats parted around the kneeling wererats like they were big rocks in a stream.
"Can you stand?" Richard asked.
"I think so."
He lowered me gently to the floor, then he glanced at the werewolves who were still standing in an unhappy group. Apparently Richard's point to Sylvie had been violent enough that none of them had disobeyed. Well, Jason was struggling in a joint lock that Shang-Da had on his arm, but no one else had tried to help. What the hell had Richard done to Sylvie?
The world suddenly smelled like the musk of wolf fur, the damp richness of leaf mold, the Christmas tree scent of evergreen, as if my furred shoulder had just brushed it with dew still on it, on a calm, still morning. I felt that piece of me that was Richard's beast pour up through my body and ease across my skin like wind.
Richard looked at me with amber wolf eyes. He'd opened the marks between us, opened them wide. He threw back his head and howled, and a dozen throats answered him, then the werewolves moved forward like a black wave of destruction.
Shang-Da and Jamil stayed at Richard's back, and they showed claws where fingernails should have been, the half-change of the very alpha. For the rest, I felt them slip their skin, felt the rush of energy like small tugging explosions in my gut.
I could feel now that Jean-Claude had shut his end of our triumvirate down as tight as he could. I could look at him, but for once I couldn't feel him at all. He'd expected to die, and he hadn't wanted to take us with him.
I found one of the guns that the wererats had discarded and felt instantly better. The weight of it in my hand was a very good thing.
Unfortunately, I wasn't the only human servant that had found a gun. Angelito fired at a werehyena, sending him spinning round, falling into the mass of biting rats. He screamed and writhed, trying to beat them off him.
I shot into the rats close to him, but there were too many. It was like trying to shoot water, you moved it, but didn't hurt it.
I knew one way to stop the rats. I sighted down the barrel at Musette/Belle's head. If I killed her, the rats would go back to wherever they came from.
I let out my breath, stilled myself for a shot that was far too close to Jean-Claude for my comfort. A rat jumped on my hand, dug its teeth into me. The wave of them began to jump on my dress, their claws catching in the heavy fabric. I screamed, and suddenly Micah was there, half-crouched, hissing at the rats. Those on the floor scattered, squealing in terror. The ones already on my body seemed immune to the fear. He helped me pick them off and threw them into the scurrying mass. The rats poured over their injured comrades and ate them, too.
The rats seemed more afraid of the wereleopards than of the wolves, and the wereleopards began to spread out from the wall, hissing, sending the small rodents back, gaining an ever-widening space.
The two vampires that I thought I'd killed had grown claws and fangs that no vampire ever had. They were wading through the werewolves in a spray of blood and white bone.
One great hand was raised at Shang-Da's back, and without thinking I fired, able to aim because I stood in the circle the leopards had made. The vampire's head exploded again. I knew now that if we wanted him to stay dead, we needed to take his heart and burn it all. Scattering the ashes over different bodies of running water wouldn't have hurt either.
Shang-Da had time for the barest of glances my way, then the other vampire launched himself and sent all three of them to the floor for the rats to engulf.
Belle's voice rose over the noise like a storm, a thunderclap that froze all of us in mid-action. Even the furred sea of rats froze. "Enough!"
She stepped back from Jean-Claude, and he began to laugh. It wasn't his magical laugh that slithered across the skin and made you think of sex, it was just laughter, pure unadulterated joy.
"We will fight no more," Belle said, and though her voice was still deep, it had lost its sexy purr. She sounded not angry, but put out, as if she'd gotten badly surprised.
The rats pulled back like a furry ocean draining away. They squeaked and squealed, but they left. Most of the werewolves were covered in tiny crimson bite marks. The remains of the fallen werehyena looked like it had been mauled by something much bigger.
Jean-Claude found his voice, and it was as joyous as his laughter had been. "You cannot feed from me. You cannot take back what you gave me, because I am no longer of your line. I am sourdre de sangof my own line now."
Belle stared at him, her face that blank emptiness that I knew so well. She was hiding how she really felt. "I know what it means, Jean-Claude."
"You can no longer treat me as a lesser member of your line, Belle. There are different niceties to be observed between two sourdres de sang."
