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“Until your own marks take the place of his, we have no idea how fragile she is,” Rodrigo said.
I really wanted to see what was happening, like had they grabbed his arms, but I couldn’t risk it.
“Fine,” Deimos said, “then how hard can she be hit?”
“Perhaps we could just try to hold her eyes open for you, my lord?” Rodrigo said.
“Then do it!”
Vampire gaze was the strongest mind-fuck most vampires ever had. I’d already fallen into Trappolino’s gaze. I did not want Deimos to capture me with his eyes. It was time to struggle.
39
The trick toreally good struggling is to use every part of your body, and to remember what their goal is and not give it to them. They wanted to make me gaze into Deimos’s eyes, so I turned my back on him and looked at the peeling paint on the wall. Turning around confused him; he even asked Rodina and Rodrigo why I’d done it. I enjoyed staring at the wall and not having to close my eyes. That was beginning to bug me. I wanted to see to fight, but I didn’t have to see my target to hit it. My wrists were bound but my elbows weren’t; I drove one back into Deimos’s gut, hard and sharp. He made a niceumphsound, but it didn’t bend him over; the next elbow did. He stumbled back from me, unable to make noise while his diaphragm seized up.
Someone’s hand pinned my cheek against the wall. I had a second to see Rodrigo’s dark eyes, and then I looked down at his mouth, his chin. I’d spent years dealing with vampires when I wasn’t powerful enough to meet their eyes in a conversation. You pick a point to stare at that’s below eye level; the chest was good, but Rodrigo’s face was too close to mine for that. I memorized the thin delicate lines of his mouth as his hand trapped the side of my face against the brittle sharpness of the peeling paint as it crumbled under me.
I pushed my hands into the wall, trying to move my head, butRodrigo’s hand was steady and with him standing to the side of me I couldn’t reach him with my upper body. I tried to find a more stable place to stand in the pile of carpets.
“If you kick me, I will hit you in the face,” Rodrigo said; he’d read my body language.
Rodina was reassuring Deimos behind me. I didn’t catch everything, but he seemed puzzled that I didn’t want to be his, why I preferred Jean-Claude, and other things that sounded delusional to me. “Any woman would prefer you to Jean-Claude,” she said. The fact that Deimos didn’t call her a liar on that meant he was lying to himself, or truly delusional. Vampires can tell if you’re lying, but not if they believe the lie. He really believed that he was God’s gift to women, no matter who the other man might be, but my man was Jean-Claude, he was my vampire. I reached for him again, and there was the pulse of his power. He was still out there, we were still connected, I just needed more vampires to touch me, and then maybe Jean-Claude could find me. We had a private army here in St. Louis if they could just get to me.
Rodrigo’s lips got so close to mine that I thought he was going to kiss me; instead he breathed, the barest of whispers, “Reach for Nathaniel or Micah, quickly.”
I didn’t argue because Rodrigo was a wereleopard and a vampire. I was the one who had marked Nathaniel and Damian; I reached for them now with Rodrigo being both for me. I caught a glimpse of Nathaniel, wide startled eyes looking up. I heard other voices, high and urgent. “Where is she?” Then Damian was standing beside Nathaniel, hugging him from behind, and the picture was clearer. Them touching each other was fuel for our vampire marks, just like Rodrigo on my end. I let them read my mind. They knew everything I did.
I learned that it wasn’t later the same night I’d been taken, it was the next night. It scared me that I’d been out that long, and the connection flickered.
“Fear,” Deimos said behind us. “What did you do to make her afraid, Rodrigo?”
“She thought it was still the first night she was taken; I told her it was the night after that.”
Deimos’s power flowed over me, riding my fear, feeding it until terror tightened my throat, squeezed my chest, and I fought not to scream. Nathaniel and Damian tried to send me love and positive energy to balance it, but they were scared for my safety, and Deimos’s magic fed on that, too. He overwhelmed the connection, and it broke until it was just me pressed against the wall with Rodrigo’s lips set in a thin line, a slight tremor down his arm. Using him to jump-start me to Nathaniel and Damian meant the fear was filling him up, too. That calmed me. I’m not sure why, but if Rodrigo was still tied to me even that much, then maybe there was something left of his time as my Bride. Death should have freed him from me. Then I felt the warm rush of his leopard, spilling down his hand into me. My panther blinked awake, golden eyes and fur like ink starting to come closer to the surface.
Rodrigo lowered his head just enough so I could see that his eyes were the same yellow-and-gold mix of Ru’s beast. They were identical in every way.
“Where did the delicious fear go?” Deimos said. He was walking back toward us.
I felt Rodrigo’s leopard shut down like he’d turned a switch. I did my best to tell my leopard to go back asleep, because Rodrigo was right; we needed to hide the fact that he had helped me contact my people. If Deimos didn’t already know.
“How did you contact Jean-Claude and an animal just now?” Deimos asked. He was still a little distance away, outside the tangle of carpets, I thought. They were uneven footing.
He could only sense vampire and wereanimal, but not the flavor, that was good. “I’m in a triumvirate of power with him.” I said it like that explained anything.
“Triumvirates are rare and powerful, that is true. Vampire, human servant, and beast to call: Jean-Claude, you, and the local Ulfric Richard Zeeman.”
“Yep,” I said, relieved that he’d been so oblivious to exactly who I’d contacted.
“I felt their fear before the connection was broken.”
“Only night hags can cause fear and then feed on it,” I said.
“Yes, but can they cause sorrow?”
I was suddenly choking on tears. The sense of loss was overwhelming, like he’d carved out my body and I was empty, lost from everyone. I’d lost everyone. Rodrigo let go of me, and I saw a shine of tears in his black eyes before he stepped back. Apparently the sorrow traveled to him, too. Deimos had touched me, and his powers weren’t more; maybe it was that my powers were still stronger through touch?
I felt the carpets shift under my feet as Deimos came up behind me. “Where did the sorrow go? I was feasting on it and now you are calm again. Why?”
