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“I don’t know,” I said, and that was partially true. I was beginning to think how to help my people find me; what were my resources? A vampire who was also a wereleopard, and another wereleopard. If I could get Rodina and Rodrigo to touch me at the same time, maybe I could give Nathaniel and Damian a louder way to find me?
He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around so hard and fast that I half fell in the carpets, gripping the chains to keep me from falling to my knees. I stared at Deimos’s chest; I would memorize his tie instead of looking at his face.
“Look into my eyes, Anita, or I will drown you in terror and feed on it, until you beg for me to stop.”
“Apparently I can’t stop you from using that part of your power.” My voice sounded remarkably calm even to me.
“Or did sorrow bother you more? I could drink your tears down like the blood I will take later.”
I tried to hide the spurt of fear, but his power resonated with it. “Sorrow frightens you more, interesting.”
I did not want to be interesting to him, not like that, because he was right; sorrow scared me a hell of a lot more than fear. He leaned over me, sniffing my hair like I was wearing his favorite perfume. “I prefer the way you smell when you’re afraid, but if you do not look into my eyes I will find the key to despair inside you and turn it until you weep broken pieces of your grief onto the floor at my feet.”
It’s funny how you never know what will scare you until it does. My heart sped up, my pulse thudding so hard in my throat it was threatening to choke me. He laid his fingers against my arm and made a sound like a normal person would make over a meal that smelled divine.
“You are so afraid that your skin is cool to the touch.”
I swallowed hard to get past my pulse, and to try and get control of my heart rate. If I could slow that down, the pulse would slow; once that happened my body would calm down and so would I.
“If you control your fear I will rouse it again.”
“There is just no win with you, is there,” I said, and I let my voice have that edge of shakiness that a racing pulse can give you.
“You cannot defeat me, Anita; I am a demigod and in this modern age I will be a god, for there are none left alive to dispute my claim to whatever throne I wish to occupy.” He sniffed my hair again, drawing it in the way a wereanimal will do when it’s scenting for prey. I felt his body react like he had heard something. I had a small spurt of hope. If it was the next night then Edward would be here, hell, Bernardo and Olaf might be here, too. There was no downside to having Edward and Bernardo here to lend their skills to our security guards, and in that moment Olaf coming into the room would have been fabulous, because he was really good at killing things and I wanted Deimos dead.
“He is awake,” Deimos said.
“I’ll get him,” Rodina said.
“No, let them bring him to us.”
I had no idea whothemwas, or whohewould be, but the fear that had quieted down spiked right back up, because I had a long list ofhims that I did not want to see dragged into this room. I was assuming that whoever it was had just woken up the same way I had, from either vampire interference or being drugged. Who else had they taken? Shit. It wasn’t Jean-Claude, Nathaniel, or Damian, but that still left a lot of people I cared about.
“She’s so afraid of who it will be, we must capture more of her lovers so I may drink her fear for them.”
Themore of her loversput my heart rate and pulse higher still until my breathing came in a ragged gasp like I was on the verge of a full-blown panic attack. I didn’t have those, damn it. Then I realized Deimos was using his power to spike my real fear, like feeding small sticks into a fire to keep it going. It was very subtle. Everything else he had done had been ham-fisted, but not this.
“You’ve been feeding everyone’s fear like the guy who attacked Jean-Claude with holy water, and all the fires from the flame of God or whatever they call themselves.”
“I have, and the more fires they start, the more attacks on vampires in your city, the more fear it causes in everyone.”
“And you feed on it,” I said.
“I could sleep for a hundred years here and feed through the small and large fears of the people here. I had no idea that city living offered so much more energy than the country.”
“Don’t get comfortable,” I said, “you won’t be here that long.”
He laughed and looked down at me. I forgot and glared up at him. “Are you threatening me?” he said with an amused and condescending smile that men have been giving women since time began. Then I realized I was staring into his brown eyes and there was no draw to them. I watched the realization of it on his face. He snarled at me, flashing fangs. His eyes glowed, not like brown glass with light behind it as it should have for a brown-eyed vampire, but silver,like glass reflecting light except the black of the pupil was a slit, like the eye of a viper. I remembered Deimos’s snake form that he sent to possess Jean-Claude months ago. Richard and I had thought the head looked like a viper, but the ghostlike snake had only had glowing, silver eyes with no pupil. There was nothing ghostly about these eyes; they were all too real as they stared into mine.
He hadn’t been able to roll me because he hadn’t been using his real eyes. These eyes swept over me like a silver ocean, but not to drown me, as if I was floating on the surface of it, gently rocking in the water that was far too still to be an ocean. A silver lake, maybe, but if it was water then where was the sky? A thick bank of fog rolled in and covered where the sky should have been, and then I was standing on solid ground, but the fog was so thick I couldn’t see what ground I was standing on, even when I looked down at my feet. Then I realized that I was wearing flat sandals; I didn’t own a pair. High-heeled, strappy ones, yes, but nothing like this. I was wearing a dress, but it was like no dress I’d ever owned—loose and lightweight, tied at the waist with rope or something softer and prettier than rope. The dress was pale lavender and the rope, or belt, was darker, almost purple. It made me think of Nathaniel’s eyes.
Nathaniel was suddenly there in the fog with me. I almost cried out, but he put his hand over my mouth and put his finger against his own lips. I nodded, letting him know I understood. He took his hand away from my mouth and smiled. I wrapped my arms around his waist, smiling up at him, and then I realized he was wearing a shorter version of my dress, in the same lavender color. I traced my hands up his bare arms and realized it was a tunic; we were both wearing tunics à la ancient Greece. Jean-Claude used to dress me up in his dream visits, too. I guess everyone likes something familiar. Nathaniel’s auburn hair was done up in some complicated hairdo with wildflowers starred throughout it. He touched my hair, and I realized that mine mirrored his, down to the flowers in my hair.
Deimos’s voice somewhere in the fog: “Anita, come to me.”
Nathaniel took my hand in his and started leading me through the fog away from the voice. I followed his lead, because I had no idea how to get out of the dragon’s eyes.
“Anita, take my hand and I will lead you out of this fog to the safety of my arms.”
