But I was of Belle Morte's line, and all our talents are double-edged blades. I felt his power dive as deep inside me as mine in him, and I couldn't keep it out. And it wasn't just my mind. Nathaniel's and Damian's memories flooded to the surface. Nathaniel as a little boy, a man holding his hand, food for a hungry stomach, then hands where… Malcolm broke the memory before he went further. He understood that I could not steer us through these waters. He couldn't break what was happening, but his centuries of being a master helped us skim along the surface and not drown. Damian on the deck of a ship in the sunlight; the wind was so fresh, the sea smelled so good. The darkness of his creator's dungeon. That dark stairway, the screams, the smells. Malcolm drew us away from it. My mother's funeral, and I drew us away from that. It was like blinking; you see something you don't want to see, and you blink, and look away. You look away, and there's another picture.
Malcolm thought of his congregation, and just like that we had images to go with the scents and tactile explosion in our heads. I knew that the girl who smelled of soap and some sweet shampoo wanted to go to college, but was fighting to get enough nighttime classes to complete her degree. I knew that the family of vampires was trying for a house in a neighborhood that did not want them. I knew that the "child" was the master of the house. Malcolm gave us the problems and hopes. What we gave him back was the scent of their skin, the finger brush along a collar, a dozen different aftershaves, twenty different perfumes, from powdery sweetness to an herbal cleanness that was almost bitter. We gave him back sighs, as our power swept over them. We gave him back upturned faces as they shivered at the touch of power that was more sensuous than anything Malcolm had shown them. It didn't have to be sexual, but it was a dance of the senses. To be touched by Belle's line of vampires was to understand that someone's breath against your arm, just your arm, could cover your body in shivers.
Malcolm drew back from Damian's neck like a drowning man surfacing. We all came to the surface of that binding. Nathaniel and I ended in a heap on the carpeted aisle. Hands had to catch Damian or he would have fallen.
"You have not saved them, Malcolm. When I wrest them from you, you will come with them like a dog on a leash." The voice was clear and bell-like, echoing to the ends of the big church. I didn't think it was vampire powers. It was more like a voice that had been trained centuries before microphones existed.
Jean-Claude touched Malcolm to keep the other vampire from answering. He answered with a voice that sounded almost ordinary compared to Columbine's. It was as bland and empty as his voice got, but somehow it filled the room. "We bargained that you would duel the first to use magic. Ma petite, my servant, did not know these rules."
"We also promised not to use our servants to bolster our powers," she said.
"So I was not allowed to contact her mind-to-mind."
"You might have plotted behind my back."
"But you did not attack ma petite, you struck at the congregation. That seems as if you have broken the bargain first." His voice held a shiver at the end, and the entire congregation reacted to it, shuddering. They began to gaze at him, some reluctantly, but they heard him now, felt him now. In that moment I understood that Malcolm had been right in one thing. Blood-oathing to me was blood-oathing to Jean-Claude. Blood of my blood and all that.
"Your servant was using her leopards and her vampire. I could have reached out to my servant, Giovanni, but I kept to our bargain. But if she was allowed to gain power from others, then it seemed fair that I could do the same."
"You can feed off the combined power of all the vampires." Jean-Claude made it a statement.
"Yes," she said, and sounded pleased with herself.
Edward and Olaf were standing on either side of us like good bodyguards. It was Micah who knelt and asked, "Are you safe to touch?"
I knew what he meant: Will whatever metaphysical crap is happening spread by touch? "I think I'm safe to touch."
He grabbed my elbow and lifted, effortlessly. Graham offered Nathaniel a hand. We both swayed a little, but we were upright. Yea.
Columbine had meant to own the congregation and use them like a battery to make her own powers greater. Great enough to win a fight with Jean-Claude, maybe. But now they were mine, and through me, Jean-Claude's.
"You are too late," Malcolm said. "I have given them to my master."
"Oh, such bonds, when fresh, are not so firm," she said.
"Bold words, Columbine," Jean-Claude said, and his voice slid over my skin. Nathaniel shivered beside me. I felt two hundred vampires, or more, react to that voice. One vampire cried out, "Malcolm, save us from this lecher and his whore."
I turned and found the man who had spoken. He was staring at Malcolm, his hand out, beseeching. I started to be angry, but then sensed a thought, and I could feel his fear. Jean-Claude's voice had made this heterosexual man's body react. Just the voice, ordinary words; Jean-Claude wasn't even trying, not yet. How would I feel if it were a female vamp? The thought made me think of Belle Morte. She'd done a lot more than use voice powers on me. The thought brought heat in a rush up my face. I burned at the thought of her body, her hands on me. Then I could taste her mouth, the sweetness of her lipstick. The silk of her skin clung to my fingertips, so that I rubbed them against the leather of my coat to get some other sensation, but it didn't help. The feel of her skin clung to my fingers like a cobweb that I could not brush away.
Nathaniel started to touch me, but I jerked back. I was shaking my head. I held my hands out to all of them, and was backing down the aisle. I needed Jean-Claude, or Asher. I needed someone who understood her power better than I did. Maybe it was just a reaction to what she had done to me in dream, but I couldn't count on that. If she was going to try to take me over, I needed to be near someone who could help me fight.
I don't know if Columbine understood what was happening, or thought it was the ardeur, but she seemed to think it was an opening; a weakness. She attacked the congregation again, but what she'd done before had been a feint. She'd just been pretending to try. Her power cut through the vampires like a burning sword. Where it touched, they screamed, and the ties that bound them to me, to Jean-Claude, seared away. It was as if she literally could cut the metaphysical bonds like rope that was too fragile to hold.
One of the vampires she cut free stumbled into the aisle and fell on all fours at my feet, shrieking. I couldn't feel what she was feeling, but apparently it hurt. A man reached out, gray eyes wide. He screamed, "Master, help me!" He didn't reach toward Malcolm, or Jean-Claude. He was inches away, and he reached for me.
I took his hand. I didn't even think about it. His hand was bigger than mine, so it was his hand that encircled mine, but the moment he touched me, he stopped screaming. He came out of the pew and wrapped himself around me. He held me as if I were the last safe thing in the world. I hugged him back, tight, and the feel of Belle Morte's skin faded under the muscled realness of the man in my arms. The girl on the floor crawled to me, touched my leg. She stopped screaming.
She wrapped herself around our legs, the nameless vampire and me. I was of Belle Morte's line. I knew how to stop the pain. I knew how to bring them back and make them mine.
I raised my face to the gray-eyed man. He bent toward me, folded his tall frame downward. I held his face in my hands and went up on tiptoe. His mouth found mine, and we kissed. His lips were dry, nervous, afraid, but I did something I'd never been able to do before: I was able to draw a little bit of the ardeur. I understood, as if the light had finally dawned, that the ardeur didn't have to be an ocean. It could be a single drop of rain, to wet the lips. I gave that tiny bit of power to him, breathed it into his mouth. I found the broken piece inside him that Columbine had cut. She had cut it with pain and force, and offered them a warning. She had showed them torture, fire, to burn and destroy them, if they refused her. I offered a kiss. I offered gentleness. I offered love. If I hadn't tasted Malcolm's power only moments before, maybe I couldn't have done it, but his intent was so pure, so unselfish, that it was like the ardeur had learned a new flavor. I offered that flavor to them. I offered them a choice. I gave them cool water and safety. She offered terror and punishment. She was threat. I was promise.