I won them back with a kiss, a touch. They poured from the pews, and I moved among them. Damian and Nathaniel helped me, moving into the crowd, touching, a kiss here and there. There was a gentleness to the ardeur that I had never felt before. Columbine's power died under a wave of kindness. A wave of touch, and chaste kisses. A wave of offering help. We will save you. We will take away your pain. She should have remembered that people have given everything they own, everything they are, to be taken care of, and to have their pain gone. It's the lure of cults: the promise of a good family; it's what people think love is, but love isn't absence of pain, it's a hand to hold while you're going through it.
Columbine screamed her frustration, and she broke the pact. She reached out to Giovanni. I felt her touch him. Not the hand that she took, but her power. The power that we had been pushing back suddenly took a leap. I felt it like a huge tidal wave rising above us. I turned and looked up as if there should be something to see, but there was nothing. Then that nothingness hit. It was like standing in the middle of a whirlwind of fire. Every breath was agony, death, but you had to breathe. Power seared down my throat, and I fought to scream, but there was no air. There was nothing but pain.
A voice came out of that pain and said, "I will make the pain stop. Be mine, and it will stop." I screamed my defiance to that voice in my head, but it was the kind of pain that eventually would break you. Eventually, you'd simply say yes, anything, everything, just to make it stop.
Vaguely, I felt the carpet of the floor underneath me. I knew I was writhing on it, but the pain ate all other sensations. My vision ran in streamers, sliding images, as if my eyes could not see past the pain. Hands tried to hold me down, but my body wouldn't be still. It hurt too much to be still.
The voice in my head said, "Let go, and it will feel so good. Just let go. Let go. They are strangers to you; let me have them, Anita. Let them go."
I didn't even know who "them" was. There was nothing but the pain, and some part of me that would not give in. It was as if everything underneath my skin had turned to fire and was trying to burn its way out.
Hands held me down, and there were enough hands that I had to feel them. They were firm and real, and it was like an anchor in the pain. I could feel the hands, feel that they were real. Which meant… Light, burning light, the sun dazzled my eyes, and I burned.
I screamed, and something covered my mouth. Lips, a kiss, and down that kiss was the sweet musk of leopard. My leopard rose to that scent. The sun was warm, and good, not a burning thing. I rose with Micah's beast, two black furred creatures that writhed and danced, and rose up and up, toward the light. The pain fell away as I remembered fur and claw, and teeth, and meat. I wasn't a vampire, not really. I was nothing that she could make burn. Her power only worked on the dead. I was reminded that I was very much alive.
I blinked up into Micah's face from inches away. He was lying on top of me, his hands trapping my face between them. I couldn't turn my head to see who was leaning weight on my arms and legs, but there were a lot of hands. I smelled wolf and hyena and human. I scented the air before I tried to see who was holding me down.
Micah stared down at me with his leopard eyes. "Anita?" He said my name like a question.
"I'm here," I whispered.
Micah crawled off of me. I could see Edward on my right arm now. Olaf was on my right leg, and Remus was on my left leg. Graham was on my left arm. I turned back to the men who were still pinning me. "You can let me up now."
"Not yet," Edward said. I realized he was up on all fours, putting his full body weight on just the one arm. I wondered how hard he had had to work to hold me down.
"You acted as if you were about to shift," Remus said, from where he had my left leg pinned.
"If there is another animal left, we cannot let go," Olaf said. The big man, almost as big in human form as Graham's animal form, seemed very serious about holding my leg down. I think the strength had impressed even Olaf. What the hell had I done?
I wanted to argue, but the looks on everyone's face said that I had scared them, or at least impressed them all. Impressed in a bad way. Nothing I could say would make them let up, but I so did not want to be spread-eagled on the ground, held down, sort of helpless in the middle of a fight.
"Our servants have fought, Jean-Claude, and mine is still standing."
"But ma petite won, Columbine. She withstood Giovanni's power. All the pain you caused her, and she did not let you use her to own the other vampires. They are still mine. You cannot feed upon their powers, as you had planned."
I could turn my head and see Jean-Claude on the stage, but Columbine was just a voice out of sight. I needed to be at his side. Call it a hunch, but bad things were coming. You could feel it in the air.
"Someone has talked out of turn," she said.
"I felt your power, Columbine, felt it forming them into a great fire to feed your power. No one had to bear tales for me to understand what you meant to do. You can take other vampires and make of their powers one great weapon."
"Yes," she said.
"But ma petite stopped you from taking these little vampires and forming them into your army, your source of power. What will you do now that you cannot win power in this way?" His voice breathed through my head, "You beside me would be well, ma petite."
I whispered, "Trying. Let me up, boys."
Power breathed through the church. It sought to feed your doubts, no, to feed on them. I'd met vampires who could feed on lust, on fear, but never one who fed on doubt. Dear God, she fed on it, and she could cause it, just like the vamps who fed off lust and fear. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the certainty that we would lose. Everyone was going to die, and there was nothing I could do about it.
"God." Remus almost moaned it. He had his head in his hands. Edward and Olaf seemed the least affected. Micah reached out to me. I let him draw me into the circle of his arms, let myself sink into the strength of him, but the doubts didn't go away. I was suffocating in my doubts. People cried out, some begged for it to stop. I heard one man say, "Anything, anything, just stop it, stop it." There was more than one way to win this fight.
Nathaniel crawled to us. He reached out, head hanging down. I touched his hand and a surge of power knocked back the doubts. He raised his face and gave me the full look of those beautiful eyes. His face brightened like the sun coming from behind a cloud. He said, "I believe in you."
I drew him into the circle of Micah's body. "You make me believe in myself." As it had earlier, Nathaniel's touch chased back the doubts. His unwavering certainty kept us both safe from her. Even sitting in the room with her, her doubts could not get past the certainty that Nathaniel gave me.