He gave me a long look out of those chocolate-brown eyes. «If the shoe fits…«he said, with an unpleasant smile.
I guess we were going to fight after all. «It isn't me you keep comparing everybody to, Richard, it's Raina.»
He actually blushed under the permanent tan of his skin. It was maybe the second time I'd ever seen him blush. «Don't, Anita.»
Micah had gone very still beside me, as if he were wondering if he should take his arm out from between us.
«You back off of me, and I'll back off of you,» I said.
«Richard,» it was Louie, «we had this talk, remember?»
Richard stood up, and his power washed around the room like a wind from the mouth of hell. It actually hurt where it touched. «I remember the talk.» He stared down at me, and there was such hatred on his face. «I tried last night, Anita, I really tried.»
My throat was tight, and my eyes burned. I was already regretting what I'd said, would have done anything to take it back. «I know you did, Richard.» My voice sounded small.
«But it's never enough, is it?»
I took a deep breath and stood up. We faced each other. I wanted to run away, but I stood there and watched the hate and pain on his face, the way his big hands kept flexing into fists. His anger breathed through the room like some sort of invisible burning beast.
«I don't know what to say, Richard.»
«What would be enough?» he asked.
«What?» I asked.
«What would be enough? Move in with you and Micah and Nathaniel? Move in here with you and Jean-Claude? What do I have to do to win with you, Anita?»
«It isn't about winning, Richard. God, don't you understand that?»
«No,» he said, «I don't.» He pointed at Jean-Claude. «Him I get. I feel his pull, too. He's my master, too.» He pointed at Micah. «But him, I don't get him. He's in my place in your life, don't you understand that?»
I nodded, and tried to breathe past the tight burning in my throat and eyes. I would not cry, damn it. «I understand that,» I said.
He pointed at Nathaniel, who'd gone very still beside the couch. «How can you share her with that?»
It was Micah who figured out that he was the one Richard was talking to. «Nathaniel is not a that, Richard.» Micah's voice held a thread of anger.
«Do you fuck him? Do you let him fuck you? Or do you just fuck Anita at the same time?»
The unshed tears were going away on a hot wave of anger. I fed the anger, embraced it, called it sweet names, because I'd rather fight than cry.
«The way you and Jean…«I started to say.
Jean-Claude called the fight. He called it with a push of power that staggered both of us. I nearly fell, and Richard looked ashen. We both turned and looked at the vampire. His eyes were glittering blue pools, like the night sky was on fire.
«Enough of this.» His voice whispered through the room like an echo of bats, bouncing off the curtains.
I knew he was our master, but I'd never felt him do anything like this to us. Never felt him simply throw his power into us and stop us in our tracks. I hadn't known he had it in him.
«We are in danger here, do you not understand that? Most of our guards are wererats. If Rafael pulls them out, we do not have enough guards to keep ourselves safe.» He uncurled from the couch and walked toward us, his long black curls moving in the wind of his own power.
We watched him come toward us like small birds that wanted to fly from the snake, but couldn't make ourselves move.
«I am sorry, mon lupe, that you wish her to marry you and abandon the rest of us. I am sorry, ma petite, that you still love him, and that some part of you wishes you could do exactly what he wants. I am sorry that I have bound you together into such pain. But there is no time for this. We need Rafael and his people. He knows that, or he would not have come like this.» Jean-Claude stood in front of us, and his power pushed so that I swayed in the wind of it. I knew he'd gained in power, but I hadn't understood, until that moment, just how much. «I will pick a blood donor among the rats. I will urge others of my vampires to do the same. You, ma petite, must choose one of his people for food. You must embrace Sampson, or do something for him that will allow his honor to step aside and let you take one of the wererats ahead of him as food for your ardeur.»
He stopped in front of us, close enough that he could have touched us. For the first time in years, I prayed that he wouldn't touch me. If he did, I'd do anything he asked.
He touched Richard's arm, and he shuddered under that light touch. He closed his eyes and swayed. I touched Richard's other arm, and I thought, No. No, don't do this.
My necromancy opened inside me in a rush that left me wide-eyed, open-mouthed. Because it wasn't just my necromancy. I felt it like an offering to Jean-Claude. If he could figure out how to use it, it was his to command while he touched us.
Richard breathed, «Don't, please, don't.»
I wasn't sure which of us he was talking to. I stared at Jean-Claude, and felt my eyes go. I saw the room through that vampiric flame, but it wasn't someone else's powers taking over my eyes, it was me. If there'd been a mirror I knew my eyes would have been filled with a black-brown light of my own eyes, as if I were the vampire.
Richard collapsed to his knees between us, with our hands still on his arms. He whispered, «Oh, God.» I looked down at him, and he gazed up at me with eyes turned to brown flame. Not my fire taking over him, but his own true brown eyes turned to vampire fire.
chapter twenty-one
RICHARD WAS STARING at himself in the bathroom mirror. His big hands clung to the marble sink edge as if he were trying to leave an imprint of his hands on the stone. I'd tried to be comforting. I'd tried to be reassuring. Nothing I said had helped. Jean-Claude had been with us, but Richard truly didn't want to talk to him. He seemed to blame Jean-Claude for this new sign that his humanity was slipping away.
«The glow will fade, Richard,» I said, not for the first time. Since he wouldn't let me touch him, I was left to lean against the far side of the sink and wall, arms crossed under my breasts. I'd already checked on my bra that was hanging by the towels. It was still too wet to wear.
He shook his head. «This is what my eyes would look like if I were the vampire.»
I wasn't sure it was a question, but I answered it anyway. «Yes.»
He looked at me, and it was unsettling to see his tanned and very alive face set with eyes that I'd only seen in the faces of the undead. It didn't match, that life and those eyes. His fear came off him in waves, so that his power bit and flitted against my skin like hot ash from a windy fire.
«You're not afraid of this. Why, why aren't you afraid of this?» he asked.
I shrugged and tried to put into words something I was trying not to think about. «I'm treating this the way I treat an emergency in the middle of a police investigation, Richard. You don't get too hung up on the horrible details or you stop being able to function. You keep moving forward, because you have to.»
«This isn't your job, Anita. This isn't my job!» The air was suddenly close and hot. I was bathed in his power, and it was hard to breathe past it. The wolf that was always inside me now, stirred.
«You're going to raise my wolf, Richard.»
He looked away from me, and nodded. «Mine, too.»
The wolf began to pad up that metaphorical corridor inside me. I shivered and started to back away toward the door. I needed out of this hot bath of power. «You're the Ulfric, Richard. Control yourself.»
He turned and looked at me through a curtain of his own thick hair. His eyes were still glowing, but now they were wolf amber, like twin suns in his face. A low, threatening growl trickled from his lips.
«Richard,» and it was a whisper.
«I could make you change,» he said in a voice that was more growl than word.
«What?» I whispered.
«I can force my wolves to shift. I can smell your wolf, Anita. I can smell her.»