He was probably right, but what could I do? "She let the girls go."
"You do not know that, ma petite. Have you seen them alive?" He had a point.
"Necromancer." Janos's voice jerked me back to him. Serephina lay propped on the throne beside him. Blood had drenched the white dress, turning it black, plastering it to her thin body.
"Come, necromancer," Janos said. "Come now, or the human suffers."
I started forward and Jean-Claude yelled, "No!"
Janos slashed outward with one pale spider-hand, just above Larry's body. Larry's white shirt sliced open, and blood soaked it. He couldn't scream with the gag, but if Janos hadn't held him, he'd have fallen.
"Drop all your weapons and come to us, necromancer."
"Ma petite, do not do this. I beg you."
"I have to do this, Jean-Claude. You know that."
"She knows that," he said.
I looked at him, struggling helplessly under three times his body weight in vampires. It should have been ridiculous, but it wasn't.
"She doesn't just want you for herself. She doesn't want me to have you. She will take you to spite me."
"I invited you to come play this time, remember?" I said. "It's my party."
I walked towards Janos. I tried not to look behind him, not to see what else I was moving towards.
"Ma petite, don't do this. You are an acknowledged master. She cannot take you by force. You must consent. Refuse."
I just shook my head and kept going.
"Your weapons first, necromancer," Janos said.
I laid both guns on the floor.
Larry was shaking his head furiously. He made little protesting noises. He struggled, failing to his knees. Janos had to release his grip on his neck to keep from strangling him.
"Now your knives," Janos said.
"I don't..."
"Do not try to lie to us here and now."
He had a point. I put the knives on the floor.
My heart was hammering so hard I could barely breathe. I stopped just in front of Larry. I stared into Larry's blue eyes. I pulled out the gag, somebody's silk scarf.
"Don't do it. God, Anita, don't do it. Not for me. Please!"
Fresh slashes cut his shirt; more blood flowed. He gasped, but didn't scream.
I looked up at Serephina. "You said this slashing only works with an aura of power."
"He has his own aura," Janos said.
"Let him go. Let them all go, and I'll do it."
"Do not do this for me, ma petite."
"I'm doing it for Larry; doesn't cost any more to throw everybody in."
Janos glanced at Serephina. She was slumped to one side, eyes half-closed. "Come to me, Anita. Let me touch your arm, and they will release them all, my word, one master to another."
"Anita, no!" Larry struggled not to get away but to come after me.
Janos slashed his hand through the air, and the sleeve of Larry's jacket flew with blood. Larry screamed.
"Stop it," I said. "Stop it." I stalked towards him. "Don't touch him again. Don't ever touch him again."
I spit the last words in his face, staring up into his dead eyes and feeling nothing. A hand brushed my arm, and I jerked, gasping. I'd let anger carry me those last few steps. What I was about to do scared me too much to think about it.
Serephina had lost a glove. It was her bare hand that encircled my wrist, not too tight, not painful in the least. I stared at her hand on my arm and couldn't talk past the beating of my own heart.
"Release him," she said.
The minute Janos let him go, Larry tried to come to me. Janos gave him a casual slap that knocked him to the floor and sent him skidding back a couple of yards.
I stayed frozen with her hand on my arm. For one awful moment I thought they'd killed him, but he moaned and tried to get back up.
I glanced past Larry, and met Jean-Claude's eyes. He'd been after me for years; now here I was letting another master vamp sink her fangs into me.
Serephina jerked me to my knees, squeezing the bones of my arm so hard I thought she'd broken it. The pain brought me up to meet her eyes. They were solid perfect brown, so dark they were nearly black. Those eyes smiled at me gently.
I smelled my mother's perfume, her hair spray, her skin. I shook my head. It was a lie. It was all a lie. I couldn't breathe. She knelt over me, and when her face came forward it was my mother's thick, black hair that fell against my cheek.
"No! It's not real."
"It can be as real as you want it to be, Ni?a." I stared up into those eyes, and I fell down the long black tunnel of her eyes. I fell towards that tiny flame. I reached towards it. It would warm my flesh, comfort my heart. It would be all things, all people, everything to me.
Distant and dreamlike I heard Jean-Claude scream my name, "Anita!" But it was too late. Her fire warmed me, made me feet whole. The pain was such a small price to pay.
The black tunnel collapsed behind me until there was nothing but the darkness and the flicker of Serephina's eyes.
Chapter 39
I dreamed. I was very small. Small enough that I fit all in my mother's lap, only my feet stuck off the edge of her knees. When she wrapped her arms around me I was so safe, so sure that nothing could ever hurt me as long as Mommy was here. I laid my head against her chest. I could hear the beat of her heart against my ear. A strong, sure rhythm that pounded louder and louder against my face.
The sound woke me. But I wasn't awake. The darkness was so complete it was like being blind. I lay in my mother's arms in the dark. I'd fallen asleep in bed with her and Dad. Her heart pounded against my ear, and the rhythm was wrong. Mommy had a heart murmur. The beat of her heart was a fraction of a second slow, a hesitation, then two quick thumps to catch up. The heart beating against my skin was as regular as a clock.
I tried to raise up, off her, and bumped my head against something hard and firm. My hands slid over the body that I was pinned to. I touched a satin dress with smooth jewels sewn into it. I lay there in the absolute dark and tried to roll off her. I slid into the crook of her arm. Her na**d flesh slid along my bare shoulders, boneless as the dead, but her heart filled the darkness even with me struggling not to touch her.
Our bodies were molded against each other. It was not a coffin built for two. Sweat broke out on my skin in a rush. The dark was suddenly chokingly close, hot. I couldn't breathe. I tried to roll onto my back. Tried to roll off her, and I couldn't. There wasn't room.
Every small struggle made her boneless body move, jiggling the soft, loose flesh. I couldn't smell my mother's perfume anymore. I smelled old blood, and a stale, neck-ruffling smell that I'd smelled before. Vampires.
I screamed and tried to do a push-up to get some distance, and the lid moved. I stayed on my arms, shoving my back into the satin and wood. The lid slammed backwards, and I was suddenly straddling her body, my upper body raised in a half push-up.
Dim light edged the lines in her face. The careful makeup looked wrong, like a badly made-up corpse. I scrambled out of the coffin, nearly falling to the floor.
Serephina's coffin sat on the stage in the Bloody Bones bar and grill. Ellie lay curled at the base of the stage. I stepped around her, half-expecting her to grab at my ankles, but she did not move. Not even to breathe. She was the newly dead, and with the sun up she was truly dead.
Serephina wasn't breathing either, but her heart was pounding, beating, alive. Why? For my comfort? Because of my touch? Hell, I didn't know. If I got out, I'd ask Jean-Claude. If he was alive. If she had kept her word.
Janos lay in the middle of the floor, on his back, hands folded on his chest. Bettina and Pallas were snuggled up against him, one on either side. A coffin lay on the floor. I had no way of knowing what time of day it was. I would have bet that Serephina didn't have to sleep all day. I was getting out of here.
"I told her you wouldn't sleep all day."
The voice jerked me around. Magnus was behind the bar, leaning his elbows on its smooth surface. He was slicing a lime with a very sharp-looking knife. He looked at me with his green-blue eyes. His long auburn hair spilled around his face. He straightened up suddenly, stretching his back. He was wearing one of those frilly shirts that you rent for wearing with a tux. The shirt was pale green and brought out the green in his eyes.
"You scared me," I said.
He leaped over the bar easily, landing on his feet light as a cat. He smiled, and it wasn't a friendly smile. "I didn't think you scared that easy."