"The reason I was at risk was that I was not a master vampire," Asher said, "but the Harlequin are all masters who gave up their rights to territories of their own to become permanently part of the royal guard."
"Of course they are," I said. "They all have animals to call, and you only get that as a master." I wanted to slap my forehead in a "coulda had a V8" moment.
"Except for Damian, you are taking only masters," Jean-Claude said.
"Okay, good to know I'm not risking anyone else like that."
"But if I understand what is happening, there is a plague of vampires in Ireland."
"There's a bunch of them in Dublin, and more people coming up missing every night."
"But the newly risen are never masters," Asher said.
"So there shouldn't be a lot of them in Ireland," I said.
"No, there should not be."
"Did anyone ever say why the vampires didn't rise the way they were supposed to?" I asked.
He thought about it, looking at the floor, frowning, but finally shook his head. "No, just that it was something to do with the land. That the land didn't like our kind."
"The Harlequin told us that the land is more alive because it has such a high concentration of Fey magic and that's why the dead don't rise there."
"Then why are they rising now?" Asher asked.
"One theory is that the wild magic is fading in Ireland finally, like it has throughout the world. It would fade in the cities first, and that's where all the new vamps have appeared so far."
"I cannot speak to any of that, but I know that what you are describing would never have happened with M'Lady at her full strength. Something must be wrong."
I almost asked if she had forced him to call her that, but I didn't. If she had, she had; no need for me to rub it in. "We're going to Ireland to try to fix what's wrong."
"Do you know why she wanted me in Ireland with her, Anita?"
I shrugged. "You're beautiful and great in bed."
Normally that would have made him smile, but not tonight. He swept his hair aside so that all his face was visible. He did that so rarely that it was almost startling. The scars really didn't cover that much of his face. We all found him still beautiful, but for him the scars were nearly everything.
He dropped his hair but didn't try to hide behind it again. "She wanted this, my beauty marred." He lifted the edge of the oversize dress shirt up so that he exposed the much more serious scars that covered him from chest to belt on that one side. The scars were deep runnels in the roughened skin over almost every inch of that side of his upper body, but the other side was still smooth and perfect as it was the day that Jean-Claude met him. I'd shared some of those memories, so I knew what Asher had looked like before the Church had tried to burn the devil out of him.
"That is her great pleasure, to see beauty that is spoiled in some way. She whispered to both Jean-Claude and me what she would do to us if she could. After seeing what the inquisitors had done to me, M'Lady said she could not have done better herself, that it was perfect."
Jean-Claude reached out toward him. "Do not torment yourself, mon ami."
Asher let his shirt fall back into place. "Some think her kind, because she will collect those who are marred as her lovers. Many of us think we will never be loved again after we are deformed, so it is a miracle to some. I saw her collect a woman who had lost a limb in an accident. She was not a lover of women; she brought her to be the lover for others of us. But she grew bored easily with most of them and if there was not someone who had met some horrible fate as I had, or the woman had, then M'Lady would create her own."
"What do you mean, create her own?" Nathaniel asked.
"She found another young woman, a dark beauty who would have been worthy of Belle's court. She was not when M'Lady finished with her. She kept her as a servant. The torture was sexual for her, but she seemed to enjoy just having the woman near her with that great beauty ruined."
"Damian said that she couldn't bear anyone being more beautiful than she was," I said.
"And you would take yourself, Nathaniel, Mephistopheles, and Damian to her. Even Echo should go nowhere near M'Lady. All of you would tempt her to create her ideal of marred beauty. Nicky would be perfect with his missing eye and scars. He would at least be safe from her adding to his injuries."
"Wait. She had Damian with her for centuries and didn't do this to him and he's beautiful."
"He was handsome enough, but not beautiful as you have made him, Anita. His nose had been broken before he came to her, and even that imperfection was enough to quiet her urges toward him, but your magic has straightened his nose and changed the very bone structure of his face. He is beautiful now, Anita. Do you not understand what she would do to him now if he ever comes into her power again?"
"We will be with the police the whole time," I said.
Asher shook his head. "She thought I was even more beautiful like this, and the woman she scarred was one of the few vampires we managed to make while I was there."
"Are you saying you brought over the woman she'd scarred?" I asked.
"I thought she would die like the others. I thought it was mercy to end her life and free her from M'Lady, but she rose. She lived when I wanted her, and she wanted herself, to die. Ironic, isn't it? God's little sense of humor, or perhaps the Devil's. I no longer know who rules in some places on earth. If God is a god of love, then He cannot rule over the evil that is M'Lady, and if the Devil rules her, he must pray that she never dies in truth because she would rule his kingdom in a hundred years."
"Now you are just being overly dramatic," I said.
He went down on his knees in front of us, raising his hands upward as if beseeching us. "I beg of you, Anita, do not take Nathaniel's beauty to Ireland."
"I am standing right here," Nathaniel said, and he was angry.
"I see you, my flower-eyed boy."
"I am not a boy. I am a man, and you do not get to talk around me as if I'm not standing right in front of you."
"Please, Nathaniel, I could not bear it if she destroyed your beauty. Please, do not go."
"We're going to be late for the plane," he said, and his voice was cold with anger. He started to walk away, but Asher grabbed his hand and mine.
The bodyguards were moving in, and one was touching his ear mic, which meant backup would be coming. There were four of them and four of us; if we needed backup from Asher, then things would have gone horribly wrong. I didn't think they'd go that pear-shaped, so I held up my free hand and waved them back. He hadn't hurt us . . . yet. If we were this afraid of him, then no apology in the world would matter, so I waved them back and hoped I didn't regret it later.
"Let go of me," Nathaniel said.
"What he said." I didn't try to tug my hand free, because I knew better than to try to outmuscle a vampire, but I wanted to pull a little. It was just automatic.
r /> "I love you. I love you both. I could not bear either of you being at her mercy. The thought of it sickens me." The tears that had glittered in his eyes earlier were back, but this time they began to slide down his cheeks. The tears were tinged pink with blood like all vampire tears. The color was faint enough that if I hadn't known to look for it I might not have seen it, but I knew to look and so there it was. It took a little of the pitiful out of him crying to know that his tears were stained with the blood of whoever he'd fed off tonight. Yeah, they'd been a willing victim, but still.
"Don't make me use my safeword," Nathaniel said.
Asher let go of his hand but clung to mine with both of his. "Please, Anita."
"What Nathaniel said."
Asher hesitated and then dropped his hands to his side, still on his knees with tears flowing faster down his face. They were leaving little pinkish trails down his skin so that I could see where every single one of them had fallen.
Jean-Claude couldn't stand it and reached out for him. Asher took his hands in his and started speaking rapid French. Jean-Claude shook his head. "Non, mon ami, they must understand your apology. I am weak when it comes to you, so it is them that you must win back. I will not come to your bed again unless they do, for they see you more clearly than I do."
I felt Nathaniel startle beside me. I glanced at him and he was already looking at me. The love of several lifetimes was holding Jean-Claude's hands, but it was up to us whether they ever got back together. No pressure.
Asher kept Jean-Claude's hands but turned to us. "I miss you both."
"You said that already," Nathaniel said. I realized that he was angrier than I was at Asher, which meant that the other man was, or had been, more important to him than he had been to me. I knew part of it was that I liked bondage and submission, but it wasn't the serious need to me that it was to Nathaniel. Asher had been an almost-perfect top for him in the dungeon. Apparently, Nathaniel missed it more than I'd realized, which was probably a relationship dropped ball on my part, or Micah's and my part?