"Did one of you do this?" I asked.

"I took blood from the bend of his arm," Asher said. "That is Colin's doing."

Nathaniel's body eased against the bed, the spasm or whatever passing. "I told them we were here to rescue Richard. I told them the truth, over and over." His hand convulsed around mine, eyes closing as if he were riding a wave of pain. After a few seconds, he opened his eyes, his hand easing around mine. "They wouldn't believe me."

Cherry came out of the bathroom. She tried to push me gently but firmly out of the way, but Nathaniel clutched at my hand. Cherry settled for making me kneel by the head of the bed. He could still hold my hand, but I was out of the way. She began to explore the wounds on his chest. She was very submissive, almost untrustworthily so, but let someone be injured and it was like a different Cherry rose to the occasion. She became Nurse Cherry, as if the leather-slut-from-hell was her secret identity.

"Do you have a first aid kit in this cabin?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"I've got one in my suitcase in the other cabin," Cherry said.

"I'll get it," Jason offered. He started for the door.

"Wait," I said. "Jamil, go with him. I don't want anyone else taken tonight."

No one argued with me. It was a first. The two werewolves just went for the door. Damian had to move out of the way for them to leave. He shut the door behind them and leaned against it. His eyes had gone a drowning, solid green, like emerald fire. His pale skin was taking on that translucent, almost glowing quality that the vamps get when their humanity begins to fold away. Strong emotions will do that to the lesser vamps: fear, lust, anger.

I looked at Asher. He was ... normal. He stood just back from the bed, that handsome, tragic, face blank and empty. It was so like the expression Jean-Claude used when he was hiding something.

"I thought Colin was either supposed to attack us directly or leave us alone," I said. "No one said anything about this kind of shit."

"It was ... unexpected," Asher said.

"Well, explain it to me."

Damian pushed away from the door, stalking into the room, every movement tight with anger. "They tortured him because they enjoyed it. They're vampires, but they fed off more than just blood."

"What are you saying, Damian?"

"They fed off his fear."

I looked from his glowing face to Asher, then back to Damian. "You mean literally, don't you?"

Damian nodded. "The one who brought me over was like that. She could feed off of fear as if it were blood. She'd go for days feeding off of terror, then suddenly she'd take blood. But she didn't just feed, she slaughtered. She'd come back to the chamber covered in blood, slick with it. Then she'd make me ... " His voice trailed off. He looked at me, his eyes were beginning to look like naked green flame, as if his power were eating the bones of his eye sockets. "I felt it when we met Colin. I smelled it. He's like her. He's a night hag, a mora."

"What the hell is a night hag or a mora? And what do you mean, you met Colin? I thought you rescued Nathaniel."

"No, they gave him back to us," Asher said. "If we did not see him, the message would not be complete."

Cherry interrupted us. "His pulse is thready, his skin is clammy. He's going into shock. The cuts on his chest are shallow. Even two vampire bites in one night shouldn't put him into shock. We heal better than this."

"There is a third bite," Asher said. Through it all, his voice had been utterly calm, as if nothing touched him.

Cherry looked down the length of Nathaniel's body, then touched his thigh. She moved his legs apart. "Of course, the femoral artery. Why is the skin discolored on both bites?" She touched the skin of his inner thigh. "The skin feels almost cold."

Nathaniel writhed on the bed. He let go of my hand, reaching for me as if he wanted a hug. He grabbed one arm, and a handful of my blouse. His eyes were wild. "It hurts."

"What hurts?" I asked.

"The bites are contaminated," Asher said.

"What do you mean, contaminated?"

"Think of it as a poison."

"He's a wereanimal, they're immune to poisons," I said.

"Not this one," Asher said.

"What kind of poison is it?" Cherry said.

There was a knock on the door. Jason said, "It's us."

Damian looked at me. His eyes had calmed down to a soft glow, his skin almost back to the milky perfection that passed for normal.

I nodded.

He opened the door. Jason came in with a first aid kit bigger than most overnight bags. Maybe Cherry had been a Girl Scout in another life. Jamil followed behind Jason like a dark, solemn shadow.

"The kind of poison that nothing in that little bag will stop," Asher said.

I stared up at him, suddenly realizing what he'd just said. "You mean he's going to ... " I couldn't even say it.

"Die," Asher said in that same utterly calm, almost mildly amused voice that he'd been using since they first walked into the cabin.

I stood, Nathaniel's hands clinging to me. I looked at Cherry and she moved in to help me draw free of him. I wanted to say things to Asher that I didn't want Nathaniel to hear. Zane crawled onto the bed on the other side. Nathaniel grabbed his hand and held on. Another spasm threw Nathaniel writhing on the bed. Zane and Cherry held him down, let him use that crushing strength on their hands. The two wereleopards stared at me while Nathaniel thrashed, eyes rolling back into his head. Zane and Cherry watched me. I was their Nimir-ra, their leopard queen. I was supposed to protect them, not drag them into shit like this.

I turned away from their accusing, expectant eyes and moved with Asher to the door. "What do you mean he's going to die?"

"You've seen the kind of vampires that rot and re-form themselves?"

"Yeah. So?"

"One of them bit Nathaniel."

"I've been bitten by one of them. Jason's been bitten by one of them. Nothing like this happened to us." I glanced back and found Jason holding Nathaniel's hand while Cherry started cleaning the chest wounds. Somehow I didn't think bandaging the cuts was going to help.

Jamil and Damian joined us. We stood in a little circle, talking, while Nathaniel screamed. Asher said, "It is one of the rarest of talents. I thought that only Morte d'Amour, Lover of Death, the council member could do this. Colin chose his messages carefully. The slashes are harm from a distance with just a flexing of power."

"Jean-Claude can't cause harm from a distance," I said.

"No, and no one else can spread corruption from their bite. No one else in this country."

"You keep saying corruption," Jamil said. "What does that mean exactly?"

Cherry came to us with white gauze pads in her hands. Her pale freckles stood out like ink on her suddenly pale skin. There was yellow and green puss on the gauze. "This came out of the chest wounds," she said quietly. "What the hell is it?"

We all looked at Asher, even Damian. But I was the one who said it out loud, "He's rotting. He's decaying while he's still alive."

Asher nodded. "The corruption is in his blood. It will spread and then he will rot."

I looked back to the bed. Jason was speaking low and softly to Nathaniel, stroking his head like you'd comfort a sick child. Zane was looking at me.

"There has to be something we can do," I said.

Asher's face was as closed and careful as I'd ever seen it. One of Jean-Claude's memories of Asher went through me so forcefully that my fingertips tingled with it. It wasn't a memory of any one event. I recognized the set of Asher's shoulders. I knew his body language with a familiarity built up of years of observation. More years than I'd been alive.

"What are you hiding, Asher?" I asked.

He looked at me, pale, pale eyes blank, empty, lined with those amazing golden eyelashes like shining lace. He smiled. The smile was everything it should have been: joyous, sensual, welcoming. That smile went through my heart like a knife. I remembered that face whole and perfect. I remembered when that smile had made me catch my breath.