I shook my head. The physical movement helped. I shook off the memories. They faded, but it didn't change what I'd seen, what I knew. "You know how to save him, don't you?"

"How badly do you want to save him, Anita?" His voice wasn't neutral now, it was almost angry.

"I brought him down here, Asher, I put him in danger. I'm supposed to protect him."

"I thought he was supposed to be your bodyguard," Asher said.

"He's walking food, Asher. You know that. Nathaniel can't even guard himself."

Asher let out his breath in a long sigh. "Nathaniel is a pomme de sang."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"It means apple of blood. It is a sobriquet among the Council for willing food."

Damian finished the thought. "The vampire that feeds from a pomme de sang is duty bound to protect them, like a shepherd keeping the wolf from his sheep." Damian looked at Asher while he said it, and it was not a friendly look. They were fighting about something, but there was no time.

I touched Asher's arm. It felt stiff, wooden, not even alive. He was drawing away from me, away from the room, away from what was happening. He was going to let Nathaniel die without even trying. Unacceptable.

I made myself grip that wooden, unalive arm. I hated it when Jean-Claude felt like this. It was a reminder of what he was, and what he wasn't. "Don't let him die, not like this. Please, mon chardonneret."

He jumped like I'd hit him when I used the old nickname that Jean-Claude had used so many years ago. It meant literally, my goldfinch, which sounded silly in English. But the look on Asher's face wasn't silly. It was almost shocked.

"No one has called me that in over two hundred years." His arm softened under my hand, feeling warm, alive again.

"I don't beg often, but for this I will."

"He means so much to you?" Asher asked.

"He's everyone's victim, Asher. Someone has to give a damn about him. Please mon -- " He put his fingers over my lips.

"Don't say it, Anita, don't ever say it again unless you mean it. I will save him, Anita, for you."

I felt like I was missing something. I could remember Jean-Claude's pet name for Asher but I couldn't remember why Asher was afraid to try to heal Nathaniel. As I watched him walk to the bed, golden hair trailing like a glittering veil across his shoulders, that missing memory seemed very important.

Asher held his hand out to Damian. "Come, my brother, or does the famed courage of the Vikings fail you now?"

"I was slaughtering your ancestors before you were a gleam in your great-granddaddy's eye."

"Shit, this is dangerous, isn't it?" I asked.

Asher knelt beside the bed. He looked back at me, the golden hair sliding over the scarred side of his face, hiding it. He knelt, all golden perfection, and smiled, but it was bitter. "We can take the corruption into ourselves, but if we are not powerful enough, it will enter us, and we will die, but your precious wereleopard will be saved either way."

Damian crawled onto the far side of the bed, moving Zane away from his spot by Nathaniel's head. Nathaniel had stopped screaming. He lay very still, skin pale, shiny with sweat. His breath came in shallow pants. The wounds on his chest were oozing pus. There was a smell in the room now, faint but growing. The bite on his neck still seemed solid, but the skin of his neck was a deep blackish green like a bruise that was killing deep.

"Asher," I said.

He looked at me, one hand running along Nathaniel's bare thigh.

"Damian's not a master."

"I cannot save your leopard by myself, Anita. Who would you save? Which will you sacrifice?"

I looked at Damian. His green eyes were human again. He looked very mortal, curled beside Nathaniel.

"Don't make me choose."

"But it is a choice, Anita. It is a choice."

I shook my head.

"Do you want me to save him?" Damian asked.

I met his gaze, and didn't know what to say.

"His pulse is very weak," Cherry said. "If you're going to do something, you better do it soon."

"Do you want me to save him?" Damian asked again.

Nathaniel's fast, gasping breath was the only sound in the sudden silence. They all looked at me. Waited for me to decide. And I couldn't decide. I felt my head nod, almost as if I wasn't doing it. I nodded.

The vampires began to feed.

A feeding takes longer in real life than it does in the movies. Either it's too quick or they do a fade like a 1950s sex scene. We all stood around the room and watched. The room was quiet enough that you could hear the vampires making small, wet noises as they fed.

Cherry knelt by the head of the bed. She checked Nathaniel's wrist pulse periodically. The rest of us had moved farther away. I ended up on the far side of the room, leaning my butt on the desk. I was working very hard at not looking at the bed. Everyone moved around the room, restless, embarrassed, I thought.

Jason came to stand beside me, leaning on the desk. "If I didn't know his life was at stake, I'd be jealous."

I looked at him, trying to tell if he was teasing. There was a look in his eyes, a heat, that said he was not. It made me look over at what was happening.

Damian had drawn Nathaniel's body into his arms, his lap, so that he cradled the smaller man almost the full length of his body. Parts of Damian's body were lost to sight behind Nathaniel's naked body. His arm cradled the smaller man's chest against the green silk shirt. The pus had soaked into the cloth in blackening streaks. Nathaniel's face was pressed by one pale hand into the vampire's shoulder. Damian had come from behind for the neck strike. You could see the top of his bloodred hair, his mouth locked over the wound. Even from where I stood, I could see Damian's jaws swallowing.

Asher was still kneeling on the floor, one of Nathaniel's pale legs flung outward so his foot hung in empty air. Asher's face was buried in the man's inner thigh, so close to the groin that Nathaniel's slack genitalia touched the side of his face. Asher moved his head slightly and a spill of golden hair flung over Nathaniel's groin. It didn't hide it so much as have him peeking out through it.

A blush flowed over my face so hard and fast I was almost dizzy. In turning away, I caught a glimpse of myself in the room's only mirror. My face was burning. My eyes looked wide and surprised. It was junior high all over again, stumbling on couples under the bleachers, hearing their laughter chase me into the night.

I stared at myself in the mirror and got a grip. I was not fourteen anymore. I was not a child. I was not a virgin. I could do this with a modicum of grace. Couldn't I?

Jamil had moved to the farthest corner of the room. He was sitting there, arms tucked around his knees, face set in harsh lines, angry. He wasn't enjoying the show, either.

Zane had moved back to lean against the wall, arms crossed. He was looking at the floor as if there was something very interesting on it.

Jason was still sitting against the desk, watching the show. I looked at him without turning around. "You do realize that you're the only one who seems to be enjoying the view."

He shrugged, grinning. "It's a nice view."

I raised my eyebrows. "Don't tell me you're gay."

"Don't tell me you care," he replied.

My eyebrows went up a little farther. "My heart is breaking. I'll have to burn all my lingerie." I kept watching his face. He was smiling but not like it was a joke.

"Are you saying all that teasing is just an act?" I asked.

"Oh, no, I like women. But, Anita, almost none of the vampires in Jean-Claude's inner circle are women. I've been acting as a pomme de sang for two years. That's a lot of fangs sinking into your body."