I came up gasping as if I'd been underwater. I was down to nothing but bra and panties, the skirt suit ripped away. My gun with its holster had vanished with the skirt. Jean-Claude's clothes were mostly gone, as well.
«Is there anything your bloodline does that doesn't involve getting naked?»
He laughed, that wonderful, touchable laugh. And I wasn't the only one who reacted to it. Auggie shivered as he gripped my hands. He was still in his expensive suit, even his tie tight in place. He'd behaved himself admirably.
I looked around the room and found it empty except for Asher on the side near the outer door and Requiem on the side near the hallway that led farther into the underground. Asher with his golden hair that hid the scars the Church had given him when they tried to burn the devil out of him with holy water. Requiem tall and pale, with hair almost as dark as mine and Jean-Claude's. His face was graced by a mustache and a small trimmed beard. Though tonight he looked like something big had hit him on the side of the face. They both held their arms up and out from their bodies. I could feel power radiating from them. I realized they'd thrown up the vampiric equivalent of a power circle to try to hold in the ardeur, and the memories. To stop it from spreading.
I relaxed in Jean-Claude's arms, squeezed Augustine's hands. There was a whisper in my mind, «Were there other times?» Was it my thought, or hers? I didn't know, and it didn't matter, because the question came, and the thought was enough.
I was thrown into the middle of a memory that had me clawing for air. Auggie on top, pressing Jean-Claude's body into a bed.
«Non, ma petite, non.» His body pressed against me, all that lovely nakedness, but it wasn't enough. This wasn't Belle's power imposed on me. She'd figured out what I'd only discovered recently myself, that I could borrow powers from vamps if they used those powers on me first. Some powers were more permanent than others, some didn't take at all, but this one was taking. This one was taking, and I couldn't stop it.
I screamed, and Auggie's arms were bare under my hands. But it didn't help. It didn't help.
«Then have all the memory, Anita,» Auggie said, «see it all.»
We were in a room, small but elegant. Auggie sat in a chair. Jean-Claude was down on one knee before him, hat in hand, head bowed.
This Auggie's yellow hair was down to his shoulders. He wore blue and silver gray with too much lace for my taste. «So the rumors are true — you have left her voluntarily.»
Jean-Claude nodded, and looked up. «I have.»
Auggie laughed. «You leave heaven voluntarily when I cry in hell for one last glimpse of it.» He shook his head, sighed, the humor vanishing from his face. «But if you are strong enough to leave heaven I will get you to the coast. I know a ship and a captain that I trust.»
«What is the destination of the ship?»
«The English colonies. The United States of America, they are called now. But honestly, Jean-Claude, does it matter where it goes as long as you are off the continent, and far from her?»
Jean-Claude bowed his head again as if whatever was in his eyes, he didn't wish to share. «I cannot pay you, Augustine, I have left with nothing.»
«It is a gift in honor of your bravery at leaving paradise, not once, but twice. Twice, when I would give everything I have to go back.»
Jean-Claude raised his face, beautiful and empty, his face when he was hiding what he was thinking. «Is it Belle you miss, or the ardeur?»
«Both.»
«I cannot give you Belle, but the ardeur is mine to share.»
Such eagerness on Augustine's face for an instant. A need so raw it filled his eyes with fire like lightning's glow behind gray clouds. Then his face stilled, all that hunger hiding away, but we had seen it. For in that instant, I was no longer seeing the room like some floating phantom. I was inside Jean-Claude's head as I had been inside him and Belle in the earlier memory.
Augustine's voice was as empty as his face when he said, «It is a gift, Jean-Claude. I would be your friend. Friends do not count the costs of favors.»
We were surprised, and had been too long with Belle Morte to trust it. «I would have bargained my body to gain what you offer so freely, Augustine.»
«And that is why I offer it freely. Yes, I long to be with her again. I will love her until the end of the world, but I did not always like her, or what she forced us to do.» His face darkened with memories, but he waved them away, and smiled. «I would have stayed with her forever, doing her bidding, her willing slave, even though I knew her to be evil. I was too» — he seemed to search for a word — «immersed in her to ever wish to save myself, or save all those she wished me to enslave for her. If she had not cast me out, I would never have been strong enough to go.»