Cerulean Sins( Anita Blake - 11 )(136)

I rubbed my hands up and down on my arms, wishing the silk and velvet wasn't there. I needed to touch my own skin, with my own hands. The cave was around fifty degrees, I needed the long sleeves, but I needed the skin contact more. I looked up to the towering ceiling above us, and the darkness that seemed to press down from it, hovering over the gaslight, pressing at the edges of the glow like a dark hand.

I sighed. "It's the dark," I said, at last.

Jean-Claude came to stand next to me; he made no immediate move to touch me, because I'd drawn away once. I'd taught him caution. He looked up briefly at the ceiling, then back to study my face. "What of it, ma petite?"

I shook my head and tried to put it into words, while I huddled into myself, as if I could hold in the warmth. I was wearing a cross. The silver chain traced down my neck into the generous cleavage revealed by the low-necked dress. There was a piece of black masking tape over the silver cross itself, so that it wouldn't spill out at the wrong moment. After the earlier visits from Belle and Mommy Dearest, I was not going anywhere without a holy item on me. I wasn't sure what that might mean to having sex with Jean-Claude, or any vampire, but for the short term, I wasn't sure that any sex was worth the risk.

Jean-Claude touched my hand gently. I jumped, but didn't move away. He took that as an invitation. He'd always taken anything that wasn't an outright rebuke as an invitation. He moved to stand behind me, putting his hands over mine where I still gripped myself. "Your hands are chilled." He pressed me in the circle of his body, arms sliding around me, pinning me gently against him.

He rested his cheek against the top of my head. "I ask again, ma petite, what is the matter?"

I settled into the circle of his arms, relaxing by inches against him, as if my very muscles couldn't stand the thought of giving in to anything soft, or comforting. I ignored the question and asked again, "Why are there plates on the floor?"

He sighed and held me close. "Do not be angry, because there is nothing I can do to change this. I knew you would not like it, but Belle is old-fashioned."

Asher came to join us. "Her original request was to put humans on large trays, like suckling pigs, bound and helpless. Then everyone could have picked a vein and enjoyed."

I turned my head against the velvet of Jean-Claude's coat, so I could stare at Asher's face. "You're joking, right?"

The look on his face was enough. "Shit, you aren't." I rolled my head up so I could look at Jean-Claude. He obligingly looked down at me. His face was more unreadable, but I was pretty sure Asher hadn't lied.

"Oui, ma petite, she suggested three humans would be enough for all of us."

"You can't feed this many vampires off of three people."

"Not true, ma petite," he said, softly.

I kept looking at him, until he looked away. "You mean drain them dry from multiple bites."

"Yes, yes, that is what I mean." He sounded tired.

I forced myself to settle back into his suddenly tense arms, and sighed. "Just tell me, Jean-Claude, I believe you that Belle insisted on it, whatever it is. I believe you that she wanted worse things done, just tell me."

He bent his head so that he whispered against my hair, his warm breath touching my ear. "When you have steak, do you invite the cow to sit at table with you?"

"No," I said, then turned my head to the side so I could see his face. The look in his eyes was enough. "You don't mean..." He did mean. "So who's sitting on the floor?"

"Anyone who is food," he said.

I gave him a look.

He spoke quickly to the look in my eyes. "You will be seated at table, ma petite, just as Angelito will sit at table."

"What about Jason?"

"Pomme de sangs will eat from the floor."

"So Nathaniel, too." I said.

He gave a small nod and let me see how worried he was about how I'd take all this.

"If you were this worried about how I'd react, why didn't you warn me ahead of time?"

"In truth, there has been so much happening that I forgot. This was once very normal for me, ma petite, and Belle holds with the old ways. There are older still than she, who would not even allow the food to sit on the floor." He shook his head, hard enough that his hair touched my face, smelling of his cologne and that indefinable something that was simply his scent. "There are banquets, ma petite, that you would not wish to see, or even know of. They are indeed horrible."

"Did you think they were horrible while you were participating in them?"

"Some, oui." His eyes filled with that wistful look, that lost innocence, centuries of pain. It didn't happen often, but sometimes in his eyes I could glimpse what he'd lost.