“We need to get him somewhere and get him some food,” Nathaniel said.

None of us argued. We just moved toward the door, getting in each other’s way as we tried to open the door and move ourselves through it. Dev finally let go so he could open the door and usher us through, which saved us from having a Three Stooges moment in the doorway. Damian leaned against the wall in the hallway and started to slide to the floor. Nathaniel and I caught him and other hands came to keep him upright, but we needed a room and privacy with our shared vampire—now.

70

NATHANIEL FELL TO his knees beside Damian and a wave of dizziness took my vision in a stomach-turning swirl. I caught myself on my one good arm and felt other hands on us. I had a moment of not being able to tell if I was watching Domino holding Nathaniel, or if I could feel him cradling me. Was I leaning against the wall with Kaazim holding me in place, or was I kneeling with Dev’s hands on my shoulders? I forced myself back into my body and my mind, but it meant that I had to shield hard from everyone.

Nathaniel gasped, “Anita, you can’t take that much from us.”

Damian’s eyes rolled back into his head and he went completely limp. Kaazim said, “My Queen, you must not cut them off, or one could die.”

I wasted breath cursing, but I lowered my shields. The wave of dizziness and nausea made me collapse, and only Dev’s arm kept me from hitting the floor; unfortunately he was on the side of the injured arm. The pain of it being pressed between his body and mine brought me out of the faint but didn’t do anything for my stomach. I fought to breathe and not throw up as I tried to even out the power between the three of us. Damian had hidden how much energy he’d been using up, but now he couldn’t hide it any longer. He should not have been able to die from not eating. Vampires couldn’t starve to death; they could rot, or go mad from it, but they couldn’t fade like this, like a person who was slipping away for real.

I was looking up into Dev’s face, and his eyes looked almost entirely pale blue; the brown was lost in them from this angle, or in this light. Pride was standing over his shoulder, looking down at me with a worried expression on his face. I smelled heat, hot, as if temperature could have a scent. Heat and dirt, as if ground could be pounded by the sun until it changed the smell of it, the feel of it beneath our feet, and beneath the delicate paws . . . I smelled spices, exotic, unnameable, or unnameable by me. I saw a fox, a wolf, no, no, a jackal. She was delicate and dainty, a beautiful golden-eyed lover both in this form and the other. I had a glimpse of a dark-skinned woman with pale brown eyes, smiling, welcoming . . . and then she was gone.

“No,” a voice said. “No, I will not remember things that have been lost for so long. It is torment and you are not queen enough to force that upon me yet. I pray to my old gods that you never grow to such power, or such evil.”

I realized it was Kaazim, and when I moved my head enough to look he was holding his wrist, putting pressure on it. Damian was sitting against the wall unaided and looking alive again, so to speak. He smiled and licked a minute drop of blood from the edge of his mouth, content as the cat that had eaten the delicious canary.

“Kaazim, your blood is yummy,” Nathaniel said, and it made me turn my head enough to see him cradled in Domino’s arms more on his side than I was, because he didn’t have an injured arm to work around. Ethan was standing over them both, uncertain who to help, or how. I couldn’t blame him on that one; I wasn’t sure what was happening either.

“That should not have happened,” Kaazim said, his voice shaking a little around the edges.

“No,” I managed to say, “it shouldn’t. You’re not one of my animals to call, or Jean-Claude’s. Your memories shouldn’t come across like that.”

He cradled his arm as if it were more hurt than just a simple wrist feeding. I wondered for a second if Damian had bitten him more than he needed to just to take blood, but discarded the idea. I’d have felt it if Damian were losing that kind of control. No, Kaazim wasn’t cradling a physical wound, or not one that we’d given him. It was almost as if it were a remembered injury to match the memory we’d seen.

“Only my master should be able to draw such things from me, and she would not need to, for she was there.” His voice was grim, and matched the bleakness of the look in his dark brown eyes.

“I am sorry, Kaazim. I did not mean to make you sad,” Nathaniel said.

The werejackal looked at him, but his eyes didn’t soften. He looked at Nathaniel as if he hated him. “You did not, but the vampire did.”

Damian’s voice came thick and slow like he’d been woken from a wonderful nap that might have included a sweet dream or two. “I did not mean to make you sad either, Kaazim.”

“I do not believe you.”

“I remember what it was like to lose everything to a vampire, Kaazim. I would not willingly draw such a memory from your mind to mine.”

“It did not seem to make you or Nathaniel sad.”

“The energy was amazing, like being drunk on strong spirits, but your downer was not lost in our high. I promise you that.” Damian reached out and touched the other man’s shoulder, but he jerked back and got to his feet in one smooth motion that ended in the slightest of sways.

“Are you all right, Kaazim?” I asked.

Nathaniel moved out of Domino’s arms and motioned him toward the other man, but Ethan had gotten to him first. Kaazim stood very straight and firm, but he was leaning just a bit against the wall. Ethan reached out toward his arm, but stopped when Kaazim glared at him. “May I take your arm, just to steady you?”