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By Root 6982 0

made the screaming stop. I’d done it to save Richard’s family, and because I couldn’t see another way to do it. I’d done it because I never ask anyone to do anything that I’m not willing to do myself. It’s a rule. Of course, before that, my rule had been I did not do torture. That was a line I did not cross, and I’d crossed it. The terrible part was that I hadn’t regretted doing it, only having to do it. He’d raped Richard’s mother, if I could have I’d have killed him slower, but that wasn’t in me, not even for what he’d done. We’d saved them, but before all of it, the Zeeman’s had been like the Waltons, and now they weren’t. They weren’t broken completely, but they weren’t as fixed as when they started, either. I’d killed the men that did it, or helped them get killed, but all the revenge in the world wouldn’t really fix what was broken.

How do you give someone back their innocence? That wonderful sense of perfect safety that only exists for people that have never really had anything bad happen to them. How do you give that back? I wish I knew.

I’d crossed a lot of lines over the years, but one line I’d never crossed until tonight had been I didn’t have sex just to feed. I didn’t have sex with strangers. Byron and Requiem were strangers. I’d known them for two weeks, give or take. I had fucked them because Jean-Claude needed me to feed.

Requiem had moved to one side of the backseat, so he was close enough to see my face and to watch Graham still twitching on the front seat, but not close enough so I could touch him easily. “You had a flashback, didn’t you?”

I nodded, still staring at the werewolf in my front seat.

“Has that ever happened before?”

“Only after Asher rolled me completely with his mind, and we all had sex.” I didn’t look at him as I spoke, I watched Graham’s body begin to grow quiet.

“But Asher was not involved tonight.”

“No,” I said, “he wasn’t.” My voice sounded very even, very neutral, empty. Empty, just like I felt.

“Did you know that you could send that memory into someone else?”

“No,” I said.

Graham’s eyes were fluttering, like butterflies trying to open, but not able to do it. He looked boneless, as if he could have slid into the floorboard, if his body had been a little less solid.

“You spilled it into him, then watched him writhe. How did it make you feel?”

I shook my head. “Nothing, just glad for once that it wasn’t me twisting in the seat.”

He moved to lean against the back of Graham’s seat, a little closer to me. “Is that true? Is that really how you feel about it?”

I moved my whole head to meet his eyes, as if a glance wasn’t enough. I let him see how dead my eyes felt, how empty I was inside. “You’re a master vamp, can’t you smell it if I’m lying?”

He licked his lips like he was nervous. “The last vampire I knew that could do what you just did, did it on purpose. She would recall a memory of pleasure, and she would pick someone to give it to. It could be a reward, and it was, but it could also be punishment. Sometimes she would choose someone who did not wish to feel such pleasures, and she would force them to experience it.”

“A kind of rape,” I said.

He nodded.

“You’re talking about Belle Morte, aren’t you?”

He nodded, again.

“She enjoyed watching them writhe, especially if they didn’t want to do it,” I said.

“You say that as a statement, not a question.”

“I’ve met her, remember?”

“You are exactly right. She loved watching prim, proper women and men, forced to spill themselves upon the floor and flop about, experiencing a pleasure greater than any they had ever felt before. It pleased her to watch the righteous brought low.”

“Yeah, that sounds like her.”

“But you truly felt nothing. It did not excite you to watch Graham writhe.”

“Why should it?”

He smiled then, and there was relief in his eyes. “That you would ask the question makes me worry less about you.”

“Worry how?” I asked.

“It has been speculation for centuries whether Belle was formed into the type of,” he seemed to search for a word, “creature she was by the ardeur and her powers running to flesh and