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She stood in a swish of skirts, that rustling sound that made my pulse beat faster, and my body tighten. Run, run, I screamed it in my head, but my body wasn’t moving.

She walked slowly towards me, her breasts mounded by the tight clothing. I had a sudden flash of memory of what it was like to kiss along that gleaming skin.

I took two handfuls of the long skirt, turned on my high-heeled shoes, and ran. The room vanished, as I ran, and it was a long, endlessly long corridor that I ran down. It was dark, but it was the dark of dreams where even without light you could always see the monsters. Though what lurked in the alcoves along the hallway weren’t exactly monsters.

Couples entwined on either side of me. Glimpses of flesh, pale and dark, images of carnal delights. I didn’t see anything clearly, I didn’t want to. I ran, and tried not to see, but of course, I couldn’t not see everything. Breasts like ripe fruit spilling out of old-fashioned dresses. Full skirts lifted to prove that there was nothing underneath but flesh. A man with his pants around his thighs, and a woman bending over him. Blood gleamed down the pale flesh, vampires raised fangs to the light, and humans clung to them, begging for more.

I ran faster, and faster, struggling against the heavy skirts and the tight upright corset. It was hard to breathe, hard to move, and no matter how fast I ran, the door that I could see at the end of all these carnal nightmares never seemed to get closer.

There was nothing too terribly frightening happening in the alcoves. Nothing I hadn’t either seen or participated in, in one form or another, but somehow I knew that if I stopped running they’d get me. And, more than anything else, I didn’t want them to touch me.

The door was suddenly in front of me. I grabbed the handle, tugged on it, and it was locked. Of course it was locked. I screamed, and knew before I turned around that the things in the corridor weren’t in the alcoves anymore.

Belle’s voice, “Come to me willingly, ma petite.”

I put my forehead against the door, eyes closed, as if, if I didn’t turn around, didn’t see them, they couldn’t get me. “Stop calling me that.”

She laughed, and it felt like sex sliding along my skin. Jean-Claude’s laugh was amazing, but this, this . . . the sound made me spasm against the hard wood and metal of the door.

“You will feed us, ma petite. It will happen, your choice is only in how.”

I turned slowly, the way you do in nightmares. You turn, knowing that the hot breath on your skin really is the monster.

Belle Morte stood in the center of the vast echoing space of the corridor, and through Jean-Claude’s memories I knew it was a real place, this corridor. The people from the alcoves crowded to either side of her and behind her, a huge, hungry-eyed, half-naked mob.

“I offer you my hand, come, take it, and it will be pleasure beyond your dreams. Refuse me . . .” she motioned, and that one small movement seemed to take in all the eager, leering faces. “It can be a dream, or a nightmare. The choice is yours.”

I shook my head. “You don’t give choices, Belle, you never did.”

“Then your choice is . . . pain.”

The mob at her back rushed me, and the dream shattered. I was left gasping in Nathaniel’s worried face. “You cried out in your sleep. Were you having a nightmare?” he said.

My heart was beating so hard I could barely swallow past my pulse. I managed a breathy, “Oh, yeah.”

Then I smelled roses, thick, cloying, old-fashioned, almost sickly sweet. Belle’s voice echoed through my head, “You will feed us.”

The ardeur poured through me, raising heat along my skin. Nathaniel jerked his hands back as if he’d been burned, but I knew it hadn’t hurt. He knelt in the tangle of sheets, eyes wide, the little satin jogging shorts stretched tight over his thighs. They weren’t stretched tight over the front of him yet, he wasn’t excited yet, and I wanted him to be.

I rolled onto my side, reaching for him, one pale hand outstretched. “Come, take my hand.” The moment the words left my mouth, I was back in my nightmare,