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He shook his head. “No, Liv.” He touched her face gently. “I had something else in mind.” He caressed her face, rubbing his hand along her cheek.

She sighed, rubbing her face against his palm. Liv had been trying to get into Jean-Claude’s pants since she hit town. She’d never hidden her plan to sleep her way to the top. She’d been very…frustrated that he wouldn’t cooperate.

She laid a gentle kiss on his palm. “Things could have been so different if it weren’t for your pet human.”

I walked up behind them and it was like I wasn’t there. They were in some private place that just happened to be in plain sight.

“No, Liv,” Jean-Claude said, “it would not have been different. It was not Anita that kept you from my bed, it was you.” His hand closed on her throat. His fingers convulsed in her flesh. He made a sharp movement and tore the front of her throat out.

Liv collapsed to the pavement, choking, blood flowing in a crimson wash down her front, out of her mouth. She rolled onto her back, hands clawing at her throat.

I came to stand beside him and stared down at her. I caught a glimpse of her spine deep in the wound. Her eyes were wide, pain-filled, frightened.

Jean-Claude was wiping his hand off on a silk handkerchief he’d pulled from somewhere. He’d flung the gobbets of flesh to the pavement, where they lay looking small and not important enough to die over.

We both watched her writhing on the pavement. Jean-Claude’s face was that empty mask he wore, beautiful and distant, like trying to draw comfort from the moon. I didn’t have a mirror, and my face would never be his lovely perfection, but it was just as empty. I watched Liv flop on the pavement and felt no pity.

No cold wind came to save her. I think that surprised Liv, because she reached for Jean-Claude. Reached for him, begging with her eyes for him to help her. He was motionless, sunk into that great waiting stillness, as if he was willing himself to vanish. Maybe it did bother him to watch her die.

If she’d been human, it would have been pretty fast. But she wasn’t human, and it wasn’t fast. She wasn’t dying. I wasn’t sure it was pity, but I couldn’t just stand there and watch anyone in such pain, such terror.

I pulled the Browning out of the coat pocket and pointed it at her head. “I’m going to end this.”

“She will heal, ma petite. It is a wound that her own vampire body will heal, in time.”

“Why isn’t her new master helping her?” I asked.

“Because he knows she will heal without his aid.”

“No wasted energy, huh?”

“Something like that,” he said. It was hard to tell through the blood, but it did look as if the wound was filling in; there was just so much to fill in.

“We offer our throat, or wrist, or the bend of our elbow to each other as a formal greeting. The lesser offer up their flesh to the greater as an acknowledgment of power. It is a pretty thing, a polite thing, but this is the reality, ma petite. Liv offered me her throat and I took it.”

I stared into her wide, wide eyes. “Did she know this was a possibility?”

“If she did not, then she is a fool. Such violence is never condoned unless the lesser vampire questions the authority of the greater vampire. She questioned my dominance over her. This is the price.”

Liv turned onto her side, coughing. Her breath rattled in her throat in a painful gasp. Things were re-forming. She was breathing again. When she had enough air to speak, she said, “Damn you, Jean-Claude.” Then she coughed blood. Yummy.

Jean-Claude held his hand out to me. He’d wiped it off, but you never get the blood out from around the fingernails without soap and water. I hesitated, then took his hand. We’d get bloodier before the night was over, it was almost guaranteed.

We walked towards the Circus. The coat billowed behind me like a cape. The Uzi bounced lightly against my back. I’d added one extra thing from the glove compartment. A long silver chain with a cross on it. I’d gotten longer chains when I started dating Jean-Claude. The shorter