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She nodded and threw the club to the ground. “Colin and Barnaby live, and we will see you again, Anita.”

“I look forward to it,” I said. I was hoping that she wouldn’t notice that my back was pressed against the tree, because I wasn’t sure I could stand on my own.

Nikki nodded, and started to walk away into the dark, past the tree and the bones. She spoke something then stepped through the ward. When she stepped through, the magic quenched, swallowed back into the earth.

She looked at me from the dark on the other side of the quieted circle. We stared at each other for a long moment, and I knew that if we met again she would kill me if she could. She was Colin’s human servant. It was her job.

I slid down the tree until I was sitting in the bones. My legs were too weak to hold me and a fine trembling had started in my hands. I gazed out into the lupanar, gazed out over my handiwork. Some of the bodies still burned, but no vampire moved within the circle. The vampires were dead. All of them.

21

ANOTHER FIGHT , ANOTHER shower. Rotting vampire was not an odor you wanted to wear to bed. My hair was still damp when I called Jean-Claude to fill him in on what we’d done. Okay, on what I’d done.

I told him the shortest version possible. His response, “You did what?”

I repeated it.

Silence on the other end of the phone. I couldn’t even hear him breathe.

“Jean-Claude, you still there?”

“I am here, ma petite.” He sighed. “You have surprised me once again. I did not see this coming.”

“You don’t sound happy,” I said. “You know the news could be worse. We could all be dead.”

“I did not think Colin would be so foolish.”

“Live and learn,” I said.

“Colin was right to fear you, ma petite.”

“I told Colin what would happen if he messed with us. He pushed the button, not me.”

“Who are you trying to convince, ma petite, me or yourself?”

I thought about that for a moment. “I don’t know.”

“Are you admitting you were wrong?” His voice held mild amusement.

“No.” I tried to think how to say it. Finally, I said, “We were losing, Jean-Claude. They were going to kill us. I had to do something. I wasn’t even sure it would work.” I held the phone, and wished that he were here to hold me. I hated the thought that I wanted him like that. That I wanted anyone like that. I hated needing people. They all had a tendency to die on me. But I’d have given a great deal for a pair of comforting arms right at that moment.

“Ma petite, ma petite, what is wrong?”

I motioned Asher over to the phone. “Talk to your second banana. Ask Asher if there were other options. If there were other options, I couldn’t see them.”

“There is something in your voice, ma petite. Something fragile.” He whispered the last word.

I just nodded, and handed the phone to Asher. I walked away from it hugging myself tight. Fragile, he said. Scared, more like. I’d scared myself tonight. Something in the power I released had extinguished the torches around the lupanar. Those of us still standing had moved by the light of burning corpses. It had been a scene right out of Dante’s Inferno, and I had done it. The power inside of me had done this thing. Yeah, scared about covered it.

Damian came up to me. He whispered, “Jason’s crying in the shower.”

I sighed. Great, just what I needed, another crisis. But I didn’t ask questions. I just knocked on the door of the bathroom. “Jason, you all right?”

He didn’t answer me. “Jason?”

“I’m all right, Anita.” His voice, even over the shower sounded strained. I’d never really heard him cry before, but that’s what it sounded like, a voice thick with tears.

I pressed the top of my head to the door and sighed. I did not need this tonight. But Jason was my friend, and who else was I going to send in to comfort him? Damian had come to me with it. Zane didn’t seem the hand-holding type, and Cherry, well . . . if I was going to send another woman into comfort him, it seemed cowardly. Asher? Naw.

I knocked on the door again.