Cerulean Sins - Laurell K. Hamilton [171]
Merle kept trying to drag her across the room. Either he didn’t know the shit had hit the fan, or one vampire was all the same to him. He was about to learn otherwise.
“Release me,” she said in a calm voice.
Merle dropped her arm as if she’d burned him. He backed away from her the way that Bobby Lee had backed away from Musette, with a look of pain, holding his arm as if it hurt.
“The leopard is her animal to call,” Jean-Claude said, and his voice carried into yet another heavy silence. But I didn’t have time to think about silence, because Belle was talking, saying awful things.
“I have been gentle up ’til now.” She turned and looked back at the two dead vampires. “Do you know how long the council has been trying to wake up the Mother’s first children?”
I think we all thought it was a rhetorical question, one we were afraid to answer.
She turned back to face us, and something swam underneath Musette’s face, like a fish pushing against water. “But I awakened them. I, Belle Morte, awakened the Mother’s children.”
“Not all of them,” I said, and immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
She gave me a look that was so angry it burned, and so cold, it made me shiver. It was as if all that had ever been of rage and hatred were in that one look. “No, not all of them, and now you have taken two away from me. What ever shall I do to punish you?”
I tried to speak around the pulse in my throat, but Jean-Claude answered, “Musette broke the truce, and would not concede it. We have obeyed the law to the letter.”
“It is true,” Valentina said. The crowd of black leather-glad grown-ups moved so the child vampire could come and stand near Musette/Belle. Valentina kept out of reach, though. I noticed that.
“Speak, little one.”
Valentina told the story of how Musette had withheld information about the child molestation and what had happened because of it. Musette’s body turned to look at Stephen and Gregory. Gregory was holding his brother, rocking him. Stephen wasn’t looking at anyone, or anything. Whatever his staring eyes saw, it was nothing in this room.
Belle turned back to us, and again there was that sense of another face swimming underneath, but this time I saw it like a ghost superimposed over Musette’s face. Ghostly black hair bled over the blond, a face with more cheekbones, more strength to it, showed for a moment, before it sank back into the softer beauty of Musette.
“Musette did break truce first. I concede that.”
Why was it that my heart rate didn’t slow a single beat when she said that?
Her next words came out in a purring contralto, a voice like fur to caress the skin and ease across the mind. “You have acted within the law, and now so shall I. When Musette and the rest come back to me, Asher will come with them.”
“Temporarily,” Jean-Claude said, but his voice held doubt.
“Non, Jean-Claude, he will be mine as of old.”
Jean-Claude took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “According to your own laws, you cannot take someone permanently away from those to whom he, or she, belongs.”
“If he belonged to anyone, that would be true. But he is no one’s pomme de sang, no one’s servant, no one’s lover.”
“That is not true,” Jean-Claude said, “he is our lover.”
“Musette communicated with me, told me that she smelled your lies, your weak effort to keep Asher from her bed.”
Belle was able to smell lies, too, if the lie was something she understood. No vampire could tell truth from falseheard if it was about something they didn’t understand. If a vampire had no loyalty, they couldn’t discern it in others—that sort of thing. I was going to try and give her something she could understand.
“I didn’t think it was a weak effort,” I said.
Jean-Claude gave me a look, and I shook my head at him. He stepped gracefully aside, because he knew I had a plan, but his voice whispered through my head, “Be careful, ma petite.”
Yeah, I’d be careful.
Belle turned her borrowed body to look at me. “So you admit it was an attempt to lie to Musette.”
“No, I said it wasn’t weak. I found the whole thing embarrassing,