'That is you. I am made of sterner stuff than that,' he said, and walked farther away from what looked to be a large bathroom behind him.

'You have yet to best me at sword practice or outdo my score at the firing range with a handgun,' Wicked said.

Mischa flushed, hands curling into fists at his side; for a really ancient vampire he was surprisingly easy to bait. Most of the really old ones could control their emotions to a degree that was frightening, almost ... inhuman.

'I have bested you both with knife and long gun,' he said, hands in tight fists.

'But neither of us with sword or handgun,' Truth said, 'and you won't even try to practice with me and an axe.' Truth would have stayed out of it, but the other vampire had said both. Truth would seldom start a fight, but he would finish one. Wicked would pick a fight but leave it laughing without caring who won most of the time. Truth cared more once you got him going.

'Even I've bested your score with a handgun,' I said.

'That is at the range, not real combat,' Mischa said.

'I shoot just fine in real combat,' I said.

Mischa looked almost pained as he said, 'I was impressed with the shot you made on the news. I would not have thought you capable of it.'

'I had to make it, so I did.'

He nodded. 'Needing to make it does not automatically give you the ability to do it, Anita Blake. That you had the skill within you under trying conditions was ... impressive.'

'Bet you hate saying that,' Wicked said.

Mischa glared at him. 'Our Dark Mistress was a weapon; she had no need of guns and blades and training with us. She was more dangerous than any of us could ever be.'

'So does that mean that Anita is more dangerous than all the remaining Harlequin?' Wicked asked.

'No.' Mischa almost spat that one word.

'You said that the Mother of All Darkness was more powerful than any of you; then wouldn't whoever killed her be more powerful than any of you, too?' Truth asked.

Mischa shook his head but said nothing.

'They debate between themselves on how a mere human woman could have slain their dark mistress.' A man stepped out from the adjoining bedroom. He was taller than Mischa by several inches, broader through the shoulders, just bigger all over. He had short brown hair that curled carelessly and eyes that were deep reddish brown. If you didn't know what you were looking at you'd think they were human eyes, but they weren't; they were bear eyes, big fucking ancient cave bear eyes. His name was Goran and he had been a werebear before most of the great cities of the world had been more than a wide place to sell your cattle, and Mischa was even older. If I let down my shields and let my necromancy feel them, they were old enough to make the bones along my jaws ache.

'There isn't a human being in this room,' I said. 'Where's Jean-Claude?'

'He's on the phone in the other room,' Wicked said, and there was the faintest tone to his voice. Whoever Jean-Claude was talking to, he didn't like it.

Mischa had no problem saying out loud what he didn't like. 'Our lord and master is on the phone to the sodomite who has him pussy-whipped.'

'Sodomite?' I asked.

'He's talking to Asher,' Wicked said, 'but I wouldn't let Jean-Claude hear you talk about his beloved that way, Mischa.'

'Wait, you can't be both a sodomite and pussy, or did the slang change?' I asked.

'It didn't change, he's just trying to be objectionable,' Truth said, and gave the other vampire an unfriendly look.

I walked toward the vampire and his big bear of a sidekick. 'I can't argue the sodomy part, but wouldn't it be pecker-whipped, or maybe cock-whipped?'

Mischa glared at me; he knew I was making fun of him, but he wasn't quite sure how. I'd noticed that almost all the older vampires had trouble with modern slang; even the ones who'd mastered some of it hadn't mastered all of it. Slang didn't travel well from one language to another either.

Truth was at my back, and Wicked was moving up through the coffins on the other side of the huge conference table that dominated the main part of the room. There was also a couch and coffee table pushed to one side of the room to make room for more coffins. The kitchenette wasn't movable, so it just took up the room it took up.

'The fact that our Dark Master is begging that sodomite to come back to St Louis is embarrassing to all of us.'

'I let you call him that once,' I said, 'and I let you know I didn't like it, but maybe I'm too tired for subtle.'

'You yourself said that you cannot argue the charge of sodomy against them,' Mischa said.

'What we all do in the privacy of our bedrooms doesn't matter to you unless you're our lover, and since you're not, why does it matter to you what we do or who we do?'

'It is an insult to all of us who call him our prince that he lets another man use him so.'

I frowned at him. 'So you're objecting because you think Jean-Claude is bottoming to Asher?'

Mischa seemed to think about it, and then he nodded. 'I've never heard it called that, but bottoming is quite accurate under the circumstances.'

I smiled, almost laughed, and was just too tired to not say what I was thinking. 'Well, if that's all that's bothering you, don't worry about it, Mischa. Jean-Claude isn't bottoming to Asher; he definitely tops him, not the other way around.' The fact that I was using BDSM terms that really had little to do with actual sex, homosexual or otherwise, went over the vampire's head, way over.

'You mean Jean-Claude uses him and is not used by him?'

'If you want to put it that way, yeah.' I had recovered myself enough to think, but not say, As far as I know, when I'm with them. If they switched the other way around when I wasn't with them, that was their business and I wasn't sure it bothered me anyway, but I hadn't seen it swing that way, but that didn't mean ... oh, hell. I was too tired to worry about something that didn't bother me anymore.

'You know, Mischa,' I said, 'I like men. I like watching the men I love together, knowing that all that strength and beauty will be aimed at me later, so stop being all homophobic. I'm too fucking tired to mess with it tonight.'

I don't know what he would have said next, because the door opened behind them and Jean-Claude stepped out. Mischa gave a look to us, and the look was enough. He would never have said what he'd just said to me to Jean-Claude. The ex-Harlequin might have been saying mean things about Jean-Claude and Asher, but he said them only to me, which showed a lack of respect for me. He feared what Jean-Claude would do, but not what I would do. I filed the thought away for later when I wasn't achingly tired and covered in the drying blood and bits of the dead I'd helped make deader.

Jean-Claude's eyes widened just a bit. 'Ma petite, you have had a busy night, I see.' His French accent was as thick as I'd heard it in a while, which meant he was feeling strong emotions that he couldn't quite hide, but he was trying. I appreciated the effort, because the accent alone meant that what he wanted to say was his version of, You are covered in blood and worse, which means you were in horrible danger and probably nearly died ... again! How can you keep risking yourself like that when I love you so much? Instead of picking a fight he just glided toward me and held his hands out to me, as graceful as if he meant to dance when he got to me.

It was one of those moments when I felt very ordinary, or maybe clunky. I had good hand-eye coordination, and speed, and skill at using my body, but I would never rival his grace and beauty of movement. He had too many centuries of practice on me, and nearly all of it showed as he walked toward me. It was that, that finally clued me in on the fact that maybe fear of my being in danger wasn't the only strong emotion he was fighting not to show.

He'd been talking to Asher. The conversation had gone either really well or really badly. Even as he took me into his arms, I couldn't tell which. I went up on tiptoe to meet him bending down over me, and the moment his lips touched mine I felt the excitement in him. The kiss grew from our normal tender, but fairly chaste kiss in front of the newer guards to one so passionate that I had to work to make sure we didn't cut my lips on the dainty fangs just inside his mouth.

I drew back from the kiss breathless and smiling almost stupidly up at him. I was energized, befuddled, and entirely too happy. It wasn't vampire powers; it was just the effect Jean-Claude had on me.

He smiled down at me so broadly that he flashed fangs, which he almost never did with just a smile. He was so obviously pleased with himself that I knew the talk with Asher had gone well, better than well.

'It is almost dawn, my lord; there is no time for sex,' Mischa said in a voice that dripped with disdain.

Jean-Claude looked at him, and the look was enough. Mischa bowed, sweeping his arm down and close so that you could almost see the hat with its feathered plume that should have been in the hand to go with that gesture. All the Harlequin had great bows and gestures of obedience, but a lot of them also had Mischa's gift for making the gesture only after they'd insulted us or turning the gesture into a snide remark of its own. The only thing that made them worth putting up with was that they were almost as good as they thought they were, and good enough that when Claudia wanted to bring the best with her she'd picked some of them.

Jean-Claude's voice came smooth and nearly devoid of accent, centuries of control sliding back into place within seconds. 'Tell me, Mischa, how did you stay alive being so snide with the Mother of All Darkness?'

There was the faintest stiffening of his shoulders, but Mischa's voice was rich and almost empty of emotion as he said, 'She valued my skills as an assassin and spy above petty concerns of flesh and hurt feelings.'

It was another insult, and perhaps even a threat. I wasn't the only one who thought both, because Wicked and Truth moved up on either side of us, a little ahead, not blocking our view of the other men, so not technically between us, but they were in place if needed.