She hopped off the chair, fluffing out the skirt of her pink dress. She came to us, her dark curls framing that forever face. She stopped looking up at Damian. "I liked your friend. It was a waste to kill him like that. I would have kept him safer than that."

Damian's hand tightened in mine. I said, "What did Bartolome do after he locked you in your coffin?"

She looked at me, narrowing her eyes. "Why are your eyes all dark?"

"New power," I said.

Either that satisfied her or she didn't really care. "Bartolome did what he always used to do. He went to find a woman." She rolled her eyes, which was more teenager than the rest of the act. "He's with her now. She seems quite besotted with him."

"Who is it?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't know her name, and I don't care. She won't play with me." She wrapped her tiny hand around one of Nicky's fingers. "You don't play with me anymore, either."

"That's because you cheated," he said.

"But we could have such fun," she said, pulling on his hand and swinging a little the way children will.

"Did I miss something?" I asked.

"You knew the rules, and you broke them." He held her shoulder so he could take his hand out of hers without her falling.

She stomped her little foot, hands on hips; it might have been cute, except that her eyes drowned in brown fire like any vampire's when their power comes on them or they lose their control. "There are plenty of wereanimals that enjoy pain. You could help me do it."

"They enjoy pain for pleasure, but you don't get off on that. You need them to really hurt before you're satisfied."

I looked from one to the other of them. It must have shown on my face, because she said, "If I'd known you hadn't tattled to Mommie, I wouldn't have said anything."

"Now I will have to tell her," he said.

"Someone tell me," I said.

"You know she was Belle Morte's torturer," Nicky said.

"I know," I said.

"She found out that I was an interrogator before I came here. She wanted to compare notes."

"Interrogator is a euphemism for is a euphemism for torturer torturer, right?"

"Right, but I saw it as more of a job. For Little V here, it's a pa.s.sion. Her only pa.s.sion." Just saying it showed that he understood her more than most people did. He got the true brokenness of her.

"Yeah," I said.

"She wanted me to help her by seducing some of the other wereanimals into some bondage s.e.x and then she'd help me play with them, but her idea of play is something that even a pain s.l.u.t wouldn't be able to enjoy."

"They'll heal, Nicky. They'll heal if I don't use silver metal," she said, hands still on her waist, face in that perfect little-girl scowl.

"When she found out I wouldn't help her lure the wereanimals in for torture, she tried to mind-f.u.c.k me."

"I take it that she couldn't roll you."

"There's too much of you in him," Valentina said. She stamped her foot again. "There's no room for anyone else in his mind, or in most of their minds. You're like Belle Morte was, Anita. You fill them up so that they think of only you, but she would give them to me when they disobeyed her or made her mad. I had more fun there."

"I didn't make you stay here," I said.

"No, we have to help Stephen and Gregory. We have to make up for scaring them." Her face went from pouting to serious. She and Bartolome had tried to take blood from the twins, but feeding for Belle's line is a kind of s.e.x, and the thought of the child vampires feeding on them had terrified Stephen and Gregory. It had been too close to their past with their s.e.xually abusive father. When they'd discovered why the twins were so frightened of them, they'd stopped tormenting them and stayed in St. Louis to make it up to the men somehow. We were going on two years and the child vampires were still trying to find a way to cleanse their honor with the brothers. Now, of course, they couldn't go back to Belle's court, because she was on the run with her court.

"If you would just let us kill their father," she said.

"Stephen's therapist says that he needs to handle his father personally. That you killing him might actually cause more damage."

"I know"-she sighed-"and so we are trapped here. At least Bartolome will have a lover now and I still have nothing."

"I never know what to say to you, Valentina. I can't give you people to torture."

"You could, but you won't," she said. She threw her tiny hands in the air in a gesture years beyond her size and stomped to the door. Her hands were a little small for the door handle, but she opened it hard enough for it to slam the wall.

"Nicky, find out what she was hiding on the computer."

He walked over and started hitting keys as the fat cartoon sheep bobbed around the screen.

Damian hugged me, burying his face in my hair. I hugged him back, my face pressed against chest. Nicky made a soft whistle. I turned in Damian's arms so I could see the screen.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Just keep looking at it, your eyes will make sense of it."

Damian put his hand in front of my face so I couldn't see. "And then you'll never be able to not see it."

"Damian, move your hand."

"I have to do it, because you ordered me, but don't look, Anita." He moved his hand, and I looked.

Nicky was right, my mind did see it eventually, and Damian was right, too. It was one of those images that once you see it you'll remember it. I'd seen cut-up bodies in person, but it was still gruesome even by my standards.

"Does she have a file of this kind of thing?" I asked.

He hit more b.u.t.tons. He started opening files and all the pictures were like that. Images from actual war casualties, crime scene photos that had made it onto the World Wide Web, bondage images, but only ones that were serial-killer bad. Image after image flickered across the screen.

"It's all like this," Nicky said. "Even I have pictures of other things; women, weapons, online cartoons. There's nothing but this on here."

"You should kill her," Damian said.

We were both standing behind Nicky, staring at the screen. I noticed that Damian's eyes had gone back to their normal green. Mine felt back to normal, too.

"She hasn't done anything here to earn an execution, Damian."

"I didn't say execute her, I said kill her. The baby vampires always go mad, Anita. I don't know any as young as her that didn't have to be put down."

"Put down? You make her sound like a rabid dog. She's not an animal." You make her sound like a rabid dog. She's not an animal."

He motioned at the screen. "Yes, she is. She looks like a little girl, but that's what's inside her head. That's all that's inside her head. Eventually, she's going to find a way to make what's inside her come outside, and then people are going to get hurt."

"I like Little V, but he's right, Anita. The fact that she's been able to control herself this long is impressive, but the pressure is building up. Eventually, she won't be able to stop herself."

"So you agree with Damian we should kill her?"

He nodded. "You can do it now, or you can do it after she's cut someone up, but eventually one of us will have to do it. She talked to me about what she wanted to do to someone, and trust me, it's all she really thinks about. I think the longer she can't act on the urge in smaller ways, the bigger the urge gets, the more it's going to take to quench her . . . bloodl.u.s.t."

"I can't kill her for something she hasn't done," I said.

"Like you couldn't let me kill Haven for you, because you felt sorry for mind-f.u.c.king me and not f.u.c.king Haven enough."

I glared at him. "Thanks, that makes me feel so much better."

"Either you need to send Little V to another master who will let her hurt people, or you need to kill her to make sure she doesn't hurt any of your people. But either with permission or without, eventually she's going to do this to someone."

"I saw what she could do to people, Anita," Damian said.

"We can't kill her for what she might do," I said.

Nicky hit some more b.u.t.tons and the images began to cycle on the screen one b.l.o.o.d.y mess, one frightened tied-up person after another. "She was sitting in the dark looking at this, Anita. The only real question is, was she just watching, or was she masturbating to it?"

I stared at him instead of the computer. "That's . . . that's sick. That's . . . I did not want to think that, or know that. f.u.c.k, Nicky, why . . ."

"I want you to understand, Anita, this is her pa.s.sion. I wasn't joking. This is either s.e.x for her, or as close as she comes."

"Turn it off," I said.

"You're not going to kill her because you feel sorry for her. Nathaniel talks to her, too, Anita. They don't talk about the same things. He's a bottom to her top, but he lets her talk about hurting him. He lets her talk some of her fantasies out with him, because he understands that she only looks like a kid. What would you do if she got Nathaniel alone? What would you do if she did that to him?"

"Don't do this," I said.

"I like Nathaniel, and it would kill you if something happened to him. Regrets are about decisions that you know you should have done different. Don't make this one of them."

"I can't kill her for what she might do, Nicky."

"I could," he said.

"You like her," I said.

"Yeah, and I understand her better than you do. Anita, if you hadn't mind-f.u.c.ked me into a Bride I wouldn't be trustworthy around your people, either. I'm not a s.e.xual s.a.d.i.s.t. I don't need pain or fear to enjoy s.e.x, but I enjoyed having power over people. The hurting was more about taking pride in my skill at it and getting information out of people. I got off on breaking the strong until they were weak. That was my kick, but everyone breaks, Anita. If you have the skills and enough time there's no such thing as someone who won't break."

"And you had the skills," I said.

He shrugged as much as the muscles of his upper body would let him. "Yeah, I did, but she's better. Do you understand me, Anita? Little V is better, because she's spent the last eight hundred years practicing."

"Anita," Damian said, and he touched my shoulders, making me look at him, as Jean-Claude had earlier, "you know how they say practice makes perfect?"

"Yes," I said, but that one word was barely a whisper.

"Valentina is perfect."

CHAPTER 31

I MADE THEM shut up about Valentina, but the thought that Nathaniel had been letting her whisper serial-killer fantasies in his ear to let off some of her pressure was almost more than I could handle for the day. I wanted to scream at them both that I didn't need this today. That we had enough problems without borrowing. If Valentina hurt him, I would kill her, but killing her after the damage was done would be cold comfort.

But once the video started, none of us were worried about what Valentina might do in the future. We were too worried about what some other vampires had done last night. We sat in the three computer chairs we dragged up in front of the big flat-screen monitor and watched the horror show in nice HD color. Some things are not meant for high-definition detail. It just makes it worse. The vampire's lair was underground, down a short flight of stone steps. There seemed to be moisture seeping down some of the walls. The first body was at the foot of the stairs with some natural sunlight filtering down from higher up the stairs. The first bodies were obvious vampire victims with neat bite marks at both sides of the throat, wrist, bend of the elbow, inner thigh, bend of the knee. The only thing that made the bites bad was that there were too many of them. No human being could feed that many vampires in one night and live.

"It's the same number of bites as you and some of the other wereanimals have," Nicky said. "Why aren't we dead?"

"Wereanimals are harder to kill, for one thing," I said, as we watched more bodies simply lying against the walls or in the middle of the tunnel. They lay as they'd fallen. No one had taken any time to reposition the bodies. They'd killed them and left them for the next victim.

"They meant to drain these people dry," Damian said. He'd gone very still beside me. I wasn't sure if he wasn't sure how I'd feel about him touching me while we watched this, or if the sight of all the bites excited him and he didn't want me to know.

"Why aren't we dead, again?" Nicky asked.

"Jean-Claude used the ardeur ardeur to keep feeding us all energy so that the Lover of Death couldn't feed off our deaths," I said. to keep feeding us all energy so that the Lover of Death couldn't feed off our deaths," I said.

"The bites are getting messier," Damian said in a voice as still as his body in the chair beside mine.

He was right. The bites weren't neat little puncture wounds anymore. There was tearing of the skin around the bites. The next man's neck was torn open on the side; blood had poured out of him. There was a pattern in the dried blood.

"Pause it here, Nicky."

He used the mouse to pause it.

"They didn't even try to feed on him," Damian said.

I leaned forward and pointed at the screen. "Are those the marks of knees, as if whoever tore his throat out knelt and let the blood pour over him?"

"I think so," Damian said.

"Could be," Nicky said.

"Start it up again."

"You mean from the beginning?"

"No, I mean just make it go again."