I looked into Nathaniel's eyes just feet in front of me. He was starting to struggle as much as the chains would allow, which wasn't much. Whatever the men were going to do, they didn't want him moving around. My heart was in my throat. I pulled on the chains at my wrists and knew doing so was useless.

"Damian, wake up!"

He startled awake, shoved Roarke, and then hit him solid in the face. Roarke fell to the ground. Rodina and Hamish moved in a blur of speed to catch Damian's arms. Rodina put a blade to his throat.

"This is why we had to gag your Mr. Graison. If you call out to him again, Anita, I will gag you, and I'll cut out your lover's tongue." Rodina's eyes blazed blue as if spring skies could burn. I believed she meant everything she said.

The chain was directly in front of me so that I'd have a good view of whatever the men were planning to do to Nathaniel. Or hell, maybe he'd have a good view for what they were going to do to me. Whichever way the pain went, they meant for us to watch each other endure it. Sadist much?

Keegan hooked the end of the single chain through the chains at Nathaniel's ankles. He tugged the connection, and when he was happy with it, he nodded. The two men holding Nathaniel began to lower him to the floor as Keegan went back to the wall and reached around an outcrop. I could see just the edge of the silver handle as he began to rotate it and the chain started going back up into the ceiling. The two Roane held Nathaniel gently until they were told to let him go. I'd have expected them to use it as an excuse to hurt him, but they didn't.

Keegan moved the chain up until Nathaniel's face was almost perfectly in front of mine so we could look into each other's eyes. He was hanging only about four feet in front of me, out of reach, but not by much. I looked into those lavender eyes, my flower-eyed boy, and my stomach was clenched so tight, I didn't know if I was going to throw up or hyperventilate. There had to be a way to stop this from happening. The thick braid of his hair trailed down from his body like an auburn rope to pool on the floor.

"M'Lady," Damian said, "please do not do this."

"Have pleas for mercy ever moved me, Damian?"

"No," he said, and he tensed in Hamish's and Rodina's grips.

Rodina asked, "Can I slit his throat if he keeps struggling?"

"No, that might kill Anita too soon. I need her terror to open her to me for feeding, and then I will feed on all her power. If she dies before I crack this so-tough nut, then the Mother's power may seek yet another vessel, and that stops here with me."

"If we can't cut him up, how do you want us to subdue him from rescuing his boy toy?" Rodina asked.

"You are the Harlequin. Are you so inadequate that you cannot even control one vampire for a few minutes?" Moroven yelled at them.

"Can we injure him?" Rodina asked.

"No! Now do your job!" Moroven turned back to us, and I didn't want that, because whatever was about to happen was going to be bad, like, nightmare bad.

"You're the motherfucking Harlequin. Are you going to let her talk to you that way?" I asked.

"She's the boss," Rodina said.

"Only because you follow her."

"We follow the Mother's power," Hamish said, "whatever vessel it chooses."

"Enough!" Moroven screamed. She walked around the edge of the wall just like Keegan had, except she didn't make any more chains appear. She came back with a big knife in her hand. It gleamed silver, and just the way the edge caught the sunlight let me know it was sharp. I didn't know for certain it was a silver blade except in color, but I was betting it was, even as I prayed that it wasn't.

"I want you to look into those big, pretty eyes, at that lovely hair and that fit and strong chest, and think upon this, Anita Blake. I am going to make a nightmare of his beauty, and then I will fuck him in front of you, and when you are filled with terror at what I will do next to your two men, I will drink you down!"

Moroven strode to Nathaniel in a swirl of white skirts. Damian and I both screamed, "No!"

She grabbed the thick braid of Nathaniel's hair like a handle to hold him steady. She moved to the side so we could watch each other. She put the blade against his hair and sawed through it. She could have done so many worse things-I knew that-but watching that long, thick braid of auburn hair fall to the floor took my breath. I sagged in the chains, because my knees didn't hold me in that moment.

We stared into each other's eyes, and I watched one lone tear trail down Nathaniel's face. I screamed, not a scream of terror or sorrow but of rage. I lost my shit and cursed her, threatened her, and finally told her, "Kill me now. Because every minute you leave me alive gives me more chances to kill you first, you evil bitch!"

Moroven laughed in my face, then threw the blade down on the floor between us. "Anger, I cannot eat anger, Anita. But I give you my word, when I come back, I will pick up that blade again and I will carve up that beautiful body, or maybe I will take an eye. I want him to have at least one good eye so he can see the ruin of his beauty and your horror at it, but he doesn't need two for that."

I fed my anger as if it were a real fire. I fed it so that it would blaze higher, because she couldn't feed on me, couldn't kill us if she couldn't find my fear. I touched that boiling pool of anger that had been inside me since my mother's death and been fed by every horror I'd seen since, and I let her see it in my face.

"If my using the blade upon Nathaniel does not frighten you, then I will use it on you, but I will find what frightens you, Anita, and then you are mine." Moroven walked to Damian, who was still held between the two Harlequin. "You believe me, don't you, Damian? You believe that I will do everything I have promised."

"Yes," he whispered, his eyes wide, showing too much white around the edges, like those of a horse about to bolt. She touched his face and his personality just slid away so that his eyes were like empty windows.

Moroven turned to me with a smile. "He's afraid for you both. It opened him to me, and now he is mine again." She led Damian up the stairs as if he were a zombie with no will of his own. "Enjoy your last view of Nathaniel's beauty, Anita. I give you my word that the hour I give you now will be the last time you see him whole."

81.

WE WERE ALONE except for the two Roane, who stood to either side of the doorway like good guards. They were both armed with handguns, peeking out from underneath their shirts, which seemed almost un-Irish by this time. In a country where most of the police-excuse me: Gardai-aren't armed, it seemed wrong for anyone else but us.

Nathaniel and I looked at each other. I concentrated on those big beautiful eyes of his and did my best not to look at his hair. It would grow back. It would. But if I paid attention to it at all, I was either going to start crying or screaming, and neither was going to help us. We needed to help ourselves, not hurt ourselves. Moroven was going to do that for us in an hour. I pushed her threats away, shoved the hatred in her eyes out of my head, or as much as I could. None of it helped me. I stared into Nathaniel's eyes and thought how much I loved him. I looked down at the braid of his hair lying underneath him like a promise of things to come, which was exactly what it was. Fuck. I prayed for an idea of how to get us out of here, along with Damian.

Nathaniel rubbed the side of his face against the chain that was across his shoulder; he scraped the gag out of his mouth. He worked his jaws and said softly, "Gag was fastened over my braid."

"Once she cut it, you had slack," I said.

He smiled. "It will grow back."

I nodded and managed to smile back at him.

The guard with the paler brown hair came toward us. "How did you get the gag out?"

Nathaniel answered, "It was tied around my hair, so now the gag is loose."

The answer seemed to make the man uncomfortable. "You should do whatever she wants you to do," he said.

"She's going to kill me anyway," I said.

"There are different ways to die, Anita. Don't let her kill you slowly."

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Barnabas," he said.

The dark-haired guard called, "Don't talk to them."

"If you don't want to watch her kill us slowly, Barnabas, help us get out of here."

He shook his head and started backing away. "I feel sorry for you, but not that sorry."

"Barnabas, get away from them!"

"I'm coming, Tommy." But to us, he said very low, "Don't look to me for help. If she tells me to kill you, I will. I'll make it quick, but I will kill you both if she orders me to."

"Good to know where we stand, Barnabas," I said.

"Stop talking to the prisoners!" Tommy yelled, and started walking toward us.

Barnabas just walked back toward the other man, who continued to berate him for talking too much to us. He made it sound like we were stray puppies that you couldn't get attached to because we were going to be put down anyway. I got the feeling that this wasn't Tommy's and Barnabas's first rodeo that had ended with prisoners dying-fast or slow. There was no help there. We couldn't offer Barnabas enough of anything to get him to betray the Wicked Bitch, and his friend Tommy was even less user friendly.

Nathaniel said, "It would be a shame if you never got to experience just how double-jointed I am again."

It seemed like a nonsensical thing to say, but I knew in a moment like this, it had to be important. I must have looked as confused as I felt, because he whispered, "More double-jointed than Houdini."

I finally realized what he meant: he was almost completely double-jointed. He could rotate his shoulders all the way around and pretty much everything else. It was interesting in the bedroom and when he danced onstage, but in this moment, it might be exactly what we needed. He could get out of the chains, and then he could let me go, if we could distract the guards.

I had to be the distraction, but how? I was wearing lingerie, so sex was an option. It certainly wasn't a fate worse than death or watching while the Wicked Bitch cut pieces off Nathaniel. If I got the guards close enough and raised the ardeur, it might work, but I didn't know if Moroven would sense it. The ardeur could be a flashy power, and we didn't need more attention.

I looked up at the chains on my own wrists. My one hand was almost small enough to pull through if I was willing to lose some skin and bleed myself. Wait. The guards would notice that.

I looked at Nathaniel. "I love you."

"I love you more."

"I love you most."

"I love you mostest," he said, smiling.

I smiled back, took a deep breath, and started pulling on my loosest wrist, hard.

Tommy of the black hair called out, "What are you doing?"

I ignored him, because what I needed was for both of them to come to me and turn their backs on Nathaniel. I put all my body weight onto my left wrist and pulled! My hand moved a fraction in the cuff. If the guards weren't here, I might actually be able to get one hand free, and that would be all I needed to get my other hand free. If the guards would stand there and let me pull on my wrist for about fifteen to thirty minutes while I scraped myself up, I could get away, but I was betting they wouldn't have the patience for it. I was counting on the fact that they wouldn't just stand by the door and watch me do it.

"What are you trying to do?" Tommy yelled.

"Get away," I finally said.

"You can't get away," he said.

I was going to need some lubrication to work my hand through. Lucky for me, my body made something that would work. If I wanted it badly enough. I stood up and started pulling, tugging, and rubbing my wrist against the manacle.

Barnabas called from the doorway, "You're just going to hurt your wrist."

"If I don't get away, she's going to hurt a lot more than my wrist."

The guards looked at each other and then started walking toward me. "Stop doing that," Tommy said.

"Or what?" I asked.

"Or we'll hurt you."

"Not half as much as the Wicked Bitch of Ireland will when she comes back in here," I said, continuing to tug on my wrist.

"Are you trying to bleed yourself?" Barnabas asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Why?" Tommy asked.

They were both in front of me, between Nathaniel and myself. Barnabas glanced behind at Nathaniel, so I leaned my body weight on the manacle and showed them why I was trying to get blood. "See, it moves a little. I think if I had some lubrication that I could get this hand out. Once I get this hand free, then I can just reach over and free my other hand."

"We're standing right here," Tommy said. "We won't let you do that."

"How are you going to stop me?" I asked, pulling harder on my wrist. I was going to have to be careful or I'd end up spraining my wrist before I got any blood to loosen things. I wanted so badly to look past them to Nathaniel and see if he was getting loose, but I didn't dare.

"Don't make us hurt you," Barnabas said, and he sounded like he didn't want to hurt me, but he would.

Tommy grabbed my arm just below the wrist. I think he thought that would keep me from pulling on it. I heard chains moving, and it wasn't me, so I started pulling wildly on the other wrist, which no one was holding. It made a lot of noise so that even I couldn't hear if Nathaniel was moving his chains.

"Stop it!" Tommy yelled, squeezing my left arm hard enough that it hurt a little, but not as much as the scrapes I'd already put on my wrist. I tucked my legs up and let all my body weight hang from my wrists, which surprised Tommy so that he let go, which let me rattle the chains like a fake ghost at a bogus seance.

Tommy hit me openhanded across the face. It was a good hit; it rocked me a little so that I just hung there in the chains for a second while my head and the rest of me caught up. He grabbed me by the front of the nightie and dragged me upright. The nightie wasn't a shirt; it wasn't even a dress, so he ended up flashing everything below my waist. Women can complain about men staring at their breasts, but trust me, there are worse things to have stared at.

There was that frozen moment when the men looked down and I could almost feel the click in Tommy's head, as he thought of something else he could do to me. I tasted blood when I swallowed. He'd busted my lip a little when he hit me, and the taste of my own blood made the beasts inside me rise like heat over my skin. They didn't like getting hit in the face either. I was alone in my head with all my beasts for the first time ever, with no more experienced lycanthrope inside me to help me. My body felt like it was starting to catch fire, so hot.

"What the hell are you?" Tommy whispered. He was still holding my arm.

I saw Nathaniel between their bodies. He was free and picking up the knife Rodina had dropped. Barnabas started to turn; if I hadn't seen Nathaniel, if there hadn't been two of them, if my beasts had had a few seconds more to rise, if I had had access to anyone's power besides my own, but I didn't. I called the only power I had that would kill and distract while it happened. I'd learned how to drain life energy through the touch of skin to skin from Obsidian Butterfly. She hadn't meant to teach me how to do one of her tricks, but one of my gifts was that if a vampire used a power on or around me often enough, I retained it either temporarily or forever. This one was forever.

It took Tommy a second to realize something was wrong, and then his hand where he touched me started to dry out, as if I'd put an invisible straw in his skin and he was a juice box. He tried to let go of me, but he couldn't. He yelled, "What are you doing?"

"Defending myself," I said, and my voice sounded distant, peaceful, because it felt good to drink him down, so much energy.

"Barnabas, help me!"

Barnabas started to reach out, but Nathaniel leapt onto his back and thrust the knife into his chest. The man made a sound and plunged his elbow back into Nathaniel, trying to get him off his back, which meant Nathaniel had missed the heart. He stabbed him again and this time Barnabas fell to his knees with Nathaniel still riding him.

Tommy was screaming now, and his body was covered in deep lines, as if he was in a desert where the sun was draining him dry, but it wasn't the sun or the heat, it was just me. I had no idea if anyone was close enough to hear the screams, but I couldn't stop even if I wanted to, because the moment I stopped feeding on his energy, he'd be free to turn and help Barnabas fight Nathaniel. He was still stabbing, trying to get a killing blow as the other man struggled. I could not afford for another trained man to join the fight Nathaniel would lose. So I stared into Tommy's eyes and watched his skin run dry until it was like leather, and still he screamed, higher and more piteously but I couldn't afford pity. Pity would kill us.

Nathaniel staggered to his feet covered in blood and breathing hard, but the other man didn't get up. Nathaniel had won. We'd survived because he'd killed Barnabas. I stared at the dried husk that was the man I was slowly killing. The strong hand that had grabbed my arm was just bones covered in dry skin. It didn't even feel like a hand anymore, and still I fed on the very essence of his life. If I stopped now, I could give back the energy I'd stolen and he'd heal, but I didn't want him to heal. We were fighting for our lives. Tommy didn't get to live any longer than Barnabas had.

Nathaniel's voice was hoarse, almost as if he'd been the one screaming. "Can I undo your wrist? Is it safe to touch you?"

"No," I said, and I swallowed all the power I'd gained from the man in front of me. I pushed the urge to feed and feed and feed back in the dark box of my soul, and Tommy fell to the floor like a broken doll.

Nathaniel reached up one hand and undid my right wrist. He still had the completely blood-soaked knife in his other hand. It felt good to have one wrist free, but the magic was still there, still blocking me. I reached over and undid the other wrist myself. The moment that I wasn't touching the chains I could suddenly hear all my people; every metaphysical link was there again. Nathaniel was there again, bright and like another beating heart. I swayed with the fear from Dev, and Damian came back to life inside my head like a piece of myself that I hadn't known was missing.