IT WAS AN ongoing police investigation, but these vampires had been willing to die rather than risk being in Jean-Claude's power. If you're willing to die to avoid being part of someone's power structure, it's only a small step to being willing to kill to destroy that power structure. I normally don't share information on investigations with my boyfriends, but... if I didn't share and something bad happened to Jean-Claude, or one of my other lovers, or friends, I'd never forgive myself. They could have my badge, if it was a choice between losing it or losing one of the people I loved.

Was I trying to justify what I was about to do? Yes. Was I going to do it anyway? Yes.

I moved to the side of the courtyard, out of the way of the crime scene techs and the dozens of extra cops that always seem to flock to a murder scene. I found a little piece of alley between two of the buildings. Admittedly the "alley" was big enough to drive a beer wagon through, back in the day when the brewery was built for just that, but it was shadowed, and away from everyone. I leaned my shoulder against the cool bricks and had what privacy I was likely to get.

I didn't have to pick up a phone and call Jean-Claude; all I had to do was drop the shields I kept in place between him and me. It was like opening a door that I kept bolted shut, because without real effort to block it, we invaded each other's emotions; thoughts, even physical sensations could be shared. At the most extreme the boundaries between where one of us ended and the other began blurred; it got confusing as hell, and frankly, scary as hell. I didn't like being that far into another person's mind, body, and heart, and I sure as hell didn't want him seeing that far into me.

But it didn't mean that all I had to do was unlock that "door" in my head, and then knock on the shields that kept me from falling too far into Jean-Claude's head, because we'd found that it wasn't enough for only one of us to block. If only one of us did it, then we got echoes back and forth at odd moments. Mostly strong emotions, strong sensations, but not always; it could be very random.

Jean-Claude opened to me, and I knew he was sitting in his office at Guilty Pleasures. I could feel the sweat on his skin as he wiped his naked upper body down with a towel. He'd danced, which was rare, since he was owner and manager of the club. On the nights when he danced, the club would be full to bursting with women and men who wanted to see the sexiest vampire in St. Louis take off some of his clothes onstage. He never stripped down as far as his other dancers. Nothing as common as a G-string for my main squeeze, but he had some pants with enough lacings and holes that they didn't hide much more. I'd learned that most of the time the more dominant personalities liked to keep more clothes on, and the submissive ones were more comfy getting naked. The days when Jean-Claude had been anyone's submissive little bloodsucker were years in the past. Outside the bedroom neither he nor I was very fond of stripping down, or at least not first.

He looked down the line of that long, lean, finely muscled body, so I could see that the leather pants were the ones with the very open ties that went from waist to ankle, so that it was more like he had the fronts and the backs of the pants on, but the sides were sort of missing-in-action. They were mostly the white, perfect skin of his long legs revealed through the black laces of the leather.

Just his looking down his body, so that I could see, tightened things low in my body and made me have to let out a deep, shaking breath. I even put a hand out to steady myself against the cool bricks of the wall. Jean-Claude had affected me that way almost from the moment I'd seen him.

He spoke to the empty office, "Ma petite, I love that you react to me so."

I whispered, my face close to the bricks, "You just got offstage; everyone reacted to you that way."

"But that is the lust of strangers, that first flush of desire where all is possibilities and fantasy. To have someone react as you do after seven years of being together, that means more."

"I can't imagine anyone ever not reacting to you like that," I said.

He laughed, and it was that touchable, caressing sound, as if his laughter spilled down my skin, underneath my clothes, and touched all the naughty places.

"Stop that," I said, "I'm still working."

"You do not usually contact me until after work. What is wrong?" We had been dating long enough for him to understand that when I was on the job, I was a Marshal, not anyone's girlfriend. Other men had had a problem with that division of mind-set; not him. Jean-Claude understood compartmentalizing your life, your emotions, and your people. Vampires that are successful at living for hundreds of years are the ultimate compartmentalizers. They have to be, or they'd go crazy. You can't dwell too much on the bad stuff, because after a few lifetimes, there's too much of it. I had found enough bad stuff in just one lifetime that I'd had to do it; I couldn't imagine nearly six hundred years' worth.

I told him the shortest version that I could think of, and added, "Have you heard any rumors about shit like this?"

"Not this precise one, no."

"That means yes, doesn't it?" I said.

"I heard rumors of dissatisfaction at the idea of the ruling council of all vampires being here in America. There are some that fear that the old council members that remain alive will simply set up shop here, and rule as they did of old. To keep that from happening was one of the main reasons that I have been encouraged, by most, to set up an American vampire council. I and the vampires here are more trusted than the old European masters."

"I've met enough of the old council to agree with that," I said.

"I had not heard that some vampires were actually contemplating having no master at all. Only the very young among us would dream of such a thing."

"The vampires here were, and are, young. None of them were over a hundred, most of them between fifty and twenty, and then ten years and under."

"Were all of them American?"

I thought about it. "I think so."

"Americans, living and undead, are an odd lot. They value their ideal of freedom beyond anything the rest of us would dream of."

"We're a young country," I said.

"Yes, in another day and age, America would be in its expansive, empire-building stage, but you came of age too late. The world leaders, and military, would never allow such conquest now."

"It would be nice to start keeping some of the land and resources that our soldiers are dying for," I said.

"Ma petite, are you a secret imperialist?"

"Just tired of watching our guys and girls die on the news, and have nothing to show for it except body bags."

"You have the freedom and gratitude of the people you are helping," he said, voice very mild.

I laughed. "Yeah, they're so grateful they keep trying to blow us up."

"It is at an odd moment in history that America comes of age, that I will agree."

"These guys were willing to die rather than risk blood-oathing themselves to you, but I could sense them as if they were already blood of our bloodline."

"That is interesting, and unexpected. Are you certain they are not from our bloodline?"

I took in a deep breath, let it out, and really tried to think about it, feel what I'd felt. I let him feel the memory with me. I just stopped talking and let him get it directly from my mind.

"I will think upon this." He was drawing back away from me, shielding a little.

"You've thought of something, and I'm not going to like it, am I?"

"I have an idea, that is all. I wish to think about it, and ask opinions of some of the older ones that I trust most, before I share it with you."

"Once, you'd have just lied to me," I said.

"And once, ma petite, you wouldn't have realized I was keeping anything from you."

"I know you," I said.

"We know each other," he said. "Will you trust me to keep the idea to myself until I think it is ready to share with you?"

"I'd rather know," I said.

"Will you trust me?" he asked, again.

I sighed. "Yes." But I thought, I want to know, and I was in his head again, but he pushed me out, gently.

My viewpoint shifted from being almost in his head to being slightly in front and above him. It used to be how I did all the long-distance viewing, before I'd gotten more comfortable with it, but it had been Jean-Claude who pushed me further away now.

He smiled up at me, his eyes that rich, cobalt blue, the darkest true blue I'd ever seen in anyone's eyes. The eyes first, and then the black curls spilling around that glistening, beautiful upper body; the small cross-shaped burn scar on his chest was a slickness under my fingertips when I touched him. The moment I remembered the physical sensation of it that clearly, I was closer in, like doing a close-up with a camera.

He pushed me back harder this time, and he wasn't smiling as he gazed at me. I knew he saw me in the shadowed alley, as I saw him in his elegant office. "You said you would trust me."

"I do trust you," I said.

"But still you push; still you test your boundaries."

I shrugged. "Sorry, didn't really mean to."

"You didn't, and you did, ma petite."

I shrugged again. "Can't blame a girl for trying."

"Yes, yes I can," he said. "Je t'aime, ma petite."

"I love you, too, Jean-Claude," I said.

He closed down the link between us, shut his metaphysical door hard and tight. He'd thought of something, and if I pushed, he might have told me, but I'd learned that when Jean-Claude told me I didn't want to know something, he was usually right. Ignorance isn't bliss, but neither is knowledge. Sometimes you just know more, but it doesn't make you any happier.

I heard someone behind me, and turned to find Zerbrowski in the mouth of the alley. "He see it on the news?"

"What?" I asked.

"The bodies," he said.

I blinked at him, trying to bring myself solidly back into my own head, my own body. I pressed my fingertips against the cold, rough brick, and it helped.

"You okay?" he asked.

I nodded. "Sure."

"I called Katie, too," he said.

"She saw it on the news," I said.

"No, but the kids did."

I gave him a sympathetic face. "I'm sorry, Zerbrowski, that must be hard."

"The news is showing all the bodies with sheets and shit over it, and they said that two officers had been killed, but they never release the names until the families are notified, which is great, but it's hell on everyone else's families," he said.

I thought about it, but most of my "boyfriends" could feel me alive, or they'd feel if I died, just as I'd feel it if they died. But I was shielding like a son of a bitch to keep them out of my head. I'd made it clear that all of them were supposed to stay out of my head while I was working a crime scene. I did my best to make sure that ongoing investigations weren't shared with any of them. It took real work to stay separate enough to keep secrets from each other, but I had to do it, not just to keep the police work confidential, but because they didn't need to see the horrors I saw on the job. I didn't want, or need, to share that part of my job. Sometimes when I had nightmares, they got glimpses of it if we were sleeping next to each other. When I was working on a really violent case, some of my lovers started sleeping elsewhere. I didn't really blame them, though I found that I did take brownie points away from the ones who hid. I preferred the people in my life who could take all of me, not just parts.

Did I need to call home? Probably. Shit.

"What's that look on your face?" Zerbrowski said.

"I let Jean-Claude know, but I didn't tell him to tell the others."

"Won't he do that automatically?"

"Not necessarily; the older vampires aren't always big for sharing information."

"We need you to come talk to these vampires right now, but if you want to call one of your other guys, make it quick."

"Thanks, Zerbrowski," I said.

"Yeah, might want to call the boyfriend most likely to tell everyone else next time."

"That'd be Micah," I said, and was already fishing for my phone.

"Say hi to Mr. Callahan for me."

"Will do," I said, and had my phone out.

"You didn't have your phone out before," Zerbrowski said.

I looked at the phone in my hand as if it had just appeared there. I realized in the dimness he'd assumed I was talking on it already. If I'd thought, I could have hidden the fact that I wasn't using a phone the first time.

He shook his head, waved a hand. "I don't want to know, because if I actually knew for sure you could talk to Jean-Claude without using a phone, that would sort of compromise the integrity of our crime scene. Just use a phone from now on, okay?"

I nodded, held it up in my hand. "You got it." I hit Micah's number on my favorite's list, and the phone dialed him for me. He was a wereleopard, not a vampire; wereanimals tended to think more like modern people. You'd think it would be the other way around, but it wasn't. Vampires weren't human, or animals; they were vampires, and no matter how much I loved Jean-Claude, I knew that was the truth.