“What have I done?” he asked, hands held out toward us.

“Nothing, mon ami, it is you who have bled, not ma petite, or Nathaniel.”

“Who hurt him?” I asked.

“No one. I believe it is sweat.”

The guards, one brunette and the other with paler brown hair, aimed their guns at the floor but weren’t leaving. I couldn’t even blame them. The bed looked like a serial killer crime scene except everyone was alive. Damian began to check himself for wounds. Nathaniel and I helped, touching his back and places he couldn’t reach, but once we wiped the blood away his skin seemed whole.

“I woke to ma petite struggling in the dark with a dream, but when I went to wake her, I realized all of you were dreaming. Damian began to sweat, and though we have some light color to our sweat, this was . . .” He gestured at the ruined bed. “I have never seen this before.”

“What’s happening to me?” Damian asked, and it was almost a yell, but the look on his blood-spattered face was a plea.

“I do not know,” Jean-Claude said, and I got a quick flash of how worried he was, before he shut it down and pushed me further from his emotions, but that was okay because I was feeling enough from Damian. Nathaniel and I were both fighting to separate his terror from our unease. I wasn’t afraid, not yet. I’d save being afraid for when there was something real in front of me to fight. Or that was what I told myself as I calmed the pulse that was trying to gallop out of my neck, as if I were choking on my own heart. God, Damian was so afraid.

Nathaniel looked at me from the other side of our vampire third, and he was as calm as I was; we were both working through our fears. No, we were both working through Damian’s fears.

“First, the three of you need to clean up. I will have the bed stripped and see what can be done with it.”

“How come you’re not bloody?” the brunette guard asked.

“Because I noticed it starting and got out of the way.”

“Why didn’t you wake us?” I asked.

“I felt it was important to see it play out.”

“Thanks a lot,” I said, as I started crawling across the bloody sheets toward the edge of the bed. Nathaniel was crawling to join me.

“Ma petite, you are forgetting someone.”

I stopped and looked where he was nodding. Damian was still staring at himself as if he were trapped in another nightmare, but this one he couldn’t wake up from. I wanted to help him, but if I was choking on his fear from here, touching him would make it worse.

I said out loud, “If I touch him I’m not sure I can stop his fear from overwhelming me.”

“Try. Just try, ma petite.”

I swallowed hard, and so didn’t want to, but Jean-Claude was right: I had to try. I crawled back to Damian and reached out to him. He jerked back from me. “No, don’t. I’m unclean. Can’t you see that there’s something wrong with me?”

Nathaniel had crawled back with me. “You aren’t unclean, Damian.”

“We aren’t vampires. We won’t catch anything,” I said, as I reached out slowly, the way you approach a skittish animal.

“Anita . . .”

“Let me try, Damian.”

“Let us both try,” Nathaniel said.

His eyes looked so green in their mask of blood, like a macabre Christmas image, but he sat still and let me touch his arm. The moment I did, my pulse slowed, and so did his. It was like touching him calmed us both. Nathaniel touched his other arm and it was like a circuit completed; we’d plugged in the last thing and with that sense of completion there was a peacefulness that I hadn’t thought possible while we were sitting in the blood-soaked sheets.

I looked back over my shoulder at Jean-Claude. “How did you know that would happen?”

“I did not know for certain, but in the past Damian has been your calm center in the midst of emotion. I thought it might work both ways.”

Damian took my hand in his and the last of the fear receded like the sea pulling back from the shore. He blinked at me. “Thank you. Thank you both.”

“What now?” I asked Jean-Claude.

“Now, you need a shower. For such as this, the bathtub attached to this room will not do.”

“I mean after the shower.”

“Come back here and if the bed is fit to sleep on we will try. If not, we will use one of the guest rooms for the rest of the day.”

“I don’t want to sleep again,” Damian said. “Did you see the nightmare I shared with Anita and Nathaniel?”

“No,” he said.

“Then you don’t understand.”

“I can see the aftermath of the dream, Damian. I understand that it was terrible enough to make you sweat blood.”

I started pulling Damian by the hand toward the edge of the bed. Nathaniel helped me tug him toward the edge of the bed. “Let’s clean up and then we’ll talk about what comes next,” I said.

Jean-Claude took pictures of us with his cell phone before we left to shower. “If we find a doctor to consult, we can show them pictures of this,” he’d said, and it made sense, though it felt like being part of a crime scene evidence collection.

Jean-Claude sent with us the two guards who had come through the door. “They are not to be left alone,” were his orders.

“What does that mean?” I asked, as I stood there holding Damian’s hand.

“It means we do not know what is happening, ma petite, and it would be beyond careless of me to send you and Nathaniel off alone with Damian without other eyes to watch over you.”