Yes. One of her lovers falls to the power of her enemy of the month, and Anita does nothing in response. He's not just a lover and an ally, he also controls the wolves. You could argue that this is Columbine's chance to take ALL THE WOLVES if she wanted to. This is such a dumb move on Anita's part it's like...SAVE THE RELATIONSHIP SHIT FOR AFTER THE BATTLE. WIN FIRST, ARGUE LATER.
And of course Anita has a guy all ready to step into Richard's place.
Damian’s hand in mine drew him into the circle of our power. He had some of the same issues with the other men that Richard had, but Damian was a more practical creature.Again: I try hard to ignore the "This is the author's personal life" theory, but it's seriously Occam's Razor with this series. It's the simplest explination for this shit. Otherwise I have to go into these convoluted reasonings that both hurt me and make LKH look like a utterly reprehensible human being, rather than a silly, vindictive one.
I think Columbine's taking a nap now. Seriously, I've never seen a villian be this disinterested in the battle she's fighting. She could have taken the other vamps about four times while Anita's working through her relationship issues.
And then Anita starts making out with Jean Claude, Damian and Nathanial while Richard watches.
Columbine's clothing gets another description that is copy-pasted from that section in the other chapter. It still looks silly. Anita also uses the phrase "Jean Claude's driving the metaphysical bus" more than once, and it doesn't improve with each repeat. Columbine finally gets sick of watching Days of our Vampire, and grabs her servant for a nice power boost. We get another bus metaphore.
Columbine then throws their collective greif at them, because that will work (That totally never works) and of course it's Juliana, the woman that Anita replaced, that figures big in the emotional infodumping. This is so Anita can soothe Jean Claude's pain.
Richard is still somewhere on the floor.
We do get a very cool scene of Nathanial flashbacking to his childhood abuse and making a statement of purpose against the memory of his own pain. If I actually gave a fuck about Nate it'd be rather meaningful, but he's a manipulative, passive-aggressive abuser and accomplice to a thousand rapes or so, so no. Sorry. You get to have heroic statement of purpose before you violate someone else's human rights. When you pass the abuse along you're just a shithead. Sorry.
And then Anita usurps this because her pain is the biggest:
I was eight again, and my father was about to say the words that would destroy my life. My mother was dead. But I hadn’t run then. Nathaniel had run because his older brother told him to run, but he wasn’t little anymore. It had been my father who had collapsed. He had wailed her loss, not me. I did not run. I did not run then, and I would not run now. I found my voice, and said, “We won’t run.”
Jean Claude lost the loves of his life to the spanish inquisition, both to torture.
Damian relived his torture at the hands of his mistress.
Nathanial watched his younger brother get beaten to death.
Anita's mom died miles away and her surviving parent was too greif stricken to coddle her, and then he got remarried to a blond woman. And HER greif is the biggest.
And you know what? Anita's been assaulted by monsters. She's been raped. She's been abused. She's had people she cares about die (Phillip) and people she cares about get severely hurt. And for all that I saw at her for raping Richard (And she did) her biggest relationship went down in flames with an awful lot of awful to spur it on. But it's her mother's death and her father's failure to perfectly accomodate her greif that is her biggest wounding.
Right.
The guards, even Richard, had fled from us. Fled from the weight of horror and loss. Fled so it did not spread to them. I guess I couldn’t blame Richard, but I would later, I knew I would. Worse yet, later he would blame himself.
Anita ordered Joseph dead because he wouldn't let her fuck him under slightly less severe circumstances. Richard has abandoned her in the face of the enemy. Richard, if he had any sense, would turn things over to Jason and make tracks for Mexico. Or Canada, because they probably let werewolves teach out of the closet up there.
And then they are all saved by the power of love.
NO. REALLY. THEY ARE LITERALLY SAVED BY THE POWER OF LOVE.
Love, love to chase back the pain . It washed over my skin like a warm wind , love, life, that spark that makes us get back up. It poured down the metaphysical links between Nathaniel and me, and the other men. Love, love to raise their faces and make them look at us. Love to help them to their feet, love and our hands to steady them, to help dry their tears. We finally stood , perhaps a little shaky around the edges, but we all stood and turned to Columbine and her Giovanni.
“Love conquers all, is that it?” she said, her voice thick with disdain.
“No, not all,” I said. “Just you.”
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