Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I looked down at the big man at our feet and knew that Jean-Claude was utterly sure of him. Utterly certain that Primo’s oath to us would hold him. It wasn’t like reading minds. I just knew that Jean-Claude was no longer worried about Primo. He was confident of him. I wasn’t.

  I turned to look at Jean-Claude, to try to persuade him of just how dangerous Primo could still be, but of course, my being willing to turn away from Primo said that in my way I was certain of him, too. And that was wrong. He was like walking rage with a big muscular body to back it up. That wasn’t safe. That could never be safe.

  I think I would have turned back to Primo, but I was suddenly looking at Jean-Claude, and the world vanished. There was nothing but Jean-Claude. Black velvet had been made into a waist-length military jacket with silver buttons down the front and a high stiff collar to frame a white mound of cravat. A silver tie tack with a sapphire in its head pierced the white at his throat. The jacket fit the spread of his shoulders, emphasized his slender waist, and took the eye to the black leather pants that looked as if they’d been braided together on the sides, as if he hadn’t so much slipped them on as been bound into them. The boots were only knee high, made of the same rich dark velvet as the coat. I was bespelled and I knew it, and I couldn’t help but stare, but I left his face for last, because I knew in what was left of my self-control that if I looked into his face, I would truly be lost.

  One slender hand came up to my lowered face. That hand surrounded by a spill of white lace. He touched my chin, the barest of touches, and began to raise my face upward. It was a delicate touch, I could have fought or stopped him, but I didn’t want to. It had taken all of my willpower simply to avoid his face at first glance.

  His black curls mingled with the velvet until it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. His eyes were huge and beautiful, a color darker than the sapphire at his throat. His eyes were as dark as blue could be and did not hold a single shade of black. His face was a pale perfection like a painting almost finished. He was pale, and the fingers against my face were like ice. He was like some pale sculpture waiting for someone to breathe it to life, except for the dark glitter of those eyes. Those eyes held all the life in the world.

  His voice was low and soft, like fur sliding across my skull. “Ma petite, let me in. Let me in. Do not leave me to the cold.”

  I actually opened my mouth to say, of course, but closed it. Once before when we’d been less bound than this, he’d taken energy from me without drawing blood. That had been because big bad vamps were in town and he needed to not look weak in front of them. And if they were to find out that his human servant didn’t allow him to take blood, he would have looked weak indeed.

  He needed to feed, desperately so. “Why?” I found my voice, hoarse and not at all like the smooth pull of his. “Why is your energy so low?”

  “I have done what I could from a distance to make your day easier.”

  I reached up and laid my fingers against his cheek. “You’ve drained yourself for me.”

  “For your peace of mind,” he whispered, and his voice trailed down my spine like a tiny drop of water trickling low and lower.

  “You want to feed,” I said.

  He gave a small nod, moving his cold skin against the warmth of my fingers. In my head, he whispered, “If I am to maintain our control of Primo, I need to feed.”

  “You don’t mean blood,” I said.

  “No,” he raised his other hand to my bandaged cheek. “Are you hurt?”

  “Not much,” I said, and my voice was sounding almost like my own. I realized that he’d pulled back. He was letting me think. He didn’t have to, but he knew me too well. If he didn’t let me think now, I’d be mad later.

  “You don’t mean like you did when the council was in town, do you? You’re asking something else.”

  His voice in my mind, “Something has happened with your binding of Damian and Nathaniel. More power is everywhere, but also more need. I have denied myself for a very long time, ma petite.” His hands slid along the edge of my jawline, until they cradled my face, and his fingers were buried in the warmth of my hair. I heard him think that he was warming his hands against my hair. So cold, so empty, so needy. I’d never seen him like this, never.

  This wasn’t his need. I turned enough so that I could see Nathaniel, who had gone to lean against the wall. He wasn’t close enough to project like this. He gave me innocent lavender eyes. I couldn’t feel him in my head. It was just Jean-Claude and me, but even with only two of us connected, it still felt like Nathaniel’s need, or Damian’s skin hunger.

  I looked back into those dark, dark blue eyes and whispered, “You’ve inherited their neediness.”

  Aloud, he said, “I fear so.”

  “What can we do?” I asked.

  “Let me in, ma petite, let me through those wonderful shields. Let me in,” and his voice spilled over my skin as if he’d covered me naked in satin and drawn it along my body.

  I shivered, and only the cool touch of his hands kept my knees from buckling. I stared into those eyes, that face, and I whispered, “Yes.”

  His face filled my vision, then his lips brushed mine. I expected him to take me in his arms and kiss me with the desperation I felt in his need, but he didn’t. He touched me only with his mouth, and even that was the barest pressure of his lips against mine. I actually pushed agianst him, raised a hand to touch him, and he put a hand on my shoulder and held us apart. A second after he’d done it, I understood why, because it was as if my soul spilled up into my lips, as if the very essence of me was a taste upon my lips. My power, my magic, my heart, my soul, everything was there for the taking in one soft brush of lips. I’d thought we’d fed the ardeur upon each other before, but I’d been wrong. He sipped from my lips, delicate, so much more he wanted. I could feel it. Feel his need. But he held me back with his hands on my shoulders, while I struggled to close that distance. But I knew with his knowledge that bare skin was bare skin, and all of it could drink me down.

  It was the most careful kiss I’d ever been given, and one of the most frustrating. I was making small noises deep in my throat, because I wanted more. I wanted so much more.

  When he drew back, he held a spot of my lipstick like a crimson stain in the center of his lips. There was the tiniest bit of color to his cheeks. He was like the cold of winter touched by the barest breath of spring, so that warmth was only a promise, not real, not now, but a distant hope. But hope is better than the alternative.

  He swallowed convulsively, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment, before he straightened and his hands on my shoulders were firm. “That is but a taste of what I need, ma petite.”

  “Don’t stop,” I said.

  He smiled, but it was sad. “Let the effects wear awhile, then give me an answer about more.”

  I shook my head. What was he talking about? Of course, of course he could have more.

  “It is my fault, ma petite. I asked you to let me in your shields. I did not mean for you to drop all the defenses in your considerable repertoire. It was nearly overwhelming for both of us.” He looked at me as if he saw something new there, or someone new. “I must attend to our fair audience.” He almost came to me again for a good-bye kiss, but he pushed away, and he called to someone, “Attend her until she recovers. No, not you, not until she is herself again. I fear what she would do if you touched her now.”

  His voice when it came again, filled the club, echoed into the shadows of it, and yet, seemed intimate, as if he whispered it against your skin, and only your skin. “Primo has walked through fire and blood to be reborn for you tonight. Transformed before your eyes from the warrior of nightmares to the lover of dreams.”

  “They’re too scared, they won’t believe it.” It was Nathaniel’s voice.

  I turned toward that voice, but met a different face. Nathaniel was standing just beyond, out of reach, but Byron was standing so close that it startled me. He wasn’t quite three hund
red years old, and I normally heard him move as if he were human. He wasn’t powerful, and never would be, but tonight, I hadn’t even known he was standing nearly touching me. That helped sober me up more than anything else. I hadn’t heard one of the weakest of the new vamps that Jean-Claude had welcomed to town. Bad necromancer, no cookie.

  “You’ve never seen him after he’s fed like this,” Byron said in that nicely accented British voice, “watch.”

  I fought not to look at Jean-Claude. I looked at the audience instead. Their eyes were wide, their faces pale, or flushed. Some of them were still hiding under the tables. If the fight hadn’t taken place between them and the most obvious door, they’d have probably fled. All they needed was a sign above them that said “scared shitless.” It was probably the most spilled blood that any of them had ever seen. Scary stuff.

  As long as I looked at the audience I agreed with Nathaniel, but when my eyes drifted to Jean-Claude’s back as he spoke with them, well . . . I had to look away. I had to not look, because the craving was still there. I’d been told that my desire to touch him had been part of the same craving that any servant felt for their master, but I hadn’t really believed it. This, this was craving.

  I found myself staring at Primo, who was still on his knees, looking confused, a half-circle of black-shirted security guards standing around him. He looked up at me, and his eyes held something like pain. He spoke, and no one at the tables heard him, just me and security, and the vampire and wereleopard at my back. “You have trapped me.”

  I opened my mouth to say, “I didn’t mean to,” but someone touched my left wrist, and it hurt. A sharp immediate pain. I whirled and found Byron touching me. “Let go of me.”

  He opened his hand and just let my arm fall back. He whispered, “You’re bleeding. Jean-Claude told me to attend to you. Let me tend your wound.” Here was a face younger and more innocent seeming than Nathaniel’s. He’d been in his late teens when his master had brought him over. His hair was a soft brown that fell in loose curls just past his ears, leaving his slender neck bare and showing the V of white skin at the neck of the robe he wore. I remembered that someone had said the college students were heckling Byron. He must have been the one on stage.

  He was shorter than I was, and slender, not preadolescent, but young, unfinished, and he’d be unfinished forever. Whether his shoulders would have broadened, or he’d have gotten taller, we’d never know. He could lift weights and add definition, in fact, he had, at Jean-Claude’s insistence, but he’d never have the body he might have had if the vampire that killed him had waited a year or two.

  His eyes were gray and seemed to take up most of his face, huge, soft gray. The color that fog can have when it’s at its thickest, that close suffocating wall of mist.

  I had to shake my head and draw back. Shit. Byron had almost rolled me with his eyes. That shouldn’t have been possible. Jean-Claude had said that I’d let down all my defenses. I hadn’t meant to. It was more as if Jean-Claude had taken down all my defenses. But Byron was no Jean-Claude. Him I could keep out.

  I actually closed my eyes and did the deep-breathing exercises that I’d learned. Draw yourself to the center of your body. Draw yourself in and center yourself down a line that goes into the earth itself. Marianne called it grounding, and it was. Grounding, as in being grounded, solid on your feet, secure.

  But it was hard to stay focused, because Jean-Claude’s voice was still there, and closing my eyes didn’t get rid of it. “Who among you has not wished to tame a savage heart, to take a man and change him beyond reckoning? To make him into what you wish him to be? Primo kneels before your beauty, and he is what you will make of him. He will rise and fall to your desires.”

  I felt Jean-Claude walk between me and Primo. Even with my eyes closed, even with me trying to anchor myself, I felt him like a hand sweeping all my concentration away. I looked up and saw him touch Primo’s face, the lightest of touches. “Show them that magnificent body.”

  Primo shook his head. He did not want to play.

  I felt Jean-Claude’s will flex, like a muscle squeezing around Primo. I felt that flare of warmth spill out from him to the bigger man. I had actually stepped closer to them, when Byron pulled me back.

  “I wouldn’t advise that,” he said, and again I felt the pull of those soft gray eyes, like being wrapped in the warmest of blankets.

  Primo stood, and that turned me back to them. The big man balled his hands into his black, blood-soaked shirt, and tore it like it was paper. Naked from the waist up, he was magnificent, if you were into giants. It wasn’t the hugeness that came from weight lifting. It was just how big he was.

  “Who will be his first kiss?” Jean-Claude asked.

  I felt the movement before I turned and saw the audience. There was no fear now, Jean-Claude’s voice had taken their fear. All I saw now was eagerness, at worst, uncertainty, as if they just weren’t sure. The first few hands went up with money in them, and once that happened, more followed. No one wants to be first, but no one wants to be left out, either.

  Byron pulled gently on my shoulder. “We need to bind that wound, Anita. Let’s go backstage.”

  “He’s right,” Nathaniel said, and he was closer now. Close enough that I could see that there was some blood spattered on his lavender shirt. He must have been closer to Primo than I remembered. But I wasn’t thinking well. It was as if I hadn’t been quite myself since I got out here. What was wrong with me?

  I nodded. “Okay, okay, yeah.”

  I let Byron and Nathaniel lead me away, but my glance stayed turned to the room. The brunette from the alleyway was running her hand up Primo’s skin, and that skin was clean and smooth, no blood, no signs of the struggle. She ran her hands over his skin, but his glance was for me. His eyes held a mute appeal for help, and I didn’t understand why.

  Jean-Claude touched the big man’s bare back, and Primo’s face turned back to the woman. There was no confusion on his face now. There was nothing but lust, and in that moment I understood. Jean-Claude was controlling Primo. He was manipulating the vampire more than he had ever manipulated the audience. They’d come for a little bit of lascivious fun. Primo had come to be Master of the City, but instead, he was just another act at Guilty Pleasures. He kissed the brunette like he’d breathe her in, as if to kiss her were life itself. When he let her go and one of the security guards eased her shaking body into her seat, money sprang up in hands throughout the room. Welcome to show business, Primo, I thought.

  36

  THE DOOR CLOSED, and like magic it was quiet. The backstage area was soundproofed, but it was more than that today. It was as if with the closing of that door I could think again, really think. I knew that proximity to Jean-Claude could make things worse, usually proximity meant touching. Tonight, in the same room was too close.

  I shook my head. “What the hell is happening?”

  “We have a first aid kit in the dressing rooms,” Byron said. He tried to lead me toward one of the doors on the right.

  I took my arm out of his grip and looked at Nathaniel. “Did I hear Jean-Claude tell you not to touch me?”

  He nodded. “He’s not sure what will happen right now.” His face was very solemn, serious, closed. He was being careful around me again, and I didn’t know why.

  “Have I missed something tonight?”

  “You’re dripping blood,” Byron said, and he motioned at my arm.

  Blood was trickling down my hand to drop, drop onto the white floor. The hallway was so white and so empty that the spot of crimson seemed loud, as if color were sound. I shook my head again. “Something’s wrong.”

  “You’ve lost more blood than you realize,” Byron said.

  “Anita,” Nathaniel said, and it seemed like it took longer than it should have for me to turn and look at him. “Anita, come into the dressing rooms. We’ll take care of you.”

  I nodded and raised my arm up to about chest high. It would help slow the blood loss. The sleev
e of my jacket was a bloody mess, and I hadn’t noticed until now. Something was terribly wrong, and I didn’t know what it was. I knew that making a new triumverate with Damian and Nathaniel was probably the cause, but that only told me why it was happening, not what was happening. Why didn’t matter very much to me right that moment; what was happening, that mattered a great deal.

  Byron touched my arm, only enough to guide me through the door that Nathaniel opened for us. As I walked past Nathaniel, I felt something open between us, as if there were a door in the middle of our bodies. A door that wanted to close around us, to press us tight together.

  Byron literally put his body in front of mine and kept me from touching Nathaniel. I growled at him, and Nathaniel echoed me at his back. “Ease down, kitty-cats, I am only doing what the Master of the City ordered me to do.” His eyes were a little wide, and I got a whiff not of fear but something close to it. “Do you remember what Jean-Claude’s kiss felt like out there?” He grabbed my hurt wrist and ground his fingers into it.

  “That hurts,” I said, and I turned on him, angry, ready to be angry.

  “But you can think now, can’t you?”

  That made me take a step back into the dressing rooms beyond. Byron followed, a hand still on my wrist, but loosely now, not to hurt, but more to guide.

  “What’s happening to us?” I asked.

  “It looks like you’ve all hit a new power plateau,” Byron said, as he led me between the little lighted tables scattered with makeup and bits of costume.

  “Which means what?” I asked.