Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I turned back to the two vampires. “I am Jean-Claude’s human servant. We truly are blood of my blood to each other.”

  “What do you propose?” Wicked asked.

  “The knife comes out, then I let Truth feed, and we blood-oath him to Jean-Claude.”

  “He would truly take us?”

  “He said yes.”

  Wicked looked down at his brother. “Do you agree to this? To being bound to another master?”

  “Felt her power, her call,” he had another of those gasping fits, “if this is servant, then the master must be more.”

  “Is that a yes?” I asked.

  Wicked nodded. “But if you take my brother, you have to take me, too.”

  I simply knew that Jean-Claude was okay with that. There was no need to ask. “Agreed, though whether I can feed you both tonight is a different question.”

  “We have fed already this night. For Truth it will need to be a true feeding, but for me a taste will do.”

  “Okay,” I said. I thought, will this work, and Jean-Claude’s answer was almost certain. He was almost certain that it would work. “Would it work better to blood-oath him, then take the knife out?” I asked.

  “Perhaps, ma petite, but the silver may also interfere with the process. We are hoping to bring him back to health, and this will not happen with the silver still in his body.”

  I blinked and looked at Wicked. With the eyes gone all vampire, his bone structure was very clear, and I realized that he was very manly-man handsome. Very masculine, and when I looked at his brother, I could trace that same bone structure underneath all the facial hair. How had I not seen the resemblance before?

  “We need to take the knife out first, then he feeds.” I looked down at my wrists. My left was still healing from Primo and the zombie last night. I was not offering up my right wrist. Never injure your gun hand if you can avoid it. I touched my neck. Requiem’s bite was still there, though almost healed. Damian’s bite was faintest. I wasn’t taking my top off, so breast was out. Neck it was. I was going to end up looking like a vampire junkie, always carrying a fresh bite mark. Oh, well.

  “Sorry, I’m going over all the injuries. Right side of the neck for feeding.”

  “He cannot sit up.”

  “I’ll lay down.” I gave my gun to Smith.

  His eyes widened. “What’s this for?”

  “I’m going to let Truth feed on my neck. I’d rather not have to worry about whether he can touch my gun or not.”

  “You don’t trust us,” Wicked said.

  “I don’t trust anybody.” I started to lie down on top of Truth, but the knife was very much in the way.

  Jean-Claude said inside my head, “The knife first, ma petite.”

  I knelt back and looked at the brother. “Do you want to do it, or do I do it?”

  He seemed to understand without extra talk—nice for a change. “I will do it.” He took his free hand, because the other was still wrapped around his brother’s hand. He gripped the hilt of the blade and hesitated.

  “It’s time, brother,” Truth said.

  I moved my hair to one side so the right side of my neck stretched clean. Once the knife was out, we had a minute, maybe, to make him live, or let him die. Wicked stayed immobile, hand on his brother and the hilt.

  “Do you want me to do it?” I asked.

  He shook his head, but still didn’t move.

  “Either you do it, or I do it . . . Wicked. We’re running out of time.”

  “Do it,” Truth whispered, “do it.”

  Wicked’s arm tensed. “Forgive me, brother,” he said, and pulled the blade out in one harsh jerk.

  Blood welled up from the wound, thick, red. His body spasmed. I did what I said I’d do. How do you lay your body on top of a wounded man? The same way you do any man, if you don’t want to roll off. I laid myself on top of him, legs on either side of his body, while he spasmed under me, and fought for his life.

  I laid my neck in front of his face, and he couldn’t control his body enough to feed. “Oh, shit!” I looked up and met his brother’s eyes. “Help me.”

  “How?”

  “Hold him up enough so he can feed.”

  Wicked didn’t argue, he just moved around behind his brother, and raised his head and shoulders just enough off the ground. The spasming was growing less, but that wasn’t good, that wasn’t good at all.

  Jean-Claude breathed through my body, “Kiss him.”

  “What?” I said out loud.

  “What is it?” Wicked asked.

  “Give him enough energy to feed.”

  “How?”

  He was just in my head, not words, not exactly images, I just suddenly understood, because he understood. The vampires had a kiss of life long before we humans had artificial respiration. Once I’d thought you had to be a sourdre de sang, or the person who made a vamp, to share energy like this, but I’d proven that it wasn’t true. If Jean-Claude hadn’t been so certain that it would work, I would have argued. I’d only done something similar to this once, and that had been with Asher, who was our sweetie, and who had fed on me before. This vampire was a stranger to me, and not one of our line, but Jean-Claude’s certainty filled me, as if it were my own.

  I looked into Truth’s face, and his eyes were beginning to glaze, as his body went still. I called power, or maybe Jean-Claude did, or we both did. It was hard to tell where one magic ended and the other began. I leaned over the vampire’s face.

  “What are you doing?” Wicked asked.

  There was no time to explain. I pressed my lips to the other vampire’s mouth. His lips were so still against mine. I kissed him, and felt his death. Felt that spark flickering like a match in the wind. I breathed power into his mouth. I forced it inside him the way you force air into the dying. I breathed into his mouth and thought, Wake. Wake to us, Truth, wake to our magic. Jean-Claude used me to thrust power like a sword down the line of his body. It was sharp and painful even to me. It brought Truth gasping, sitting up off the floor, yelling. Yelling something in a language I’d never known.

  “Feed,” I said, and it was Jean-Claude’s words. But it was my hand that swept my hair to the side and bared my neck to him.

  He grabbed me, his hands digging into my shoulders. I saw his head coming forward, but the rest was lost to my sight. He bit me. Sudden, hard, fangs tearing my flesh. I yelled, because it hurt. There was no mind trick or sex to soften it. It just hurt.

  I heard a startled male voice in the direction of the closest door. “Shit, another one!”

  “She volunteered,” Smith said, “to save his life.”

  “He’s a fucking corpse, you can’t save his life.”

  “Marshal Blake made the decision, Roarke, go back to the others.”

  “Shit,” he said again.

  I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t help explain. My hands were on Truth’s arms. I think I was going to start struggling. It just fucking hurt.

  Jean-Claude was there, harder in my head. “Relax, ma petite, do not fight him.”

  “I’m not fighting,” I thought.

  “Yes, you are. You are fighting his powers, you must lower your shields not just between yourself and me, but between him and yourself. Quickly, ma petite, quickly, or we will lose him.”

  I dropped my shields, the ones that kept out all the other vamps. The ones that were so automatic that I didn’t usually notice them. The shields that I had naturally as a necromancer. They fell down, and suddenly . . . it didn’t hurt anymore.

  It was like suddenly being thrown into that part of sex where pain is pleasure, where the bite that you’d have slugged someone for is just the best thing you’ve ever felt.

  I’d let him feed on my neck, but I’d been straining away from him, now I relaxed into him. It was like melting into a kiss that caught you off-guard, and suddenly you give in to it. You stop thinking it to death, and just let it be.

  I gave myself to the feel of his mouth on my neck
, the strength of his hands on my back, the press of his body against mine. His hand slid lower, down to my lower back, and farther, so that he cupped my ass. He pressed us together, bowing his neck and shoulders to keep his mouth sealed to my neck, and pressed our lower bodies tight against one another. Tight enough that I could feel him hard and thick against the front of his body.

  I’d lowered my shields, all my shields. The only miracle had been that the ardeur hadn’t tried to rise sooner. But it rose now, rose with the press of his body, the sucking of his mouth. Rose through my body, across my skin and into him.

  He drew back from my neck with an exclamation, “Mother of Darkness save us, it’s Belle Morte!”

  I met that wide-eyed gaze. His eyes were bluer now than they had been, or seemed so. “Not Belle, Truth, just me, just Jean-Claude, just us.” I whispered the last against his lips. The ardeur wanted me to kiss him, to press our mouths together and feed, energy for energy. I spoke with my mouth almost touching his, “Jean-Claude, help me, help me put the genie back in the bottle. Help me stop this.”

  “If I help you shield, the ardeur may spread here in the club, where I am.”

  “Then feed like you did last night. Feed on the willing, but let this cup pass me by tonight. I need to catch a murderer, not fuck everyone we bring over.”

  “Help us,” Truth said, “help us, master.”

  I felt Jean-Claude’s surprise thrill along my skin, as if curiosity was a touch. “Does he want to stop?” His question came out of my mouth, in my voice.

  “Yes,” Truth breathed it against my lips, so that I could smell my blood on his breath, “yes, help us stop this.”

  “Why?” Jean-Claude asked.

  This question I stopped, because I’d had enough. “Satisfy your curosity about him later, Jean-Claude. I’ve got police waiting in the other room. I need this over with.”

  “Very well, ma petite.” It wasn’t like he reached out to me, he was already in me almost as deep as he could go. But reaching was the only word I had for it. He didn’t shield me or Truth. He didn’t shield anything or anyone. He took the ardeur that was rising in us, and did two things at once. He swallowed the ardeur, and he shut down the link between him and me, tight and final, like slamming a door between us.

  I was left alone pressed against Truth’s body, our faces still inches apart, but suddenly it was just us. We both let out a breath in shaking unison, as if we’d both been holding our breath.

  He moved his arms away, so I could get out of his lap. There was no teasing, no sense of loss from him at the touch of the ardeur and its going away. He seemed as relieved as I did. If I’d had time and could have figured out a way to ask why he was relieved, without sounding like my pride was hurt, I would have. But I had work to do, so I stood up and swayed, and only Truth’s hand on my arm kept me from bumping a wall.

  “Are you alright?” Smith and Wicked asked at the same time. Smith glared at the vampire, but Wicked’s face was neutrally handsome.

  “Just been donating a little too much blood lately. I’m fine.” To prove it, I stepped back from Truth’s hand. I took a few deep breaths, and I was steady. But I was really going to have to see if I could go at least a night without opening a vein.

  “I felt your master’s power,” Wicked said. “My brother is bound to him, but I am not. You promised you would take us both.”

  “I will, Jean-Claude will, but not tonight. This blood bank is closed for the night.”

  Wicked gave me a look that said he neither believed nor trusted me. His brother was simply standing beside him, as if he’d levitated to his feet. Maybe he had. He hugged Wicked one-armed across the shoulders. “She’ll do what she promised.” Truth was smiling.

  “Why, because she helped you fight off the ardeur?”

  “Partly.”

  Wicked shook his head. “You must be even better than that felt, for Truth to trust you this much.”

  “I saved his life, that tends to impress people.”

  “Not him, not Truth.”

  “Fine, but I’ve got to go question a murder suspect, right now.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Truth said.

  “Sorry, police business. Thanks for trying to catch the bad guy.”

  “Your power called to us when you touched Avery,” Truth said.

  “So when I said, catch him, you had to do it?”

  They both nodded.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “I’m not,” Truth said.

  Wicked gave me another cynical look. “I’ll let you know. I’m not sorry, yet.”

  “Look, I give you my word that as soon as humanly possible I will give you to Jean-Claude.”

  “Give me?”

  I frowned. “I give my word that as soon as humanly possible I will see that you will be bound to our Master of the City, good enough?”

  “Promise me that you will bind me as you bound my brother.”

  “I just did.”

  “No, you didn’t. For all I know you could pass me off to someone else in your master’s household. My brother and I go together. To go together, we must go in the same way.”

  I wished I’d had Jean-Claude to ask, was there a problem with this promise, but he was busy making all the customers at Guilty Pleasures happy. I thought about what he’d asked, and I couldn’t see the problem with it, so, I said, “Okay, I promise that I’ll bind you like I did your brother. Happy now?”

  He gave a small nod, with an even smaller smile.

  “Then leave a card or number at one of Jean-Claude’s clubs, and we’ll arrange another meeting.”

  “We’ll be there,” Wicked said.

  “Yes,” Truth said, “yes, we will be there.”

  I turned toward the door and the other room. Smith came at my back. I reached my hand out to him. “Gun,” I said.

  He handed me my gun. I holstered it and kept walking toward the other room and the waiting bad guy and police. I had a vague feeling that I’d missed something just now with Wicked and Truth. “The Wicked Truth” Jean-Claude had called them, why? Just because they killed their bloodline? Or had I missed something. Something I’d regret missing later. I ran it over in my head, and all I had promised was to let Wicked take my blood and bind himself to Jean-Claude and me. That’s all I’d promised, so why did I feel like the brothers were going to expect more than I’d offered. I thought, Jean-Claude, what did I just do?

  To my surprise, he answered carefully, as if he were shielding me. “We have our warriors, ma petite, just as you wished.”

  “You can’t be done feeding the ardeur, yet.”

  “Non, but I remember Wicked, of old, and I thought it foolish not to check on you one more time.”

  “You’re holding the ardeur in check while you talk to me mind-to-mind, in a room full of lusty women?”

  “Oui.”

  “Nice to know our little three-way gained you something.”

  “You make it sound as if you gained nothing, ma petite. It is you who called the Wicked Truth to us, to you, before they came to my hand. You said only last night that we needed people that could fight, not merely seduce, and less than forty-eight hours later, you have called two of our most legendary warriors to you. That, ma petite, is not just impressive, it is frightening.”

  I ignored the frightening comment and concentrated on the other part. I didn’t remember wishing for fighters, or warriors. I remembered thinking we needed more muscle.

  “Then we have more muscle, just as you wished.”

  I couldn’t argue with him, but I’d have to be more careful what I wished for. Lately, it seemed I was getting it, no matter what I wished. Suddenly, the phrase be careful what you wish for had taken on a whole new meaning. I guess I’d just have to be damned careful what I wished for.

  69

  OF COURSE, WHAT I was wishing the second I entered the next room was that we could catch our serial killers before they killed again. I was pretty secure with that wish. It seemed l
ike a wish we could all live with. They had sat the vampire in the chair with his hands cuffed through the rungs, again, just a delay, but if it went really wrong, a second delay could save lives. I stared at the vamp’s face. His hair was darker than Avery’s, a brunette that some would have said was black if I hadn’t been standing in the room. His eyes were brown and dark. He was good looking in a standard haven’t-I-seen-a-hundred-faces-just-like-that-way, but that wasn’t what made me stare. I knew him. At first it was just a niggling in the back of my head, that his face was familiar, then suddenly it came full blown.

  “You’re Jonah Cooper. I got interviewed about how I felt that one of my fellow vampire hunters had been slain by the vampires. What was that, nearly two years ago now, three?”

  His look, which had been neutral, went to hostile. “Four.” He said that last word like it was a bad one.

  “They’re legal now, Cooper, why didn’t you come out of the closet and tell people you didn’t die in that fire?”

  He looked down, then up, and his eyes had gone dark, sparkling with anger and vampire powers. I leaned into him with a smile. I knew what smile I was giving him, it was the cold one that left my eyes dead. My gun was pressed, not too hard to his chest, just over his heart. “Or is it that you let, what was it, six policemen die in the fire?”

  “Anita, what’s going on?” Zerbrowski asked.

  I told him. I didn’t have to look up to know that Zerbrowski’s face wouldn’t be friendly. Nothing pisses off the cops like someone who kills one of their own. “How’d you survive, Cooper?” I asked.

  He glared up at me. “You know how.”

  “You sold them to the vampires you were hunting, didn’t you?”