Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “I cannot believe that my”—and I hesitated because boyfriend seemed too junior high, lover not enough—“the man I love is encouraging me to take another lover.”

  He smiled at me. “We know now that any who have tasted Belle’s ardeur are susceptible to your ardeur. I think any of her line will be too risky to taste as pommes. Agree to feed the ardeur from Requiem, ma petite, that is all. Agree, because we have two more things to know before the party tonight.”

  “What two things?”

  “Will you draw and be drawn to all leopards, wolves, and lions? Do the ardeur’s effects travel outside Belle’s line?”

  I looked at Jean-Claude, tried to read past his face. “You’re still shielding so hard, I can’t tell how you really feel about this. Let me see inside your shields.”

  He shook his head. “I think it would be no help to you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because part of me is happy our powers are growing, no matter what the cost. Part of me is frightened of what the council may do about it. Do I want you to take another lover? No, but do I prefer that it is you whom the ardeur hunts to this degree, and not me, yes. I am sorry, ma petite, but that is the truth.”

  I thought about it, then nodded. “If you have a human servant who can’t hold her shit together the other masters may forgive you. Like a bad marriage, not your fault. If you can’t hold your shit together, they won’t let that pass.”

  “Please, Anita,” Requiem said, “please, feed the ardeur upon me, please.”

  “I will.”

  The look on his face was amazing, so joyous even through all the bruises. The look scared me. No one but your nearest and dearest should ever look at you like that.

  “But not right now,” I said.

  Some of the joy faded. “Why not now? It is morning. You have slept.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, usually that does raise the ardeur.” I looked at Jean-Claude. “That’s a good question, why don’t I feel all ardeurish?”

  “I, too, am well fed.”

  “You feasted last night,” Requiem said, “on Augustine and his people.”

  I looked back at Jean-Claude. “Is he right? Was it such a powerful meal that we’re safe for longer?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “The ardeur is not always a predictable power, ma petite. I would need more than one feeding of such magnitude before I agreed that that was the reason.”

  “Or perhaps,” Elinore said, “you should be trying to figure out how powerful a meal you would need to abate the ardeur. You cannot feast on another Master of the City and his people every night.” She leaned forward in her chair, all lace and satin, but strangely, she didn’t look cute. She looked too intent for words like cute. “Perhaps what is needed is permanent food of high power.”

  “Few masters would agree to become Anita’s, or my, permanent pomme de sang. Not if they are powerful enough to rule a territory of their own.”

  “What if they have no choice in the matter?” she said, indicating Requiem.

  “Are you suggesting that I purposefully trap other masters the way I accidentally trapped Requiem?” I asked.

  “It would solve a great many problems,” she said.

  “It would be”—I groped for a word—“evil.”

  “I thought you were more pragmatic than this, Anita.”

  “Doing that would be no different than if we gave in to the requests we get weekly for you to join some other master’s kiss, as his mistress. We give you room to choose, Elinore. How can you ask us to take that same choice away from someone else?”

  “I would not be bespelled, Anita. I would know every night as he touched me, lay on top of me, that I hated him. Requiem adores you, and he will adore you until, and if, he falls in love, true love. Until that time he will be in the bed of someone he adores, having amazing sex, and enjoying every minute of it. It is not the same thing, Anita. Trust me on that.”

  “But it’s sort of a metaphysical date-rape drug, used like that. Just because you’re enjoying the abuse doesn’t make it not abuse.”

  “Does it not, ma petite?”

  I shook my head. “It’s too late for Requiem, I’ll accept that. I’ll try feeding the ardeur on him.”

  He kissed my hand. “Thank you, mistress.”

  “Not mistress,” I said, “Anita, just Anita.”

  “Thank you, Anita,” he said, and kissed my hand again.

  “Get up off the floor, Requiem, please.”

  He stood. “I would like very much to sit beside you.”

  I sighed, and nodded.

  He sat on the other side of me from Jean-Claude, except that he sat close enough that his legs touched me. Great, just creepy, great.

  I looked at his chest where the blades had come so close to taking his life. “What are we going to do about Meng Die? She’s just proven herself too dangerous, and so not a team player.”

  “Kill her,” Elinore said.

  I looked at Jean-Claude.

  “I would rather find another solution, but yes, it may come to that.”

  “You are overly sentimental, Jean-Claude, just because you feel guilty that you stole her mortal life. It is a great gift, not a curse.”

  “I feel as I feel, Elinore.”

  “Have a care that your feelings do not get us all killed.” She looked at me. “Also, I think if Anita truly is going to be a panwere…”

  “News travels fast,” I said, looking at Jean-Claude.

  “I wished an opinion of someone powerful enough to have an opinion.”

  I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t. She was the most powerful vamp in his group right now. Her waking first had proven that.

  “As I was saying, if Anita is truly going to be a panwere, then it may not simply be lions, wolves, and leopards that she attracts. It may be all wereanimals, or many. Almost all the visiting masters have brought their animal to call, so we must test this theory before she is allowed near them. Augustine I believe will let the insult go, because he is besotted with you both, and he attacked you first. The breach of protocol was on his side, not ours. But if Anita entices others away from their masters, they may not be so forgiving.”

  “Agreed,” Jean-Claude said, “and we still must see how master vampires outside Belle’s bloodline react to Anita’s ardeur.”

  “And where are we going to get master-level vamps and other wereanimals to test these little theories on?” I asked.

  There was a knock on the door. “It’s Remus, Jean-Claude.”

  “Enter.”

  Remus entered, closing the door behind him. He was actually looking directly at us, and he was angry, which I guess explained the direct look. “I told you if there were any more that I wouldn’t let them in without me and my guards coming in here.”

  “I remember,” Jean-Claude said.

  “I said any other vampire, but definitely these two are not coming in here without you having bodyguards on this side of the door.”

  “What two?” I asked.

  “Wicked and Truth are out here,” Remus said.

  “Wicked and Truth,” Elinore said, “how interesting. They are very powerful, and they are not of Belle’s line.”

  I shook my head. “Truth already got a taste of the ardeur when I bound him to Jean-Claude. He’s not following me around like this.” I jerked my thumb at Requiem.

  “Did you actually feed from Truth?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Then you must try.”

  “No,” I said.

  “At least suggest it to them,” she said.

  “No,” I said, and put more heat into the word.

  “They have sworn loyalty to Jean-Claude. They are not leaving us,” Elinore said.

  “No,” I said, “absolutely no.”

  “Very well, then perhaps not feed, but watch you feed,” Jean-Claude said.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “S
amuel watched you feed and was not drawn to you, or me, that strongly. But Haven was drawn so that his companions had to drag him away, almost as they did Augustine. Perhaps if Wicked and Truth are simply in the room when you feed, that would tell us if the effect will go outside Belle’s line, or no.”

  “We would need someone from Belle’s line to be in the room too, someone close in power.” I looked at Elinore.

  She smiled, “I am in love, Anita, true love. It does not work on me.”

  “Some types of ardeur work anyway,” I said.

  “For a brief time, yes, but my being in love makes me unusable for the test.”

  There was another knock on the door. Remus opened it, murmured to someone, then turned back. He didn’t look directly at us again. “London is out here, too. He’s Belle Morte’s line, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Elinore said, “he is.”

  “So what, I feed the ardeur, and then they tell us how attracted they are to it?”

  “It is a way of testing without impinging too far upon your morals,” Elinore said.

  “Just have sex in a room while a bunch of men watch, right?”

  Jean-Claude shook his head and smiled. “Simply feed the arduer, ma petite. It does not have to be sex, if you do not wish it.”

  “It seems a shame to raise the ardeur on purpose when I’m not hungry,” I said.

  He sighed. “Yes, it does, but it is far better to raise it now, when we can control it, than later, when visitors have arrived, and we cannot.”

  Put that way, it made sense, but…“Who do I feed from?” I asked.

  He gestured to Requiem. “The damage is already done to him.”

  “Great, now I’m damage,” I said.

  “And feeding from blood as powerful as yours will help him speed his healing.”

  That was true, but…“Fine, but only if you explain the parameters of the experiment to everyone. They have to agree to it, or I won’t do it.”

  “Of course, ma petite, I would not have it any other way.”

  I looked into that beautiful, unreadable face, and was almost a hundred percent certain he was lying.

  26

  EVERYONE AGREED TO the test. Everyone seemed happier about it than I did. Okay, everyone but Remus and some of his guards. I think that was because he was pretty sure it was going to go horribly wrong and he and his people would have to pick up the pieces. I agreed with Remus.

  Part of me hopes that someday I get over being so damned uncomfortable about group scenes like this; part of me hopes I don’t. It’s sort of the same part of me that mourns that I can kill without feeling bad about it, most of the time. Yeah, that same part thinks that doing metaphysical sex in front of a bunch of men, for any reason, is just another step down the slippery slope to damnation. But if the alternative is having the ardeur go off like a metaphysical bomb during the party tonight, well, what we were about to do was the lesser evil. Still it might be nice, once in a while, not to have to choose between evils. Just once, couldn’t I choose the lesser good?

  Requiem lay back against the fresh sheets, his hair spilling out around his upper body like a dark halo. His day job, or would that be night job, was stripping at Guilty Pleasures. The body showed that, but all I could see was the wounds. Meng Die had come very, very close to putting out his light forever. I traced fingertips across the sternum cut. His breath came out in a shuddering sigh. I couldn’t tell if it had hurt, or felt good.

  Normally I could read Requiem, but today there was nothing in his face that helped me. He gazed up at me as if I were the most wondrous thing he’d ever seen. It was a step above, or below, love. Worship was the only word I had for it. It hurt my heart to see that look on his face. There was no Requiem left in that look.

  Requiem of the somber, pretty speeches. He’d earned his name because he was poetic but damned depressing. But there was no force of personality to him now, nothing but this overwhelming need.

  “God, help me,” I said.

  Jean-Claude came to stand next to the bed, to me. “What is wrong, ma petite?”

  “Please tell me he’ll get better than this,” I said.

  “Better than what, ma petite?”

  “Look at him,” I said.

  Jean-Claude moved close enough that the sleeve of his robe touched my robed arm. He gazed down at Requiem with me.

  Requiem’s gaze flickered to him, then settled back on me, as if the other man didn’t matter. But he’d noticed him, because he said, “Will you force me to share your favors with another, Anita? Or will I be as the heavens stretched between the heat of the sun and the cold kiss of the moon? Will you do to me as you did to Augustine?”

  “Well, at least he’s back to being wordy and poetic,” I said. “It’s a start.”

  “Did he offer himself to both you and Anita?” Elinore asked, still curled in her chair.

  “I believe so,” Jean-Claude said.

  “Requiem does not embrace men,” London said from the far corner. He’d moved to the darkest, most shadowy corner he could find, as he always did. It wasn’t just his short dark curls and penchant for black clothing that got him the nickname “the Dark Knight.” “It was the one thing he fought against most strongly.”

  “Yes,” Elinore said, “he was always most adamant that he did not do men.”

  “Belle punished him for his refusal to service men,” Jean-Claude said. He stared down at Requiem with a solemn, lost look.

  “Then he shouldn’t be offering to do it for us,” I said.

  “No, he should not.” Jean-Claude looked at me, and showed for an instant what he was feeling. I felt it like a stab through my heart. Anguish, anguish that he had brought Requiem here to keep him safe, and instead had enslaved him more thoroughly than Belle ever managed.

  I felt the bed move a moment before a hand touched my back through the robe. I turned, but I knew whose hand was on me. Requiem had sat up, with all the damage to his chest and stomach, and he’d sat up so he could touch me. I searched his face for something familiar. I finally said, “Requiem, are you in there?”

  He touched my face. “I am here,” but he spoke the words with such emotion that they seemed to mean a great deal more than they should have.

  I moved his hand away from my face, held it in mine, so maybe he would stop touching me. I looked at Jean-Claude. “This is awful. How do we fix this? Isn’t there some faster way than finding his true love?”

  Requiem’s thumb began to make little circles on my hand, as if just being held wasn’t enough.

  “It’s almost as if she’s bespelled him,” Elinore said, “as if she were the vampire and he the human.”

  “Fine, treat it like it’s vampire mind tricks; how do I undo it?”

  “A vampire’s master can sometimes break such enchantments,” Elinore said.

  I looked at Jean-Claude. “Help him.”

  London stepped back to the edge of the light. “But it is not Anita’s ardeur, but Jean-Claude’s ardeur through her. He cannot fix his own ardeur, can he?”

  “I do not know,” Elinore said. She looked around the room and spoke toward the wall farthest from the door. “Wicked, Truth, you have been very silent through this discussion. Do you have any suggestions?”

  The two brothers came forward into the stronger light near the bed. At first glance they didn’t look that alike. They were both tall and broad-shouldered, but beyond that they were opposites. Wicked’s hair was sleek and very blond, cut long so it framed a face that was all high, sculpted cheekbones, complete with a dimple in his chin deep enough that I could never decide if it looked adorable or painful. His eyes were a clear steady blue, and if I hadn’t had Jean-Claude’s and Requiem’s eyes to compare him to, I’d have said his eyes were striking. He wore a modern tailored suit of tans and creams that made him look halfway between the college professor of your dreams and an executive gigolo. Then there was Truth.

  Truth had obviously slept in his clothes. The clothes were made up of bi
ts of leather, but not fashionable club wear, no, more like boiled leather worn smooth and soft with use and wear. His pants were tucked into boots so battered that Jean-Claude had offered to replace them, but Truth wouldn’t give them up. He could have been dressed for any century from thirteenth to fifteenth. His straight brown hair was shoulder length, but stringy, as if it needed a good brushing. He didn’t exactly have a beard, just stubble, as if he hadn’t shaved for a while. But under all that disarray was the same bone structure, the same cleft chin, and the same blue eyes. Wicked’s eyes always seemed to hold a cynical joy, but Truth’s looked tired and wary, as if he was just waiting for us to disappoint him.

  “What do you want from us?” Truth asked, and his voice was already defensive, as if he was ready for an argument.

  Elinore uncurled from her chair and moved to stand on the other side of Jean-Claude, not quite to where London was standing, but so she could see the brothers more clearly. “You have been masterless for longer than any other master vampire. Surely, in all those centuries, some powerful vampire tried to capture the great warriors Wicked and Truth. Have you been bespelled as Requiem is?”

  Wicked laughed. “Save the flattery, Elinore; we’ll help if we can, if Anita tells us plainly what she wants from us.” He turned those laughing eyes to me. Truth’s somber eyes followed his brother’s gaze.

  I met their eyes. Wicked looked like it was all a big joke, which I’d finally realized was his blank face. Truth looked calmer, blanker, but he was ready to be disappointed in me. Certainty that I would not live up to his expectations was clear on his face.

  “Isn’t it Jean-Claude’s order you need?” Elinore asked.

  Truth shook his head. Wicked said, “No.”

  “No,” Jean-Claude said.

  “No,” Wicked repeated, and he allowed himself a small, tasteful smirk of satisfaction.

  “Who is your master?” Elinore asked.

  “They are,” and Truth motioned at both Jean-Claude and me.

  “Then why is Jean-Claude’s order not good enough?” she asked.

  “He hasn’t bespelled Requiem; she has,” Truth said.

  “You do not agree with London that it is Jean-Claude’s ardeur flowing through Anita.”