Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I found Elinore standing by her chair, holding on to it, as if only the chair’s weight kept her from coming to me.

  I felt myself go pale. “I didn’t mean…”

  “Your necromancy has gained in power, ma petite, as have your beasts. Be more specific on your orders; use his name.”

  I looked at Elinore. “If I called you, would you have to come to me?”

  She swallowed hard enough for me to hear it. “I would fight, but the compulsion would be strong. I am not yet a Master of the City. As you must be of a certain level of power to rule a city, so the ruling of it, and the oaths that are taken, the magic that binds, gains a vampire more power. I do not have those ties, yet, so I…I am not Augustine, or Samuel. I think if you forced the issue it would be difficult.”

  It was my turn to swallow.

  “We are all blood-oathed to Jean-Claude,” London said, through gritted teeth. “I think her call is stronger for her ties to him.”

  Truth broke from his brother, and went to the chair by the fireplace. He strode to it, and hid his face in his hands. Wicked turned back to me. “He wanted to go to you. We are both blood-oathed to Jean-Claude. Why was my brother more drawn to your call?”

  “He fed on ma petite, when he oathed to us,” Jean-Claude said. “You took my blood.”

  “I told you when you brought him over that I had to be brought over in exactly the same way. You assured me that it wouldn’t matter.” He gestured angrily toward his brother. “This matters.”

  Requiem wrapped his arms around me, and laid a kiss upon my neck. He was bending his stomach to do it. Didn’t it hurt?

  I said the only thing I could think of. “I didn’t know.”

  “We must always be bound the same,” Wicked said, “we must always be the same. It is our strength. It is who we are. Whatever you have done to him, you must do to me, or undo to him.”

  I nodded. “I’ll try.”

  “I’m beginning to understand why we used to kill necromancers on sight,” London said.

  “Is that a threat?” Jean-Claude said, voice mild.

  “No, no, master.”

  But I understood what London meant. Requiem licked along my neck, and that one touch made me shiver, just a little. “Requiem, stop touching me.”

  He froze against me, but he was still touching me. He simply stopped kissing and licking me. I guess I’d have to be careful how I worded things. I had to find Requiem. Not just a vampire, or the dead. I needed him, his individual self. I’d done something similar once in the Church of Eternal Life, when the police and I were searching for a vampire murder suspect. I’d sought the flavor of one person, and that had been someone I hadn’t known. I knew Requiem. I was holding him.

  I wrapped my arms around him, moved all that thick hair to one side, so I could bury my face in the bend of his neck. I breathed in the scent of his skin. He didn’t smell warm. I could smell his cologne, the soap he used, his shampoo, but underneath all of it was the faint smell of death. Not of corpses and rot, because vampires did not do that, but the scent of long-closed rooms, vaguely like the smell of snakes. Musty, not warm, nothing that you could cuddle. Yet his arms were strong, the edges of his wounds on the one arm catching in the silk of my robe. He was real, but he wasn’t exactly alive.

  I held him close, and pushed my necromancy into the body I held. Pushed it carefully, just into this one body, nowhere else. I searched not for this befuddled stranger but for that spark that was truly Requiem. I found him, in the dark, inside himself. He wasn’t afraid, but softly confused, lost. I called to him. I felt him look up, hear me, but he could not come. I could see his prison, touch the door, gaze at him through the bars, but I did not have the key. Then I realized what we needed. Blood. No matter what type of undead you’re dealing with, blood is usually the key.

  I rose up from his neck, and swept my own hair to the side. “Feed, Requiem, feed from me.”

  He showed me a face with eyes wide with shock, as if he couldn’t believe I would let him do it, but he didn’t ask me to repeat the order. His hand wrapped in my hair, his other hand at my back. He pressed me tight against him, holding my neck to the side, and he brought me down to him, for he was sitting and I kneeling. He brought my neck down to his mouth, the way you would do for a kiss. He could not roll me with his eyes, and he didn’t try. There would be nothing to change the pain to pleasure. I felt him tense, and I tried to relaxed, but you never relax. You tense up, just a bit, and it hurts more.

  He bit me, fangs sinking in, pain sharp enough to make me push at his shoulders, as I tried to get away. I just couldn’t take that much pain out of the box without pushing against it. I felt him begin to drink me down, his throat convulsing, swallowing. Something that could be so erotic, and it just fucking hurt like this.

  But it was just like beheading a chicken to raise a zombie, or spreading blood on a vampire’s lips to heal him. It was blood with a purpose, and I sent my magic down with that blood. I used it, to call Requiem. Used it to find him in the dark, and set him free.

  He drew back from my throat, gasping, as if he’d been running. There was blood on his lower lip as he stared up at me. One moment he still looked dazed, the next he spilled into his eyes. They flared with blue fire, with that hint of turquoise in the center. His power danced over my skin like a cold, prickling breeze.

  “I am here, Anita. You have cleared my mind. What would you have of me?”

  I moved back from his arms, touching my neck, and came away with blood. Remus was already sending the young guard Cisco to the bathroom for gauze and tape.

  “I wanted you free, and yourself. We’ve got that.”

  He shook his head, and winced, as if only now did the bruises hurt. He leaned back against the mounded pillows, favoring his stomach and chest, holding his injured arm carefully. “It was like being on drugs; nothing hurt that badly, when you touched me. I am free, but everything hurts.”

  “Isn’t that always the way,” I said, but I smiled. He was himself again.

  I looked around at the other vampires. I looked at Elinore still gripping the back of her chair. I felt her. Felt her as if she were a flavor of ice cream that I could have put in a cone and licked. Mostly vanilla, but with chocolate chips. I looked at London. Not vanilla, definitely something darker, chunkier, full of hard crunchy bits. Wicked filled my mind like icing, chocolate icing to spread on skin and lick clean. I shook my head at the imagery, and looked for Truth, still huddling by the fireplace. Something fresh and clean, strawberries, maybe, strawberry ice cream to melt down the skin, and be licked away, so you could suck the cold around the nipples…

  “Anita”—and it was Jean-Claude’s voice—“Anita, you must stop this.”

  He never called me Anita. It made me look at him. “Why can’t I taste you?” I asked.

  “Because I am your master, and not a toy for your power.”

  The look on his face frightened me, because he was frightened. I licked dry lips, and said, “I guess this answers the question. I don’t touch anyone else’s vampires.”

  “No,” he said, “no.” He was at the edge of the bed. “Now shut it down.”

  It took me a second to realize what he meant. My necromancy, I needed to turn it off again. I closed my eyes, and drew it back in. I drew in tight and tighter, closed and squeezed that metaphysical fist tight and hard. But it was like the hand wasn’t big enough to hold it all now. I could squeeze it down, but it leaked through as if the fingers were trying to hold sand. No, not true. I didn’t want to stop. It felt so good to wander through the vampires, better than playing with zombies. The moment I realized I was the one letting the fist leak, I was able to shut it down. It almost hurt, but I did it. I could do it. But I wondered if there would come a day when there was so much power that I wouldn’t be able to shut it down completely? I needed to talk to my magical mentor, Marianne, about that, sooner rather than later.

  I opened my eyes and said, “How’s that?”

  �
��Good,” he said, but his voice was not happy.

  “That was frightening,” Elinore said. “I felt your power, as if you were licking along my skin, my…” She shivered, not in a happy way.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “You could roll me,” London said, “roll me the way I can roll a human. You could, I felt it.”

  “You must undo to my brother what you have done to him,” Wicked said, “or bind me as you bind him.”

  I nodded. “We’ll discuss it later, okay? I’ve got a full plate today.”

  “You promised me,” Wicked said.

  I sighed. “Look, I didn’t know that taking blood from me instead of Jean-Claude would be that big a deal, okay? I’m doing the best I can here, Wicked. Truth was dying when I offered him blood. I saved his life, if I remember correctly, so stop being so pissy about it.” I was getting angry, because I felt guilty, and that almost always led to anger for me.

  “Anita can work on your problem another day,” Requiem said. “Today is mine.”

  Something in the way he said it made me look at him. He lay like he hurt, but the look on his face wasn’t about pain. It was almost anticipatory.

  “What are you thinking, Requiem?” I asked.

  “That you still need to feed the ardeur in front of all these good people.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “The test is to see what will happen if you feed the ardeur in front of our visitors. You know not to use your necromancy in front of them now, but this question has not been decided.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I think it has.”

  “I’m with Anita on this one,” London said, “no ardeur in front of the guests. No anything much in front of the other masters.”

  “That is not your call to make,” Elinore said.

  “Do you think I’m wrong?” he asked.

  No one answered. So I did. “No, you’re not wrong. My powers are too unpredictable to use in public right now. I just have to shield like a son of a bitch.”

  “Perhaps you can control the necromancy to that degree, but the ardeur is not broken to bit and bridle, yet,” Requiem said.

  “She just freed you,” Wicked said. “How can you want her to enslave you again?”

  “I don’t want to be enslaved, but I do want her to feed. I want it more than I’ve wanted anything in a very long time.”

  I looked at Jean-Claude. “Is he free, or not?”

  “You called me back so I could choose, Anita.”

  I looked at Requiem. “I don’t understand.”

  “You said you would never feed the ardeur on me again, unless I broke free and could choose. You said it would be like rape, unless I could choose.”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d remember everything I said.”

  “I remember,” he said.

  “I think it’s too dangerous to feed the ardeur on you.”

  “You swore that you would feed from me, if I broke free. I have broken free.”

  “I broke you free.”

  “Are you certain of that? Are you certain that my will did not help you some little bit?”

  I started to say no, then hesitated. “I don’t…know.”

  “Then I choose for you to feed.”

  I was shaking my head.

  “Feed, Anita, feed upon my flesh, drink deep of my will until it doth spill upon your body like blood.”

  “You’re not thinking clearly.” I started to get off the bed.

  He grabbed my arm, in one of those too-quick-to-see movements. He winced, showed that it had cost him. “I have not made the choice you would make, if our places were reversed. I have not said what you wished me to say, but I have chosen.”

  “Let go of me, Requiem.”

  He looked at me, and smiled. “I do not wish to, and I am free not to obey. I fought to come back because you said only if I did, only then would you feed from me. Would you deny me now that I have fought the battle and won?”

  “What if one feeding undoes it? What if the ardeur consumes you again?”

  “If I am never again to be consumed by love, then what better than to be consumed by the ardeur?”

  “You sound like a junkie who’s had another taste after a long dry spell.”

  “My heart has died twice. Once when my mortal life ceased and the second when Ligeia was taken from me. I have felt nothing for so very long, Anita. You make me feel again.” He sat up, drew me in toward him.

  I put a hand on his chest, missing the knife wound by fractions. “The ardeur makes you feel again.”

  He touched my face with his wounded hand. “No, there is something about you that has awakened my heart.”

  I had a panicked feeling he was about to profess undying love. Maybe Jean-Claude did, too, because he moved forward and laid a hand on my arm.

  Requiem kept his wounded hand against my cheek, but let go of my arm. He reached out to Jean-Claude, laid his hand against the other man’s waist. I knew he couldn’t feel much through the thick robe, but it was still the most intimate gesture I’d ever seen him make toward Jean-Claude.

  “Always before your ardeur tasted of hers, Jean-Claude.”

  He wasn’t talking about me. He meant Belle Morte, because her without appellation always meant Belle for them. “Last night, Jean-Claude, you did not taste of her. You tasted of no one’s power but your own. I knew you were a sourdre de sang, but until last night you were still a planet circling the sun of Belle Morte’s power. Last night you became the sun and she the moon.”

  “Belle was the moon,” I said.

  He looked at me, smiling. “No, Anita, you were the moon. ‘The moon’s an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.’”

  “You’re quoting something,” I said.

  “Shakespeare, ma petite. He’s quoting Timon of Athens.”

  “Haven’t read that one,” I said. My pulse was in my throat, and it was making blood trickle from the wounds he’d made in my neck. “I don’t need to feed the ardeur right now, Requiem, and with everything going all weird, I think I’ll wait until I have to feed.”

  “That is sense, Requiem,” London said.

  Requiem gazed at the other vampire. “Would you wait?”

  “With permission,” London said, “I would like to leave the room.”

  “Go,” Jean-Claude said.

  London didn’t run for the door, but he didn’t stroll either. Hell, if I could have run from it, I would have. But you can’t run from yourself.

  “Any who wish to go, go,” Jean-Claude said.

  “The test will not work if we are not here,” Elinore said.

  “The test is over. We are too dangerous, and we know it.”

  Elinore didn’t argue, she just walked out. Wicked took his brother by the arm, and led him out. Truth seemed to be weeping.

  “What do you want us to do?” Remus asked.

  “Guard us, if you can.”

  “We can guard you,” he said, sounding slightly offended that Jean-Claude doubted it.

  “Can you guard us from ourselves?” Jean-Claude asked.

  “I don’t understand,” Remus said.

  Cisco had the gauze and tape. He stood by the bed, as if unsure what to do with the bandages. I touched my neck and came away with a little blood, but it had been a clean bite. It wouldn’t bleed all that much, not if it had been done right, and knowing Requiem it had been.

  “Do you need antiseptic?” Cisco asked.

  Remus came to the bed, impatient. “You treat Anita like another shapeshifter.”

  “Oh,” Cisco said. He started to set the first-aid supplies on the bed, then hesitated as if he didn’t want to put them between Requiem and me. He was still wearing a gun, but the confident guard had vanished, replaced by an awkward eighteen-year-old.

  “Give her some gauze so she can hold it against the wound,” Remus said. “The bandage is mostly to keep the cleanup to a minimum, not really for the wound.”

 
Cisco nodded like he understood, but he held the gauze out to me with his eyes nowhere near my face. In fact, he was sort of studiously trying not to look at me. I finally realized part of his problem. More of my chest was showing than when I’d started. Requiem’s feeding had moved the front of the robe around, so that a lot of breast was showing. Not all, not more than a really low neckline would show, but it was distracting him. He was both trying not to stare at my chest, and staring at it, as he warred with himself.

  I pressed the gauze to the bite, and closed my robe up with the other hand. I’d need two hands to retie, so all I could do was hold the robe closed. That let Cisco know I’d noticed what he’d been doing. He suddenly met my eyes, and he was embarrassed. It showed in the almost panic in his own eyes, and the dark blush that crawled up his neck. The panic turned to anger, and he looked away, as if I’d seen too far into his soul.

  Remus took the first-aid stuff from him. “Go to the coffin room and tell Nazareth to send someone to take your place on this detail.”

  Cisco protested, “Why?”

  “You’re staring at her chest. She’s not a piece of ass, kid. When you’re on the job, you’re on the fucking job. You can notice she’s pretty, but you don’t stare, you don’t get distracted.”

  “I’m sorry, Remus, it won’t happen again.”

  “No, it won’t,” Remus said. “Go to the coffin room.”

  “Please, Remus…”

  “I gave you an order, Cisco, follow it.”

  Cisco lowered his head, not a bow, but dejection. The gesture itself, at something so small, said how young he was. But he didn’t argue again. He went for the door.

  When it closed behind him, Remus turned to me. “Are you still bleeding?”

  I let go of the gauze; it stayed in place, pasted there by blood. “Hard to tell,” I said.

  He started to touch the gauze, then stopped, letting his hand drop to his side. I actually looked down to make sure my chest was completely covered. Nothing was showing. So why did Remus seem as reluctant as Cisco to touch me?