He pressed us back to the bed, his weight suddenly pinning me down. My legs were still wrapped around his waist so his body was already pushing against my opening. I fought to concentrate on the sex instead of flesh and blood. But the sex was tangled up with the feel of my nails in his back, my mouth at his lips. I wanted that hard press of flesh to shove its way inside me, but almost more I wanted to bite his lips and draw blood. I wanted blood more than sex. I was feeding for Jean-Claude, but the ardeur wasn’t his first hunger.
I licked Donovan’s lower lip, drew it into my mouth, so full, so rich, so…I bit down on his lip, hard and sharp. Blood, sweet, metallic, warm blood filled my mouth, and the world vanished in a dance of light flashes and pleasure. It wasn’t sex, or orgasm, but it was as if that sip of blood ate the world in a red wash of pleasure. I’d had the world go red from anger, but never from sheer joy. It was as if every piece of my body filled with warmth and happiness all at once. It was orgasmic and not, but whatever it was, it was amazing.
I was left gasping and almost limp underneath Donovan. It was as if I’d lost time, because he had my wrists pinned, his body trying for the right angle to enter me. I blinked up at him as if I didn’t remember how I got there. His chin was covered in bright, crimson blood; his lower lip was shredded. Had I done that?
Then he found his angle and was pushing his way into my body. I gazed down the length of our bodies to watch him plunge himself into me. The sight of it made me cry out and raise my hips to meet his thrust. His eyes fluttered shut, and he gasped, “You take all my control away.”
“Fuck me, Donovan,” I whispered.
He looked down at me, with blood spilling down his face, but his eyes filled with that look that a man gets. That look that says, Mine, sex, more, less than that. His eyes were bluer than I’d ever seen them as he began to shove himself in and out of my body. He found his rhythm, quick, fast, over and over. I watched all that pale, hard length plunge in and out of me. I felt the warmth begin to build. I whispered, “Soon.”
“Your eyes,” he whispered, “your eyes like blue flame.”
I might have asked what he meant by that, but one last thrust and the orgasm hit me. I screamed and struggled underneath him. He fought to hold my hands down, fought to pin my lower body, fought to keep me where he had me, as his body thrust inside me in one last powerful movement that brought me screaming again, or maybe I hadn’t stopped screaming from the first time. The ardeur fed, fed on his body plunged inside mine, fed on the strength of his hands on my wrists, fed on the heat of him, and then I felt the swans. The three women I knew in St. Louis were in a small bedroom. They stared up at me as if I were something they could see, something that had come to get them. Then other faces, more startled eyes; some cried out, some slumped on their couches, fell from chairs, others writhed on their beds. I fed, we fed, the ardeur fed. Dozens of faces, of bodies, and I felt Jean-Claude wake, felt it like a jolt through my belly and groin.
He took control of the energy and I might have tried to stop, but it was too late to stop. We fed on the swans, we fed on them all. So much power, so much life. We ate them down while they stumbled in mid-step, while they slid down walls, and none of them fought us. They just gave it up. An army of prey, an army of food; a glorious rush of power.
Richard woke; I felt his eyes flash open, felt him begin to choke and fight the tube in his throat. Jean-Claude drew me back from him, enough so I did not choke with him. I saw the white coats pile around Richard as he began to struggle.
Then it was night and moonlight and wings, strong wings beating against so much air. The ardeur hit those wings like an arrow through his heart. One pulse beat it was feathers and wings, the next pulse it was a man falling to earth. The ardeur took his power, drank down that pale body, that dark hair, the mix of pleasure and terror as he plummeted. Richard’s power burst over me, through me, in a rush of heat and electricity. He reached out to the falling man, and simply thought—Change. He called the man’s beast, called that energy and covered the flesh in feathers, turned the arms to wings in time for him to turn and skim over the treetops. I felt leaves brush our feet as wings beat frantically to gain height. But frantic didn’t quite cover all that smooth, muscled power. When all we could feel was wind and space, we left him, and I had a moment of staring into Richard’s face, a moment to see his chest covered in healing scars. Then I was back in the narrow bed with Donovan on top of me, his body poised above me, spine bowed, hands gripping my wrists as if I were the last solid thing in the world. His eyes were closed; blood dripped from his mouth onto my skin like red flowers exploding on my body.
I breathed his name. “Donovan.”
He opened his eyes and they were solid black and no longer human. He threw his head back and screamed. The sound was high and piteous. The sound froze my heart in my throat. I had time to think, I’ve hurt him, and then that pale, perfect body began to thrust into me all over again, as if we hadn’t just made love. But before he’d been gentle, careful. There was nothing gentle this time. He plunged into me as hard and fast as he could. He brought me screaming, writhing, underneath him. His hands bruised my wrists, held me in place as his rhythm became frantic, his breathing ragged, and feathers flowed around his body like a nimbus of white light. I had a second to think, Angel, and then all I could see was feathers, brushing me, covering me like a blanket. He cried out again and his body thrust into mine. He brought me one last time, covered in feathers, blinded by them, breathing them in. His hands vanished and I could move my hands, but all I could touch were feathers and bones too delicate to be human. Huge wings beat the air above me, and I could finally see a long graceful neck, the head, the beak. I was trapped at the center of a storm of wingbeats and feathers, as he fought for lift. I covered my face with my arms, because a swan can break the arm of a grown man with one blow. Then he was off, almost hovering, but the ceiling was too low. He crashed to the floor.
I was left buffeted, breathless, heart hammering in my chest. A single feather longer than my hand lay across my stomach. I managed to prop myself up, the feather fluttering down between my legs to land beside the condom that lay discarded on the bed. It had been the only clothes he’d been wearing.
Jean-Claude’s voice eased through me. “Je t’aime, ma petite, je t’aime.”
“I love you, too,” I whispered.
Then dawn came, and I felt him die. Felt that wonderful person I loved go away. I heard the sound of a body hitting the ground. Requiem was a heap of black cloak. One of the guards had managed to catch London and was lowering him to the ground a little more gently. The vampires were dead for the day, all of them. We had hours of daylight to find the Harlequin and kill them. I’m not sure that’s what Jean-Claude and the other vampires would have wanted, but the vampires were down for the count until nightfall. It was daylight, and the humans were in charge. Thanks to Jean-Claude I was the top human in our city. Thanks to Richard’s self-loathing, the guards would listen to me instead of him. All right, except for the wolves. The wolves were his, but that was okay, I needed professionals, not gifted amateurs. I needed Edward and his backup. At that moment I would have welcomed any backup he thought could handle the job.
28
I WAS WRONG. I didn’t want to welcome Edward’s backup. One of them I wanted to send back to his mommy. The other I wanted to put a bullet in his brain, or heart. He was human, so either would do the job.
At least I was dressed for the fight. I never fight as well naked. I would so not have been comfy naked in front of Edward, let alone in front of his “backup.” “What the fuck were you thinking?” I shouted at him. Yeah, it was one of those kinds of fights.
Edward’s face was blank, empty, peaceful. It was one of the faces he killed with when he wasn’t enjoying the kill. “Olaf is good backup for this, Anita. He’s got the skills we need: a covert spook, any weapon you care to name, hand-to-hand, and better with explosives than I am.”
“He’s also a fucking serial kille
r, whose victims of choice are petite brunette women.” I slapped my upper chest. “Sound like anyone you know?”
He let out a breath; if it had been anyone else I would have said he sighed. “He’s a good match for this job, Anita, I swear that he is, but he wasn’t my choice, not exactly.”
I stopped pacing and came to stand in front of him. I’d kicked everyone out except Micah when he handed me the overnight bag full of clothes and weapons. I loved a man who knew how to pack for me. When I’d stepped out into the hallway and seen Olaf and Peter, I’d gone back in the room, kicked Micah out, too, and invited Edward in.
“What does that mean, he wasn’t your choice, exactly? You just said his skills match this job.”
“They do, but do you really think I’d have brought him within a hundred miles of you, Anita? Olaf likes you, likes you in a way I’ve never seen him like a woman. He has whores and he has victims, but whatever he feels for you is different.”
“Are you saying he loves me?”
“Olaf doesn’t love anybody, but he feels something for you.”
“He wants me to play serial killer with him, Edward.”
Edward nodded. “The last time he saw you, you and he killed a vampire together. You decapitated it, and he cut out its heart.”
“How do you know what we did? You were in the hospital trying not to die.”
“I heard about it later from the local cops. They were creeped by the way you butchered the vampire. Said you were both real good at cutting up the body.”
“I’m a legal vampire executioner, Edward. It’s what I do.”
He nodded again. “And Olaf has been a special-ops assassin for most of his adult life.”
“I don’t hold his day job against him, Edward; it’s his damn hobby that I don’t like.”
“Hobby? You call the fact that he’s a serial killer his hobby?”
I shrugged. “I think that’s how he sees it.”
He smiled. “I think you may be right.”
“Don’t you smile at me. Don’t you fucking smile at me. You hinted that you didn’t want to bring him on this job, so why did you?”
His face sobered. “He wanted to come to St. Louis to see you”—he put air quotes around the see—“on his own. I told him if he came near you I’d kill him. He believed me, but he said that if I ever got called to back you up again, I had to include him. If I didn’t, he’d come on his own, and take his chances with me later.”
“Later? Later, after what?”
Edward gave me a look out of those blue eyes that were some of the coldest I ever looked into. “So he’s here to what, kill me?”
“He doesn’t kill women, Anita. He butchers them.”
I shuddered, because I’d seen Olaf at a serial-killer crime scene. Not his own work. He’d been helping Edward and me track down a different killer. But the victim had been just a pile of meat. It had been one of the worst things I’d ever seen done to a human being. Olaf had looked up from that pile of carnage, and the look in his face had been sexual. As if what lay on that table was the biggest turn-on he’d ever had. He’d looked at me, and he’d been thinking sex, yeah, but he’d been thinking sex not just without my clothes, but as if he wondered what I’d look like without my skin. Most humans didn’t scare me anymore, but Olaf scared me.
Edward said, “Anita, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’d rather see a ghost than him.”
He smiled again. “Rather see a ghost; I keep forgetting that you’re not just a pretty face.”
I frowned at him. “You’re smiling. This fight isn’t even close to over.”
“I had to invite Olaf to play, Anita. This way I have his word that he’ll behave himself.”
“Define behave himself.”
“No serial killing on your turf, period.”
“So I’m off the menu, too?”
“He wants to help you slaughter your victim of choice, vampires. He’ll even help you kill men, he said.”
I shivered, rubbing my arms, squeezing tight so the gun in its shoulder holster dug into my breast a little. I liked the discomfort. I wasn’t helpless. It was just that Olaf was six feet plus of trained muscle. I was stronger and faster than a normal human thanks to Jean-Claude’s vampire marks, but I still knew enough about physical potential to know that Olaf was a very dangerous man. He was crazy and trained to kill; that seemed an unfair advantage to me.
“You think he would have come on his own by now, if you hadn’t given him your word?” I asked.
“Yes.” He wasn’t smiling when he said that last. He was as serious as I’d ever seen him. “I would never have invited him to that last case in New Mexico if I’d thought I would be needing your help. Please, believe that the last thing I wanted was for him to meet you. I knew it would be a disaster. I just didn’t expect you to…charm him. I didn’t know there was a woman on the planet that could have made him feel anything close to…”—he searched for a word—“he wants to help you hunt and slaughter these vampires.”
“I don’t want him here, Edward.”
“I know, but this was the best compromise I could make with him, Anita. Actually I hoped he’d be out of the country, so far away that the fireworks would be over before he could get back to the United States. He took a job with a government agency to help train up some of their new antiterrorist infiltration groups. He took a job that he’s qualified for—he speaks more Middle Eastern languages than I do—but it wasn’t a job that let him exercise his urges.”
“You mean he’s not been allowed to kill anyone.”
He nodded.
“Why would he take a job that didn’t let him slaughter people?”
“Because he knew if he went out of the country, he’d never make it back in time to be in St. Louis when you needed me.”
I stared at Edward. “Are you saying that Olaf took a job that he didn’t want so he’d be closer to me?”
“That is exactly what I’m saying. This last year and some change is probably the longest he’s ever gone without killing someone. If you’d asked me, I’d have said he couldn’t go this long without killing someone.”
“How do you know he didn’t?”
“He’s got a deal with our government. He doesn’t play serial killer on American soil. They look the other way, as long as he abides by that.”
I hugged myself tight again. “I didn’t ask Olaf to be a good boy, Edward.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“Why does the fact that he’s behaved himself on the off chance that he can come play with me scare me?”
“Because you’re smart.”
“Explain to me why it makes my skin run cold that he’s gone to this much effort for me?”
“He is crazy, Anita. Which means that you never know what will trigger him with a woman. He likes you as much as I’ve ever seen him like a woman. But he has high standards for women.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that when he saw you almost two years ago you weren’t sleeping around. Now you are. I’m a little worried that that will change his opinion of you.”
“He kills whores,” I said, my voice flat.
“I did not call you a whore.”
“You said I sleep around.”
“You have half a dozen regular lovers, and you just had sex with a new one. Give me another way to say it.”
I thought about it, then shook my head and almost smiled. “A full dance card. Oh, hell, Edward. Fine, I’m sleeping with a lot of men.” Which brought me to another thought. “God, Peter was in the hallway while Donovan and I were in here…” I felt myself blush and couldn’t stop it.
“I figured you for a screamer.”
I gave him a very unfriendly look.
“Sorry, but Peter was embarrassed. What else do you want me to say?”
“Say why you brought him. Say why the hell would you involve him in this dangerous mess?”
“Short version, because
we’ve only got a few hours to find these bastards.”
“I agree we’ve got a ticking clock, but you have to explain Peter being here. I can’t just let him go hunting vampires with us, Edward. He’s sixteen years old, for God’s sake.”
“It was the phone call when you talked to him. He knew you were in trouble. Short version, he wanted to return the favor. You rescued him, he wanted to help rescue you.”
“I don’t need rescuing. I need people to help me kill other people. I don’t want Peter to get better at killing people. I watched him kill the woman who raped him. I watched him blow her face to red sauce.” I shook my head and started pacing the room again. “How could you do this to him, Edward?”
“If I had left him home he just would have followed me. He knew where I was going. This way I can keep an eye on him.”
“No, you can’t. We can’t do this job and babysit at the same time. They almost killed all three of us: Richard, Jean-Claude, and me. We’re kind of hard to kill, Edward. These guys are good, dangerous good. Do you really want Peter’s first real job to be against something this scary?”
“No,” Edward said, “but he was coming. I had the choice of bringing him with me, or letting him find his own way.”
“He’s sixteen, Edward. You’re his father. You say no, and you make it stick.”
“I’m not married to his mother yet, Anita. I’m not his official step-anything.”
“He sees you as his dad.”
“Not when he doesn’t want to.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I don’t have the authority that a real dad would have over him sometimes. It means that I’ll always wonder if he’d been mine from the beginning if he’d be different, or if we’d have ended up here anyway.”
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15 Page 234