Edwin Alonzo Herman's mouth locked around my wrist and began to suck. The wound had begun to heal more than I'd realized, because to get to the blood, he had to pull hard and tight on my wrist. It hurt, really hurt. Yeah, I liked teeth in the right situation, but this wasn't it, and what might feel good during sex just fucking hurts during violence.
Richard was running full out now. I'd thought he was fast before, but he'd just been playing. Now, he ran. He ran so fast that branches slashed at him, that the earth didn't give to him, and part like water. He was running, running... running from himself. I had a bright glimpse inside his head. The sensation of teeth in my wrist, of that forceful mouth on my wound excited him. Excited him as both man and beast. He could have accepted if it was just about food, but it wasn't. The mixture of human and animal blurred the differences between food and sex. Blurred so many lines. Lines that Richard had never known existed, let alone wanted to cross.
He ran, and slipped in the leaves, and fell and was on his feet and running before his body had time to realize it was down. It was only in that moment that I remembered his injured shoulder, and the thought got me the memory, he'd shapeshifted, briefly, and healed himself. So much more powerful than he wanted to be.
The zombie had fallen to his knees, as if sucking at my wrist was the most exquisite thing it had ever tasted. It cradled my wrist against its mouth, and its tongue explored the wound.
My breath came out in a harsh word, "Shit!"
"Are you hurt?" Requiem asked softly.
I shook my head. It hurt, but I wasn't hurt. There was a difference, but usually a zombie starts to slow down about now. This one was still sucking hard and fast, as if he were a baby that had been starved. Of course, I'd never raised anyone this long dead without an animal sacrifice. Maybe that was the difference? I hoped so, because anything else would mean that something had gone wrong, really wrong.
He shook his mouth like a dog with a bone, and I swallowed a scream. It wasn't just that it hurt. That was way too much enthusiasm for a zombie. "Edwin, stop feeding." My voice was clear, and he ignored me. Shit. I licked suddenly dry lips. "He's had enough. Help me pry him loose," I said, voice low. Mustn't scare the clients. Mustn't let them know that everything had gone wrong tonight.
Richard fell again, slid in the damp autumn leaves, slid until a tree stopped him, sudden, and abrupt and bruising. He looked up, and I saw those wide brown eyes, saw what he was running from. He wanted to be there on his knees, he wanted to lick my wound, taste my blood, maybe widen that wound with sharp teeth. The thought didn't just excite him. The thought did it for him, just flat did it for him. What he wanted to do in the deepest, darkest, places in his soul gave a whole new meaning to oral sex.
He waited for me to be horrified, but I wasn't. If there was anyone who could resist doing the great bad thing, it was Richard. I trusted his control, not always his temper, but his control—that I trusted without doubt or reservation. I whispered, "Just because you want to do something, doesn't mean you will do it, or even that you have to do it. You're human, Richard, you have a mind and willpower. You aren't just your beast."
"You don't understand," he said, and the moment he said it, I knew what he'd done, by accident.
"You can feel what the zombie is doing?" I said.
He hid his face from me and scrambled to his feet, and ran. He ran out of the trees, and hit a paved road, and was across it before the headlights could be sure what they'd seen. Fast, faster, run, run. Run, but what he was running from, he couldn't outrun, because no matter how fast, or how far, he would still be there. How do you outrun the monster, when you are the monster?
"Richard, make the zombie stop feeding on me."
"I don't know how," and he was gone, crashing through the trees, but it wasn't friendly now, or joyous.
The zombie bit me, hard, and damn it, it hurt. "Requiem, get him off of me."
The vampire moved around so he could touch the zombie's face and hands, but nothing holds on like a zombie. I'd had to help clean up other people's zombies that had gone wrong, and sometimes you had to cut them apart a finger at a time to get them to let go of someone. Human teeth could still bite deep enough to sever a vein or artery. I wanted him off of me.
Requiem tried to pry him off, but he finally looked up at me. "I can pull him apart in pieces, but I cannot pull him off of you."
I looked at the very bodyguarding werewolf and called him over. He came, face serious, hands behind his back, as if he didn't exactly trust himself not to touch me again. Did I smell of wolf and forest, or was it the fresh blood? Don't ask unless you want to know. I didn't want to know.
The zombie plunged his tongue into the wound, as if he were trying to get the blood to flow faster. It hurt, and it surprised me, and I screamed, a little scream, but enough that one of the lawyers called, "Are you alright, Ms. Blake?"
"Fine," I called back, "fine." Mustn't let the clients know that the zombie you raised for them is beginning to eat you. Fuck!
Using every ounce of strength he had, Graham was able to pry one finger off of my wrist, but he had to hold on to that finger, or it curled right back into place. "He shouldn't be this strong."
"You've never tried to fight zombies, have you?" I said.
He gave me wide eyes. "If they're this strong, I don't want to."
"They're not just strong, they don't feel pain."
"Anita, I can tear his fingers off," Requiem said, "or break his jaw, but other than those extremities, I have no other suggestions."
The bad part was, neither did I. The zombie bit me harder, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he hit something major. He was digging his teeth in deeper by the tiniest of increments, but eventually it was going to get bad, and I was no longer sure what would happen if a gush of fresh blood hit its mouth. I'd seen what flesh-eating zombies could do to people. I wasn't exactly human, but I wouldn't grow back a hand if you ripped it off.
We could burn him up, but he wouldn't let go, and I'd burn with him. Shit.
Richard was sitting in a clearing under a tangle of naked limbs. "I have to shut the link between us, Anita. I have to. I can't separate myself from the zombie. I keep feeling what he's doing. Keep wanting him to find more blood." He cradled his face in his hands, and he'd lost his shirt somewhere, so that his back was bowed and naked as the trees overhead. "I'm sorry, Anita, I tried, I really tried."
"It's okay, Richard, we'll do what we can from here. Go take care of yourself."
He looked up, and there were tears shining in the starlight. "I'm supposed to take care of you."
"It's a partnership, Richard, we're supposed to take turns helping each other."
He shook his head. "I fucked this up, Anita, I'm sorry." I wasn't sure I'd ever heard him say fuck when he wasn't referring to sex.
"Go, Richard, go back to your folks' house. They'll be worried."
The zombie bit hard enough that I screamed, and Richard was suddenly gone. He cut the tie so abruptly that it staggered me, and only Requiem's and Graham's hands kept me from falling.
"Anita!" Graham said, and he lost his grip on the zombie, trying to keep me standing. But the hands on my wrists eased.
I looked down at the kneeling zombie, and the eyes were filling up. There was personality there, someone home. I'd been stupid. Richard had accidentally tied the zombie to him, and when he broke the link to me, the zombie was mine again. Good news, but I felt stupid that I hadn't thought of it sooner. The dead are supposed to be my specialty. I wasn't feeling very special tonight.
The zombie blinked up at me, drawing its mouth back from my wrist. His big mustache was stained with my blood. He frowned up at me. "I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm doing here." He let me go and stumbled to his feet, staring at his hands and my bloody wrist, horror showing on his face. "I beg your pardon, miss, I don't know what I was doing to you. I do apologize most sincerely, it's monstrous, monstrous." He was staring at the blood on his hands and wiping at his mouth.
Shit, he didn't know he was dead. I hated when they didn't know they were dead. And as if on cue he backed up enough to bump into his own monument. He gazed up at that uncompromising stone angel, and then he had the Ebenezer Scrooge moment. He saw his own name on the tomb, complete with a date. Even by starlight, all the color drained from his face.
"Hear me, Edwin, by right of the blood you have tasted, hear me."
He turned huge, stricken eyes to me. "Where am I? What's happened to me?"
"Don't be afraid, Edwin, be calm."
The panic began to slide away from his face, his eyes began to fill with that artificial calm, because I willed it, and because I'd been the one to call him from the grave, and it was my blood on his lips. I'd earned the right to order him around.
I told him to be calm. I told him to be clear and concise and answer the questions from the nice lawyers. He informed me that he was always clear and concise thank you very much, and I knew he'd do what the lawyers and his descendants wanted him to do. This group of lawyers and clients had decided ahead of time that they didn't want me asking the questions. Something about not trusting that I couldn't control the zombie enough to get the answers that certain people wanted. The implication had been that some of the clients feared that other clients would bribe me. At the time they'd set the guidelines down, I'd been a little offended, tonight I was glad. It meant that I could go back to the Jeep while they questioned the zombie. I had a first aid kit in the Jeep, and I needed it.
The zombie hadn't exactly reopened the wound, he'd made the old wound bloodier, and put new teeth marks into my wrist. So it was like a new wound around the old one. Some nights it feels like I have a target on my left arm. If I take a major hit, that's usually where it lands.
"You've lost more blood," Requiem said.
"No shit," I said.
He gave a small frown. "What I am saying is, could you not allow them to take the zombie home for the night and put him back tomorrow?"
I shook my head and winced as Graham raised the gauze to see if the bleeding had stopped. "He bit me, he actually injured me, zombies aren't supposed to do that. They take blood from an open wound or animal that's already dead, but they don't make a wound. They don't feed that actively."
"This one sure as hell did," Graham said, frowning at my wrist and putting pressure and a fresh gauze pad back on it.
"Exactly, so much is going wrong tonight, or not working exactly like it's supposed to, that I can't risk letting it have that much time. I have to put it back tonight, as soon as possible."
"Why?" Requiem asked.
"Just in case," I said.
"In case what?" Graham asked, this time.
"In case it becomes a flesh eater."
They both looked at me, like you've got to be kidding. "I thought that was like legend," Graham said.
"I have seen such things," Requiem said. "Long, long ago. I thought that the power to do such," he seemed to think what word to use and settled for, "things, was lost."
" Evil, you were going to say, power to do such evil , was lost."
He gave me a faint smile. "My apologies," he said.
"That's alright, nobody likes necromancers. Christian, Wiccan, vampires, whatever, nobody likes us."
"It is not that we do not like you," Requiem said.
"No," I said, "it's that everybody's afraid of us."
"Yes," the vampire said, softly.
I sighed. "Tonight for the first time I felt that I could have raised this entire cemetery without a sacrifice of any kind. I could have raised them, and they would have been mine, totally mine. I contacted Richard, because I was fighting the urge to raise my own personal army of the dead."
"Contacting your Ulfric went very wrong, from what I understood from your side of the conversation," Requiem said.
Graham said, "He tried to help."
"Yeah, he did, but just as Jean-Claude and I are gaining powers, so is Richard. Neither of us expected him to be able to link up with the zombie."
"I have never heard of such a thing," Requiem said.
"We're a u-fucking-nique bunch here in St. Louis," I said.
"Unique," Requiem said, as he and Graham began to bandage my arm. "Well, that is one way of putting it."
"How about scary?" I said.
He looked at me with those blue, blue eyes with their hint of green from the shirt near his face. "Oh, yes," he said, "oh, yes, scary will do."
Yeah, scary would do.
41
I canceled the rest of the clients for the night. It had been too close for comfort. I would put this zombie back, but that was it until I figured out what the hell was going on. Bert would be pissed. The clients would be pissed. But not half so pissed as they'd be if I raised a shambling army of the dead and terrorized the city. No, that would be more bad press than even Bert could figure out how to cure.
Besides, I'd finally lost enough blood that I wasn't feeling well. It wasn't metaphysics, it was just physical. I was light-headed, vaguely nauseous, cold even with the leather jacket and a blanket from the back of my Jeep. I'd lost enough blood over the years to know the signs. I didn't need like a transfusion or anything, but I didn't need to lose anymore blood tonight, either. In fact, I'd have Graham drive us back to the club, pick up Nathaniel, and beg off on any big sexy scene tonight. Sex called on account of blood loss. Surely he'd accept that as a good enough excuse.
We were all huddled in the backseat of the Jeep. Me, because I felt like shit. Graham and Requiem because I couldn't get warm on my own. A blanket, the leather jacket, and I was still shivering.
"My lady, may I make a bold suggestion?" Requiem asked.
It took me two tries to stop my teeth from chattering long enough to say, "Sure."
"If we do not get you warm, you will be fit for nothing tonight."
"Just say it, stop"—I shook so hard it almost hurt, when the shuddering passed—"stop talking me to death, Requiem."
"Graham under the blanket would double your body heat." He said it very crisp, no wasted words, it was nice to know he could be concise when he needed to be.
If I could have stopped my teeth from chattering I might have argued, but I couldn't, so I didn't. Besides, a little fully clothed cuddling under a blanket seemed pretty tame after what had happened earlier tonight. What could it hurt? Oh, hell, don't answer that.
Graham was still in his serious bodyguard mode, so he eased under the blanket, as if I'd bite. "I can't really be security while trapped under a blanket in the backseat," he said.
It took me three tries to say, "You carrying?"
"You mean a gun?"
"Yeah."
"No."
"If I'm the only one armed, then you ain't my security."
He looked like he'd argue, and Requiem said, "There are many ways to guard someone's body, Graham. If we do not help her warm herself, then I fear we will be going to the emergency room with her. Would you like to explain to Jean-Claude how you let that happen, when you could have prevented it with such a small action on your part?"
"No," Graham said, and eased himself in around my right side. It was as if he were a totally different person from the one that got that taste of orgasm from me earlier. He seemed stiff and uncomfortable. He slid his arm across my shoulders tentatively, awkwardly.
"She will not break, Graham," Requiem said.
"I've forgotten my job twice tonight. I don't want to do it a third time."
I snuggled in against the warmth of his body, burrowing under his leather jacket to find where the heat was trapped between his own body and the leather. He was so warm, so incredibly warm.
"God, she fits under my arm." That arm curled around me, almost reflexively, as if he just couldn't help himself. "She seems so much bigger when she's moving around, or talking, or doing anything." His voice sounded puzzled, and soft. His arm wrapped around me, tucking me close in against the line of his body, and he was right, I did fit. He was around six feet, and I so wa
sn't. He could have cradled me like a child, and I hated that, but he was so warm, so warm. His body felt almost hot. We were about a week away from full moon, and some lycanthropes' body temperature went up before the change, almost like a fever. Either I was colder than I thought, or Graham was one of the wereanimals that ran hot.
My teeth stopped chattering, and it was as if my muscles began to unclench. I still had small involuntary spasms, but it was better.
"Can I pick you up?" Graham asked, and he sounded like he expected me to say no.
I said, "Why?"
"You'll be warmer," he said.
I thought about it. He was probably right, but it would reinforce that I was tiny enough to sit in his lap and cuddle against his chest like a child. I really hated doing shit like that. But he was probably right, it would be warmer. Damn it.
"Yes," I said, and even to me it didn't sound happy.
"Are you sure?"
"The lady has spoken, Graham, do not make her repeat herself," Requiem said.
Graham hesitated for a second, then he scooped me up in his arms, like I weighed nothing. He sat me on his lap, and I found another downside to the thong. He must have been wearing new jeans because they weren't soft. I was so not wearing enough underwear, or enough skirt. But I'd dressed mostly for meeting Jean-Claude and Asher later in the evening. I'd been thinking date, not medical emergencies. Silly me.
He was able to curl most of me underneath his jacket against his chest, the rest of me curled into a small ball in his lap, with just a little leg off to one side. He put one of his arms across that spill of leg, and the other arm held the jacket tight around me. Requiem helped us get the blanket draped around us, and the only thing uncovered was the top of my head. It was dark and warm, and I laid my head against his chest, and the T-shirt was a thin barrier between me and the heat of his skin. I let my body ease into the warmth of his skin, and the scent of leather, and just him. I realized why his scent seemed so comfortable to me. He smelled like pack, that faint scent that all of Richard's wolves had. I was too friendly with too many of them not to equate that faint ruffling musk with safety. I let myself sink into a warm nest of leather, and blanket, and body, and shared warmth, and the distant smell of wolf, and I slept.
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