His hand stayed around my wrist. "You do not need to lose more blood tonight, Anita."
"I need blood to finish this," I said.
"Does it have to be yours?" he asked.
"Normally, it's animal blood, but I'm not going to slaughter a chicken just to lay a zombie. The chickens have survived this far. If I spill a little more blood, they can make it through the night."
"Would my blood do?" he asked.
I frowned at him. "You're seriously not going to let me do this without an argument, are you?"
"No," he said.
I sighed, and relaxed my arm just a little to save muscle cramp. He kept his grip on the arm with the machete. "I've used vampire blood by accident, but it went a little... odd. I don't need more odd tonight, Requiem."
"Will his do?" He pointed at Graham.
"Will my what do?" Graham asked.
"Your blood," Requiem said, as if it was an everyday request.
"How much blood?" Graham asked, as if it wasn't the first time he'd been asked.
"Just enough to touch the face, sprinkle or smear."
"Okay," Graham said, "I agree that you don't need to lose more blood tonight. If mine will do, then okay. Where will you make the cut?"
"Lower arm, but above the wrist, less risk of hitting something that'll bleed too freely. Also a wound in the wrist hurts more, because of all the movement that goes through it."
He stripped out of his jacket and tossed it on the ground behind him.
I looked up into his face, searched it for some sign that he felt used, or abused. I didn't see that. He looked like he said he was, okay with it.
"The look on your face," he said. "Really, it's okay. It's not like I don't donate blood on a regular basis."
"Your neck and arms are clean," I said, "no bite marks."
"There are other places to donate from, Anita, you should know that."
I blushed, which was bad, since I didn't have enough blood to spare. There were other places to donate from, most of them intimate. "You someone's pomme de sang ?" I asked.
"No, not yet."
"What does not yet mean?"
"It means that some of my brethren are hesitant to commit themselves to a single wolf, when your Ulfric has suddenly decided to share such bounty," Requiem said.
"He asked for volunteers," I said.
"Oh, I'm willing," Graham said, "I just don't like going around advertising the fact. Besides," he said, and he put his hands on his hips, palms flat, "it is a wild," he smoothed his hands down his jeans, "ride," until his hands touched either side of his groin, "when they feed," and his hands formed a frame of fingers and thumbs around the bulge in his pants, "down low."
My gaze had followed his hands the whole way, like I was mesmerized. I think I was just tired. I blinked and tried to concentrate on what we needed to do. I was not going to feel well until I'd fed, but I also wasn't feeding on anyone standing here. Nathaniel was waiting back at the club, and so was Jean-Claude. I had people who were willing, now that I could say no to the ardeur until I chose, I didn't have to depend on the kindness of strangers.
"Fine, hold out an arm. I'd recommend it be your nondominant arm." I had the machete in my hand. I'd made small cuts in the arms of other animators when we shared power so we could raise a bigger or older zombie. I choked up my hold on the hilt and held out my other hand for his arm. He tried to give me his hand, and I had to say, "No, I'll hold your wrist to help steady us both."
"Have it your way," he said, and he let me grip his wrist in my left hand. Normally this was quick, but my hands were shaking tonight. It's not good to be cutting on people when your hands are shaking. I blew out all the breath in my body, as if I were aiming down the barrel of a gun, and pressed the edge of the tip against his arm. I had to take a breath and did the down-stroke as I breathed out. I was slower than I would have been if I'd felt steadier. I was working on not going too deep, rather than not causing pain.
He hissed, "Shit," under his breath.
Blood welled out, almost black in the starlight. Not a lot of blood, just a trickle along the edge of the cut. The blood began to glide out of the wound, and I rubbed my fingers through it. I turned with my fingers stained with Graham's blood, turned to the zombie still waiting on the grave.
"Don't touch me with that," he said, and he recoiled away from me.
"Stand still, very still," I said, and he froze in place, unable to move, or back away. Only his eyes showed, wide and frightened.
I had to stand on tiptoe to touch his face, and Requiem was at my arm, as I wobbled. "With blood I bind you to your grave," I said.
Herman's eyes didn't get one bit less frightened.
I raised the machete up, and he made small protesting sounds, because I'd told him not to move and he couldn't scream. I tapped him with the flat of the machete. "With steel I bind you to your grave."
I spoke to Requiem, "The salt now."
He turned and got the open jar that he'd laid down by the foot of the grave. He held it out toward me. I took a handful of salt, and I'd used the wrong hand and gotten blood in the white crystals. All the salt would have to be dumped. Damn it.
I turned to the frightened zombie and threw the salt on him. "With salt I bind you to your grave." I waited for what should happen next, and prayed that this part, at least, would go like normal.
The fear, and fierce personality in those pale eyes began to fade, to leak away, until he stood open-eyed, but empty. His eyes were the eyes of the dead.
Relief poured through me, because if his eyes hadn't gone dead, then we'd have had more problems on our hands than I wanted for tonight. But he was just a zombie, a really good, well-made zombie, but just a zombie. Yeah, he'd fought me, but he was just dead clay, like all the others.
"With blood, steel, and salt, I bind you to your grave, Edwin Alonzo Herman, go, rest, and walk no more."
He lay down on the ground like it was a bed, and then he simply sank into the ground. I moved us off the grave, so that that heaving, shifting earth settled around him, without us having to go along for the ride. When it was over, the ground was undisturbed. It looked as it had when we'd first walked up, like an old grave in an old cemetery.
"Wow," Graham said into the silence, "wow."
"Wow, indeed," Requiem said, "you are very good at this."
"Thanks. There are aloe baby wipes in the Jeep for cleaning up. First aid kit for Graham, then get me back to the club."
"As my lady commands, so shall it be done."
I looked at the tall vampire and frowned at him. "There's going to come a time between us when I'm going to ask you to do something and you won't say that."
"How can you be certain of that?" he asked, and offered me his arm for the walk back to the Jeep. Graham was already packing everything up, except the machete, which I had cleaned with a rag for that purpose, and was oiling down with a cloth that I'd bought for the occasion. The two rags lived in the same bag, until one got bloody. Then it went in the trash. Organization is the key.
"Because, eventually, everyone says no."
"You are terribly young to be so cynical," he said.
"It's a gift," I said and put the machete back in its sheath, and that went on top of the bag that Graham had waiting. He was awfully efficient for a werewolf.
"No," Requiem said, "it is not. It is something learned through harsh experience."
Speaking of harsh experience, I had to check something. I knelt on the now pristine grave. I laid a hand on the hard ground.
"What are you doing, Anita?" Requiem asked.
"This zombie fought me more than most. It seemed more... real. I'm just checking to make sure that it is back to being bones and rags."
"Why, what happens if he isn't?" Graham asked.
I closed my eyes and opened just a little of that metaphysical hand that I'd had to squeeze back into a fist. "Then the zombie would be trapped down there, thinking, aware, but imprisoned. He won't rot. He can't die." I
thrust my power into that cold ground. It was quiet down there, peaceful again. Bones and rags were all that lay underneath. Good.
"Could you really trap someone like that?" Graham asked.
"I don't know for sure, but I don't want to take the chance. I wouldn't want to leave anyone down there like that." I dusted my hands off.
"Is it okay?" Graham asked.
"Yeah, just bones."
"Vampires do not die when buried, either," Requiem said. "There have been accidents where new vampires were buried too deep, or those that were appointed to retrieve them failed."
Graham shuddered. "That's just creepy."
I stood and I almost fell. Requiem caught me, steadied me. "Is that buried alive stuff what they tell bad little vampires?"
He looked at me, and there were suddenly centuries of pain in those eyes. "I, too, have learned from harsh experience."
"Just get me to Guilty Pleasures, and we'll try to avoid adding tonight to the harsh list."
"As my lady commands," he said, smiling, and offering his arm. I took his arm and let him walk me to the Jeep, because I wasn't sure I could have walked that far without falling over. I didn't feel well enough to mark Nathaniel in public. I felt weak and ill, and didn't want to be part of the show, but I also needed to feed, and he'd be furry after the show. Choices, choices, too many damn choices, and not enough options.
42
I was cold by the time we got to the Jeep. Graham had to drive, and I wouldn't ride without a seat belt, so we worked out a compromise. I rode in the backseat with the blanket, and Requiem did his best to cuddle with me while I was strapped into the seat. Which was a lot harder than it sounded.
He started with his arm around my shoulders, his body pressed as close to my side as he could get. The blanket spread over us. He was warm, warm with the blood he'd taken from me, but his wasn't the heat of the werewolf, and sitting side-by-side wasn't as warm as sitting in someone's lap. By the time we'd pulled out of the cemetery I was shivering. A mile or so down Gravois and my body started to do those little involuntary spasms.
Requiem gripped my hand under the blanket. "Your hand is cool to the touch."
"Yeah," I said.
He wrapped his arms tighter around me, and the blanket slid off. He grabbed it, tried to spread it back over us both. "Allow me to unbelt you. Allow me to hold you as Graham did."
"If"—and I had to fight past chattering teeth—"we get in an accident, I could die."
"It is true you are no vampire and couldn't survive a car crash, but it is also true that a vampire that goes too long without a feeding, cannot die. They may whither, as a grape upon the vine, but they will spring back to plump, ripe, life with the first taste of blood. I fear that you will not."
My teeth began to chatter as if I was sitting on snow instead of in a car with the heater on high and a warm man wrapped around me. I was so cold that my muscles were beginning to ache from it.
"Allow me at least to cover more of your body with my own. I know you felt that the position lacked a certain dignity, but allow me this liberty, I beg of you."
I would have said, no, but my teeth were shaking so hard I was afraid I was going to chip one of them. He took the silence for a yes, and slid to the floorboard. He burrowed under the blanket and laid his head against my stomach, his arms wrapped around me.
I fought to tell him, move, but the involuntary muscle movement eased, and my teeth stopped sounding like castanets. He'd been right, with more of his body against mine, it was warmer. Not a lot, but maybe just enough. I was still cold, so cold, as if I were ass-deep in the snow and more was falling all around me. I'd thought freezing to death was an easier way to die. You just fell asleep. This wasn't easy, and I didn't feel the least bit sleepy. A little scared, but not sleepy.
I wanted to be warm. I wanted heat. I needed something warmer.
Requiem's voice came from under the blanket, his upper body completely hidden under the gray folds. "The shivering has slowed."
"I noticed," I said, and it was nice to just be able to talk without risking a tongue injury.
He snuggled his face against me, an oddly catlike gesture. I'd had enough of the wereleopards rubbing over me to know what I was talking about. "I would do anything that my lady required."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked, and I was feeling better enough to sound suspicious.
He laughed and pressed his body against my legs hard enough that my knees moved just a little apart. His body was covering my legs, but that one little movement was like the beginning of something. It's hard for most men to keep their thoughts above the waist when they're touching below the waist, no matter how innocently. He was a vampire, but he was still male. I guess I couldn't fault him for thinking about it, as long as thinking was all he did.
"I'm feeling better than I was. I don't think we need any heroic measures."
"The tone of your voice, the stiffening of your body," he said from under the blanket, "such disapproval, as if you think I will try to ravish you."
"Let's just say that I'm not the trusting sort." Though it felt a little silly talking to a lump under a blanket, when the lump was wrapped around my body. It did lack a certain dignity.
He laid his head against the side of my body, because he was too tall to lay his head in my lap with so much of him covering my legs. His hands wrapped around the back of my body, sliding between me and the seat. It was way too intimate for my tastes, and not long ago, when the ardeur was hungry this much up-close-and-personal would have raised it, but there was nothing. Nothing but the warmth and movement of him, and the awkwardness of having a near stranger that close to me. But I could think. I felt like crap, but him this close didn't bring it on. I'd fed on him earlier tonight, and even that thought didn't raise anything through the chill. If I'd felt better, I would have been happy. The ardeur wasn't my master anymore. It couldn't make me do impossibly embarrassing things anymore. Yeah, maybe I had to feed it, but it could be on my own terms. Or close to my own terms.
I sat there with a gorgeous male curled around my body, and smiled. Even cold and aching with emptiness, I was still happy. Still willing to trade that overwhelming heat for this cold waiting. Because it was a waiting that I could feel now. The ardeur wasn't gone. It was like a fire that had burned down to cold ashes, but there was still life in the heart of that dying wood. It just needed a good poke and stir, and there would be flames, oh, yeah.
Just thinking that hard made it curl to life, a tiny flare. I squashed it. Pressed it down. Not yet, not yet.
Requiem raised his head against my body, so that the top of his head brushed my breasts, but through the leather jacket it wasn't much of a touch. The jacket was bulky enough that it could have been accidental on his part, though I doubted it. If Requiem was anything like Jean-Claude and Asher, then he was very aware of where his body was, and what it was doing. But I let it go. I wasn't that cheap a date for the ardeur anymore. Yea!
I felt Damian. I would like to say, I heard him, or saw him, but that wouldn't be true. I felt him. He was sitting against a wall, and he was cold, so cold. Colder than I'd ever been. I called to him, "Damian, Damian what's wrong?"
I didn't hear him answer, but I felt his body, felt that aching cold at the center of it. Why, what was happening to him? What was wrong? "Damian, what's wrong?"
"Did you say Damian?" Requiem asked.
"Yes, he's hurt. He's so cold, so cold, that he's collapsed against a wall. There are people around him, but I can't see who. He's so cold, so cold."
Requiem knelt upward, pushing his head out of the blanket and meeting my eyes. "You are his master now, Anita, you make him live. Your energy makes him live."
"Oh, shit."
"Yes, you can refuse the ardeur 's call, but you are cold to the touch, and it is your warmth that gives warmth to Damian, in a way that goes far beyond sharing blood."
I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the seat. "Shit, shit, shit."
"Will you let him die for embarrassment's sake?"
I opened my eyes. "That question would have a lot more merit if you weren't the one kneeling by my knees."
He put his head to one side, and a curious look came over his face. He looked as if he'd say something, then shook his head as if he'd decided better of it, and I was almost certain that what came out of his mouth wasn't what he'd thought of first. "Are you able to feed the ardeur without intercourse, or donating blood?"
"Yes," I said.
"Then allow me to offer myself as a tiding over snack until you reach the club and your pomme de sang. "
"Define snack ," I said.
Damian screamed through my head, and I got a confused glimpse through his eyes of a blond woman bending over him. It was Elinore, one of the new vampires. She was speaking, but he couldn't hear her anymore, only watch her lipsticked mouth move, noiseless.
I grabbed the front of Requiem's shirt. "Out of time. Damian needs... needs to be warm."
"Then let me share my warmth with you," Requiem whispered it as his face bent toward mine. As happened so often, tonight I didn't have to explain, or give detailed instructions. He just grasped what was needed, and acted.
His lips touched mine, and the kiss was gentle, and no liberties were taken, his tongue stayed nicely in his own mouth. Of course, that did nothing to raise the ardeur.
He drew back and searched my face with his gaze. "You are still cold in every way."
I nodded, and down that long metaphysical line, Damian called out for help. He was dying, not like a human dies, but like you watch a flame fade from lack of oxygen. It was as if some invisible spark were being blown out inside him. I was his spark now, and I didn't know how to fix this.
I looked up at the man in front of me. He was handsome enough, but without the ardeur 's heat, he was still a stranger, and I didn't lust after strangers. I had to be seduced not by the color of someone's eyes, or the flawlessness of their face, but by a smile that had become dear to me, a conversation so familiar that it had become like music to me. Familiarity never bred contempt with me, it made me feel safe, and until I felt safe, I did not lust after people, at least not in the front of my head, and it was the front of my head that I needed. I'd finally found the lock for my subconscious, which meant I had to bring the ardeur out on purpose, not just get out of its way, or stop fighting it, but truly had to coax it to life. Again, I hadn't thought what it would mean to control the power to this degree. I seemed to spend my life not understanding the mess I was making until it was too late.
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