Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10

by Laurell Hamilton

  He smiled, and it wasn’t nearly embarrassed enough. “You may find it strange, but a lot of women find me attractive.”

  “You know I don’t find that strange,” I said.

  “But you’re still with Jean-Claude,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I’m out of here, Richard. I’ll stay around and try to keep you from being killed or getting any of our pack killed, but let’s drop the personal stuff.”

  He closed the distance between us, and I put my hands up to keep him from touching me. My hands ended up pressed to his bare chest. His heart thudded against my hands like a trapped animal.

  “Don’t do this, Richard.”

  “I tried hating you, and I can’t.” He put his hands over mine, holding them against the hard smoothness of his chest.

  “Try harder.” But it was a whisper.

  He leaned over me, and I drew back. “If you don’t dry your hair, you’re going to have to wet it down again.”

  “I’ll risk it.” He kept moving towards me, lips half parted.

  I stepped back, pulling my hands out of his, and he let me. He was strong enough that he didn’t have to let me, and that still bothered me.

  I backed towards the door. “Stop trying to love me, Richard.”

  “I have tried.”

  “Then stop trying and just do it.” The door was pressed against my back. I grabbed the doorknob without turning around.

  “You ran from me that night. You ran from me to Jean-Claude. You pulled his body around you like a shield to keep me away.”

  I opened the door, but he was just suddenly there, holding it half-closed. I started tugging on the door, and it was like pulling against a wall, immobile. His one hand pressed flat on the door, against the pull of my entire body, and I couldn’t budge him. I hated that a lot.

  “Damn it, Richard, let me go.”

  “I think you’re more afraid of how much you love me than you are of Jean-Claude. At least with him you know you’re not in love.”

  That was it. I wedged my body in the door enough so he couldn’t close it on me, but I stopped tugging on it. I looked up at him, at every gorgeous inch of him. “I may not love Jean-Claude in the same way I love you.”

  He smiled.

  “Don’t get cocky,” I said. “I do love Jean-Claude. But love isn’t enough, Richard. If love were enough, I wouldn’t be with Jean-Claude now. I’d be with you.” I looked into his big, brown eyes and said, “But I’m not with you, and love isn’t enough. Now, get away from this damned door.”

  He stepped back, hands at his side. “Love can be enough, Anita.”

  I shook my head and stepped out on the steps. The darkness was thick and touchable but not yet solid. “The last time you listened to me, you killed for the first time, and you haven’t recovered from it. I should have just shot Marcus for you.”

  “I’d have never forgiven you for that,” he said.

  I gave a harsh sound that was almost a laugh. “But at least you wouldn’t be hating yourself. I’d be the monster, not you.”

  His handsome face was suddenly very solemn; all the light fled from it. “Whatever I do, wherever I go, Anita, I am the monster. You left me because of what I am.”

  I stepped down onto the ground, staring up at him. There was no light inside the cabin, and Richard stood in a darker shadow than the coming night. “I thought you said I left you because I was afraid of how much I loved you.”

  He looked confused for a second, not knowing how to deal with his own logic thrown back into his face. He finally looked at me. “Do you know why you left me?”

  I wanted to say, “Because you ate Marcus,” but I didn’t. I couldn’t say it staring into his face, so ready to believe the worst of himself. He wasn’t my problem anymore, so why did I care how hurt his ego was? Good question. I was out of good answers. Besides, maybe there was some truth to what Richard was saying. I didn’t know anymore.

  “I’m going to go to my cabin, now, Richard. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  “Afraid?” he asked.

  I shook my head and answered without turning around. “Tired.” I kept walking, knowing he was watching me. The parking area was empty. I didn’t know where Jamil and the others had gone, and I didn’t care. I needed some alone time.

  I walked through the soft, summer darkness. There was a spill of stars overhead, glittering and edged by the dark shapes of leaves. It was going to be a beautiful evening. Somewhere off in the distance, a high, clear howl rode the coming dark. Richard had said something about arcane werewolf shit. We were going to have a moonlight jamboree. God, I hated parties.

  10

  I LEANED AGAINST the door of my cabin, eyes closed, breathing in the cool air. I’d turned the air-conditioning on for my two guests. The coffins sat in the middle of the floor between the desk and the bed. Under the Circus of the Damned, deep underground, neither Damian nor Asher slept until full dark. I hadn’t been sure if they would aboveground or not. So the air. Though, actually, it had been partly selfish. Vampires in a closed, hot space tended to smell, well, like vampires. They didn’t smell like dead bodies. It was like the smell of snakes, and yet that wasn’t it, either. It was a neck-ruffling smell. Thick, musky, more reptile than mammal. The smell of vampires.

  How could I be sleeping with one of them? I opened my eyes. It was dark in the cabin, but there was still a faint push of illumination through the two windows. A faint touch of light against the gleaming feet of the coffins. Had that small touch of natural light been enough to keep both vampires comatose, dead in their coffins, waiting for true dark? Something had, because I knew that they were still and waiting inside the coffins. A small amount of concentration, and I knew they were still dead to the world.

  I strode between the coffins into the bathroom, closed and locked the door. The darkness seemed too solid. I turned on the light. It was white and harsh after the darkness. I was left blinking in the brightness.

  Getting a good look at myself in the mirror was almost startling. I hadn’t really seen the bruises yet. The corner of my left eye was a wonderful shade of purple black, swollen, puffy. Seeing it made it hurt worse, like seeing blood from a cut that doesn’t sting until you notice it.

  My left cheek was a wonderful shade of greenish brown. It was that sickly green that usually takes days to accomplish. My lower lip was puffy. You could still see the edge of darkened skin where it had bled. I ran my tongue inside my mouth and could feel the ridge where my cheek had been forced against my teeth, but it was healed. I stared into the mirror and realized as sore and awful as it looked, it wasn’t as bad as it should have been.

  It took me a few moments of staring to figure it out. When I did finally realize what was happening, a rush of fear ran through my body from my toes to the top of my head. I felt almost faint.

  I was healing. I was healing days worth of injury in only hours. At this rate, the bruises would be almost gone by tomorrow. I should have been wearing the fight marks for days, a week at least. What the hell was happening to me?

  I felt Damian wake in his coffin. I felt it like a stab through my body. It staggered me against the sink. I knew he was hungry, and I knew that he sensed me near at hand. I was Jean-Claude’s human servant, bound by marks that only death would break. But Damian was mine. I’d raised him and another vampire, Willie McCoy, more than once. I’d called them from their coffins during daylight hours, safely underground, but the sun had been burning bright when I did it. One necromancer had said it made perfect sense. We could only raise zombies after the souls had fled the bodies, so I could only raise vamps when their souls had fled for the day.

  I wasn’t even going to debate the vampires and soul issue. My life was complicated enough without religious discussions. I know, I know, I was just delaying the inevitable. If I stayed with Jean-Claude, I was going to have to face the whole issue. No hiding. But not tonight.

  Raising Damian had forged some kind of link between us. I didn’t u
nderstand it and didn’t have anyone to ask advice of. I was the first necromancer in several hundred years that could raise vampires like zombies. It scared me. It scared Damian more. Frankly, I didn’t blame him.

  Was Asher awake, too? I concentrated on him, sent that power, magic, whatever the hell it was, outward. It brushed him, and he felt me. He was awake and aware of me.

  Asher was a master vampire. Not as powerful as Jean-Claude, but a master, nonetheless. That gave him certain abilities that Damian, who was by far the elder of the two, would never have. Without the link between us, Damian wouldn’t have sensed me searching for him.

  I wanted a few minutes to be alone and think, and I wasn’t going to get it. I didn’t make them call for me. I opened the door and stood framed in the light, blinking out into the thick darkness.

  The vampires stood like pale shadows in the gloom. I hit the overhead light. Asher threw his hand up to protect his eyes from the light, but Damian just blinked at me. I wanted them to cower back from the light. I wanted them to look monstrous, but they didn’t.

  Damian was a green-eyed redhead, but that didn’t really cover it. His hair fell like a red curtain around his upper body, the hair so red it looked like spilled blood against the green silk of his shirt. The shirt was a paler green than his eyes. They were like liquid fire, if fire could burn green. It wasn’t vampire powers that made his eyes gleam. It was natural color, as if his mother had fooled around with a cat.

  Asher was a blue-eyed blond, but again, that description didn’t do him justice. The waves of his shoulder-length hair were golden. I don’t mean blond, I mean gold. His hair was almost metallic in its glittering brilliance. His eyes were a blue so pale, they were almost white, like the eyes of a husky.

  He was wearing a white dress shirt, untucked over chocolate brown dress pants. Leather loafers, no socks, completed his clothes. I’d spent too much time around Jean-Claude to call it an outfit.

  If you could stop staring at the eyes and hair long enough to see their faces, Asher was the handsomer of the two. Damian was handsome, but there was a length of jaw, a less perfect slope to the nose—small imperfections that might go unnoticed if you hadn’t had Asher for comparison. Asher was beautifully handsome like a medieval cherub. Half of him, anyway.

  Half of Asher’s face was the beauty that drew a master vampire to him centuries ago. The other half was covered in scars. Holy water scars. The scars started about an inch from the midline of his face so his eyes, nose, and those full, perfect lips remained untouched, but the rest was like melted wax. His neck was pale and perfect, but I knew that the scars continued at his shoulders. His upper body was worse than the face, the scars rough and pitted. But like the face, only half of his body was scarred. The other half was still lovely.

  I knew that the scars touched his upper thigh, but I had never seen him completely nude. I had to take his word that the scars covered the space between. It had been implied though never stated that he was still capable of sex but was scarred. I didn’t know for sure, and I didn’t want to know.

  “Where are your bodyguards?” Asher asked.

  “My bodyguards? You mean Jason and the Furballs?”

  Asher nodded. His golden hair fell forward over the scarred side of his face. It was an old habit. The hair hid the scars—or almost hid the scars. He could use shadows the same way. He always seemed to know just where the light would hit him. Centuries of practice.

  “I don’t know where they are,” I said. “I just finished talking to Richard. I guess they thought we needed privacy.”

  “Did you need the privacy?” Asher asked. He looked straight at me, using the scars and beauty for a double effect. He didn’t look happy for some reason.

  “It’s none of your damn business,” I said.

  Damian sat at the foot of the carefully made bed. He smoothed pale, long-fingered hands across the blue coverlet. “Not in this bed, you didn’t,” he said.

  I came to stand beside the bed and stare down at him. “If one more vampire or were-anything tells me they can smell sex, I am going to scream.”

  Damian didn’t smile. He’d never been a real happy camper, but lately was even more serious than usual. He just sat there, looking up at me. Jean-Claude or even Asher would have smiled, teased. Damian just looked at me with eyes that held sorrow the way others’ held laughter.

  I reached out to touch his shoulder and had to sweep back a lock of his hair to reach it. He jerked back from my touch as if it had hurt. He pushed to his feet and went to stand near the door.

  I was left with my hand out, puzzled. “What’s wrong with you, Damian?”

  Asher came to stand beside me. He rested his hands lightly on my shoulders. “You are quite right, Anita. What you do with Monsieur Zeeman is none of my business.”

  I slid my hands over his, sliding my fingers to intertwine with his. I remembered the feel of his cool skin against mine. I leaned my back against him, pulling his arms around me, and I wasn’t tall enough. It wasn’t my memory. It was Jean-Claude’s. Asher and he had been companions for over twenty years, once upon a time.

  I sighed and started to pull away.

  Asher leaned his chin on the top of my head. “You need someone’s arms that you don’t feel threatened by.”

  I leaned against him, eyes closed, and for just a moment let him hold me. “The only reason this feels so good is that I’m remembering someone else’s pleasure.”

  Asher gently kissed the top of my head. “Because you see me through the nostalgia of Jean-Claude’s memories, you are the only woman in over two hundred years who doesn’t treat me like a circus freak.”

  I leaned my face against the bend of his arm. “You are devastatingly handsome, Asher.”

  He smoothed the hair from my bruised cheek. “To you, perhaps.” He leaned over me and laid the softest of kisses on my cheek.

  I pulled away from him, gently, almost reluctantly. What I remembered of Asher was simpler than anything I was trying to pull off in this lifetime.

  Asher didn’t try to hold me. “If you were not already in love with two other men, the way you look at me might be enough.”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, Asher. I shouldn’t touch you like that. It’s just . . .” I didn’t know how to put it into words.

  “You treat me like an old lover,” Asher said. “You forget and touch me as if you’d touched me before when it is always the first time. Do not apologize for that, Anita. I enjoy it. No one else will touch me so freely.”

  “Jean-Claude will,” I said. “These are his memories.”

  Asher smiled and it was almost sorrowful. “He is loyal to you and to Monsieur Zeeman.”

  “He’s turned you down?” I asked and wished I hadn’t.

  Asher’s smile brightened, then dimmed. “If you would not share him with another woman, would you truly share him with another man?”

  I thought about that for a second or two. “Well, no.” I frowned up at him. “Why do I feel like apologizing for that?”

  “Because you share with Jean-Claude and myself the memories of Julianna and the two of us. We were a very happy ménage à trois for almost longer than you have been alive.”

  Julianna had been Asher’s human servant. She’d ended up burned as a witch by the same people that had scarred Asher. Jean-Claude couldn’t save them both. I wasn’t sure that either of them had truly forgiven Jean-Claude for this oversight.

  Damian said, “If I’m not interrupting, I need to feed.” He was standing by the door, hugging himself as if he were cold.

  “You want me to open the door and yell dinner?” I asked.

  “I want permission to go feed,” he said.

  I frowned at the phrasing but said, “Go find one of our walking donors and help yourself. Just our people, though. We can’t hunt here.”

  Damian nodded, standing up straighter as if he’d been hunched in upon himself. I could feel that he was hungry, but it wasn’t hunger that made him huddle. “I will not hu
nt.”

  “Good,” I said.

  He hesitated, with his hand on the doorknob. His back was to me, but his voice came low, “May I go and feed?”

  I glanced at Asher. “Is he talking to you?”

  Asher shook his head. “I think not.”

  “Sure, help yourself.”

  Damian opened the door and slipped outside. He left the door slightly ajar.

  “What is his problem lately?” I asked.

  “I think he must answer that question,” Asher said.

  I turned and looked at him. “Does that mean you can’t answer the question or won’t answer it?”

  Asher smiled and his face moved freely, even the scarred skin. He was having consultations with a plastic surgeon in Saint Louis. No one had ever tried to repair holy water damage on vamps, so they didn’t know if it would work, but the doctors were hopeful. Hopeful but cautious. The first operation was still months away.

  “It means, Anita, that some fears are very personal.”

  “Are you saying Damian’s afraid of me?” I didn’t try to keep the astonishment out of my voice.

  “I am saying that you must speak to him directly if you want answers.”

  I sighed. “Great, just what I need. Another complicated male in my life.”

  Asher laughed, and it slid along my bare arms like a touch, raising gooseflesh. The only other vampire that could do that to me was Jean-Claude.

  “Stop that,” I said.

  He gave a low, sweeping bow. “My most sincere apologies.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “Go get dinner. I think the werewolves are planning some sort of party or ceremony.”

  “You need one of us with you at all times, Anita.”

  “I heard Jean-Claude’s ultimatum.” I looked at him and couldn’t keep the surprise off my face. “You think he’d really kill you if something happened to me?”

  Asher just looked at me with his pale, pale eyes. “Your life means more to him than mine does, Anita. If it did not, he would be in my bed and not yours.”

  He had a point, but . . . “It would kill something inside of him to kill you personally.”