Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10

by Laurell Hamilton

  “Asher,” I said.

  He looked at me, one hand running along Nathaniel’s bare thigh.

  “Damian’s not a master.”

  “I cannot save your leopard by myself, Anita. Who would you save? Which will you sacrifice?”

  I looked at Damian. His green eyes were human again. He looked very mortal, curled beside Nathaniel.

  “Don’t make me choose.”

  “But it is a choice, Anita. It is a choice.”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you want me to save him?” Damian asked.

  I met his gaze, and didn’t know what to say.

  “His pulse is very weak,” Cherry said. “If you’re going to do something, you better do it soon.”

  “Do you want me to save him?” Damian asked again.

  Nathaniel’s fast, gasping breath was the only sound in the sudden silence. They all looked at me. Waited for me to decide. And I couldn’t decide. I felt my head nod, almost as if I wasn’t doing it. I nodded.

  The vampires began to feed.

  13

  A FEEDING TAKES longer in real life than it does in the movies. Either it’s too quick or they do a fade like a 1950s sex scene. We all stood around the room and watched. The room was quiet enough that you could hear the vampires making small, wet noises as they fed.

  Cherry knelt by the head of the bed. She checked Nathaniel’s wrist pulse periodically. The rest of us had moved farther away. I ended up on the far side of the room, leaning my butt on the desk. I was working very hard at not looking at the bed. Everyone moved around the room, restless, embarrassed, I thought.

  Jason came to stand beside me, leaning on the desk. “If I didn’t know his life was at stake, I’d be jealous.”

  I looked at him, trying to tell if he was teasing. There was a look in his eyes, a heat, that said he was not. It made me look over at what was happening.

  Damian had drawn Nathaniel’s body into his arms, his lap, so that he cradled the smaller man almost the full length of his body. Parts of Damian’s body were lost to sight behind Nathaniel’s naked body. His arm cradled the smaller man’s chest against the green silk shirt. The pus had soaked into the cloth in blackening streaks. Nathaniel’s face was pressed by one pale hand into the vampire’s shoulder. Damian had come from behind for the neck strike. You could see the top of his bloodred hair, his mouth locked over the wound. Even from where I stood, I could see Damian’s jaws swallowing.

  Asher was still kneeling on the floor, one of Nathaniel’s pale legs flung outward so his foot hung in empty air. Asher’s face was buried in the man’s inner thigh, so close to the groin that Nathaniel’s slack genitalia touched the side of his face. Asher moved his head slightly and a spill of golden hair flung over Nathaniel’s groin. It didn’t hide it so much as have him peeking out through it.

  A blush flowed over my face so hard and fast I was almost dizzy. In turning away, I caught a glimpse of myself in the room’s only mirror. My face was burning. My eyes looked wide and surprised. It was junior high all over again, stumbling on couples under the bleachers, hearing their laughter chase me into the night.

  I stared at myself in the mirror and got a grip. I was not fourteen anymore. I was not a child. I was not a virgin. I could do this with a modicum of grace. Couldn’t I?

  Jamil had moved to the fartherst corner of the room. He was sitting there, arms tucked around his knees, face set in harsh lines, angry. He wasn’t enjoying the show, either.

  Zane had moved back to lean against the wall, arms crossed. He was looking at the floor as if there was something very interesting on it.

  Jason was still sitting against the desk, watching the show. I looked at him without turning around. “You do realize that you’re the only one who seems to be enjoying the view.”

  He shrugged, grinning. “It’s a nice view.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you’re gay.”

  “Don’t tell me you care,” he replied.

  My eyebrows went up a little farther. “My heart is breaking. I’ll have to burn all my lingerie.” I kept watching his face. He was smiling but not like it was a joke.

  “Are you saying all that teasing is just an act?” I asked.

  “Oh, no, I like women. But, Anita, almost none of the vampires in Jean-Claude’s inner circle are women. I’ve been acting as a pomme de sang for two years. That’s a lot of fangs sinking into your body.”

  “Is it really that close to sex?” I asked.

  The humor left his face and he just looked at me. “You’ve really never been rolled completely by a vamp, have you? I mean I knew you had partial immunity even before the marks, but I thought someone somewhere would have gotten to you.”

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Sometimes I’m not sure, but it may be better than sex, and almost everyone who’s been doing me has been a guy.”

  “So you’re bisexual?”

  “If what they’re doing now counts as sex, yeah. If it doesn’t then . . .” he laughed, and the sound was so abrupt in the silence that I saw Zane and Jamil jump. “If this doesn’t count as sex, let’s just say that ‘where no man has gone before’ no longer applies.”

  Damned if I didn’t want to ask who it had been. Maybe I would have asked, but Cherry spoke and the moment was gone. “His pulse is stronger. Losing this much blood, he should be getting weaker, but he’s not.”

  Asher drew back from the wound. “We are not so much drinking blood as drawing out the corruption.” He stood one hand under Nathaniel’s thigh. He moved the leg back onto the bed, straightening his limbs as if he were a sleeping child. A moment before, it had been utterly sexual; now there was something in the way Asher acted that was tender, careful.

  Damian pulled away from the wound. There was a spot on his lip, not red, but black. I wondered if it had tasted bad. He wiped the spot away with the back of his hand. If it had been pure blood he’d have licked it off. So it hadn’t been pleasant.

  He crawled out from under Nathaniel, laying him carefully on his back. He drew covers over Nathaniel as he moved off the bed.

  Cherry had her first aid kit open. She recleaned the chest wounds with antibacterial antiseptic. The first few sterile cloths came away smeared with pus. We’d all moved next to the bed without realizing it. The smell was stronger here, unpleasant, but fading. When the skin and wounds were completely cleaned, the flesh was whole, and bright red blood welled into the slashes.

  Cherry flashed the room a smile so warm and bright that you had to smile back. “He’s going to be all right.” She sounded surprised, and I wondered how close it had been.

  Someone drew a hissing breath. I turned to the sound. Damian was backing up. He was staring at his hands. That pale, milky skin was turning dark, a blackness flowing under the skin. The flesh of his hands began to peel back while we watched.

  14

  “SHIT ,” I SAID.

  Damian held his hands out to me like a child that had burned its hand. I didn’t know which was worse, the terror in his face or the almost resigned look in his eyes.

  I shook my head. “No,” I said, but my voice was soft. “No,” I said it again, louder, stronger.

  “You cannot stop it,” Asher said.

  Damian stared at the darkening flesh of his hands, soft horror on his face. “Help me,” he said, and he looked to me.

  I stared down at him and didn’t have the faintest idea how to save him. “What can we do?” I said.

  “I know you are accustomed to riding in on your white steed and saving the day, Anita, but some battles cannot be won,” Asher said.

  Damian had gone to his knees staring at his hands. He ripped his shirt off in pieces, leaving remnants of the sleeves on his arms. The rotting flesh was halfway to his elbows. A fingernail split and fell to the floor with a burst of something dark and noisome. The smell was back, sweet and sickly.

  “I healed Damian once of a facial cut,” I said.

  Damian made a sound between a
laugh and something more bitter. “I didn’t nick myself shaving, Anita.” He shifted his gaze from the peeling flesh of his hands to me. “Even you can’t heal this.”

  I dropped to my knees in front of him, reaching out to touch his hands. Damian jerked away. “Don’t touch me!”

  I put my hands over his hands. The skin felt almost hot to the touch, as if the corruption were cooking him from the inside out. The skin was soft as if, if I pressed too hard the skin would give way like a rotted spot in an apple.

  My throat was tight. “Damian, I’m . . . sorry.” Dear God, it was an inadequate word. A thousand years of “life” and he’d given it up for me. He would never have taken such a risk if I had not asked. It was my fault.

  The look in his eyes was grateful, and pain-filled. He pulled his hands gently out from under mine. Careful not to press too hard against my hands. I think we were both afraid my fingers would sink through his skin and into the flesh inside.

  His face twisted in pain, and a small sound escaped his lips. I remembered Nathaniel’s cries of how it had hurt.

  The ends of his fingers burst like overripe fruit, spilling something black and greenish onto the floor. It spattered my arm. The smell was growing in sickening waves.

  I didn’t swipe at the drops on my arm but I wanted to. I wanted to slap at them like a spider, shrieking. My voice held some of the strain I was trying to keep off my face. “I’ve got to at least try to heal you.”

  “How?” Asher asked. “How do, even you, begin to heal this?”

  Damian made a low whimpering sound. His body shuddered, face ducking, neck twisting, and finally he screamed. Wordless, hopeless.

  “How?” Asher asked again.

  “I don’t know,” and I was screaming, too.

  “Only his original master, the one who saved him from the grave, would have any chance of healing him.”

  I looked at Asher. “I called Damian from his coffin once. It was accidental, but he answered to my call. I kept his . . . soul, whatever, from fleeing his body once. We are bound together, a little.”

  “How did you call him from his grave?” Asher asked.

  “Necromancy,” I said, “I am a necromancer, Asher.”

  “I know nothing of necromancy,” he said.

  The smell swelled stronger. I breathed through my mouth, but that just put the odor on the back of my tongue. I was almost afraid to look at Damian. I turned slowly like a character in a horror movie, where you just know the monster is right behind you, and you delay looking because you know it will blast your sanity forever. But some things are worse than any nightmare. The rot had moved past his elbows. Naked bone showed through the back of his hand. The smell had driven all but the three of us back. I stayed kneeling in the rotting fluid of Damaian’s body. Asher stayed close, but only I was still within touching distance.

  “If I were his master, what would I do?”

  “You would drink his blood, take the corruption into yourself as we did for Nathaniel.”

  “I didn’t think vamps fed on each other.”

  “Not for food,” Asher said, “but there are many reasons to share blood. Food is only one of them.”

  I stared at Damian, watching the blackness spread under his skin like ink. I could actually see it swimming underneath his flesh. “I can’t drink the corruption away,” I said.

  “But I could,” Damian’s voice came breathy with pain.

  “No!” Asher said. He took a threatening step towards us. I could feel his power flaring out from him like a whip.

  Damian flinched, but looked up at the other vampire. He held his hands out to Asher, pleading.

  “What is going on?” I asked, looking from one to the other of them.

  Asher shook his head, face angry, but otherwise unreadable. I watched his features smooth and grow blank. He was hiding something.

  “No,” I said, getting to my feet. “No, you tell me what Damian meant.” Neither spoke.

  “Tell me!” I screamed it into Asher’s calm face.

  He just stared at me, face as closed and impassive as a doll’s.

  “Dammit, one of you tell me what Damian meant. How could he drink away his own corruption?”

  “If . . .” Damian started.

  “No,” Asher said, pointing a finger at him.

  “You are not my master,” Damain said. “I must answer.”

  “Shut up, Asher,” I said. “Shut the fuck up and let him talk.”

  “Would you have her risk all for you?” Asher asked.

  “It does not have to be her. Only someone with more than human blood,” Damian said.

  “Tell me,” I said, “now.”

  Damian spoke in a rushed whisper, voice edged with pain. “If I drank blood from one powerful. . . enough. I might be able . . .” He shuddered, struggling, then continued in a voice that was weaker than just a moment before. “Might be able to take in enough power to . . . cure myself.”

  “But if the one he takes blood from is not strong enough mystically to take the corruption into himself, then they will die as Damian is dying now,” Asher said.

  “I’m sorry,” Jason said, “but count me out.”

  “Me, too,” Zane said.

  Jamil was across the room hugging his arms. He just shook his head.

  Cherry knelt by the bed. She said nothing, eyes huge, face terrified.

  I finally turned back to Asher. “It has to be me. I can’t ask anyone else to take the risk.”

  Asher grabbed the back of my hair in a movement so fast I hadn’t seen it coming. He twisted my face back to look at Damian. “Is this how you want to die, Anita? Is it? Is it!”

  I spoke through gritted teeth. “Let go of me, Asher. Now!”

  He released me slowly. “Don’t do this, Anita. Please, don’t. The risk is too great.”

  “He’s right,” Damian’s voice came in a bare whisper, so low I was surprised I could hear it at all. “You could cure me but kill . . . yourself.”

  The rot had spread up his arms and was gliding like some malignant force underneath his collarbones. His chest was like glowing ivory, and I could feel his heart thudding in his chest. I could feel it like a second heartbeat in my own head. A vampire’s heart didn’t always beat, but it was beating now.

  I was so scared I could taste something flat and metallic in my mouth. My fingertips tingled with the desire to run. I couldn’t stay in this room and watch Damian melt down into a stinking puddle, but part of my brain was screaming at me to run. Run somewhere far away where I wouldn’t have to watch and I certainly wouldn’t have to let those rotting hands touch me.

  I shook my head. I stared at Damian, not at the rotting flesh, but at his face, his eyes. I stared into those shining green eyes like bits of emerald fire. It was ironic that as parts of him corrupted and slothed away, that what was left had become its most beautiful. His skin was polished ivory with a depth of light like some white jewel. His hair seemed to glow like spun rubies, and those eyes, those emerald eyes . . . I stared at him, made myself see him.

  I swept my hair to one side, exposing my neck. “Do it.” I dropped my hand, and the hair moved back to hide my neck.

  “Anita,” he said.

  “Do it, Damian, do it. Now, please, before I lose my nerve.”

  He crawled to me. He swept the hair aside with a hand gone blackened flesh and bone. He left a trail of something heavy and thick on my shoulder. I could feel that thickness sliding down my shirt like a snail. I concentrated on the soft glow of his skin, the imperfect slope of his nose where someone centuries ago had broken that perfect profile.

  But it wasn’t enough. I turned my head to one side so he wouldn’t have to touch me more than necessary. I saw his head tense for the strike and I closed my eyes. It was sharp like needles and it didn’t get better. Damian wasn’t strong enough to roll me with his eyes. There would be no magic to take away the pain.

  His mouth locked against the wound and he began to feed. I thought I’d
have to try and force my power into him or lower my shields and let him inside my power, let him drink it away. But moments after his teeth pierced my skin, something flared between us. Power, bond, magic. It raised every hair on my body.

  Damian cuddled against the front of me, pressing our chests to one another, and the power burst over us in a rush that filled the room with sighing. Distantly I realized that there was a wind and it was coming from us. A wind forged of the cool touch of vampire and the chill control of necromancy. A wind forged of us.

  Damian was like a feeding thing at my throat. The power took the pain, turned it into something else. I felt his mouth at my throat, felt him swallowing my blood, my life, my power. I gathered it all into us and thrust it back into Damian. I fed it into him with my blood.

  I visualized his skin whole and perfect. I felt the power spill down his body. I felt us push out the other. I could feel it flowing out of us, not onto the floor but into the floor, past the floor, into the ground below. We were exorcising it, ridding ourselves of it. It was no more.

  The two of us knelt bathed in power. A wind trailed Damian’s hair across my face, and I knew the wind was us. It was Damian who drew back, trailing power between us like the broken shreds of some dream.

  He knelt in front of me, lifting his hands to my face. They were healed, under the remnants of that black ooze, his hands were healed. His arms healed. He cradled my face in his hands and kissed me. The power was still there. It flowed over us, through his mouth, in a line of energy that burned.

  I drew back from Damian’s kiss. I managed to sit up.

  “Anita.”

  I looked at Damian.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  I nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  “Now,” Asher said, “I think it is time for showers all around.” He stood, pants covered in black goop. It was on his hands, too, and I couldn’t remember when he’d touched Damian or the floor.