“Sort of,” I said. I looked across the room, past Micah’s head and found Cherry. “Is calling flesh like what I do when I call munin?” Munin were sort of the ancestral memories of the werewolves. Except that they were actually more like ghosts, the spirits of the dead. You could gain their knowledge, their skills, and their bad habits if you had the ability to channel them. I was a necromancer—all the dead liked me. The munin that liked me best of all was Raina, the wolf pack’s old lupa. I’d been the one who killed her—to keep her from killing me—and she delighted in the fact that she could take me over. I’d gained the power to control Raina when I accepted her, warts and all. When I called her, I didn’t fight her anymore. We’d worked out a sort of truce. But calling munin for healing was almost always sexual for me, because it had been sexual for Raina.
“It’s not sexual,” Cherry said. “Sensual, but not sexual.”
I trusted Cherry’s judgment on that. “Okay then, do it.”
Micah looked at me, those strange yellow-green eyes so terribly close.
“Do it,” I said.
He gave that wistful, sad, condescending smile again, like he was laughing at both of us, and crying for us, too. Unnerving, that smile. Then he lowered his mouth to my neck and the first of the scars. The first kiss was gentle against my throat; he breathed power against my skin, and it was suddenly hard to breathe. But the power hovered above my skin like cloth. Then the tip of his tongue slid along my skin, licking a hot, wet line down my neck. The power followed the line of that heat, sinking under my skin as he licked me. But it was when his mouth pressed over my skin, sealing him against me, sucking me into his mouth, between his teeth, that I felt the power shoved into me, forced into the scars. He literally breathed, bit, ate, the healing into me. I made small helpless movements. I couldn’t help it. We all have our erogenous zones in addition to the normal ones, places where if we’re touched our bodies react whether we want them to, or not. My neck and shoulders are two of my spots.
He leaned back, far enough from my neck to whisper, “Are you alright?” His breath was so hot against my skin.
I nodded, my face turned away from him.
He took me at my word, pressing his mouth back to my neck. There were no preliminaries this time; he bit me, hard enough that I gasped. My stomach knotted, twisting me onto my side, pulling me away from him.
“Anita, what’s wrong?”
“My stomach,” I said.
He slid the robe open, passing his hand over my stomach. “There was no wound here.”
Another wave of pain tore through my gut, bending me over double, to writhe on the floor. The need tore through me like something alive trying to rip its way out from inside my body.
Micah was there, smoothing my hair back from my face, that power that was building between us rolling through my body like a cat wading through me. He bundled me into his arms, his lap, pressed my face against his chest. “Get the doctor.”
His chest was smooth, warm. I could hear his heartbeat, feel it against my cheek. I could smell blood under his skin like some exotic candy that would melt on my tongue and glide down my throat. I worked my way up his body until I could see the big pulse in his neck. I watched that pulse like a man dying of thirst; my throat burned with the need, my lips dry, cracked from want of it. I had to feed. I knew in that instant that it wasn’t my thought.
I stretched out that part of me that Jean-Claude claimed and found him. Found him sitting in a windowless cell. He looked up as if he could see me standing in front of him. He whispered, “Ma petite,” and I knew where he was. I didn’t know why, but I knew where. He was in the St. Louis city jail, in the rooms reserved for things that cannot stand the light of day. I stared into his eyes and watched them fill with blue fire, until they cast their own light in the dim cell.
He reached out towards me, as if we could touch, and it was Micah’s power, Micah’s beast rolling through my body that tore me away from Jean-Claude.
I opened my eyes to find my arms around Micah, my face pressed to his shoulder, my mouth very close to the long warmth of his neck. There was movement in the room, and I knew distantly that someone had run to get a doctor, but what I needed a doctor couldn’t give me.
Micah’s skin smelled clean, young. It was like I could tell just by scent how old he was. The blood was like icing spread just under the tenderness of his flesh; and the part of me that thought of Micah as meat wasn’t Jean-Claude, it was Richard.
I didn’t know how to put the need into words. Micah turned his face, looked into my eyes, and I felt something inside me open; some door that I hadn’t even known existed swung wide. A wind blew through the door, a wind made of darkness and the stillness of the grave. A wind that held an edge of electric warmth like the rub of fur across bare skin. A wind that tasted of both my men. But I was the center, the thing that could hold both of them inside and not break. Life and death, lust and love.
“What are you?” Micah asked, his voice a surprised whisper.
I’d always thought that vampires took their victims—stole their will with their eyes and took them like magical rape. But in that instant I knew it was more complex than that, and more simple. I saw with Jean-Claude’s eyes, his power. I stared into Micah’s face from inches away, and I saw, felt, his own need. Lust was there, a horribly unsatisfied lust, and I knew it had been a long time for Micah. But underneath that was a greater need, a need for power and the shelter that power could provide. It was like I could smell his needs, roll them on my tongue. I stared into his yellow-green eyes in that so-human face, and Jean-Claude gave me the keys to Micah’s soul.
“I am power, Nimir-Raj. Enough power to warm you on the coldest of nights.” Power flowed off his skin like a scalding wind. That hot wind mingled with the power inside me, twisting together until it drove like a knife deep inside me. It tore a gasp from my throat, and Micah echoed it. The power turned into something gentler, something that caressed instead of stabbed, something that you would wait your whole life to have. I saw the sensation flow over Micah’s face, knew that he felt it, too.
A wind stirred the edge of his hair. And the wind was moving between us like the point where cold and heat meet and form something larger than either can form alone, something huge and whirling, a wind so strong it can level houses and drive straw through telephone poles.
His arms tightened around me. “I am Nimir-Raj, mind games don’t work on me.”
I got to my knees still in the circle of his arms, and pressed my body down the front of his. We were almost exactly the same height, the eye contact was terribly intimate. The power pressed around us like a giant hand squeezing us together. His body responded, and he was large again, so hard pressed to my groin and stomach. This was my cue to be embarrassed, to panic, but I didn’t. I knew that Jean-Claude fed off of lust as well as blood, but I’d never really understood what that meant until that moment when Micah’s flesh touched mine. It wasn’t just the naked press of him, hard and firm against my body, that made me shudder against him, it was the need in his body. I felt his hunger quiver through his flesh, as if I could read parts of him that were too primitive for words, needs that had nothing to do with language, and everything to do with naked flesh.
He closed his eyes, and a soft moan escaped him.
“What I offer isn’t illusion, Nimir-Raj, it’s real.”
He shook his head. “Sex isn’t enough.”
“I’m not offering sex, not now.” Even as I said it, I pressed my body against his. His entire body shuddered against me, and a sound very like a whimper crawled out of his throat.
“I’m offering a taste of power, Nimir-Raj, a small taste of all I can offer you.” In my head I knew it was a lie, but in my heart I knew it was true. I could offer him power and flesh, the two things he wanted, needed, above all else. It was perfect bait, and it was wrong. I started to back down, to try and cram the power down, but Jean-Claude fought me. He thrust his power into me like an echo of his body,
riding me. It was too late for me to feed as humans feed and give him back his strength. He’d avoided me for nights, because I was weak. I had grown strong again, and he had grown weak, and we had enemies in town. We could not afford weakness. All this, I knew in a heartbeat, his mind to mine. And it was that seed of doubt—could we afford to be weak?—that made me unable to shut him out.
“What do you want in return?” Micah asked it in a whisper that held an edge of desperation, as if we both knew that whatever I asked, he would do it.
“I want to drink the warm rush of your body, to have you fill my mouth with that hot liquid that beats just below here,” and I rubbed my lips across his neck. The scent of blood so near the surface made my stomach twist, but we were close, so close, mustn’t rush it, mustn’t scare him. We were like fishermen. We had our net, all we needed was for the fish to stop fighting us and lay still.
My lips hovered over his neck as he spoke. “Show me you have enough power to make it worth my while, and I’ll give you any body fluid you want.”
I swept his hair to one side, and it slid back. I balled my hand into a fist of his curls to keep it out of the way, and even that movement brought a sound from his throat. I bared the long smooth line of his neck. He moved his head to one side as if he knew what I wanted now. I could see the big pulse in his neck, beating against his skin like something small and separate from him, something alive that I had to make free.
I licked my tongue across that throbbing skin. I meant to be gentle, I meant many things, but his skin was slick and flawless against my mouth; the smell of him intoxicated me like the sweetest perfume. His pulse throbbed against my mouth, and I sank my teeth around that frantic movement. I ate at his skin, dug my teeth into the flesh underneath, and into his power, his beast.
I felt my beast rise through my body, like some great shape rising from the ocean depths, a leviathan that grew and grew, swelling up inside me until my skin couldn’t hold it, then it touched his beast, and it stopped, hovering in black water, hovering in my body like some huge thing. The two powers floated in that dark water, brushing huge, sleek sides down the length of their bodies, our bodies. It was a sensation like velvet rubbing inside me, except this velvet had muscles, flesh, and was hard even where it was soft. The imagery that kept flowing through my mind was of some great cat rubbing itself inside me, rolling through me, but bigger than that. I’d seen Richard’s beast move through his eyes like some great shape half-seen in water, and it felt that large, that overwhelming. I drank Micah’s power down but not just through my mouth and down my throat. Everywhere I touched him, I fed. I could feel his heart beating against my naked breasts. I could feel the blood rushing through his body, feel every inch of him pressed against me. Feel his need, his desire, and I ate at him. I fed at his neck as if his pulse were the center of some filled cake, as if once I gnawed away the flesh I would have something unutterably sweet. I drew blood, and with the first touch of sweet metallic flavor in my mouth, all pretense, all prettiness was wiped away, drowned in the scent of fresh blood, the taste of torn flesh, the feel of meat and blood in my mouth. The feel of his hands pressing my body against his, my legs wrapped around his waist, riding him. I was aware like some distant call that he wasn’t inside me, that he was still pressed between our bodies, so hard, so ready that he quivered against my stomach. His breath came fast and faster. Someone was making small animal noises, and it was me.
Micah’s fingernails dug into my body, an instant before he poured over me in a scalding wave, noises too primitive for words, and not loud enough for screams coming from his mouth.
I felt Jean-Claude down that long metaphysical cord that bonded us together. I felt him grow quiet and well fed, sated. I drew my mouth away from Micah’s torn throat, putting my cheek against his bare shoulder, my legs and arms still wrapped around him. His arms still holding me tight. I was covered in fluid, my breasts thick with it. It ran down my body in heavy liquid lines, curling over my stomach, tracing down to my thighs.
He knelt there supporting both our weights, while our breathing quieted, and the massive pulse of our bodies subsided into silence. And in that silence there was nothing but the feel of his flesh, the raw scent of sex, and in the distance, the satisfaction of the vampire.
10
THE SHOWER WAS one of those group ones, like you’d find in a health club. But I was the only one in it. I’d cleaned off, scrubbed myself thoroughly, but I felt like Lady MacBeth screaming “out, out, damned spot!” Like I’d never really be clean again. I sat on the tiles under the hot, beating water, hugging my knees. I hadn’t planned on crying, but I was. Slow tears that felt cool compared to the water pounding my body. I wasn’t sure why I was crying. My mind was blank. Usually when I try to be blank, I can’t, but just then, there was nothing but the water, the heat, the smooth tiles, and the little voice in my head that kept running round and round like a hamster on a wheel. I couldn’t hear what the voice was saying—I think I didn’t want to. All I knew was that it was screaming.
A noise behind me made me turn. It was Cherry, still naked. None of the leopards ever dressed unless I made them. I turned my head away from her. I didn’t want her to see me cry. I was her Nimir-Ra, her rock. Rocks did not cry.
I knew she was standing over me, could feel it, even before the water’s rhythm changed. She knelt over me, the water sluicing around her, leaving me shivering in the sudden touch of the cool, waterless air. I kept my face turned away from her. She touched my water-soaked hair. When I didn’t protest she hugged me, arms going slowly around me, as if she expected me to complain.
I stayed stiff in her arms, with her body wrapped around me. She just held me, head pressed to the top of mine, her body sheltering me from the water, leaving me colder, even as her body stretched like heat against my wet skin. I leaned into her by painful inches until finally I let her hold me. I cried, and Cherry held me.
The crying never grew, or got loud. It remained slow tears while Cherry held me, and I let her. Finally, there were no more tears, just the sound of the water, the heat, the feel of Cherry’s body around mine. There was comfort in the touch of flesh that went beyond sex. I pulled away, and she drew back. I stood and turned the water off. The silence was sudden and complete. I could feel the press of the night outside. Even without a window, I knew it was the wee hours of morning—maybe two, or even three. It would be dawn in a few short hours. I needed to know why Jean-Claude was in jail. Everything else could wait. We had enemies in town, and I needed to know who they were, what they wanted. After that I’d think about what had just happened, but not yet, not yet. Avoidance is one of my best things.
Cherry handed me a towel and kept one for herself. I wound the towel around my hair and retrieved a second towel for my body. We dried off in silence, no eye contact. It wasn’t shower protocol; girls aren’t as hung up about that as guys. I just didn’t want to talk about what had happened. Not yet.
I wrapped the oversized towel securely around my body, and asked, “Why is Jean-Claude in jail?”
“For murdering you,” she said.
I stared at her for a few seconds, and when I could talk, I said, “Pass that by me again. Slowly.”
“Someone got pictures of Jean-Claude carrying you out of the club. You were covered in blood, Anita. He was covered in your blood.” She shrugged, drying off a spot she’d missed on one long leg.
“But I’m alive,” I said. It sounded almost silly saying it.
“And how would you explain that in less than a week you were healed of wounds that should have killed you?” She straightened, slinging the towel over one shoulder, not bothering to cover even an inch of her body.
“I don’t want him in jail for something he didn’t do,” I said.
“If you go tonight, the police will want to know how you healed yourself. What are you going to tell them?” Her eyes were very direct. So direct it made me want to squirm.
“You’re treating me like a lycanthrope who hasn’t
come out of the closet yet. I’m not a shapeshifter, Cherry.”
She dropped her gaze then, wouldn’t meet my eyes. It reminded me of the looks they’d all given each other in the room where I woke up. I touched her chin, having to reach up to do it. “What aren’t you guys telling me?”
A man’s voice came from outside the showers. “Can I please come in and clean off?” It was Micah. I’d planned on running for the hills the next time I saw him, but there was something in Cherry’s eyes that kept me frozen. She was scared. And there was something else, something I couldn’t quite read.
I yelled back, “Just a minute!” Then I continued. “Cherry, tell me. Whatever it is, just tell me.”
She shook her head. She was afraid, but of what? “Are you afraid of me?” I couldn’t keep the surprise out of my voice.
She nodded, looking down again, avoiding my gaze.
“I would never hurt you, any of you.”
“For this you might,” she whispered.
I grabbed her arm. “Cherry, damn it, talk to me.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, and turned towards the door a second before Micah Callahan walked through, as if she’d heard him before I had. He was still naked. I expected to be embarrassed, but I wasn’t. I was beginning to have the proverbial bad feeling about whatever it was that Cherry didn’t want to tell me.
Micah had combed his hair. It was definitely curls, not waves. The curls were tight, but not small. The color was that shade of dark, dark brown—almost black—that comes to people who start out white blond as children, then darken. The curls fell to just below his shoulders, and, following the line of hair, my eyes found his chest. I quickly moved them up so I could concentrate on his face. Eye contact. That was the ticket. I was getting back to the embarrassment.
“I told you we’d be out in a minute.” My voice sounded grumpy, and I was glad. The fact that I was sort of clutching the towel to my body was purely coincidental.
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