Anita Blake 12 - Incubus Dreams

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I was looking forward to it. I tried picturing the night without Nathaniel. No Nathaniel coming and going out of the kitchen with popcorn and soda, making people use coasters. No Nathaniel sitting on the floor, next to my legs, half the night spent with his head on my knee, and the other half playing his hand up and down my calf. It wasn’t sexual, he just felt better touching me. The entire pard, and pack, felt better touching each other. It was possible to be up close and personal without it being sexual. It really was, just not usually for me.

  Which brought me back to the problem at hand. Funny how the thinking led back to it. Tonight when the ardeur finally surfaced, what was I going to do? I could exile Nathaniel to his room, legitimately, because I’d need to feed tomorrow, too. I could save him like for dessert. But we’d both know that that wasn’t it. I wasn’t saving him, I was saving myself. Saving myself from what, I wasn’t sure, but it was definitely about saving me, and had nothing to do with saving Nathaniel.

  He didn’t want to be saved. No, that wasn’t true. Nathaniel already thought he had been saved. I’d saved him. I’d been treating him like a prince who needed to find his princess, but that was all wrong. Nathaniel was the princess, and he had been rescued, by me. As far as Nathaniel was concerned, I was the prince in shining armor, I just needed to come across, and then we could all live happily ever after.

  Trouble was, I was no one’s prince, and no one’s princess. I was just me, and I was all out of armor, shiny or otherwise. I just wasn’t the fairy-tale type. And I didn’t believe in happily ever after. The question was, did I believe in happily for now? If I could have answered that question, then all the worry would have been ended, but I couldn’t answer it. So as Micah drove us toward home in the October dark, I still didn’t know what I’d do when the ardeur finally rose for the night. I didn’t even know what the right thing to do was anymore. Wasn’t right supposed to help people and wrong supposed to hurt people? Didn’t you make the right choice because it was the right thing to do? I always felt squeamish about praying to God about sex, in any context, but I prayed as we drove, because I was out of options. I asked for guidance. I asked for a clue as to what was the best for everyone. I didn’t get an answer, and I hadn’t expected one. I have a lot psychic gifts, but talking directly to God is not one of them, thank goodness. Read the Old Testament if you don’t think it’s a scary idea. But worse than no answer, I didn’t feel that peace that I usually get when I pray.

  My cell phone rang. It made me jump, and my pulse was so thick in my throat that I couldn’t answer right away. A woman’s voice said, “Anita, Anita are you there?”

  It was Marianne. She lived in Tennessee and was the vargamor for the Oak Tree Clan. It was a very old-fashioned title and job, basically she was the witch that helped them deal with their metaphysical problems. Most packs didn’t have one anymore, too old-fashioned. Maybe the New Age stuff would bring it back into vogue.

  She was also helping me cope with my abilities. She was the only psychic I knew, and trusted. She knew the shapeshifters almost as well as I did, in some ways better, in some ways not. But she was the closest thing I had to a mentor of late, and I needed one.

  “Marianne, it’s great to hear your voice. What’s up?” My voice sounded breathy even to me.

  “I just got this overwhelming urge to call you. What’s wrong?”

  See, she’s psychic. I wanted to explain everything, but Nathaniel was behind me in the car. What was I supposed to do, make him put his fingers in his ears and hum while I talked? “It’s a little awkward right now.”

  “Should I guess?”

  “If you want.”

  She was quiet for a few moments, and she wasn’t guessing. She was using either her own gifted intuition, or she was drawing a card, a tarot card that is. “I’m looking at the Knight of Cups here, that’s usually Nathaniel’s card.” I’d been skeptical, to say the least, when Marianne first got out a deck of cards to do a “reading,” but they were eerily accurate, at least in her hands. When she’d first started, Nathaniel’s card had been the Page of Cups, a child’s card, or a least a very young person, but of late he’d been promoted. Knight of Cups.

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  Silence, and I knew she was laying a spread. She’d actually tried to get me to use the cards, to see if I had any abilities for divination, but they were just pretty pictures to me. My gifts lay elsewhere.

  “King of Wands, Micah is with you, too.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes.” I could picture her with her long gray hair tied back in a no-nonsense ponytail, probably in one of her loose, flowing gowns, sitting cross-legged on the bed, which is where she’d have been this late. She was slender and strong, and her body didn’t match her hair, or the fact that she was closer to sixty than fifty.

  “The devil, temptation. You haven’t fed the ardeur yet, have you?”

  It used to creep me out that she could do this, but I’d gotten used to it. It was just something Marianne could do. She didn’t hold it against me that I raised zombies, and I didn’t hold it against her that she could tell what was happening hundreds of miles away. In fact, sometimes, like now, it came in handy.

  “Not yet.”

  “The Priestess, you have a question for me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not doing something silly like trying to choose between Micah and Nathaniel, are you?”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “You can’t blame me, Anita, you do tend to complicate your life.”

  I sighed. “Fine, true, but sort of, and not exactly.”

  “Fine, be cryptic.”

  “Not in the way you might mean,” I said finally.

  “So not dumping one for the other,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s good.” She was quiet for longer this time. “I’ll stop guessing. I’ve laid a reading.” She preferred to do a reading without knowing anything about the problem. Marianne felt that if you talked to much you influenced the person doing the reading.

  “I put you in the center, Queen of Swords. The past is the five of pentagrams, being left out in the cold, not getting your needs met. Deity is the six of cups, which can be someone from your past coming back into your life, someone you felt a strong connection with. Future is the Knight of Cups, Nathaniel’s card. The mundane is the four of pentacles, the Miser, holding on to things that no longer help your life run smoothly. Now we’ll do the connecting cards.” She was quiet for a second or two, while she thought, or prayed, or whatever she did to make the cards talk to her. I understood everything but the six of cups so far. “Connecting the mundane to the past is the Lover’s card. Something happened in your love life that made you be afraid of being hurt, or giving up something, or someone. Connecting the past to deity is the King of Wands, usually Micah’s card, but it could be energy, a male presence in your life. Connecting deity to the future is the two of swords; you have a choice to make, and you think it’s difficult, but if you take off the blindfold, you can see, and you have what you need to do it. Connecting the future to the mundane is the Knight of Wands, another man in your life. You do draw a lot of male energy to you.”

  “Not on purpose,” I said.

  “Hush, I’m not finished.”

  “Overlaying the Miser is the six of swords, help unseen, or help from a spiritual source. Overlaying the Lovers is the four of rods, the marriage card. Overlaying the out in the cold is the ten of pentacles, happy prosperous home. Hmm. The King of Rods and the six of cups stand on their own, but the two of swords has crossed with the Queen of Wands. Nathaniel’s card is crossed with the ten of cups, a happy home, true love. The Knight of Wands is crossed by the Devil, temptation.”

  “Okay, I get most of it, but who is the Knight of Wands, and why is he covered by temptation? And who is the Queen of Wands?”

  “I think the Queen of Wands is you.”

  “I’m always the Queen of Swords.”

  “Maybe that
’s changing. Maybe you’re coming into your power, into yourself.”

  “I’m already myself,” I said.

  “Have it your way.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “I’d say the Lovers and the four of rods are your old fiancé in college that dumped you. That experience led you to be the Miser with your emotions. You need to let that go. Your home was the five of pentacles, cold, but now it’s a happy prosperous home. You’re going to be offered up some difficult choices soon; that has something to do with someone from your past. I think Micah’s card is the message that he’s helped you heal some of those old wounds, because he bridges the past with deity.”

  “He’s a gift from deity?”

  “Don’t be cheeky. When the universe, or God, or Goddess, or whatever you choose to say, gives you someone in your life that comes in and makes so much right, so quickly, be grateful. Be grateful instead of picking at it.” Marianne knew me too well.

  “And the Knight of Wands?”

  “Someone new, or someone old, but you’ll be seeing them in a new light. It will be a temptation, but the wands represent power, so it could be a temptation to use power or gain power, rather than anything relationshipwise.”

  “I don’t need more temptation in my life, Marianne.”

  “Did you start a case tonight?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I felt compelled to draw another card. It’s the eight of swords, a woman bound and blindfolded, surrounded by swords. A woman died tonight.”

  I try to avoid calling Marianne in the middle of a murder case, for a lot of reasons, this was one of them. It creeped me out, and gave her nightmares.

  “Five of rods, there will be a lot of conflict on this one, and more to die. But the Justice card says the guilty will be punished, and it will work out, but not without loss. The eight of pentacles? That’s odd. Someone will be involved that was once your teacher. Someone older. Do you know who that would be?”

  I thought about it being Dolph, but that didn’t sound right. “I don’t know, maybe.”

  “They haven’t come into the situation, yet, but they will. They will help you.”

  “How sure are you that there will be more killings?”

  “Aren’t you sure of it?” she asked, and she had that tone in her voice that said she was listening to voices I couldn’t hear.

  “Yeah, I got that feeling.”

  “Trust your feelings, Anita.”

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  “You must be almost home by now.”

  I didn’t ask how she knew we were turning into the driveway. She wouldn’t really have been able to tell me. Psychic stuff wasn’t big on A, B, C logic. It was more like A to G, leaps of logic, with no road map as to how we got to G.

  “Yeah, we’re home.”

  Micah blew me a kiss and got out of the Jeep. I heard Nathaniel get out of the back. They both closed the doors and left me in the suddenly dark car, alone with the phone.

  Marianne spoke into the sudden silence. “Oh, one more thing, the message I just got was, ’You know what you need to do. Why are you asking me?’ That’s not my message to you, you know I never mind you asking my advice. I actually kind of like it. Who else have you been asking advice from?”

  I opened my mouth, and closed it. “I prayed.”

  “What I’m getting is that you usually only pray when you’re out of other options that you like. It might be nice if you prayed as something other than a last resort.” She said it so matter-of-factly. Nothing big, you prayed, God can’t talk to you, so he left a message on your machine. Great.

  I licked my suddenly dry lips, and said, “It doesn’t bother you that you just took a message from God for me?”

  “Well, it wasn’t from him directly. He just sent it.” Again, utterly matter-of-fact, no big deal.

  “Marianne.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes you creep me out.”

  She laughed. “You raise the dead and slay the undead, and I frighten you.”

  Put that way, it sounded silly, but it was still true. “Let’s just say that I’m glad you have your psychic powers, and I have mine. I feel guilty enough without knowing the future.”

  “Don’t feel guilty, Anita, follow your heart. No, it was the Queen of Rods, not of Cups. So follow your power, let it take you where you need to go. Trust yourself, and trust those around you.”

  “You know I don’t trust anybody.”

  “You trust me.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Stop poking at it, Anita. Your heart is not a wound to be poked at to see if the scab is ready to come off. You can be healed of that very old pain, if you’ll just let it happen.”

  “So everybody keeps telling me.”

  “If all your friends are saying one thing, and your heart is saying the same thing, and only your fear is arguing, then stop fighting.”

  “I’m not good at giving up.”

  “No, I’d say that is the thing you are worst at. Giving up something that no longer serves a purpose, or protects you, or helps you, isn’t giving up at all, it’s growing up.”

  I sighed. “I hate it when you make this much sense.”

  “You hate it, and you count on it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go inside, Anita, go inside, and make your choice. I’ve said all I have to say, now it’s up to you.”

  “And I hate that most of all,” I said.

  “What?” she asked.

  “That you don’t try and influence me, not really, you just report, tell me my choices, and let me go.”

  “I offer guidance, nothing more.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m hanging up now, and you’re going inside. Because you can’t sleep out in the car.” The phone went dead before I could whine at her anymore. Marianne was right, like usual. I hated that she just gave me information and helped me think, but wouldn’t tell me what to do. Of course, if she’d tried to boss me around, I wouldn’t have tolerated it. I made my own choices, and when someone pushed me, it just made me more determined to ignore them, so Marianne never pushed. Here’s your information, here are your choices, now go be a grown-up and make them.

  I got out of the Jeep and hoped I was grown-up enough for this particular choice.

  11

  « ^ »

  The living room was dark as I entered the house. The only light was from the kitchen. One or both of them had walked through the pitch-dark living room and only hit a light switch when they went to the kitchen to check messages on the machine, which was on the kitchen counter. Leopards’ eyes are better in the dark than a human’s, and Micah’s eyes were permanently stuck in kitty-cat mode. He often walked through the entire house with no lights, just drifting from room to room, avoiding every obstacle, gliding through the dark with the same confidence I used in bright light.

  There was enough light from the kitchen, so I, too, left the living room dark. The white couch seemed to give off its own glow, though I knew that was illusion, made up of the reflective quality of the white, white cloth. I was pretty sure the men had both gone to change for the night. Most lycanthropes, whatever the flavor, preferred fewer clothes, and Micah didn’t like dressing up. I walked into the empty kitchen not because I needed to, but because I wasn’t ready to go to the bedroom. I still didn’t know what I was going to do.

  The kitchen held a large dining room table now. The breakfast nook on its little raised platform with its bay window looking out over the woods still held a smaller four-seater table. Four had been more chairs than I needed when I moved into this house. Now, because we usually had at least some of the other wereleopards bunking over due to emergency, or, often, just the need to be close to more of their group, their pard, we needed a six-seater table. Actually we needed a bigger one than that, but it was all my kitchen would hold.

  There was a vase in the middle of the table. Jean-Claude had sent me a dozen white roses a week after we
started dating. Once we had sex, he’d added one red rose, so it was actually thirteen. One red rose like a spot of blood in a sea of white roses and white baby’s breath. It certainly made a statement.

  I smelled the roses, and the red one had the strongest scent. Hard to find white roses that smelled good. All I had to do was call Jean-Claude. He was fast enough to fly here before dawn. I’d fed off of him before, I could do it again. Of course, that would simply be putting off the decision. No, it would be hiding. I hated cowardice almost more than anything else, and calling on my vampire lover in this instance was cowardice.

  The phone rang. I jumped back so hard that the roses rocked in their vase. You’d think I was nervous, or guilty of something. I got the phone on the second ring. The voice on the other end was cultured, a professor’s voice, but it wasn’t a professor. Teddy was over six feet, and a serious weight lifter. That he also had a very fine mind and was articulate had surprised me the first time I’d met him. He looks like dumb muscle and talks like a philosopher. He was also a werewolf. Richard had allowed the wolves that wanted to help to join the coalition. “Anita, this is Teddy.”

  “Hey, Teddy, what’s up?”

  “I am fine, but Gil is not. He will be, but right this moment we are in the emergency room of Saint Anthony’s.”

  Gil was the only werefox in town. So he depended a great deal on the “Furry Coalition,” as the local shapeshifters and even the local police had started calling it. The coalition had originally been designed to promote better understanding and cooperation among the various animal groups, but we’d branched out to dealing with the human world, to try and promote better understanding with them, too. One great big love fest.