Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Belle drew Micah’s face towards hers. Her skin seemed to be made up of white light, black flame hair, the glittering molten metal of fingertips and eyes. Her lips glowed like a slash of fresh blood.

  Micah’s hand convulsed in mine, so strong it hurt, and the pain helped, made my thoughts clearer, harder-edged. He made a small sound in his throat as Belle pressed her mouth to his. I knew he didn’t want to touch her, and I also knew he couldn’t refuse her.

  But he was mine. Micah was mine, not hers. Mine. I sat up with Micah on one hand and Damian on the other, the warm and the cold, the live and the dead, the passion and the logic. Jean-Claude’s hands were still on my nearly bare shoulders. He strengthened me, as I strengthened him, but this power was mine, not his. The leopards weren’t his to call. They were mine.

  I called that part of me that the leopards touched and realized for the first time that it wasn’t tied to Richard, or even really Jean-Claude. The leopards were mine, and Belle’s.

  I sat up with my face so close to hers that the glow of her fire caressed my face, and the pleasure of that light touch sent a wave of shivers over my skin. It wasn’t that I was immune to Belle’s touch. It was that I had my own.

  I usually fought my beast, whatever flavor it was, but not tonight. Tonight I welcomed it, embraced it, and maybe that was why it poured through me like a scalding flood of power. If I’d been a lycanthrope in truth, my beast would have burst from my skin in a flood of warm fluids, but I wasn’t a lycanthrope. But the beast rode under my skin, screamed out my mouth, and hit Micah’s body like a train, a huge, liquid muscled train. It tore his mouth from Belle Morte’s, and brought a scream to echo mine. My beast roared through his body, and his beast answered it. His beast rushed up from the depths to meet mine, like two leviathans racing for the surface.

  We hit that metaphorical surface together, and our beasts wound in and out of our bodies, rolling like huge cats, luxuriating in the feel of fur and muscle. There was nothing to see with the eyes, but there were things to feel.

  Belle brushed her glowing hands just above us, caressing that energy. “Très de bon gout.” She touched Micah’s skin, and that energy leaped to her, bringing a gasp from her throat. Micah turned, and I think would have gone to her again, but I caught his face in my hands. We kissed.

  The kiss began as a brush of lips, an exploration of tongues, a nibbling of teeth, a pressing of mouths. Then our beasts rolled through our mouths, like two souls changing places. The rush of energy slammed our bodies together, sliced my nails through Damian’s hand, convulsed Jean-Claude’s hands on my shoulders. I felt both his body and Damian’s bow backwards, a second before the power tore through them, and ripped sounds from both their throats that had more to do with pleasure than pain.

  Micah and I rode each other, mouths locked in an endless kiss, as if our beasts had merged into one. Then slowly, the entwined energies began to roll apart and slide into their separate houses of flesh.

  I came completely to myself on the floor with Micah collapsed on top of me, Damian lying on the floor with only my hand holding him. Jean-Claude was still sitting upright, but he was swaying softly in place, almost like he was dancing to music I couldn’t hear. I think he was simply fighting not to fall down, but even that he made seem graceful.

  Belle was staring down at us with a look close to rapture on her face. “Oh, Jean-Claude, Jean-Claude, what toys you have wrought for yourself.”

  Jean-Claude found his voice while I was still fighting to breathe over my pulse, and Micah’s heart was thudding so hard against my chest it felt like it would burst. The pulse in Damian’s palm beat like a second heartbeat against my skin. None of the rest of us had found a voice that could override the pulse of our bodies.

  “Not toys, Belle, never toys.”

  “They are all toys, Jean-Claude, some are merely harder to use than others. But they are all toys.” She stroked her glowing hand down the back of Micah’s carefully styled hair.

  Her energy played along his body, brought a sigh from all of us, but it was faint, almost a knee-jerk reaction, that you couldn’t quite prevent. We lay quiet under her touch.

  Belle looked down at us, and it was hard to see through the glowing mask, but I think she frowned. She ran her fingertips down the side of Micah’s face, and there was no reaction. She called to his beast, but his beast was well fed, sleepy, and content.

  My voice came, hollow, as if I hadn’t quite filled back up. “The leopards are mine, Belle.”

  “The leopard was my first animal to call Anita, and call them I shall.”

  I lay on the floor, feeling languorous, content. Micah rolled his face so his cheek rested on the soft pillow of my breasts. We watched her with lazy eyes, the way that only cats can. I should have been afraid, but I wasn’t. The rush of power seemed to have taken all my fear along with it. I felt clear-headed and safe.

  Belle poured that misty power on us, but though she raised gooseflesh and brought sighs to our lips, there was no more. She could not call Micah as her beast, because he was mine. She could not call my beast, because I was Micah’s. We truly were Nimir-Ra and Nimir-Raj, and together we were enough to keep her out of us.

  She turned those gold-flame eyes to someone behind us, and I felt her reach out to one of the leopards. I’d known somehow it would be Nathaniel. If she’d tried it before Micah and I had merged, he would have come to her, but now it was too late. We’d shut that gate and barred it. Belle Morte could not touch our leopards, not tonight.

  “This is not possible,” she said, and her voice had lost some of its purring caress.

  Jean-Claude answered her doubt. “You can call almost all the big cats, but you cannot call the cats that answer to the Master of Beasts.”

  “Padma sits upon the council, you are one of my children. That I cannot take what belongs to another council member is merely truth. That any of my children could keep me from possessing what is theirs is impossible.”

  “Perhaps,” Jean-Claude said, and he got to his feet. He offered a hand to both Micah and me. Normally, I don’t let people help me up, but tonight I was wearing a long skirt, high heels, and had just had what amounted to metaphysical sex in public. We took his hands together, and he pulled us to our feet. Damian still had a death grip on my other hand, but he stayed on his knees, eyes still only half-focused, as if the power rush had thrown him more than it had the rest of us. He was the only one of us who wasn’t either a master or an alpha something. I drew him in to sit against my legs, but didn’t try and make him stand; it didn’t look like he was ready to yet.

  “By American standards,” Jean-Claude said, “this did not count as sex.”

  Belle laughed, and the sound still shivered across the skin, but it was distant. Either we were too numb, or too shielded for her to touch. “The Americans do not count this as sex, that is absurd!”

  “Perhaps, but true nonetheless. You and I would consider it sex, would we not?”

  “Oh, oui, sex enough for one of my entertainments.”

  I almost felt Jean-Claude smile. I didn’t have to see it. “Do you truly believe we have not done this and more with Asher?”

  She looked at him, and her anger lashed through the room again like a wind off the lakes of hell. “I will not be turned aside so easily.” She gestured back at the two dead vampires. “You have no idea what your human servant has taken from me. They were not merely vampires.”

  “They were lycanthropes,” I said.

  She looked at me, and there was more interest than anger in her now. Belle had always been more interested in power than being petty, though if she could be both, well, that would be the best of all worlds.

  “How do you know this?”

  “I felt their beasts, and I felt the beast from Mommy Dearest earlier today.”

  “Mommy Dearest?” She managed to look puzzled underneath all that glittering power.

  “The Sweet Dark,” Jean-Claude said.

  “I felt her stir in he
r sleep, Belle. The Mother of All Darkness is waking up, that’s why her children, as you put it, finally came to someone’s call.”

  “I called them,” she said.

  “You can call all of the great cats, and among other things, they are cats. I’ll bet the Master of Beasts could call them, too, if he tried,” I said.

  I thought for a moment she was actually going to stamp her foot—or rather Musette’s—at me. “They came to my call, no one else’s.”

  “Doesn’t it worry you that the children of the dark are rising? Doesn’t that scare you?”

  “I have worked long and hard to amass enough power to wake the children of the dark.”

  I shook my head. “You felt her today, Belle, how can you stand there and not understand that this isn’t your power going to a new level, it’s hers waking up.”

  Belle Morte shook her head. “Non, ma petite, you are seeking to deter me from my revenge. I never forget an insult, and I always make sure someone pays the price for it.” She walked up to us, and that glowing edge of power swirled at my full skirts, but it didn’t catch my breath this time. It was power, and it crawled across my skin like lines of insects marching, but it wasn’t seductive, it wasn’t special. We’d all had so much power poured through us that we just didn’t have anything left for more fun and games tonight.

  She ran her hand down Micah’s chest, and I felt his body tighten, but it wasn’t the effect she was used to. She touched Jean-Claude’s face, and he let her.

  “Marvelous, as always, Belle.”

  “No, not as always,” she said. She turned to me, then.

  I didn’t want her to touch me, but I knew that I could let her do it now. She wasn’t here in the flesh, not really, and it limited her power. Intellectually I knew that, the cold hard feeling in my stomach wasn’t so certain. I made myself stand still while she put that glowing hand against my face. Her hand didn’t exactly burn where it touched, but it was hot, and the power spread from it, marching down my body like hot water poured from my face down my skin. It made me shiver and want to pull way, but I could tolerate it. I didn’t have to pull away. I didn’t have to run.

  She drew her hand back, and there was a lingering sense of power between her hand and my skin. She brushed it against her skirt, Musette’s skirt. I wondered, was Musette still in there? Did she know what was happening? Or did she go away, only to come back when Belle was finished?

  She turned last to Damian. He tucked himself in tight against me, like a dog that was afraid of being hurt, but he didn’t run. Belle touched his face. He flinched, not wanting to meet her eyes, but as he knelt at my legs, and nothing worse happened to him than the feel of power over his skin, he looked up, slowly. There was something like wonderment in his eyes, and behind that, triumph.

  Belle jerked her hand back as if it had been she who was burned. “Damian is of my line, but not of yours, Jean-Claude. It is not your power that he tastes of.” She looked at me, and there was something on that beautiful, alien face that I couldn’t understand. “Why does he taste of your power, Anita? Not you of his, but he of yours.”

  I wasn’t sure truth would help here, but I knew a lie wouldn’t. “Would you believe me if I said I’m not quite sure.”

  “Oui, and non. You speak truth, but there is some evasion to it.”

  I swallowed and took a deep breath. I really didn’t want Belle to know this part. I really didn’t want it getting back to the council at large.

  She looked at me, and her eyes went wide, and some of that glowing power began to seep away, sliding back into Musette’s body, so that it was Musette with honey-brown eyes that met my gaze. “Somehow he is your servant. Our legends speak of this possibility. It is one of the reasons we once slew all necromancers on sight.”

  “Glad we’ve moved on from the good ol’ days,” I said.

  “We have not, but when we thought you were Jean-Claude’s human servant, then there was no harm, because your power was his.” She shook her head and there was an afterimage of black hair over the blond, a dark ghost over all that bloodstained white. “Now I am not so certain. You taste of Jean-Claude’s power, oui, but Damian tastes only of yours. And the leopards taste only of your power, also. No necromancer has ever had an animal to call.”

  She shook her head. “Jean-Claude with his new human servant and her servants, has been able to keep me at bay. If I were here in flesh instead of spirit, this would not save you, I think.”

  “Of course, it would not,” Jean-Claude said, “your beauty would overwhelm us.”

  “No false flattery, Jean-Claude, you know how much I hate it.”

  “I did not know it was false.”

  “I am not so certain that my beauty would overwhelm any of you. Somehow this one,” and she motioned at me, “has cut me off from the leopards, and somehow, you have cut me off from the vampires that descend directly from you.”

  My pulse sped up a bit at that, because I hadn’t even felt her trying to take over Meng Dei or Faust. They were standing as far from the show as they could, dressed in the bodyguard black leather. Though both were so small compared to the rest that they looked out of place. Meng Die looked scared, Faust didn’t. Which could have meant anything and nothing.

  “But not every vampire in this room is a direct descendent of yours, Jean-Claude. Because I am not here in flesh you may keep me from the flock that is yours, but not what was first mine.”

  I was afraid I knew what she meant, and hoped I didn’t.

  Belle Morte brushed past us, with a flare of power lost like a breeze against our skin. She was walking towards Asher. Because she had made him herself, and he was older than Jean-Claude. Asher owed nothing to Jean-Claude except the vows any vampire makes to his Master of the City, and love, perhaps love. I wasn’t sure love was enough to save him from Belle Morte. I believed in love, but I believed in evil, too. Neither love nor evil conquers all, but evil cheats more.

  47

  THE WOLVES CHOSE that moment to come in through the far curtain. Their entrance stopped everything briefly because they doubled our bodyguards. I didn’t need to see Belle’s—or Musette’s—face to know she didn’t like it. It showed in the sudden stiffening of her shoulders, the slight clenching of her fists. I realized suddenly that I was seeing Musette begin to rise up through Belle like a fly caught in melting ice.

  It was when I saw Jason in an outfit that was mostly dark blue straps, which covered about as much of his body as Nathaniel’s outfit covered of his, that I realized that there had been no wolves present until now, except Stephen who had ridden with Micah from my house. I’d known that Richard was delayed, but I hadn’t noticed that none of the wolves had been here. Usually, there were always some wolves here for Jean-Claude. Jason walked in smiling in his black over-the-knee boots, but there was something in his eyes, some small warning that I couldn’t decipher. I’d expected to see him wearing makeup like Micah and Nathaniel, but he wasn’t. None of the male wolves were.

  Richard came into sight, easy to spot above the sea of black leather that was his pack. I knew that he had butchered his hair, but I hadn’t really grasped how much until I saw him. I’m sure the hairstylist had done his or her best, but there was only so much they could do. They’d had to buzz his hair back to less than an inch of medium brown. It seemed darker this short, missing the gold and red highlights. He also looked remarkably like his older brother Aaron, and his father. The resemblance had always been strong, but now it was like they were clones.

  He was wearing a black tux with a shirt of deep, rich blue and a matching bow tie. With the new haircut, and the more conservative clothes, he looked—out of place.

  His eyes met mine, and the shock of how handsome he was still sent a thrill through me from head to toes. Without the hair to distract, you couldn’t pretend that the cheekbones weren’t knife-edge perfect, the dimple in his chin didn’t soften the strong masculinity of his face. His shoulders were broad, his waist not slender, but small. Nothing a
bout Richard was slender. He was built more like a football player than a dancer.

  Jamil and Shang-Da, his Hati and Skoll, the Ulfric’s personal bodyguards, flanked him. Jamil was wearing black leather straps for a shirt to complement almost ordinary leather pants and short boots. The bright red beads, worked into his cornrow braids, looked like drops of crimson blood against the darkness of his skin and the black of the leather. He met my eyes, and there was again that sense of warning that I’d gotten from Jason. Something was wrong, something beyond what was already happening, but what?

  Shang-Da looked uncomfortable out of his usual suit, but black leather suited his tall frame the same way any kind of armor would have. Shang-Da was the tallest Chinese person I’d ever met. He was physically imposing by any standards. He was also a warrior, and protecting his Ulfric was all he did. He pretty much hated me, because so much of the pain I caused Richard was something he couldn’t protect him against. Bodyguards can’t do shit about emotional stress. He avoided my gaze.

  Jason strutted towards me, making sure his body swayed seductively. He was by profession a stripper so he was pretty good at the seductive sway. His body language said sex, his eyes held a shadow of something else, and when he got to me, he slid an arm across my shoulders, pressing his body up against mine, but what he whispered in my ear wasn’t sweet nothings, it was a warning.

  “Richard has found his backbone, but he’s decided to use it against Jean-Claude first.” He smiled as he said it, his face full of the seductive promise that his walk had held. He ran his hands across the back of my neck, playing his fingertips in the hollow of my collarbone.

  I whispered against the shell of his ear. “What does that mean?”

  He turned my head towards his, so that my face was hidden from Richard and the pack. It looked like flirting. “Richard’s going to try and take all his wolves away from Jean-Claude.”

  I was glad my face was facing only Jason, because I couldn’t hide the shock. I fought to control my face, and Jason laughed at nothing that I’d said. He put a hand on either side of my face, giving me time to regain control of myself.