Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Nathaniel drew back enough to say in a harsh whisper, “Happy thoughts, Anita, happy thoughts.” Then his mouth was on mine, tongue, lips, even teeth light against my own lips, so that it was more eating than kissing, but it brought a whimper from my throat, a small helpless sound of pleasure.

  My hands were on his body, following the flow of his shoulders, his back, and the smooth silken curve of his ass. The back of his body filled my hands, and the front of him was like heat wrapped in flesh, as if we’d burst into flame.

  Damian’s hands were on the back of my bra; somehow it had survived that first rush. He snapped it open, and the front of it fell against Nathaniel’s chest. Hands spilled over my breasts; one from behind, and one from the man pressed against the front of my body. Damian’s touch was delicate, stroking. Nathaniel wrapped his hand around my breast and dug his nails into my flesh. It was Nathaniel’s hand that bowed my back, tore my mouth away from his, and forced a scream from my mouth.

  Damian hesitated, pulled back from that scream, as though he had to feel that it was pleasure and not pain. He didn’t like to hear women scream. And just like that we were back in his memory. There was a room underneath the castle, torches, darkness, and women, any woman that she thought was prettier than she. No one was allowed hair more yellow than hers, eyes more blue, or breasts larger. These were all sins, and sins were punished. A rush of images; piles of yellow hair, wide blue eyes like cornflowers, and the spear that put them out, a chest as pale and fair as any he’d seen, and the sword . . .

  Nathaniel screamed, “Noooo!” He reached past me and grabbed a handful of red hair. He jerked Damian so hard against me, that just feeling the hard length of him made me writhe between them. “Happy thoughts, Damian, happy thoughts.”

  “I don’t have any happy thoughts,” and on the heels of that statement were other dark rooms, and the smell of burning flesh.

  I was the one who screamed this time, “God, Damian, no more. Keep your nightmares to yourself.” The memory that had gone with that smell, had dampened the ardeur. I could think again, even pressed between both their bodies.

  “Tell him to fuck you,” Nathaniel said.

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “Order him to do it; then he won’t be conflicted.”

  It seemed almost ridiculous to be huffy, kneeling pretty much nude between two nude men, but it was still how I felt. “Maybe I’m conflicted.”

  “Almost always,” he said, and smiled to soften the words.

  Damian’s voice came, low and heavy with something like sorrow. “She doesn’t want to do this. She wants me to help her stop the ardeur, not to feed it. That’s what she really wants, I can feel it, and that’s what I have to do.”

  “Anita, please, tell him.”

  But Damian was right. He was the only port in a storm of sexual temptation. I valued his ability to make me not feel the ardeur. I valued that more than anything his body could do for me. And because I truly was his master, and that was my true wish, he had to help me do it. The coolness of the grave rose between us, and it wasn’t frightening this time. It was soothing, comforting.

  “Anita, no,” Nathaniel said, “no.” He put his face against my shoulder. The movement put his body farther away from mine, and that helped me think, too.

  I turned to look at Damian, though I didn’t need to see his face to feel the overwhelming sadness. The sense of aching loss that seemed to fill him, like some bitter medicine. But the look on his face drove the sorrow home like a blade thrust through my heart. It hurt to see anyone’s eyes full of such pain.

  I turned to face him, still held lightly in both their arms. Nathaniel put the top of his head against my naked back, shaking his head. “Anita, can’t you feel how sad he is? Can’t you feel it?”

  I looked into Damian’s cat-green eyes, and said, “Yes.”

  He turned his face away, as if he’d shown me more than he was comfortable with. I touched his chin and brought his face back to me. “You don’t want me,” and there was a world of loss in those words. A loss that tightened my throat, made my chest hurt. I wanted to deny it, but he could feel what I was feeling. He was right, I didn’t want him, not the way I wanted Nathaniel, let alone the way I wanted Jean-Claude or Micah. What do you say when someone can read your emotions, so that you can’t hide behind polite lies? What do you say when the truth is awful, and you can’t lie?

  Nothing. No words would heal this. But I’d learned there were other ways to say you’re sorry. Other ways to say, I’d change it, if I could. Of course, even that was a lie. I wouldn’t lose the cool reserve that Damian could give me, not for anything.

  I kissed him, and meant for it to be light, gentle, an apology that words could not make, but Damian thought he’d never get this close to me again. I felt a fierceness rise up through him, a desperation that made him tighten his grip on my arms, made him thrust his tongue into my mouth, and kiss me hard and eager, and angry.

  I tasted blood and assumed he’d nicked me with his fangs. I swallowed the sweetish taste of the blood without thinking. Then I could smell the ocean, smell it like salt on my tongue. We drew back enough to look into each other’s faces, and I saw the trickle of blood trailing over his lower lip. Nathaniel had time to say, “I smell seawater.” Then the power flooded up and up and smashed us against each other. It ground us against the floor like a wave cracking a boat against the rocks. We screamed, and writhed, and I could not control it. If I’d been a true master, then I could have ridden it, helped us all, but I’d never meant to mark anyone. Never meant to be anyone’s master. The fourth mark was crushing us, and I didn’t know what to do. The inside of my head exploded in white star bursts and gray miasma. Darkness ate at the inside of my head. If I’d been sure we’d wake up again, I’d have welcomed passing out, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know. But it didn’t matter; darkness filled up the inside of my head, and we all fell into it. No more screaming, no more pain, no more panic, no more anything.

  14

  I WOKE TO early morning sunlight. It left me blinking, and only after I could see through the warm dazzle of it, did I wonder, where am I? and why am I on the floor? Why was I naked on the floor? Without turning my head, I saw the chair legs and the little raised area that was my breakfast nook. Okay, I was in the floor of my own kitchen, naked. Why?

  I heard the soft sounds of movement before I felt a hand brush mine. It seemed to take a lot of effort to look to my right, down my body, and see Nathaniel lying on the floor, more nude than I was. I still had the remnants of my tuxedo clinging to my legs. The tuxedo made me remember the wedding. I remembered talking to Micah after we got home. I remembered Micah had had to go out and save one of Richard’s wolves. I remembered the ardeur rising and that something had gone wrong. I remembered that Damian had been there. He must have woken before we did and dragged himself down to his coffin. Trust the undead to recover quickest.

  Someone groaned, and it wasn’t Nathaniel, and it wasn’t me.

  I suddenly found I could turn my head, a lot quicker than I had before. Adrenaline will do that to you.

  Damian lay on the floor, his upper body bathed in golden morning light, as if his white skin had been dipped in honey. Part of my mind registered the beauty of him, lying there in a pool of bloodred hair and golden light, but most of me was terrified. I was on my knees and grabbing for his leg before my body could argue. Nathaniel was beside me, and we jerked Damian out of the sunlight.

  He was awake now; awake and screaming. He was out of the direct sunlight, but the kitchen faced east and north, and the room was bright with early morning light. Damian had backed into the cabinets, pressing his body into them as if he thought he could melt into them, and hide in the dark. I tried to take his arm, to get him to his feet, to get him out of the light, but he fought me. His hands were beating at his skin like someone covered in spiders, trying to bat away their darkest fears, when those fears are crawling on their body. But sunlight isn’t spiders, and you ca
n’t brush it off of you.

  I grabbed a flailing wrist and held on. I yelled above the screaming, “Nathaniel, help me!”

  Nathaniel fought for a grip on the other arm, and we pulled the vampire out of the light and into the curtained dimness of the living room. He didn’t stop screaming. Even when we put him up against the wall, in the cool near-dark, he still shrieked. The moment we let go of his hands, he started beating at his skin again, as if he were putting out invisible fire.

  But it shouldn’t have been invisible flame. I’d seen a vampire burn in sunlight, and they flash burned, hot white flames, like magnesium. There was nothing invisible about it. They burned, and if they didn’t get out of the light, they melted, even bone. It takes a hot fire to melt bone, but vamps in sunlight burn good.

  Nathaniel was kneeling, trying to comfort Damian, to hold him, to just get him to stop swatting at things we couldn’t see. I stared down at Damian and tried to think past the fear that was choking me. I was choking on Damian’s terror. I couldn’t think past it. I could barely breathe past it. I threw up shields, put metal in my mind against his fear, and tried to think. I looked down at Damian’s white skin, and there was not a blister, not even a red spot. He wasn’t burned. He wasn’t burning. I didn’t know why not. He should have burst into flames the moment the sunlight touched him, but he hadn’t, and if he hadn’t burned with the sunlight drowning him, then he wasn’t going to burn here, in the dark.

  I could hear the phone ringing in the other room, but it was dim over the sound of Damian’s screams. For once I let it ring. If it was the police, they’d call back. If it was a friend, they’d call back. If it was another emergency, it could wait. One disaster at a time.

  I knelt in front of him and tried to talk over the awful screaming. “Damian, Damian, you’re safe. You’re okay. You’re not burning.” I put my hands on either side of his face and screamed back at him, “Safe, you’re safe!”

  His eyes stayed wide, the pupils like pinpoints. He wasn’t hearing anything. It was like shock, but worse. If it had been an old movie, I’d have slapped him, but I wasn’t sure that would help. What do you do with a hysterical vampire? What do you do with a hysterical anybody?

  The front door burst open behind us. My eyes were dazzled by the sunlight that spilled over us. Gregory, one of my leopards, stepped out of that blaze of light. I don’t know what I would have said, because Damian let out a sound that was beyond a scream. It was a sound that should never have come from a human throat. He was up and moving like a white and red blur, darting farther into the house, out of the warm blaze of light.

  Nathaniel followed him in that faster-than-the-eye-can-see speed that shapeshifters have, and they’d both turned the corner before I got to it. I expected to see the basement door open, but it wasn’t. Movement up the stairs caught my eye, and I saw Nathaniel clear the last step and vanish down the hall. In his panic, Damian had run up, not down, up into the part of the house where the vampires rarely went. Up into the part of the house where the drapes were open and the morning light streamed in. Shit.

  15

  I WAS NEARLY to the top of the stairs when I heard Gregory behind me. He called up after me, “What’s going on?”

  I didn’t know how to answer the question, so I ignored it. The upper hallway was a blaze of light, the big window at the end open to the risen sun. The hallway was empty. I thought, where are they? and I knew. I could feel them, both of them in the smallest room to the left, our guest room. I had made one step toward the doorway when Damian came running out as if all the demons of hell were chasing him. He ran screaming into the room across the hall, which was the bathroom. Unfortunately, it had a window, too. All the rooms up here had windows. If we could get him into a closet, maybe.

  He came running out of the bathroom and fell, and scrambled on all fours like an animal toward the next open door. He vanished inside, only his piteous screaming coming back out to tell us he’d found another open window, another wash of sunlight.

  “Was that Damian?” Gregory asked.

  I nodded.

  Nathaniel came to the first door Damian had run out of, blood ran down his shoulder, and he was cradling his arm. He looked at me, and his eyes held all the sorrow in the world. “He’s gone crazy again.”

  The last time Damian had gone mad, he’d killed several people, butchered them, not just fed. But that had been because I was his master, and I’d left town. I hadn’t known I was his master then. I hadn’t known that leaving him alone without the touch of my magic, or whatever you want to call it, would make him a revenant, a mindless killing thing.

  If it had been my fault before, somehow it was my fault again. I was his master now more than ever; I had to be able to fix this.

  “Gregory, close the drapes. Start with the ones at the end of the hall.” His blue eyes were wide, and his face held a dozen questions, but Gregory could follow orders when he wanted to, or you made him. He didn’t argue, just started down toward the end of the hallway.

  I went for the room that Damian had gone into, but I never made it, because he came tearing back out of it and nearly ran me down. I grabbed him, but my touch didn’t calm him, and his didn’t calm me, not today. He slammed me into the wall, and if I’d let go of his arm, he’d have run again, but I didn’t let go. I hung on and got slammed into the wall on the other side of the hallway. Shit.

  I yelled, “Damian, stop it!” But either he couldn’t hear me, or I’d lost the power to make him obey me. Either way, it wasn’t good. When he tried to slam me into the wall again, I braced my legs and used his own momentum, turning him into the wall, so that his own strength drove him into it so hard, the plaster gave under the impact.

  He came off the wall snarling, fangs bared, his face thinning down, his humanity folding away, until what pinned me to the floor wasn’t Damian. The only thing that saved me from having my throat torn out was that little extra bit of speed I’d gained from all the metaphysical shit. It gave me the time to throw one hand across his throat and one hand into his chest. I held him off of me by an arm’s length, my fingers curled around his throat. Normally, I’d have thrown an arm into his throat and not trusted that I could get a hand there in time, but the last two times I tried that manuevuer with a vampire, they’d torn up my arm. So I set my fingers in his throat and my palm against his chest, and tried to hold him off me.

  His teeth snapped and snarled at me, like a dog on the end of its chain. Saliva splattered my face, trailed from his mouth as if he were a rabid animal. He struggled mindlessly to reach me, to sink those teeth into my flesh. If he’d been thinking like a person he’d have used his hands, his arms to overwhelm me, but he wasn’t thinking like a person. So he fought my hands, pressing his body against the force of my hands, as if that were all that mattered. He pressed the strength of his madness against the push of my hands, and he began to press my arm inward. I don’t know if he’d been sane whether my new metaphysics would have helped more, but he wasn’t sane, and crazy anything is stronger than sane. It was like trying to bench-press pure muscle, a snarling, breathing force of nature. My arms began to bend, and I knew that if he got close enough, he’d tear me apart. His eyes had bled to green, and there was nothing in them but a mindless ferocity.

  I had no weapons on me. I might have been able to tear his throat out. I didn’t know if I was that strong now, or not. But he wasn’t a master vamp, and I didn’t know for certain that he’d heal if I pulled his throat apart. If he’d just been a bad guy, I’d have torn into him and done my best to take him out before he took me out, but Damian wasn’t a bad guy, and whatever was wrong was somehow my fault. I couldn’t kill him, because I wasn’t master enough to handle him.

  He pressed himself into me, and I put everything I had into keeping him away from my face and throat. My arms started to shake with the effort, and my elbows were bending. His face filled my vision, and his saliva dripped on my face. I did the only thing I could think of, I yelled for help.

>   Gregory was there, his hands on Damian’s arm and shoulder, trying to use supernatural strength against supernatural strength. He slowed Damian’s push toward my face, but only slowed it. Damian was like a human on angel dust, stronger even than he’d been, because there was no one home to help him regulate his force. He was all about that force, and his goal in life seemed to be my face.

  Nathaniel grabbed Damian’s other shoulder. Blood was still dripping down his arm, but it had slowed. Which meant Damian had found a way to injure him that didn’t include teeth or nails, those wouldn’t have started healing, yet. I think with the two of them pulling and me pushing, we might have made it, but Nathaniel’s bloody arm was next to Damian’s face. He was enraged, but all vampires, even revenants, react to fresh blood.

  His neck turned in my hand, and I’d been so intent on pushing him away, that it surprised me. He would have sunk fangs into Nathaniel’s arm, except Gregory was a fraction too quick, and a fraction too slow. He managed to get his arm halfway around Damian’s neck, which put his wrist almost in the vampire’s mouth. Damian did what any animal would do, he bit him.

  Gregory screamed and tried to pull away. It worked, and it didn’t. He pulled away from us, but the vampire went with him. They moved so fast, that Nathaniel fell against me, smearing blood down my skin. He was on his feet and moving toward the sounds of fighting farther down the hallway, before I’d gotten to my knees.

  Damian had Gregory pinned on the floor, worrying at his arm like a dog with a bone. Even over Gregory’s screams I heard the bone crack. Nathaniel was there, wrapping his arms around Damian’s waist. He lifted him into the air, but the teeth stayed in Gregory’s broken arm, so that Gregory was pulled to his knees by the pain and the fangs locked into his arm.

  I was almost to them, when Damian remembered he could fly. He pushed off from the floor and smashed Nathaniel against the ceiling hard enough that plaster dust rained down on them, and when Damian touched ground he rolled out of Nathaniel’s loosened grip. Damian had been a warrior once, and though Nathaniel and Gregory had the strength, they didn’t know how to fight. Strength without training was no match.