Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “What are you doing, Anita?” Requiem asked.

  “This zombie fought me more than most. It seemed more . . . real. I’m just checking to make sure that it is back to being bones and rags.”

  “Why, what happens if he isn’t?” Graham asked.

  I closed my eyes and opened just a little of that metaphysical hand that I’d had to squeeze back into a fist. “Then the zombie would be trapped down there, thinking, aware, but imprisoned. He won’t rot. He can’t die.” I thrust my power into that cold ground. It was quiet down there, peaceful again. Bones and rags were all that lay underneath. Good.

  “Could you really trap someone like that?” Graham asked.

  “I don’t know for sure, but I don’t want to take the chance. I wouldn’t want to leave anyone down there like that.” I dusted my hands off.

  “Is it okay?” Graham asked.

  “Yeah, just bones.”

  “Vampires do not die when buried, either,” Requiem said. “There have been accidents where new vampires were buried too deep, or those that were appointed to retrieve them failed.”

  Graham shuddered. “That’s just creepy.”

  I stood and I almost fell. Requiem caught me, steadied me. “Is that buried alive stuff what they tell bad little vampires?”

  He looked at me, and there were suddenly centuries of pain in those eyes. “I, too, have learned from harsh experience.”

  “Just get me to Guilty Pleasures, and we’ll try to avoid adding tonight to the harsh list.”

  “As my lady commands,” he said, smiling, and offering his arm. I took his arm and let him walk me to the Jeep, because I wasn’t sure I could have walked that far without falling over. I didn’t feel well enough to mark Nathaniel in public. I felt weak and ill, and didn’t want to be part of the show, but I also needed to feed, and he’d be furry after the show. Choices, choices, too many damn choices, and not enough options.

  42

  I WAS COLD by the time we got to the Jeep. Graham had to drive, and I wouldn’t ride without a seat belt, so we worked out a compromise. I rode in the backseat with the blanket, and Requiem did his best to cuddle with me while I was strapped into the seat. Which was a lot harder than it sounded.

  He started with his arm around my shoulders, his body pressed as close to my side as he could get. The blanket spread over us. He was warm, warm with the blood he’d taken from me, but his wasn’t the heat of the werewolf, and sitting side-by-side wasn’t as warm as sitting in someone’s lap. By the time we’d pulled out of the cemetery I was shivering. A mile or so down Gravois and my body started to do those little involuntary spasms.

  Requiem gripped my hand under the blanket. “Your hand is cool to the touch.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He wrapped his arms tighter around me, and the blanket slid off. He grabbed it, tried to spread it back over us both. “Allow me to unbelt you. Allow me to hold you as Graham did.”

  “If”—and I had to fight past chattering teeth—“we get in an accident, I could die.”

  “It is true you are no vampire and couldn’t survive a car crash, but it is also true that a vampire that goes too long without a feeding, cannot die. They may whither, as a grape upon the vine, but they will spring back to plump, ripe, life with the first taste of blood. I fear that you will not.”

  My teeth began to chatter as if I was sitting on snow instead of in a car with the heater on high and a warm man wrapped around me. I was so cold that my muscles were beginning to ache from it.

  “Allow me at least to cover more of your body with my own. I know you felt that the position lacked a certain dignity, but allow me this liberty, I beg of you.”

  I would have said, no, but my teeth were shaking so hard I was afraid I was going to chip one of them. He took the silence for a yes, and slid to the floorboard. He burrowed under the blanket and laid his head against my stomach, his arms wrapped around me.

  I fought to tell him, move, but the involuntary muscle movement eased, and my teeth stopped sounding like castanets. He’d been right, with more of his body against mine, it was warmer. Not a lot, but maybe just enough. I was still cold, so cold, as if I were ass-deep in the snow and more was falling all around me. I’d thought freezing to death was an easier way to die. You just fell asleep. This wasn’t easy, and I didn’t feel the least bit sleepy. A little scared, but not sleepy.

  I wanted to be warm. I wanted heat. I needed something warmer.

  Requiem’s voice came from under the blanket, his upper body completely hidden under the gray folds. “The shivering has slowed.”

  “I noticed,” I said, and it was nice to just be able to talk without risking a tongue injury.

  He snuggled his face against me, an oddly catlike gesture. I’d had enough of the wereleopards rubbing over me to know what I was talking about. “I would do anything that my lady required.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, and I was feeling better enough to sound suspicious.

  He laughed and pressed his body against my legs hard enough that my knees moved just a little apart. His body was covering my legs, but that one little movement was like the beginning of something. It’s hard for most men to keep their thoughts above the waist when they’re touching below the waist, no matter how innocently. He was a vampire, but he was still male. I guess I couldn’t fault him for thinking about it, as long as thinking was all he did.

  “I’m feeling better than I was. I don’t think we need any heroic measures.”

  “The tone of your voice, the stiffening of your body,” he said from under the blanket, “such disapproval, as if you think I will try to ravish you.”

  “Let’s just say that I’m not the trusting sort.” Though it felt a little silly talking to a lump under a blanket, when the lump was wrapped around my body. It did lack a certain dignity.

  He laid his head against the side of my body, because he was too tall to lay his head in my lap with so much of him covering my legs. His hands wrapped around the back of my body, sliding between me and the seat. It was way too intimate for my tastes, and not long ago, when the ardeur was hungry this much up-close-and-personal would have raised it, but there was nothing. Nothing but the warmth and movement of him, and the awkwardness of having a near stranger that close to me. But I could think. I felt like crap, but him this close didn’t bring it on. I’d fed on him earlier tonight, and even that thought didn’t raise anything through the chill. If I’d felt better, I would have been happy. The ardeur wasn’t my master anymore. It couldn’t make me do impossibly embarrassing things anymore. Yeah, maybe I had to feed it, but it could be on my own terms. Or close to my own terms.

  I sat there with a gorgeous male curled around my body, and smiled. Even cold and aching with emptiness, I was still happy. Still willing to trade that overwhelming heat for this cold waiting. Because it was a waiting that I could feel now. The ardeur wasn’t gone. It was like a fire that had burned down to cold ashes, but there was still life in the heart of that dying wood. It just needed a good poke and stir, and there would be flames, oh, yeah.

  Just thinking that hard made it curl to life, a tiny flare. I squashed it. Pressed it down. Not yet, not yet.

  Requiem raised his head against my body, so that the top of his head brushed my breasts, but through the leather jacket it wasn’t much of a touch. The jacket was bulky enough that it could have been accidental on his part, though I doubted it. If Requiem was anything like Jean-Claude and Asher, then he was very aware of where his body was, and what it was doing. But I let it go. I wasn’t that cheap a date for the ardeur anymore. Yea!

  I felt Damian. I would like to say, I heard him, or saw him, but that wouldn’t be true. I felt him. He was sitting against a wall, and he was cold, so cold. Colder than I’d ever been. I called to him, “Damian, Damian what’s wrong?”

  I didn’t hear him answer, but I felt his body, felt that aching cold at the center of it. Why, what was happening to him? What was wrong? “Damian
, what’s wrong?”

  “Did you say Damian?” Requiem asked.

  “Yes, he’s hurt. He’s so cold, so cold, that he’s collapsed against a wall. There are people around him, but I can’t see who. He’s so cold, so cold.”

  Requiem knelt upward, pushing his head out of the blanket and meeting my eyes. “You are his master now, Anita, you make him live. Your energy makes him live.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yes, you can refuse the ardeur’s call, but you are cold to the touch, and it is your warmth that gives warmth to Damian, in a way that goes far beyond sharing blood.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the seat. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Will you let him die for embarrassment’s sake?”

  I opened my eyes. “That question would have a lot more merit if you weren’t the one kneeling by my knees.”

  He put his head to one side, and a curious look came over his face. He looked as if he’d say something, then shook his head as if he’d decided better of it, and I was almost certain that what came out of his mouth wasn’t what he’d thought of first. “Are you able to feed the ardeur without intercourse, or donating blood?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Then allow me to offer myself as a tiding over snack until you reach the club and your pomme de sang.”

  “Define snack,” I said.

  Damian screamed through my head, and I got a confused glimpse through his eyes of a blond woman bending over him. It was Elinore, one of the new vampires. She was speaking, but he couldn’t hear her anymore, only watch her lipsticked mouth move, noiseless.

  I grabbed the front of Requiem’s shirt. “Out of time. Damian needs . . . needs to be warm.”

  “Then let me share my warmth with you,” Requiem whispered it as his face bent toward mine. As happened so often, tonight I didn’t have to explain, or give detailed instructions. He just grasped what was needed, and acted.

  His lips touched mine, and the kiss was gentle, and no liberites were taken, his tongue stayed nicely in his own mouth. Of course, that did nothing to raise the ardeur.

  He drew back and searched my face with his gaze. “You are still cold in every way.”

  I nodded, and down that long metaphysical line, Damian called out for help. He was dying, not like a human dies, but like you watch a flame fade from lack of oxygen. It was as if some invisible spark were being blown out inside him. I was his spark now, and I didn’t know how to fix this.

  I looked up at the man in front of me. He was handsome enough, but without the ardeur’s heat, he was still a stranger, and I didn’t lust after strangers. I had to be seduced not by the color of someone’s eyes, or the flawlessness of their face, but by a smile that had become dear to me, a conversation so familiar that it had become like music to me. Familiarity never bred contempt with me, it made me feel safe, and until I felt safe, I did not lust after people, at least not in the front of my head, and it was the front of my head that I needed. I’d finally found the lock for my subconscious, which meant I had to bring the ardeur out on purpose, not just get out of its way, or stop fighting it, but truly had to coax it to life. Again, I hadn’t thought what it would mean to control the power to this degree. I seemed to spend my life not understanding the mess I was making until it was too late.

  I grabbed Requiem’s arms, dug my fingers into his flesh. “Damian is dying, and I don’t know how to save him.”

  “Simply raise the ardeur and feed.”

  “I don’t know how to do it, without the ardeur pushing on me. Shit.”

  “Do you mean you do not know how to raise lust for me?”

  “Nothing personal, but I don’t know you.”

  “There is no shame in not being a creature of casual lusts,” he said.

  “Damian is dying,” I whispered it, because I could feel it. I could feel him beginning to pull away from me. He was trying not to drag me to the grave with him, so he was shielding as best he could.

  “I can raise lust in you, Anita, it is not the ardeur, but it is one of my gifts.”

  If we’d had time I would have asked him what the difference was, but we were out of time. “Do it, help me feed. Don’t let me kill Damian, not like this.”

  “Drop your shields, or I am helpless to bespell you.” He cupped the side of my face in his warm hand.

  Damian felt like a cold wind in my head. I dropped my shields, and two things happened at once. Requiem’s power crashed into me. It was as if that power had been pushing at me all night, and I simply hadn’t felt it. He couldn’t have gotten past my shields, he was right, but without them . . . without them, I was suddenly wet, soaking through what panties I had. It left me breathless, helpless, staring up at him, my body already moist and ready for him. It wasn’t lust, it was like hours of really good foreplay packed into seconds. The second thing that happened was my own special little power went, wow. It was as if his power complemented the ardeur, as if it were a key to the lock, or maybe all of Belle’s line were like this, that we could bring each other.

  Whatever the reason, whatever the cause, the ardeur roared back to life. And I felt it smash into him the way his power had hit me. His eyes drowned in bright, blue flame, like gas lights sparkling in his skull. Our mouths met, and this kiss wasn’t gentle. This kiss was like feeding. Like we were trying to suck each other’s souls from between our lips. The thought brought the memory of what the Dragon had shown me, had tried to get me to do, but it was distant and gone. It wasn’t souls we were after.

  I fed on him and shoved it down that cold line to Damian. I heard him in my head, “Anita,” but still he was cold, still he lay in someone’s arms.

  The Jeep skittered around a turn and stopped. Graham yelled from the front seat. “What the fuck are you two doing back there? My skin is crawling with it.”

  My hand was on the seat belt a second before Requiem’s. The seat belt unsnapped, and he spilled me to the seat with him on top. He was suddenly grinding me against the seat, and I was suddenly very aware that the front of the leather pants were laced up tight. Those lacings began to rub against me. I tore the side of the thong panties and pressed naked against the front of his leather pants.

  He hesitated, as if afraid he’d hurt me, but I pulled at him, made him collapse on top of me. He looked down at me with eyes like drowned flames, and whatever he saw on my face seemed to decide him, because he slid hands on my naked hips, cupped my ass, and angled me up against the front of his pants, so the leather bindings rubbed directly onto the most delicate of places.

  The sensation bowed my spine, threw my head back. I wrapped my legs around his waist, pressed myself tighter against the front of him, dug that strangely smooth roughness in against me.

  That distant spark was growing brighter. I shoved the energy into Damian, shoved the feel of it, the heat of it, and knew he was awake. Knew he gazed up at the world through eyes that had swum to green flames.

  His voice sounded soft in my head. “Anita, what are you doing?”

  “Feeding.”

  Requiem did something with his hips that brought me back into my head, my skin. I knew I was still giving energy to Damian, small bits of the pleasure, but I was back to gazing up at Requiem. His hands, his arms were around my waist, his groin pressing into me, the leather braiding rubbing up and down the front of my body. He rotated his hips and rubbed back and forth between my legs. I could feel him swollen and thick behind the leather.

  I let my head fall back, so that my upper body draped backward, my hair trailing along the seat, and was staring upside down when the door opened. Graham stood looking down at me. He went to his knees, as if he meant to kiss me, but Requiem picked me up, moved me out of reach. He put one hand under my shoulders and lifted, so that my back was pressed against the back of the seat. I was suddenly trapped between his body and the seat in a way that I hadn’t been before. The push of his body was firmer, harder, rougher. It was as if he’d spread me wider with the push of hi
s body, peeled back the layers of my most intimate places, until the leather braiding rubbed directly on those spots, that spot.

  It was as if he knew exactly what he’d done, because he looked down at me with those burning eyes, and said, “Does it hurt?”

  “No, not yet.” I put my hands on his shoulders, and would have drawn him down to a kiss, but he drew back, and stroked himself against me, so hard, so rough, so smooth. The leather was wet from my body, from how wet he’d made me. If I’d been a little less wet, he’d have hurt me, but it didn’t hurt. He began to pivot his hips, rubbing his groin against mine, beginning to rub across me, not just back and forth, but around, rolling himself over me, around and around, over and over. That bright spark of pleasure began to build inside me. It all felt good, but it was at the height of his stroke, as his groin brushed over that one small point, that the spark grew. It grew as if he were feeding some tiny flame. Every stroke, every rub of the leather, soaking wet from my body, every time he touched me there, the spark flared bright, and brighter. It was as if fire had weight to it, and that bright light grew heavy inside my body, until I could feel the brush of that heat every time he moved over me. Until it was as if my lower body became heat and weight, nothing but the building pleasure, and then finally at the height of one of those rough strokes, all that heat and weight spilled over me, through me, washing like heat across my body. Spilling in screams from my mouth, dancing down my hands, so that I ripped his shirt until I found skin to drive my nails into.

  It was only then that he drove himself against me hard enough that it was almost pain. Hard enough that I felt his body convulse against me through the leather of his pants. His hands were on the back of the seat, holding us in place, but his neck was bowed, his eyes closed, and his body pinning me to the seat as if he would press himself through the leather and find himself inside me. His body convulsed a second time, and he crushed me against the seat, and the cry I gave him was part pleasure and part pain.

  It was only then that the ardeur truly fed. It had gotten small bits, but not what it needed, not what I needed. Requiem had been controlling himself with an iron will, and that iron will had kept me out of something that I needed. Only with his release had all his walls come tumbling down, and the ardeur had roared into that breach, and fed.