Danse Macabre ab-14

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I screamed his name, and reached out to him not with hands but with power. I felt him breathe, but his heart hesitated, as if it was forgetting how to beat.

  I screamed, "Nathaniel!"

  Jean-Claude just suddenly appeared beside the bed. "Nathaniel is trying to keep Damian alive, but he does not know how. You must feed them en­ergy, now, ma petite, right now."

  "Or what?" I asked, and I leaned into the death grip I had on Richard's arm.

  "Or they will die," Jean-Claude said.

  31

  I STARED AT him, because I believed him, but feeding the ardeur meant sex, and in that moment I'd never felt less like sex in my life.

  Richard said, "Feed, Anita, you have to feed."

  I looked at him. "You going to help?"

  He shook his head. "Not me, my concentration isn't this good."

  Jean-Claude's voice cut across the panic. "Requiem, your moment has come." He looked at me. "If you fight him, they will die. Drop your shields, and let his power take you. Let him awake the ardeur, and feed."

  I was suddenly staring at a chest decorated with stab wounds. I looked up into Requiem's eyes, clear blue, an almost painful brightness. He'd raised his power, and I felt nothing. He'd crawled across the bed and I hadn't noticed. Shock had set in again, but for different reasons. Minutes ago I'd wanted to be alone, just me again, but I hadn't meant it. I prayed, / didn't mean it, as if somehow my thought was responsible for this new disaster.

  Richard's body still cradled me. Requiem had to wrap his hands around my upper arms and pull me out of Richard's arms. Richard's fingers slid over my skin, and I felt the loss of his touch like a blow. I felt like some small an­imal torn out of its nest and thrown into the heart of the storm. That storm was made of flesh and bone, and eyes that glowed as if you could set the ocean afire.

  Jean-Claude's voice whispered through me. "Let go, ma petite, let go, or all is lost."

  I did what he asked. I let go. Let go, and fell into eyes the color of sea water where it runs deep and clear and cold, and the blue dark glows with the cold light of phosphorescence, shining off the backs of creatures that never saw the light of day.

  I floated in that cold emptiness, with the dim light, and a voice whispered through me, but it wasn't Jean-Claude's. It was Nathaniel's voice in my head. He didn't ask for help, or chastise me. He whispered, "Love you." Those words echoed through the emptiness, and I followed them, up through the

  cold dark. Cold wasn't what we needed, it wouldn't keep him alive. We needed heat.

  I hit the surface of Requiem's gaze, fell out of the power I'd let him try. I fell out of his eyes, and was left panting, struggling to breathe. I would not let Nathaniel go, even if it meant going with him. I reached out to him, felt his heart slowing. My chest ached with the need to draw a good breath.

  I stared up into Requiem's glowing eyes, and whispered, "Help us."

  He turned to Jean-Claude. "I cannot break her. I cannot get through!"

  The last time he'd used his powers on me it had taken a while. We didn't have a while. He couldn't roll me, but I had rolled him before. Could I bring his powers on line? I prayed, prayed for help. I whispered, "Requiem." His voice echoed through the room, and he turned glowing eyes to me.

  I didn't have enough air to say what I wanted out loud. I fell back toward the bed, and only his arms caught me. I knew what I wanted, what I needed. I willed it, I commanded it, and I shoved that command into him. I was los­ing my words, and it was a wordless longing that I filled him with. That longing flared like heat across my skin, threw me off the bed, gasping. My body was suddenly swollen with need, wetness dripping between my legs. My breasts ached with the need to be touched. The ardeur rose to that ache, and I welcomed it, embraced it. I threw the door of my self-control open wide, and didn't care where it landed.

  It was Jean-Claude's mouth that found mine first. I knew the taste of him with my eyes closed tight. He gave himself up to the ardeur, and I fed through his kiss, fed in a rush that flowed through my body, in a tingling rush of energy. I'd fed the ardeur a hundred times, and it had never been like this.

  He drew back from the kiss, eyes filled with midnight fire. "How do you feel?"

  I tried to think past the pulse of my own body. I'd fed the ardeur, but the swollen longing in my body wasn't gone. I felt for Nathaniel's energy, and found him still there, still alive. Distant as a dream, Damian's spark like a match flame in a wind.

  "More," I whispered, "I need more."

  He nodded. "I gave you enough to bring you back to us." He moved back from me, and I tried to hold him against me. "Non, ma petite, you need food." I kept my arms locked around his neck, and he reached out, and brought Re­quiem into view. "When you helped him raise need in yourself, you raised it in him, as well. Would you deny him?"

  I frowned at him. I couldn't think. I whispered, "No," but wasn't entirely sure what I was saying no to: no, I wouldn't deny him, or no, to other things?

  Requiem's hand slid over my bare arm. That one touch threw my head back, fluttered my eyes shut. I knew where my need had come from, I could taste it on my tongue, taste his need.

  Jean-Claude slid away, and Requiem was above me. So lonely, so heart-wrenchingly lonely. Lonely for so long. You feed the ardeur on sex, but its gifts are more than that. Sometimes you can see into people, see what they most desire, most need, and you can offer it to them. You can offer them their heart's desire, and sometimes you can even give them exactly what you promise.

  I had an instant of seeing so far into Requiem that I started to cry. Weep­ing not my tears, but his. He wanted the ardeur again, yes, but more than that, he wanted a place of refuge. A place where he could stop being afraid; he'd been afraid for so very long. Afraid that Belle would drag him back, and make him suffer for all eternity for falling in love with someone else. I felt his fear, his loneliness, his loss, like blows to my heart, and in the end, I did the only thing that would keep him well and truly safe. I made him mine.

  32

  MOST OF THE clothes vanished in a blur of hands and bodies, but it was when he wrapped his hands around my belt, and tore it in two, jerking my body up off the bed, that I remembered. I had just enough presence of mind to make sure he didn't destroy the shoulder rig, but it fell to the floor with the pieces of the jeans and T-shirt. Requiem, with his poetry, his gentle­manly restraint, vanished under the crash of the ardeur, and the power of his own magic.

  I fed on the touch of his hands, the brush of his lips, the sensation of his naked skin brushing along mine, the weight of him above me. Requiem and I had never been nude together, and that first time was shared with Nathaniel and Damian. They knew what I was doing, they could feel it, be­cause I'd opened that mark between us, so that each touch, each kiss, each movement, fed energy to them. Nathaniel's heart began to beat sure and strong, but Damian's spark still flickered, hesitating between life and death. Nathaniel could make his own heart beat, but Damian couldn't. Damian needed more than these small touches of ardeur. I'd gotten to where I could feed the ardeur in small ways from less touching, but I needed orgasm for a full feeding. Okay, for a really, truly, full feeding you needed orgasms from everybody involved, but one was enough to get you through. We needed to get through.

  Requiem rested above me, pressing every inch of his nakedness against the front of me, but he laid his body on top of mine, not inside it. He pressed me down into the bed, kissing me as if he would eat me from the mouth down, and only luck kept us from cutting our lips on his fangs. The feel of him, swollen and hard, made me spread my legs and try to wrap my legs around him, but he moved away. Moved above me, holding most of his weight away with his arms and legs, as if he were afraid to touch too much of me. It had all seemed to be going so well, and then he'd climbed back into himself, regained control somehow. Requiem in control went back to being a gentleman. In a situation where I would not have blamed him about tak-

  ing full advantage, he still seemed painfully aware that he wa
sn't my first choice, or even my seventh. He tried to feed the ardeur without crossing that last barrier, because he knew, or thought he knew, I didn't want him.

  "Requiem, please, please, finish it."

  "Finish it," he said, voice showing the strain of his control."Your words be­tray you, Anita. You use me only because you must, not because you want me."

  Anger flared through me. "My body wants you, Requiem."

  "But your heart does not."

  I screamed, half from anger, half from the need in my body that he'd raised, and wasn't going to satisfy. The thought came that I could make the ardeur stronger, that I could overwhelm him with it. An old thought from Belle's memories, I think. But in his way, Requiem had made it clear he did not want to be food, or my fuck buddy. When push had come to shove, he wanted to be more than that. I understood that, but I couldn't give it to him. This was one thing I could not do. I could not love him.

  "I need food, Requiem. If you aren't food, then get off."

  I watched emotions struggle across his face. I think he was fighting his own body's need, but finally that so-refined sense of self won, and he slipped to the side, burying his face in his arms. He did not leave the bed, but he wasn't touching me.

  The ardeur was still there, but faded under the anger and frustration of the riddle that was Requiem. I reached outward for Damian, and he was still fragile. The energy I felt in him now would never wake; it wasn't enough to bring him back to life for the night. If he tried to wake now, and failed, would he die? Would that fragile spark rise, and fall, never more to burn with life?

  I yelled, "Jean-Claude!"

  He came to stand by the bed on the other side of Requiem's softly weep­ing form. I reached out to him, but he stepped back, just out of reach. "I make all the other vampires of this city wake at dusk. We cannot risk trad­ing one life for many."

  I screamed, wordless, my hand reaching skyward, reaching for anyone. In that moment I used the ardeur to call food, not deliberately, because I'd never purposefully used it to call a victim to me. Jean-Claude had said that the ardeur was calling food of its choice; now I knew he had been right, be­cause I could feel it. I felt the ardeur spread not randomly like some sort of shrapnel bomb, but like a high-tech heat-seeking missle. I felt the ardeur brush Asher; I knew the taste of him, but his energy signature was weak. He still hadn't fed. The ardeur brushed against a dozen lesser fires, but finally it found one it liked.

  I knew only three things about the energy it called; it was vampire, it was no one I'd ever touched, and it was powerful.

  A hand grabbed mine, and that one touch stabbed through me, a hard, tight thrust of energy that tightened my body, and tore a cry from my mouth. So much need, God!

  It was London who crawled over the footboard of the bed. London whose hand in mine had already fed me more energy than all of Requiem's touches. I didn't know why, I didn't care. It was too late to care. He pressed his fully clothed body over me, settling between my legs, so that I could feel him tight and hard through his clothes. The sensation of it fluttered my eyes closed. I felt his face above mine, and opened my eyes to see him, so close it was startling.

  I stared into his eyes from inches away, and realized they weren't brown at all, they were black. A black that made his pupils vanish into them, an is­land of darkness in the whites of his eyes.

  His face lowered toward me, his breath escaping in a sound like a sob, be­fore he pressed his mouth against mine. That sound made me remember that there was something important about London and die ardeur. Some­thing I needed to remember, but he kissed me, and I stopped thinking about anything but the feel of his mouth on mine.

  It wasn't just the force of his kiss, but that I fed from that kiss. As if his energy were some sweet liquor, spilling into my mouth, down my throat. There was no effort to feeding from London. He gave himself to the ardeur with an abandon that was exactly what I needed. I poured that energy into Damian, and felt his spark begin to grow to a small, flickering flame.

  I wrapped my arms and legs around London's body, pressed my most in­timate parts against die hardness still locked behind his clothes. He made that sobbing sound again, his breath hot inside my mouth. I thought he would pull away from the kiss, but he kissed me harder, pressing, exploring, and I kissed him back, sending my tongue between die sharpness of his fangs. It was as if I had more room to explore, as if his mouth were wider tlian Jean-Claude's. It was almost a clear thought, and I might have remem­bered what I'd forgotten, but London chose that moment to feed at my lips, kissing me fiercely, with tongue and lips and teeth, and with the intensity of his kiss, die ardeur fed harder. The sweet salt of blood filled my mouth, and I knew one of us had been cut on his fangs. If he'd given me time to think, I might even have known who, but he didn't give me time to think. He mounded my breast in one hand, jerked his mouth from mine, and pressed his mouth around my breast. He sucked, hard and fast, tongue flicking across my nipple. I cried out for him, my arms and legs falling away from

  him enough so he could move that fraction of an inch that let him suck me harder, faster, always the press of his fangs like a promise, or a threat, against my flesh.

  He made a sound, eager, almost whimpering, then he bit me, fangs plung­ing into my breast. It brought me screaming, and only his weight kept my upper body from rising off the bed.

  He rose up, his lips decorated with my blood. His eyes drowned in black fire, filled with his own power. He pressed his mouth back to mine, but raised his body off me. The taste of my own blood was like sweet metal in my mouth. I tried to draw his body back on top of mine, but only his mouth touched me. When he lay back on top of me, his pants were undone, and all that hard length pressed against my naked body. The feel of it made me break the kiss so I could cry out.

  He raised his upper body off me, angling himself to enter me. I got only a glimpse of him, before he shoved himself inside me, and my gaze tore from his body, to his face above me. His eyes were wide, lost even to vam­pire glow; there was something frantic about them. He drove his body as deep inside me as he could, drove until there was no more room, then he froze above me. He froze with his body plunged inside mine, and stared down at me. His face was slack with need, and lust, but underneath it all, was fear. That one look, and I remembered. He was addicted to the ardeur. Shit.

  I said, "London, London, I'm sorry, I'm sorry ..."

  He started to draw himself out of me. I thought he meant to stop. But he drew out only so much, then plunged back in, and he fucked me. He fucked me as hard and fast as he could. I stared down my own body, and watched him plunge in and out of me, and somewhere in the middle of it, I came. I came screaming, my hands clutching at his jacket, trying to find flesh to touch, but there were too many clothes. He brought me, and the ardeur fed on the waves of pleasure, on the sensation of him plunging in and out of me, on the sound of his breathing, as it changed. He picked me up, at the last minute, he picked me up, sat me in his lap, with his body still inside mine. He sat me across his body, and I wrapped arms and legs around him to help hold me in place. He sat back on the bed, still plunging in and out of me, but less sharp from this angle, less deep. I stared into his face from inches away, my hands in the short curls at the back of his neck. I watched his face grow frantic, felt his rhythm change. He buried his hand in the back of my hair, held me in place, so we had to stare into each other's eyes. With one last, hard thrust he came, and brought me with him. I screamed, and it would have bowed my neck back, but he held me in place, forced us to stare into

  each other's faces. As his body spasmed inside mine, I couldn't look away. I had to watch his pleasure, and his pain.

  His hand eased from my hair, and he hugged me, his arms loose instead of frantic. His heart pounded against my body, his breath so fast, so terribly fast. He clung to me now, softly, and I hugged him back. He had given me his everything. He had let me feed. Damian was awake, I could feel it. London had helped me save him, but as I held him, his pulse thundering
against my cheek, I had to wonder at what price. What had it cost the man in my arms?

  33

  WHEN LONDON'S PULSE had slowed, he sat me down, gently, on the bed, and asked Jean-Claude's permission to use the bathroom for cleaning up. Jean-Claude gave it. London had taken his pants off the rest of the way, so that he was nude from the waist down, though his dress shirt and suit jacket were long enough that they hid him from behind. He held his shirt up in front to keep it out of the mess, and his pants wadded in his other hand. He looked at no one as he went inside, and closed the door behind him.

  He left behind him a silence so loud that I could hear the blood in my own head.

  I knew that the vampires could be so still it was like they weren't there, but it was the first time I'd realized that die lycanthropes had their own ver­sion of stillness. Of course, there were fewer people in the room than we started with. It was almost as if people had fled before things got bad. Some bodyguards.

  Though, admittedly, I didn't look around too much, to see who was left in die corners of the room. Maybe they were all there, huddled around each other, trying to keep the big bad succubus from getting them.

  Jean-Claude moved first, and it was as if the pause on a television program had been turned off. He moved, and everyone else breathed, moved. Voices broke into a low murmur. Jean-Claude helped Requiem stand, from where he had apparently fallen on the floor. He must have left the bed sometime during London's and my little ... feeding. Even in my own head, I heard, So that's what they're calling it these days.

  Requiem gripped Jean-Claude's arm tight. He spoke low, urgently, as if he had something important to say.

  "Damian's coming." Nathaniel's voice turned me to look at him. Micah was helping him climb onto the bed. Nathaniel lay down beside me, his lavender eyes blinking at the ceiling as if he was still having trouble focusing. He was right about Damian. I could feel him coming down the corridor from