I sent out a call to Richard, and he was fighting. I saw through his eyes for one dizzying second. He was fighting Eric. Great. I broke contact as quickly as I could, but I knew it cost him a second of concentration. I was on my own.
Roland pushed his jeans to his knees and seemed to think that was sufficient, because he started to crawl up my legs. Oh, this was romantic.
It wasn’t Richard who came to the rescue. It was a man I didn’t know. He tackled Roland, much as Roland had tackled me. They rolled off me and down a small incline into a hollow. I started pulling my pants up as fast as I could.
There was a movement behind me, and I turned, pants just above my knees and no weapon in sight. It was Zane, one arm held tight to his chest. Nathaniel came out of the dark behind him. Nathaniel held out his one good hand to me. “Hurry.”
I hurried. Nathaniel took my hand and pulled me into the trees. He ran like liquid spilling through every crack and shadow. I tried to stay behind him, trusting that if his body could go through the openings, so could mine. I jumped when he jumped, weaved when he weaved, even if I couldn’t see the obstacle. His night vision was better than mine, and I didn’t question it. I had a sense of Zane behind us, following like smoke in our wake.
A chorus of howls broke out to our right. Nathaniel pulled me faster through the trees until I fell headlong, and a jagged branch sliced my cheek open. It missed my eye by a wish. “Shit, Nathaniel.”
“They’re coming,” he said.
“I know.” I touched my hand to my cheek and came away with blood. “Fuck.”
“I won’t let them take you,” Nathaniel said.
I stared up at him. He was only three inches taller than I was. He couldn’t have outweighed me by thirty pounds. It was muscle, but he was small. Size counts if everyone you’re fighting can lift large trees.
“They’ll kill you, Nathaniel.”
He didn’t look at me, just kept staring out into the dark as if he could hear things I couldn’t.
Zane leaned against a tree, looking at me. His good hand was rubbing his bound arm like it hurt. I bet it did.
“If they take you, you’ll fight,” Zane said. “They’ll kill you.” He closed his eyes. “This is one time when you can’t protect yourself, but maybe we can.”
“You’ll both die,” I said.
Zane shrugged with his one good shoulder, casual, like it didn’t matter.
The thought came that it would all be over if I had sex. It would end then, and only then. Raina came back in full force, spilling through me. She wanted Nathaniel, and that she could not have, not with my body. Fucking Nathaniel would be like child molesting. I wouldn’t do it.
Zane. Zane would do. Raina had always been fickle. I got a sudden visual so strong it made me blush. Was there anyone that Raina hadn’t slept with? I wasn’t going to do either of them. No way.
Then they’ll die. I wasn’t sure if it was my thought or the munin. Either way, we were right.
Jason limped into sight. I knew him just by the shape of his shoulders and his hair. Either I hadn’t healed him completely, or he’d been in a fight. Maybe both. I’d broken contact before I finished. The munin was saving the deeper healing for sex. For her it was the toll to be paid for services rendered. No payment, no healing. Like a drug dealer giving just a taste.
Jason gave me a very strange smile as he entered the trees near Nathaniel and Zane. He slid down until he was sitting with his back against a small tree trunk. He let out a sigh.
We all looked at him. A scream tore our gaze back to the woods. Out there, close, they were fighting. Another howl rode the still, hot air. The sound was close enough to make my scalp prickle.
The trees we had stopped at were at the bottom of a hill. It was familiar. “Are the cabins just up there?”
“Yes,” Zane said.
“If you go to the cabins, they’ll follow,” Jason said. “Can’t have the tourists seeing it.”
“Fuck that,” I said, “Some of them won’t follow to the cabins because of the tourists. I say we go and board ourselves in.”
“It won’t end until someone wins,” Jason said. He sounded tired or maybe discouraged.
“And up there are two vampires who are on my side.” I started up the hill. Nathaniel and Zane followed at my heels. Jason just sat there. We were a quarter of the way up the hill before he pushed to his feet to follow. When all this shit was over, I’d ask what was wrong. Right now, there was no time.
Figures appeared through the trees. Zane gave a little push to my back. “Run,” he said, “I’ll delay them.”
Nathaniel turned with him, facing down into the dark and the danger.
“No,” Zane said, “you go with her, Nathaniel.” He looked at me. “I’m learning what it means to be an alpha. Nathaniel doesn’t know how to fight.”
Nathaniel looked from one to the other of us. He finally settled on me. “What do you want me to do?”
I thought about that for a second, studying Zane’s so-careful face. “I’d say come with me, but I’m not leaving Zane behind.”
I reached back and touched Zane’s hand. “I won’t leave you to die.”
“Damn it, Anita, if you’re not here, they won’t kill us. They’ll just hurt us and go after you,” Zane said.
“I’m sort of bait,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Don’t die on me, okay?”
“I’ll do my best,” Zane said.
I squeezed his hand. “Don’t do your best, just don’t die. You, either,” I said to Jason.
He shook his head. “I have to stay with you. Richard’s orders.”
“Why?”
He shook his head and glanced back at the dark figures moving through the trees. Closer, always closer. “Later. Now, we move.”
He had a point. We moved and left Zane alone in the dark with at least five figures gliding through the trees. They put on a burst of speed as we neared the crest of the hill. I cleared the hill on my knees, and we were at a flat-out run across the gravel parking lot.
I thought, Damian. He opened the door as if I’d spoken. He was standing there with a surprised look on his face. It isn’t often you see a thousand-year-old vampire shocked. I had a moment to think how we must look. Me bloody, in just the black bra and blood-soaked jeans. Jason running with a noticeable limp. Nathaniel running full out behind us.
We cleared the doorway. Damian shut the door behind us. He locked it without being told. Smart vampire.
“What—” he started to say.
“Block the windows and door,” I said.
Asher grabbed the heavy wooden desk like it weighed nothing and shoved it over the window. “Do we have nails, or am I forced to hold it in place.”
Something struck the window, shattering glass around the edges of the desk like glittering rain. Asher was staggered backwards. Damian joined him, and they shoved the desk against the window. The door shuddered as something heavy threw itself against it.
“He’s not going to make it in time,” Jason said.
Nathaniel stood in the center of the room like he was lost. “What now?”
The door shuddered again.
Jason went to the door, leaning against it. “Nathaniel, help me!” Nathaniel joined him, putting his shoulder against the quaking wood.
Hands pushed past the edge of the table. Asher took one hand off the table to break the wrist like match wood. There was a scream, and the hand pulled back.
He spoke as if he wasn’t using almost all his strength to hold the table against the broken window. “May one ask why the local werewolf pack is trying to kill us?”
“They’re not trying to kill us,” Jason said. “They’re trying to fuck her.” He leaned his entire back against the door. Whatever was at the door left abruptly, and Jason almost fell against the suddenly quiet door.
The window cleared, too. It was suddenly terribly quiet, too quiet, as the old saying goes.
“What is going on?” Dam
ian said.
“Later,” Jason said. His eyes looked almost wild. “Ask me why Richard told me to stay with you.”
I stared at him. “Okay, why did Richard tell you to stay with me?”
“This ends when you have sex with any of the lukoi.”
I stared at him harder. “Come again.”
“If it looks like someone else will get there first, he told me to do it.”
“Do it?” I said. I walked around to the nightstand. “You mean, do me.”
Jason had the grace to look down. He nodded.
I opened the drawer and took out the Firestar. I tucked it down the front of my jeans. I took the Browning out next and clicked off the safety. “Nothing personal, Jason, but I’ve got a different plan.”
“I didn’t say I liked the plan,” Jason said. “I may joke about it, and I would love to be with you, but Jean-Claude is my master, too. He’d kill me.”
I glanced at Asher. He gave a very small nod. “Probably.”
“And if you let someone else get to me because you were squeamish?” I let it be a question.
“Richard doesn’t kill easily,” Jason said, “but if I let someone rape you, for that he’d make an exception.”
I waggled the gun in the air, barrel pointed at the ceiling. “Lucky for you I’m armed.”
Jason nodded.
Glass broke in the bathroom. “Shit!” We’d been stupid. “Stay at the doors,” I said. I kicked the bathroom door in, already sighting down my arm. I had a glimpse of a man trying to squeeze a large body through the small window. I hit the wildly swinging door with one hip and fired into the mass of the man. He screamed and fell back through the opening.
I yelled, “I’ve got this window covered.”
Sounds of fighting came from outside the cabin. Screams turned into growls. I felt the rising energy and knew that people were losing human form. I could feel them slipping away, slinking through the trees. I could almost smell the musk of their fur. The munin swam back up so suddenly and so purely that I staggered against the door that I was using to steady my aim.
I turned away from the window to stare across the room at Jason. Raina was fine with that. She didn’t care who. If it caused Jean-Claude distress or cost Jason his life, that was dandy. I slid down the door slowly, eyes closed, the flat of the gun barrel pressed to my forehead.
“Someone else needs to do this window,” I said. I hoped I’d spoken aloud. I was having trouble telling.
Jason must have filled them in because no one asked what was wrong. I felt Damian brush my legs as he went into the bathroom. The feel of his passing caused things low in my stomach to clench. I glanced up at him, and he was frozen in the doorway as if he’d felt my body’s reaction.
He stared down at me with his cat green eyes, and I knew as surely as I knew anything that if I told him to come to me, he would have done it. What I didn’t know for sure was why.
“Damian,” Asher said, “the window.”
Damian stayed where he was, staring down at me. “I can’t.”
“Order him to watch the window, Anita,” Asher said.
I went to my knees, free hand sliding up Damian’s pants leg. I slid my hand up his thigh and shook my head. I grabbed a handful of his green silk shirt and pulled him down to me. He stayed on the balls of his feet, knees on either side of my body. I went to my knees and kissed him.
I slid my tongue between the delicate points of his fangs. I’d perfected the art of French kissing a vampire. Practice, practice.
He tried not to kiss me back. He drew back enough to whisper, “You taste like blood, other people’s blood.” Then he locked his mouth to mine like he would breathe me into himself. His long, pale hands cupped my face, slid behind my head in the warmth of my hair.
I pressed my body against him. The Firestar was still in front of my pants. The gun pressed into his groin. I ground it into him until he made a small pain sound. The Browning was lost on the floor.
There was a sound at the bathroom window. I drew back from the kiss, and Damian began to run his lips down my neck. I saw the man crawling through the window as if down a long crystalline tunnel.
I tugged the Firestar from my pants and pointed it. I sighted at the center of his forehead. His eyes widened, and he suddenly spilled backwards into the night. Not so far gone that he didn’t want to live. The question was, how far gone was I?
Damian’s mouth hovered over the big pulse in my throat. His tongue curled over it, caressing. He was asking for permission. But it wasn’t that kind of blood I wanted to donate tonight. Raina had no interest in just opening a vein.
I wrapped my free hand in his long, blood-red hair and jerked his face up to me. “Don’t bleed me, fuck me.”
Asher yelled, “Jean-Claude will kill him.”
“I don’t care.” The moment I heard myself say it, I swam back up. It was like pushing aside a wet curtain that clung to my face, suffocating, trying to mold itself to my body and keep me, drown me.
I crawled away from Damian into the room. I said, “Watch the damn window, Damian, and stay away from me.”
He stood in the doorway, uncertain.
Asher said, “You heard your mistress. Do as you’re told.”
I heard him walk into the bathroom. Heard his boots crunch on the broken glass. I stayed on all fours, my head hanging down, my breath coming in gasps. The Firestar was still gripped in one hand. I squeezed it tight until my hand ached. I ground the feel of the gun butt into my skin. This was real. This was real. Raina was dead. She was just another kind of ghost, damn it.
I heard someone crawling towards me. I raised my head to find Nathaniel staring at me with lilac eyes. I screamed and scrambled back from him. He was a victim and Raina liked victims. I held my hand out to him as if to ward off a blow. I ended with my back against the bed, gun squeezed in both hands, rocking back and fourth.
Nathaniel crawled towards me. He crawled like he had muscles in places he shouldn’t have, in a graceful roll that was almost snakelike, as if his spine had too many parts. He put his face so close to mine that when he spoke, I could feel his breath on my face. “I’m yours, Anita. You are my Nimir-ra. My queen.” He was very careful not to touch me. He stayed that last fraction of an inch away, so that it was my decision. But it wasn’t mine.
I tried to tell him to get away from me, but my voice wouldn’t work. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. All I could do was hold onto that last ragged edge of control and not move my mouth that last space. I fought with all I had left not to kiss Nathaniel. Because whoever I fell on next was it. The munin was wearing me down. Even my self-control wasn’t limitless. I didn’t want it to be Nathaniel. That helped me hold on.
There was a knock at the door. It was so unexpected that I screamed. The scream pushed Nathaniel back to his knees, a little farther out of reach, but still too close.
Asher asked, “Do you open it?”
I shook my head, not as a no, but I couldn’t say. I couldn’t think. I was fighting too hard to not throw my clothes off and fuck something in the room. That was taking about all my concentration.
Maybe Asher figured that out for himself, because he said, “Who is it?” Very civilized.
The answer shocked us all, I think. “It’s Richard.”
Jason was on his feet, opening the door, before anyone could tell him to do it. The outer surface of the door was clawed and broken. Richard stood there in the doorway. His T-shirt was in rags, still clinging to his shoulders but so ripped apart that you could see the bloody wounds in his tanned skin. He walked through the door a little unsteadily. Zane and Shang-Da came behind him.
Zane looked unhurt, but Shang-Da’s face had been opened from forehead to chin. His eye sat in a mask of blood. He closed the door and looked at me with cool eyes.
I was glad to see all of them. But I couldn’t move. If I moved, it was over. I was putting everything I had into just staying where I was. If I moved anything, the control was gone. A t
ear squeezed out of one eye and fell in a hard, hot line down my cheek. I stared up at Richard and wanted to say so many things and couldn’t say any of them. Words would break me into a million glittering pieces.
Richard walked to me. He stood over me, staring down. I didn’t look up. He didn’t so much kneel as collapse to his knees in front of me.
I put out a hand to steady him, and the munin spilled across my skin like a flame. The Firestar fell to the floor with a thunk. I grabbed a handful of the torn T-shirt, balled it into both my fists, and pulled him those last few inches into a kiss.
His lips were dry. I licked his mouth, running my tongue over his lips until they were like wet, rubbed velvet to kiss. I slid my hand inside one of the tears to trace the cut I’d made over his heart.
His breath came out in a sharp hiss as if it hurt. He grabbed my wrist. I slid my other hand inside the tear and found another wound to probe. He grabbed both my wrists in his hands. You forget how large Richard is. He doesn’t seem intimidating physically, but he could have held both my wrists in one hand. He forced my arms back at my sides. I tried to pull my hands free, and his grip tightened. He leaned over me, but not for a kiss.
He licked the edge of the knife wound on my chest.
I gasped, half in pain, half in pleasure.
He ran his mouth down the wound until he came to the soft upper part of my breast. He bit gently into my flesh, not hard enough to leave a mark, just hard enough that I felt his teeth. I made a small moan.
He raised his face to look at me. He let go of my wrists and put a hand on either side of my face. He trapped my face between the strength of his hands and forced me to stare into the perfect chocolate brown of his eyes.
“Anita, can you hear me?”
I tried to move forward for a kiss, but his hands held me trapped. My hands found his chest, explored the smooth flesh, the torn wounds. I tried to press my body forward against his, but his hands held my face, and I couldn’t go closer.
“Anita, Anita, talk to me. Are you in there?” The grip on my face was almost painful.
I didn’t push the munin aside. It fell back. I felt Raina leave me enough for me to answer. “I’m here.” It was a whisper.
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 112
