Burnt Offerings

by Laurell K. Hamilton

Chapter 37~38

  37

  Kevin put a chair under the door handle and we were as secure as we were likely to get. I'd told Smith, who was now manning the door, that I needed to get a feel for things, and I'd be done when I was done. I was being treated like a detective, so the uniforms would stay out. The only worry was Padgett. He'd only stay out until his ego recovered. I half expected him to try and barge in on us. The only thing that might save us from him was the fact that he'd want to break the door in because he'd be sensing what we were doing, and he wouldn't want to admit that.

  I stood by the bed. Nathaniel looked up at me with a look that was so trusting, it made me nervous. I turned away and found everyone else looking at me, too. "Okay, guys, now what? I've never even seen this done. "

  There was an exchange of looks all the way around. Stephen said, "I don't know if we can explain it to you. "

  I nodded. "I know, magic is like that. You either get it, or you don't. "

  "Is this magic?" Teddy asked. "Or is it just psychic ability?"

  "I'm not sure there is a difference," I said. "Sometimes I think the only difference is that psychic ability is something you do without thinking about it, and magic requires a ritual to get your juices going. "

  "You do more of this kind of shit than we do," Kevin said. "We're just werewolves, not witches. "

  "I'm not a witch. I'm a necromancer. "

  He shrugged. "Same diff to me. " He sat down in the chair he'd started out in, crushing the cigarette into the palm of his hand as if it were lit and his flesh were an ashtray. He scowled up at me. I didn't know him well enough to be sure, but he seemed nervous.

  Me, too. I only knew two ways to raise energy: ritual or sex. The sex took the place of ritual when I was with Jean-Claude or Richard. But I had no bond with Nathaniel. No marks, no emotion, nothing. I wasn't his leoparde lionne,not really. It was all lies. I couldn't do this without some feeling towards him. Pity wasn't enough.

  Teddy loomed up behind me. "What's wrong, Anita?"

  I would have walked across the room and whispered, but I knew Nathaniel would hear anywhere in the small room. "I need some emotion to work from, something. "

  "Emotion?" he asked.

  "I don't know Nathaniel. I don't feel anything for him except pity, obligation. Neither of those is enough to even get started. "

  "What do you need?" His eyes were very serious. The intelligence in them was almost touchable.

  I tried to put it into words and ended up saying, "I need something to take the place of a ritual. "

  "Raina didn't use a ritual," Kevin said from the chair.

  "She used sex. Sex can take the place of the ritual. "

  "You raised power at the lupanar that one night with Richard," Stephen said. "You didn't have sex, but you still raised power. "

  "But I. . . I wanted Richard sexually. It's a sort of energy all of its own. "

  "Nathaniel is handsome," Stephen said.

  I shook my head. "It's never been that easy for me. I need more than a pretty face. "

  Stephen slid out of the bed in one of those wraparound gowns, but it didn't gape as he moved. It was wrapped around him like a sheet, more cloth than he needed, just like it would have been on me. One size never really fits all.

  He tried to take my hand, and I wouldn't let him. "Let me help you. "

  "Define help. " Suspicious, who me?

  He smiled, and it was almost condescending. The smile men get around girls when they're doing something sort of cute and girlish. The smile alone pissed me off. "What is your problem?" I asked.

  "You," he said softly. "You know I would never hurt you, don't you?"

  I looked into his cornflower-blue eyes and nodded. "Never on purpose. " I said.

  "Then trust me now. Let me help you call the power. "

  "How?" I asked.

  He took my hand in both of his, and this time I let him. He drew my hand to Nathaniel. He rested my fingertips on Nathaniel's forehead. His skin was cool. Just the touch of his skin, and you knew he wasn't well.

  "Pet him," Stephen said.

  I looked at him, shaking my head. I drew my hand back, "I don't think so. "

  Nathaniel started to say something, but Stephen put his fingers across his mouth. "No, Nathaniel. " It was almost like he knew what the other man was going to say. But he couldn't know, not for sure, could he? I might have believed it if Nathaniel was pack, but he wasn't.

  "Close your eyes," Stephen said.

  "Uh-huh," I said.

  "We don't have time for this," Kevin said.

  "He's right," Teddy said. "I understand your natural reluctance, but the police are going to knock on the door eventually. "

  If Nathaniel couldn't leave with us, that meant leaving people behind to guard him, which put people in danger again. If we were all somewhere together, at least we wouldn't be endangering innocent policemen, though most cops would wince at being called innocent.

  I took a deep breath and blew it out. "Fine, what's your idea?"

  "Close your eyes," Stephen said.

  I frowned at him. He looked patient, long-suffering even, and I closed my eyes. He took my hand in his, and it wasn't until he began to gently open my fist that I realized I'd clenched up. He started to massage my hand.

  I said, "Stop that. "

  "Then loosen up," he said. "It won't hurt. "

  "I'm not afraid it will hurt," I said.

  He moved around to stand in back of me, so close the hem of his gown brushed my legs. "But you're still afraid. " His voice had dropped almost to a whisper. "Can you use that fear to call power?"

  My pulse was hammering in my throat, and I was afraid, but it wasn't the right kind of fear. The fear that overwhelms you in the midst of an emergency can call power almost without effort. This was the kind of fear that keeps you from jumping out of perfectly good airplanes even though you'd decided to do it. Not an unhealthy fear, but it would hold you back.

  "No," I said.

  "Then let go of the fear," he said. He touched my arms gently and sat me on the edge of the bed.

  Nathaniel made a small protesting sound, as if it had hurt.

  I opened my eyes and Stephen said, "Close them. " It was the closest thing to an order I'd ever heard him give. I closed them.

  He took my hands and laid the tips of my fingers on either side of Nathaniel's face. "The skin just over the temples is so soft. " He drew my fingers in a soft feathery line down Nathaniel's face, fingers gliding on either side, as if I were blind and trying to memorize his features.

  He slid my hands into Nathaniel's hair. It was silken, unbelievably soft. His hair had the texture of satin. I balled my hands into that soft warmth, lowered my face towards his hair and smelled it. There was a faint medicinal smell. I buried my face in the satin brush of his hair and found his scent under it all. He smelled like vanilla, and under that was the scent of wood and field and fur. He wasn't pack, but the scent was similar. He smelled like home. Something clicked deep inside me, like a switch being thrown.

  I opened my eyes and knew what to do, how to do it, wanted to do it. Like a distant thought, I realized that Stephen's hands had fallen away long ago.

  I stared down into Nathaniel's lilac eyes and bent towards that amazing gaze. I touched his lips with mine, a chaste kiss, and that one soft brush brought the power in a warm, skin-tingling rush. It spilled out of me like water, warm, soothing, filling. But power alone wasn't enough. It needed direction, guidance, and I knew how to do it, as if I'd done it before. I didn't question it, didn't want to.

  I tried to run my hand down his chest, but the gown covered him. He was like Stephen, like me, small. The gown was fastened in front, not in back. My hand sought the opening and slid along bare skin. Slid until I felt the incision.

  I straddled Nathaniel's legs. He made another small hurting sound and I liked it. I rose up on my knees so only the sides of
my legs touched his body. I slid the sheet down around his body and opened the gown, exposing him. The stitches were a thin dark line across the paleness of his skin that ran nearly from one hip to the other. A fearful wound, a killing wound.

  He wore nothing below the waist. Hospitals are always stripping us down, leaving us as vulnerable as possible. The sight of him naked should have stopped me in my tracks. Dimly, it shocked me. I hadn't expected it, but it was too late. The power didn't care. I ran my fingers lightly over the stitches.

  Nathaniel cried out, only half from pain. He was half-erect before I lowered my face to the stitches. I licked the wound like a dog would, long, slow caresses. He was more than half-erect when I raised my face to see his eyes staring down at me. I knew in that moment that I could have him, that he wanted me to take that last step.

  I could feel the others in the room like a hum of energy, a vibrating backdrop to the energy inside me. I'd never been interested in casual sex, but the smell and feel of Nathaniel's body was almost overwhelming. I'd never been so tempted by a stranger. But temptation is just tempting. You don't have to give in. I rose on my knees over him, placing my hands on the smooth bones of his hips, drawing my hands towards the middle of the incision. When my hands touched, I put one on top of the other and pressed. Not with muscle or flesh but with power. I thrust that warm, rising power into his body.

  He gasped, spine bowing underneath me, hands grabbing my arms, fingers convulsing against my bare skin.

  It was like smoothing out the imperfections in a zombie except this flesh was warm and alive, and I couldn't see what I was fixing with my eyes. But I could feel it. I could feel his body smooth and firm, caressing places that no hand was meant to touch. Rolling them between my fingers, filling him up with the rising, rushing heat inside me. It spilled down my arms, my hands, into him. The heat spread through his body, through my body, until it was like fever, running over the skin, through the body, forming our bodies into a single thing of heat and flesh, and a rush of power that just kept building. It built until I closed my eyes, but even the darkness was shot with brightness, white flowers exploding on my vision.

  My breath came in pants, too quick, too shallow. I opened my eyes and watched Nathaniel's face. His breathing matched mine. I forced us slower, forced his breathing to slow. I could feel his heart as if I caressed it, held in my hands. I could touch any part of him. I could have any part of him. I could smell the blood under his skin and wanted a taste.

  He was healed when I lowered myself on top of him, pressed my mouth to his. I turned his face to one side and ate down the side of his neck until I felt the pulse under his skin. I licked the skin, but it wasn't enough. I laid my mouth over the beating pulse, bit gently into the skin until I could hold the throbbing of him in my mouth. I wanted to bite down harder and harder until blood flowed. I wanted it. Dimly, I knew that Jean-Claude had awakened for the day. It was his hunger that I felt, his need. But it wasn't his need that had me straddling Nathaniel's body. It wasn't even mine.

  I remembered Nathaniel's body, and I'd never met him before. I knew the taste of him. The feel of him as only an old lover can. Not my memories. Not my energy.

  I slid off Nathaniel, tried to crawl out of the bed, and fell to my knees. I couldn't stand, not yet. Richard had said as long as the pack existed, Raina wasn't gone. I hadn't understood what he meant, until now. I was channeling the bitch from hell, channeling her, and having a very good time doing it.

  But I knew something else, something that Raina hadn't done. Couldn't blame her for this one. I knew how to heal Nathaniel's body, but I also knew how to tear it apart. Anything that you can fix, you can break. When I held his heart in my metaphysical hand, I'd had a split second, a dark urge, to close that hand, to crush that pulsing, throbbing muscle until blood flowed and his life stopped. A moment, the blink of an eye, of an urge so evil, it scared even me. I'd have liked to blame the bitch from hell, but something told me that this little bit of darkness was all mine. Stephen's hand on my mouth was all that kept me from screaming out loud.

  38

  Stephen's hand held the screams to a whimper. He held me against his body, hard, as if afraid of what I'd do if I got loose. I wasn't so sure myself. Running seemed like good idea. Running until I outran the thought of it, the feel of it, all out of me. But like Richard, I couldn't run from myself. That thought made me stop struggling and just sit in the circle of Stephen's arms.

  "Are you all right?" he asked softly.

  I nodded.

  His hand slid away from my mouth, slowly, as if he wasn't sure I'd heard him or understood him.

  I sagged against him, almost sliding to the floor.

  He stroked my face, over and over, like you'd comfort a sick child. He didn't ask what was wrong. None of them did.

  Nathaniel knelt beside us. He didn't just look healed, he looked healthy. He was smiling, handsome in a boyish, unfinished sort of way. If you cut the hair and changed the eyes, he looked like he should have been playing halfback on the high-school football team and dating the homecoming princess.

  The fact that I'd almost gone down on him two minutes ago brought a rush of heat that made me hide my face against Stephen's shoulder. I did not want to look into that youthful, handsome face and realize how close I'd come to doing him. The fact that I could still remember his body in details that I'd personally never touched, didn't help. Raina was gone, but not forgotten.

  I felt movement. The vibrating energy of the shapeshifters was getting closer. I knew without looking that they were crowding around me. The energy tightened like a circle drawing closed. It was hard to breathe.

  I felt someone's check brush my face. I moved my head enough to see Kevin inches from me. I'd expected Nathaniel. Teddy's large hands stroked down my bare arms. He brought his hands to his face. "You smell like pack. "

  Lorraine was on her back staring up at me with eyes gone strange and wolfish. "She smells like Raina. " She rolled her face so that her lips brushed the knee of my jeans.

  I knew that if I allowed it, we could sleep in one big communal heap like a litter of puppies, that touching was part of what kept the pack together, like the mutual grooming that primates do. Touching, comforting. it didn't have to be sexual. That had been Raina's choice. They were wolves but they were also people and that made them primates. Two animals really, not just one.

  Kevin laid his head in my lap, cheek resting on my leg. I couldn't see his eyes, to tell if they'd gone wolf on me. His voice came thick and low. "Now I do need a cigarette. "

  It made me laugh. Once I started laughing, I couldn't stop. I laughed until tears ran down my face. The werewolves ran their hands up and down me, faces rubbing my bare skin. They were taking my scent, rolling in the lingering scent of Raina. Marking me with their scent.

  Stephen kissed my cheek, the way you'd kiss your sister. "Are you all right?" It was hard to remember, but I think he'd asked that before.

  I nodded. "Yes. " My voice sounded tinny and distant. I realized I was on the edge of shock. Not good.

  Stephen shooed the wolves away from me. They moved languorously, as if the energy we'd raised had been some sort of drug, or maybe sex was a better analogy. I didn't know. I wasn't even sure I wanted to know.

  "Richard said that Raina wasn't truly gone as long as the pack lived. Is this what he meant?" I asked.

  "Yes," Stephen said, "though I've never heard of a non-pack member being able to do what you just did. The spirits of the dead should only be able to enter lukoi. "

  "Spirits of the dead," I said. "You mean you don't have a fancy name for them?"

  "They are munin," Stephen said.

  That almost started me laughing again. "Memory, Odin's raven. "

  He nodded. "Yes. "

  "What exactly was it, isit? It wasn't a ghost. I know what a ghost feels like. "

  "You've felt one of them," Stephen said. "It's the best explanation I can
give you. "

  "It's energy," Teddy said. "Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It exists. We have the energy of everyone that has ever been pack. "

  "You don't mean all lukoi, do you?"

  "No," he said, "but from the first member of our pack to now, we have them all. "

  "Not all," Lorraine said.

  He nodded. "Sometimes one of us will be lost to accident and the body cannot be recovered and shared. Then all they were, all their knowledge, their power, is lost to us. "

  Kevin had gone back to the chair, still sitting on the floor, leaning his shoulders against the chair seat. "Sometimes," he said, "we decide not to feed. It's sort of like excommunication. The pack rejects you in death as in life. "

  "Why didn't you reject Raina? She was a twisted sadistic bitch. "

  "It was Richard's choice," Teddy said. "By rejecting her body that last time, he thought it would have angered some of the other pack members who aren't wholeheartedly on his side yet. He was right, but. . . now we have her inside us. "

  "She's powerful," Lorraine said, and she shivered. "Powerful enough to possess a lesser wolf. "

  "Old wives' tales," Kevin said. "She's dead. Her power survives but only when called. "

  "I didn't call her," I said.

  "We might have," Stephen said softly. He lay back on the floor, hands covering his eyes as if it was too horrible to look at.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean that we've never seen anyone but Raina do what you just did. I was thinking about her, remembering. "

  "So was I," Kevin said.

  "Yes," Teddy said. He had moved back to the far wall, as if he didn't trust himself near me.

  Lorraine had moved back with him, sitting so that their bodies touched lightly. A comforting closeness. "I, too, was thinking about her. Glad she was not here. Happy it was Anita. " She hugged her arms as if cold, and Teddy put a muscular arm around her, hugging her close, resting his chin in her hair.

  "I wasn't thinking about Raina," Nathaniel said. He crawled towards me.

  "Don't touch me," I said.

  He rolled onto his back, for all the world like a big pussy cat wanting its belly rubbed. He stretched, straining from toes to finger tips. He laughed and rolled onto his stomach, propped on his elbows. He looked up at me, long, rich brown hair like a curtain across his face. His lilac eyes stared out at me, feral and almost frightening. He lay down in a pool of hair and energy. His gaze stayed on my face, and I realized he was being playful. Not exactly seductive, but playful. It was different and almost more disturbing. Nathaniel managed to be childlike, catlike, and still be an adult. You didn't know whether to pat him on the head, rub his belly, or kiss him. All three seemed to be up for grabs. It was too confusing for me.

  I used the far bed to get to my feet. When I was sure I could walk without falling down, I let go of the bed. I swayed just a touch, but not too bad. I could walk. Great, because I wanted out of here.

  "What do you want us to do?" Stephen asked.

  "Go to my house. Jean-Claude's there, and Richard was there. "

  "What about him?" Kevin asked.

  Nathaniel raised his head enough to look at us all. He said nothing, asked for nothing, but I could taste his pulse in my mouth. I knew he was scared. Scared to be left alone again. I hoped this empathy with me wasn't permanent. I had quite enough men running around in my head without adding another one.

  "Take him with you," I said. "The leopards are mine as you are mine. "

  "He is to be protected and treated as pack?" Kevin asked.

  I rubbed my temples. I was getting a headache. "Yes, yes. I've given him my protection. Any of the leopards that want my protection can have it. "

  "As our lupa that binds us to protect them," Lorraine said, "even to give our life for them. Will they do the same?"

  I wasn't getting a headache, I had one.

  Nathaniel rolled to his feet in a movement that was too graceful to be real and almost too quick to see. He sat on the foot of Stephen's bed, watching me with bright, eager eyes. He said, "My body is yours. My life, if you want it, is yours to take. " He said it almost matter-of-factly--no, joyously, like it was a good thing.

  I stared at him. "I don't want anyone's life, Nathaniel, but if the pack is willing to risk their lives to protect you, I expect you to do the same. "

  "I will do anything you want," he said. "All you have to do is tell me. "

  He didn't say, "ask me. " He said, "tell me. " I'd never heard it phrased quite like that. It implied he didn't have the right to say no. I asked, "Does everyone here know they have the right to argue a point with me? I mean, when I say jump, you don't just say how high, right?"

  "We don't," Stephen said. His face was guarded, careful.

  "How about you?" I asked, turning to Nathaniel.

  He rose to his knees, leaning his upper body out towards me, but with both hands still on the bed railing. He didn't try to touch me, just get closer. "How about me, what?" he asked.

  "You do understand that you have the right to refuse me? That my word is not like from on high?"

  "Just tell me what you want me to do, Anita, and I'll do it. "

  "Just like that, no questions, you'll just do it?"

  He nodded. "Anything. "

  "Is this a custom among the leopards, the pard?" I asked.

  "No," Stephen said, "it's just Nathaniel's way. "

  I shook my head, literally waving my hands in the air as if I'd just erase it all. "I don't have time for this. He's healed. Take him with you. "

  "Do you want me to wait in your room?" Nathaniel asked.

  "If you need to rest, help yourself to a bed. I won't be there. "

  He smiled happily and I had the oddest feeling that what I was saying wasn't what he was hearing. I wanted out of the room, away from them all. I'd tell Padgett I was sending them all to a safe house, and he'd buy it because he wanted off this detail. He wanted away from them more than I did.

  The doctor was amazed at Nathaniel's recovery. They released him, though they started talking about wanting to run more tests. I vetoed that. We had places to go, people to meet. They all piled into Kevin's and Teddy's cars, and I went for my Jeep. Happy to be rid of them for a while. Happy even if it meant another crime scene. Happy even if I still didn't know how to tell if Malcolm was alive down there in the dark. Nathaniel watched me through the back window of the car, his lilac gaze on me until the car turned a corner. He'd been lost, and now he thought he'd been found. But if he expected me to be more than friends, he was still lost.