Blood Rites df-6

by Jim Butcher

  "Harry."

  I stopped. His voice was raw with emotion, and sounded like he was trying to speak through a throat full of bitter mud. "I wanted you to know. Justine… I tried to stop in time. I didn't want to hurt her. Never."

  "Yeah," I said. "You had good intentions. That makes it all right."

  He folded his arms over his stomach, as if nauseous, and bowed his head. His long hair veiled his face. "I never pretended I wasn't… a predator, Harry. I never claimed she was anything but what she was. Food. You knew it. She knew it. I didn't lie to anyone."

  I had a bunch of vicious answers I could have used, but I went with, "Before she went to you last night, Justine asked me to tell you that she loved you."

  Short of shoving a running chain saw into Thomas's guts, I don't think I could have hurt him any more. He didn't look up when I spoke, and he started trembling with rapid breaths. "Don't go yet. I need to talk to you. Please. There are things happening that-"

  I started walking out, and heard myself put every bit of caustic contempt I could into the words: "Make an appointment at my office."

  He took a step after me. "Dresden, Mavra knows about this house. For your own sake, at least wait for sunrise."

  He had a point. Dammit. Sunrise would send the Black Court back to their hidey holes, and if they had any mortal accomplices, it would at least mean that I would only be up against run of the mill weapons and tactics. Arturo probably wouldn't be awake at the moment, and Murphy would just now be getting dressed and heading for the gym. Bob would stay out until the last minute he possibly could, so I'd have to wait for sunrise to talk to him anyway. I had a little time to kill.

  "All right," I said.

  "Do you mind if tell you a few things?"

  "Yes," I said. "I mind."

  His voice broke. "Dammit, do you think I wanted this?"

  "I think you hurt and used someone who loved you. A woman. As far as I'm concerned, you don't exist. You look like a person, but you aren't. I should have remembered that from the beginning."

  "Harry- "

  Anger flared up in me like a wall of red flame behind my eyes. I shot a look at Thomas over my shoulder that made him flinch. "Be satisfied with nonexistence, Thomas," I said. "You're lucky you have it. It's the only thing keeping you alive."

  I slammed the door behind me as I left his chambers. I slammed open the door to the guest room he'd mentioned. And then slammed it behind me, which was starting to seem a little childish, even through a haze of bitter anger. I tried to take deep breaths and got the shower going.

  Hot water. Ye gods. There are no words to describe how good a hot shower feels after several years of living with no water heater of your own. I broiled myself for a while, and found soap, shampoo, shaving cream, and a razor waiting on a shelf inside the shower. I availed myself of them and began to calm down. I figured that once I got some coffee I might be almost stable again.

  I guess if Lord Raith could afford a house that size, he could afford a water heater to match it, because I ran the shower as hot as I could stand for almost half an hour and it never got cold. When I got out, the bathroom mirror was steamed up and the air was thick and wet enough to suffocate me. I slapped my towel over all the wet bits, tied it to my waist, and left the bathroom for the guest bedroom. The air was cooler and drier and it made it a pleasure to simply inhale.

  I opened the sports bag Thomas had thrown me. It held a pair of blue jeans that looked more or less my size and a pair of plain grey athletic socks. Then I found what I thought at first was a circus tent, but it turned out to be an enormous Hawaiian shirt with lots of blue and orange in its flowered pattern.

  I looked at the thing skeptically while I put on the jeans. They fit pretty well. Thomas hadn't included any clean underwear, which was likely just as well. I'd rather go commando than wear undies that may have outlived their previous owner. I zipped up the jeans with considerable caution. A nearby dresser had a mirror on it, and I went to it to comb my hair while working up the nerve to put on the shirt.

  Inari's image stood in the mirror, staring at my back. My heart flew up into my throat, then past it into my brain and out the top of my skull. "Holy crap!" I sputtered.

  I turned to face her. She was wearing a cute little pink sleep shirt with prints of Winnie the Pooh all over it. The shirt would have fallen to midthigh on a shorter or younger girl, but on Inari it barely managed to escape indecency. Her right arm was wrapped to the elbow in a black plaster cast. Her left was cradled against her body, and she held the notch-eared puppy in it. He looked restless and unhappy.

  "Hello," Inari said. Her voice was very soft and her eyes were distant and unfocused. Alarm bells started going off in my head. "Your pet got out into the manor last night," she went on. "Father asked me to find him and bring him back to you."

  "Oh," I said. "Uh. Thank you, I guess. Don't let me keep you waiting. Just put him on the bed."

  Instead of doing so, she stared at me-specifically, at my chest. "You have more muscle than I would have thought. And scars." Her eyes flicked down to the puppy. When she looked back at me, they had turned a pale shade of grey, and over the next several seconds that color gained a metallic sheen. "I came to thank you. You saved my life last night."

  "Welcome," I said. "Puppy on the bed, please?"

  She slid forward and lowered the little dog to the bed. He looked tired, but he started a quiet little warning growl, his eyes on Inari. After she put the dog down, she kept taking slow, sinuous steps toward me. "I don't know what it is about you. You're fascinating. I've been wanting the chance to speak with you all night."

  I did my best not to notice the almost serpentine grace of her movements. If I noticed them too hard, I'd start ignoring everything else.

  "I've never felt this before," Inari continued, almost to herself. Her eyes stayed locked on my bare chest. "About anyone."

  She got close enough that I could smell her perfume, a scent that made my knees wobble for a second. Her eyes had become a shade of brightest silver, inhumanly intense, and I shivered as a spasm of raw physical need shot through me-different from when Lara had hit me with the come-hither, but just as potent. I had a flash image of pressing Inari down onto the bed and tearing the sweet little nightshirt off of her, and I closed my eyes to shove it away.

  It must have taken longer than it seemed, because the next thing I knew, Inari pressed herself to me. She shivered and ran her tongue over my collarbone. I nearly jumped out of my borrowed jeans. I blinked my eyes open, lifted a hand, and opened my mouth to protest, but Inari pressed her mouth to mine and guided my hand down to brush against something naked and smooth and delicious. There was a panicked second in which some part of me realized that my caution hadn't been enough-that I'd been compromised and taken. But that part quickly shut up, because Inari's mouth on mine was the sweetest thing I'd ever tasted. The puppy continued growling his little warning, but it didn't matter, either.

  We'd gotten to some seriously heavy breathing when Inari tore her lips from my mouth, panting, her mouth swollen with the heated kisses. Her eyes flashed pure and empty white, and her skin began to grow luminous and pearlescent. I tried to fumble some words out of my mouth, to tell her to stop. They didn't get past my tingling lips. She hooked one long leg behind one of mine and pressed in with a sudden and inhuman strength to slather a line of licking, wet kisses across my throat. Cold started spreading through me-delicious, sweet cold that stole warmth and strength even as the pleasure began.

  And then the damnedest thing happened.

  Inari let out a panicked shriek and staggered back from me. She fell to the floor on the other side of the guest room, gasping. She lifted her head a moment later to look at me, her eyes hazed with confusion and their original color again.

  Her mouth had been burned. I saw blisters rising around her lips. "What?" she stammered. "What happened? Harry? What are you doing here?"

  "Leaving," I said. I still felt short of breath, as if I'd been sprin
ting rather than doing energetic kissing. I turned from her, stuffed the dirty clothes in my pack, and pulled my duster on. I plopped the puppy down in his usual pocket and said, "I've got to get out of here."

  Just then Thomas slammed the door open, his eyes wild. He looked from Inari to me and back, and exhaled, evidently trying to relax. "Thank God. Are you both all right?"

  "My mouth," Inari said, her tone still sleepy and bewildered. "It hurts. Thomas? What happened to me?" She started hyperventilating. "What's happening? Those things last night, and you were hurt, and your eyes were white, Thomas. I… what…?"

  Ow. It was painful to watch her. I'd seen people who had suddenly been shocked out of their innocence to the existence of the supernatural before, but it had rarely been something this sudden and terrifying. I mean, my God. The girl's family wasn't what she thought they were. They were also a part of this nightmarish new reality, and they had done nothing to prepare her for it.

  "Inari," Thomas said gently. "You need to rest. You've barely slept and your arm needs time to heal. You should get to bed."

  "How can I?" she said. Her voice started shaking and cracking, as if she were weeping, but no tears fell. "How can I? I don't know who you are. I don't know who I am. I've never felt anything like that. What's happening to me?"

  Thomas sighed and kissed her forehead. "We'll talk, soon. All right? I'll give you some answers. But first you have to rest."

  She leaned against him and closed her eyes. "I felt so empty, Thomas. And my mouth hurts."

  He picked her up like a child and said, "Shhhh. We'll take care of it. You can sleep in my room for now. All right?"

  "All right," she said. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  Still damp from the shower, I grew cold enough to bite the bullet, take off my duster, and put on the Hawaiian shirt. The duster went on over it, which went a long way toward neutralizing the shirt's presence. I packed up everything to go and headed for the door. Thomas was just leaving his room again, locking it up behind him.

  I stared at his profile. He cared for Inari. That much was obvious. And whether he wanted to admit it or not, he had cared for Justine as well. I felt cold, bitter anger run through me when I thought of Justine, who had risked her life for him on at least one other occasion. Who had given up her life for him last night. The sheer, vicious passion of my anger surprised me. And then I had another intuition.

  He hadn't meant it to happen. Thomas may have hurt or killed the woman he loved, but the anger I felt wasn't solely a reaction to what he'd done. I was standing on the outside this time, but I'd seen this situation before, when the Red Court had destroyed Susan's life. I would never have wished harm on Susan, not in a thousand years, but the fact remained that if she hadn't been going out with me, she probably would still be in Chicago, writing her column for the Midwest Arcane. And she would still be human.

  That's why I felt such anger and shame when I looked at Thomas. I was staring into a mirror, and I didn't like what I saw there.

  I'd all but destroyed myself in the wake of Susan's transformation. For all I knew, right now Thomas was worse off than I'd been. At least I'd saved Susan's life. I'd lost her as a lover, but she was still a vital, strong-willed woman determined to forge a life for herself-just not with me. Thomas would not have even that much consolation. He'd been the one to pull the trigger, so to speak, and his remorse was tearing him apart.

  I shouldn't have tried to hurt him more. I shouldn't have started chucking stones from within my own glass domicile.

  "She knew what she was doing," I said into the silence. "She knew the risk. She wanted to help you."

  Thomas's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "Yeah."

  "It wasn't your decision at that point, Thomas."

  "I was the only one there. If it wasn't my call then whose was it?"

  "Your dad and Lara knew Justine was important to you?"

  He nodded.

  "They set her up," I said. "They could have handed you anyone. But they knew Justine was here. Your father gave Lara specific instructions to take you to your room. And from what Lara said on the way here in the car, she knew what he was going to do."

  Thomas lifted his eyes. He stared at his door for a moment and then said, "I see." He clenched a hand into a fist. "But it hardly matters now."

  I couldn't refute that. "What I said was out of line."

  He shook his head. "No. You were right."

  "Right isn't the same thing as cruel. I'm sorry."

  Thomas shrugged and we said nothing more on the matter.

  "I've got places to go," I said, heading down the hall. "If you want to talk, walk me out."

  "Not that way," Thomas said quietly. He stared at me for a minute and then nodded, some of the tension leaving him. "Come on. I'll take you around the guards and monitors. If my father sees you leaving, he might try to kill you again."

  I turned around and fell into step beside Thomas. The puppy whimpered and I scratched him behind the ears. "What do you mean, again?"

  He spoke quietly, his eyes flat. "Inari. He sent her to you when he saw that you left my chambers."

  "If he wanted me dead, why didn't he just come and do it?"

  "It isn't how the White Court fights, Harry. We use misdirection, seduction, manipulation. We use others as instruments."

  "So your dad used Inari."

  Thomas nodded. "He intended her to have you as her first."

  "Um. First what?"

  "First lover," Thomas said. "First kill."

  I swallowed. "I don't think she knew what she was doing," I said.

  "She didn't. In my family, we start off life like any other kid. Just… people. No Hunger. No feeding. No vampire stuff at all."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Not many do. But it comes on you eventually, and she's about the right age. The panic and the trauma must have acted like a catalyst on her Hunger." He stopped by a panel in the wall and nudged it with his hip. It slid open, revealing a dim corridor between interior walls. He went down it. "Between that, the painkillers, and the exhaustion, she didn't know what was going on."

  "Let me guess," I said. "The first feeding is lethal."

  "Always," Thomas said.

  "But she's young and could be forgiven a loss of control under the circumstances. So I end up dead and it's a believable accident. Raith is clear of any blame."

  "Yeah."

  "Why the hell hasn't anyone told her, Thomas? What she is? What the world is really like?"

  "We're not allowed," Thomas said quietly. "We have to keep it from her. It's my father's standard procedure. I didn't know when I was her age, either."

  "That's insane," I said.

  Thomas shrugged. "He'd kill us if we disobeyed."

  "What happened to her mouth? I mean, uh, I wasn't exactly feeling observant when it happened. I'm not sure what I saw."

  Thomas frowned. We left the concealed passage for a dimly lit room halfway between a den and a library, thick with books and comfortable leather chairs and the scent of pipe smoke. "I don't want to get too personal," Thomas said. "But who was the last person you were with?"

  "Uh, you. During this walk."

  He rolled his eyes. "Not like that. In the biblical sense."

  "Oh." The question made me feel uncomfortable, but I said, "Susan."

  "Ah," Thomas said. "No wonder."

  "No wonder what?"

  Thomas stopped. His eyes were haunted, but he was clearly making an effort to focus on the answer. "Look. When we feed… we mingle our lives with the prey. Blend them together. Transform a portion of their life into ours and then pull it away with us. Got it?"

  "Okay."

  "It isn't all that different between human beings," he said. "Sex is more than just sensation. It's a union of the energy of two lives. And it's explosive. It's the process for creating life. For creating a new soul. Think about that. Power doesn't get more dangerous and volatile than that."

  I
nodded, frowning.

  "Love is another kind of power, which shouldn't surprise you. Magic comes from emotions, among other things. And when two people are together, in that intimacy, when they really, selflessly love each other it changes them both. It lingers on in the energy of their lives, even when they are apart."

  "And?"

  "And it's deadly to us. We can inspire lust, but it's just a shadow. An illusion. Love is a dangerous force." He shook his head. "Love killed the dinosaurs, man."

  "I'm pretty sure a meteor killed the dinosaurs, Thomas."

  He shrugged. "There's a theory making the rounds now that when the meteor hit it only killed off the big stuff. That there were plenty of smaller reptiles running around, about the same size as all the mammals at the time. The reptiles should have regained their position eventually, but they didn't, because the mammals could feel love. They could be utterly, even irrationally devoted to their mates and their offspring. It made them more likely to survive. The lizards couldn't do that. The meteor hit gave the mammals their shot, but it was love that turned the tide."

  "What the hell does that have to do with Inari getting burned?"

  "Aren't you listening? Love is a primal energy, Harry. To actually touch that kind of power hurts us. It burns. We can't take any energy that's been touched by love. It dampens our ability to cause lust, as well. Even the trappings of love between two people can be dangerous. Lara's got a circular scar on the palm of her left hand where she picked up the wrong wedding ring. My cousin Madeline picked up a rose that had been a gift between lovers, and the thorns poisoned her so badly she was in bed for a week.

  "The last time you were with anyone, it was with Susan. You love each other. Her touch, her love is still upon you, and still protecting you."

  "If that's true, then why I am still adjusting my pants every time Lara walks by?"

  Thomas shrugged. "You're human. She's lovely and you haven't gotten any in a while. But trust me, Harry. None of the White Court could wholly control or feed from you now."