Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #16 - Blood Noir (40 page)

“I think if I touch you now, that you’ll just say yes.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“I want you to say yes.”

“Yes to what, Richard?”

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“Everything,” he said.

“So now that you have enough metaphysical abilities to roll me, you’ll just do it. You’ll roll over my free will and just make me into your little pet?”

He frowned. “It’s not like that, Anita. I’m not making you feel things you don’t feel. The emotions are real.”

“Maybe, but they aren’t the only emotions I’m feeling. You’re trying to take away my choices, Richard.”

He knelt in front of me. My heart thudded against my chest, and I pressed myself tighter against the bathroom door. He reached out toward me, and I said the only thing I could think of to stop him.

“Aren’t you trying to do the very thing that you keep accusing Jean-Claude of doing?”

His hand hesitated so close to my face that I could feel the heat from his skin. It wasn’t just the warmth of his body this time. His power was there like something alive and almost separate from him, pulsing above his skin. Playing along my cheek like something smooth and warm and…I waited for it to raise my wolf, but it didn’t. It was as if it wasn’t that kind of power. It felt softer than his usual electric rush. It felt more like…Jean-Claude.

I opened my eyes, looked up at him, and found what I’d feared. His eyes were solid brown, glowing with the light of his own power. It was what his eyes would have looked like if he’d been a vampire. The way my own eyes looked from time to time.

“Your eyes,” I whispered.

His hand touched my face, and the touch was too much. One breath, I was trying to fight; the next, I fell into the brown fire of his eyes. There was nothing but the need to touch him. Nothing but the feel of his mouth on mine, his hands on my body, my hands on his, and the absolute rightness of it all.

His hand went between my legs and grabbed me through my jeans. Normally, it would have been exciting, but tonight, it hurt. The pain was immediate. It helped me swim back up to the top of my mind. I could think again, rather than just feel.

“Richard, stop,” I said, and it was almost a yell.

He touched my face. “You don’t want me to stop.”

I stared at the floor, as if the stained, clothes-strewn carpet were all-important. “I
do
want you to stop.”

“Look at me, Anita.”

I shook my head and started to move away from him, still on my knees. He grabbed my arm. The feel of his bare skin on mine almost undid me, but whatever was happening was a type of vampire power and I’d spent years fighting that. I breathed through the almost crazed desire to have more of his skin touch mine. It was like a mixture of the
ardeur
and vampire gaze. Shit.

“Let go, Richard, now.” My voice was breathy, but clear. Point for me. file://L:\Azures L_Disc Shared Dowloads\EBooks\Anita Blake Series 1-17\(Book16] - Bl... 10/18/2009

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“I can feel how much you want me to touch you,” he said, and his own voice was tight with power, or desire, or both.

I felt his body, not just through his hand, but all of it. It was as if I could feel every inch of him, so warm, so alive, so…yummy. I did want to touch him. I wanted to strip off and roll around on top of him. Again, it felt like the
ardeur
, but different. But this time I was on the wrong end of it. It was as if Richard were the one projecting the
ardeur
at me, not the other way around. Jean-Claude held the
ardeur
, but he’d always behaved himself. In this moment with Richard, I knew just how much JeanClaude had behaved himself. I thought, “Jean-Claude, help me.”

The bathroom door opened behind us. Jason stood in the doorway with a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Go away,” Richard said.

“Help me,” I said.

I had a moment to feel sorry for Jason. He was so screwed. If he helped me, his Ulfric would be pissed. If he didn’t help me, I’d be pissed, and so would Jean-Claude. I had a moment to appreciate his dilemma, caught between the werewolf and the vampire. But even appreciating his problem, I couldn’t care as much about his problem as my own. Richard had finally inherited the
ardeur
, and he was using it on me.

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50

JASON SPOKE SLOWLY,
carefully, in that voice you use for people on ledges, when they’re far, far above the ground. “Richard, Anita, what’s happening?”

“Leave us alone, Jason,” Richard said. He tried to pull me in closer to his body. I braced with my other arm and my knees, the way I did sometimes in judo. Not when you think you can win the fight, but when you’ve simply decided that you’ll make them hurt you before they win. I wasn’t strong enough to keep Richard from drawing me into his body, if that’s what he wanted, but I was strong enough to make him hurt me to do it. It was the best I could do. The Browning was on the bed, and truthfully, I wouldn’t shoot Richard. He knew it, and I knew it. Oh, there had been moments when I might have, and a knife I might have used, but not a gun. I wouldn’t have risked killing him. Once you give up the idea of killing someone bigger and stronger than you are, you are, to an extent, at their mercy. You better hope that they’re merciful. I would have looked at Richard’s face to try to see if there was any mercy there, but I was afraid to meet his eyes again. It was hard enough to fight his power with just his hand on my arm. I couldn’t afford to fall into his eyes again. I wasn’t sure I would be able to crawl back out. There was something different to his version of the
ardeur
. For lack of a better word, there was more life to it. My strongest powers lay with the dead, not the living. Richard was so very much alive.

“It’s the
ardeur
,” Jason said, “but it doesn’t make me want to touch you, Anita.”

“Go back into the bathroom, Jason,” Richard said; there was a faint edge of growl to his voice now.

Jason gripped the doorjamb tight enough that his fingers mottled. “It’s so strong, I can’t breathe past it, but it’s all directed at you, Anita. I can feel it, like a thought in the air. He wants you to want him, and only him. God, it’s so strong.”

I said, “Help me.”

Richard said, “Get out.”

“Richard, Ulfric, you’re doing the very same thing you accused Jean-Claude of doing,” Jason said.

Richard’s head jerked up, and he looked at Jason. Jason looked away from that gaze. “Your eyes are glowing as if you were a vampire, Richard. I know not to look a vampire in the eyes when they look like that.” Jason let the fear sound in his voice. It sounded real, and it was one of the first times I’d realized that he was afraid of the vampires.

I kept my arm braced on the floor as Richard tried to draw me to him. But it wasn’t the strength in his hand that was hard to resist. It was the warm, crushing embrace of his power. It was like file://L:\Azures L_Disc Shared Dowloads\EBooks\Anita Blake Series 1-17\(Book16] - Bl... 10/18/2009

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something alive, warm, and wanting. Something that pulled at me, as surely as his hand. It wasn’t just about lust, but the promise that if I would just let go, he would wrap me in the warm safety of his love, and there would be no more pain, no more uncertainty. But I’d felt something like this before. Auggie, Master of Chicago, could make you love him. But even Auggie had never made it feel like this. This felt real. But of course, it was real, or had been. Auggie had been a stranger, the logic in my head had known it was a trick, but what Richard offered felt real, because once it almost had been. Once, the belief that his love would heal all the old wounds, and finally make me feel safe, had been true. True, and a lie. Love is real, and false, even true love. Because love alone cannot keep you safe, if there is still a trembling fear inside you. Still a knowledge of what it was like to love and believe and have it all taken away. It wasn’t my fiancé in college that haunted me. It was, as always, my mother’s death. If that truth couldn’t hold, then what chance did any man have?

It was that thought that helped me push against the warmth of Richard’s power. It was that thought that helped me swim against the current of his love. Just as his hands had been too rough and caused me pain, this loss was the biggest pain I had. It was the gaping black hole inside of me that had filled up with rage so long ago. It was the place that my anger came from, and went back to, like the tides of some bloody ocean. Pain always helped you push back vampire powers. I let myself feel that loss, that I spent most of my time not thinking about. I let the rage and loss fill me, and there was no lust, no desire, no love, that could win against such sorrow. People talk of sorrow as if it is soft, a thing of water and tears. But true sorrow is not soft. True sorrow is a thing of fire, and rock. It burns your heart, crushes your soul under the weight of mountains. It destroys, and even if you keep breathing, keep going, you die. The person you were moments ago dies, dies in the sound of screaming metal and the impact of one bad driver. Gone. Everything solid, everything real, is gone. It doesn’t come back. The world is forever fractured, so that you walk on the crust of an earth where you can always feel the heat under you, the press of lava, that is so hot it can burn flesh, melt bone, and the very air is poisonous. To survive, you swallow the heat. To keep from falling through and dying for real, you swallow all that hate. You push it down inside you, into that fresh grave that is all that is left of what you thought the world would be. I was not foolish enough to look into his eyes, but my voice was solid, and sure of itself, as I said, “Let go of me, Richard. You can’t make me feel safe. You can’t fix what’s wrong with me.”

“I love you,” he said, and his voice was full of everything those words meant for him.

“You love me so much that you would use vampire wiles to force me into your arms.”

He stopped trying to pull me to him and came to me. He closed that small distance and wrapped his arms around me. Minutes before, held in his arms like this, I would have done anything he wanted. But it was too late. He held my body, but my heart was cold. It was the way I had lived for years. Cold and hot, sorrow and rage; it had been the world to me until Jean-Claude found a way inside the walls I’d built.

I understood in that moment why it had been Jean-Claude and not Richard who had broken down those walls. Jean-Claude had had his own sorrow and rage when I met him. He had known what it was to have everything he wanted, real love, real security, and to lose it all. Richard hadn’t understood. He had believed in the goodness of the universe. I hadn’t believed in that since I was eight. Jean-Claude hadn’t believed in words like
goodness
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Sometimes it’s not the light in a person that you fall in love with, but the dark. Sometimes it’s not the optimist you need, but another pessimist to walk beside you and know, absolutely know, that the sound in the dark is a monster, and it really is as bad as you think. Did that sound hopeless? It didn’t feel hopeless. It felt reassuring. It felt—real. Richard held my chin in his hand. It began as a gentle gesture, but when I didn’t meet his eyes, his hand squeezed. He tried to force me to look into his eyes. I couldn’t stop him, but I could make him hurt me to do it. The pain helped me distance myself from him. He held me so close that it was like being wrapped in a warm blanket of energy, but what he meant to be comforting felt as if I were too hot. It was a choking, close heat, as if the air were too thick to breathe. His hand on my jaw was painful, just this side of breaking bones. I kept my eyes closed, but even through closed lids I could feel the press of his gaze.

“Look at me!”

“No,” I said.

Jason said, “This is the first time you’ve felt the
ardeur
yourself, Richard. You’re power-drunk.”

“Anita, look at me!”

“No!”

He kissed me then, and it didn’t matter that I didn’t look at him. For the
ardeur
, a kiss was as good as a glance. Maybe better.

He kissed me, and all the lies flowed over my anger, cooled the rage, and filled me with a sweet certainty that nothing could ever hurt me while I was in Richard’s arms. file://L:\Azures L_Disc Shared Dowloads\EBooks\Anita Blake Series 1-17\(Book16] - Bl... 10/18/2009

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51

ONE MINUTE, I
was safe; the fear, the anger, all of it fell away. It was as if Richard’s arms, his mouth, his body were food, drink, air, and every good thing all rolled into one person. The next minute, I was drowning. The kiss that had been like air, sweet and pure, was suffocating me. The arms that had felt so safe were a trap from which I had to break free. I went from melting into his body to fighting with everything I had to get away. Richard fought to keep kissing me, holding me. But there were other hands on my shoulders, helping me fight. Not by fighting Richard, but helping my mind, me, fight. Richard’s hand went to my hair and tried to keep my face pressed to the kiss, but another hand was there, another arm, helping pull me away, another body pulling me backward.

Jason’s fear washed over me with his touch. Fear of what Richard was doing. Not just fear of Richard’s new vampire powers, but fear of how I felt in his kiss. Fear of the drowning, perfect obsession of love.

Jason felt my emotions, felt what Richard made me feel, and I felt Jason’s terror of what he said he wanted. Terror of being consumed by one person. Fear of belonging to just one person. Jason said that his heart’s desire was this, but he lied to himself. In one suffocating, drowning, hand-filled moment he and I both knew he did not want it. The thought of only one person forever made his blood run cold.