Anita Blake 14 - Danse macabre (79 page)

I wanted to enjoy the smooth perfection of his skin. Cool, and moving, but not pulsing. Not alive, not completely, not really. It was like kissing my way down a dream, faintly unreal, as if Requiem's pale body should have evaporated into the first alarm of the day. Did Jean-Claude and Asher play human for me, more than this? Did they make their hearts beat, their blood pump, so I would not feel this amazing stillness? Requiem's arms caressed down my back, my sides. His chest moved, writhing with the pleasure of being touched, but he did not breathe. He did not play alive for me. He was a moving dead thing. It should have bothered me, but it didn't. The power that filled my eyes understood what he was, and liked it, liked it a lot.

I kissed down that smooth, cool flesh, until I came to coarseness, and a faint metallic taste. It made me open my eyes, and look at what I was kissing. It was the knife wound. It looked so smooth, but my lips told the truth. The edges of the wound were rough. The wound could look as pretty and neat as it wanted to but it had been violent. The knife had torn his skin, even around the edges, minute tears that the eye couldn't see, but the mouth could feel. I traced a fingertip across the lip of the wound. It drew small pain noises from him. Part of me liked the noises, and part of me worried that it hurt too much.

I gazed up at him. The look on his face as he stared down the length of his body at me wasn't a pained look. There was a tightening around his
eyes
that showed it hurt, but the look in those eyes was still eager. Which meant I hadn't crossed that thin line, yet. It still excited him more than it hurt him. Cool.

I concentrated on the sensation of the wound under the barest tip of my finger. I closed my eyes so that I could concentrate on it. It was coarse under my finger, not as instantly noticeable as my lips had found it, but the skin was torn and roughened by the violence of the blade. Touch also didn't give me that sweet, faint taste of blood. Was this Raina's thought, or mine? No, Jason was right, Raina was gone. I realized I was using my hand, both hands. It made me lean back from Requiem and stare at my burned hand. I'd had burns before, almost this bad, and for similar reasons. Admittedly, it had been because a vamp had pressed his flesh into the holy item. I guess this was the first time it had been just my body involved. Had it been because Marmee Noir had been possessing me, or had it been because I was using vampire powers? Huh? That was an interesting thought. I pushed it back, for so many reasons. I'd look at the implications later. Much later.

The skin had blistered, and hardened, and begun to slough off. Days, or weeks, of healing in minutes. I moved the hardened skin to one side. I wasn't quite brave enough to pull at it. I moved all that truly dead skin aside until I found the palm of my hand. The skin of the palm was soft, baby soft, but there was a new cross-shaped scar in the middle of my hand. That skin was shiny and not soft, not rough, more slick. Weeks of healing.

I hadn't used Raina to heal Requiem. I'd used her to heal me. But I understood why. I'd asked something of her munin that it could not do. She healed lycanthrope flesh, living flesh, and Requiem was not living flesh. No matter how alive he seemed, it was a trick, or a lie, or something I had no name for.

I stared down at Requiem. He gazed up at me with eyes that had gone back to their normal swimming blue. There was no power in him now. If it hadn't been silver blades, his body would have smoothed the damage over by now. But it was silver, and that meant healing would be almost human-slow, unless he had help.

"You are healed?" He made it a question.

I nodded. "A little trimming away of dead skin, but yeah."

"Trimming away the dead," he said, voice soft. He sighed, and said, "I can go back inside as I am. I will not be at my best, but it was your wounds that were most important."

I stared down at him, the two nearly fatal wounds in his upper body, the dozens of cuts and slashes on his arms. But I looked lower and found the rest of his body still hard and ready. "You should walk around nude more often," I said.

He actually frowned at me. "Why, m'lady?"

"Because you are beautiful."

He smiled. "I thank you for that."

"You say it like it's not true."

"If I were truly beautiful you would have found your way to my bed weeks ago."

I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. My necromancy was still here, but it was changed somehow. It was like calling the munin or something about chasing out the Dark Mother had changed my own power. It was still necromancy, but it held an edge of… life. It was more alive, this energy. I didn't understand it, exactly, but I understood one thing: always before when I'd healed damage on vampires, small wounds, it had been in the daytime when they were dead. Once they rose, their own personality, or soul, or whatever, kept my power from recognizing them as a dead thing, the way it recognized zombies. They always hit the radar as dead, no matter how mobile they were.

I could feel the wound I had touched. I could feel it, and knew that it was a little like gathering up the bits of a zombie. One of the things I did most often in my job was to make the dead whole again.

It seemed important to do this thing. As though if I didn't heal Requiem now, I would forget how to do it. It was like a gift offered once, and wiped away if you don't use it. I wanted to use it; it would feel good to use. It always felt good to work with the dead.

I set my fingertips over his wound, and thought about it like clay. Like smoothing clay back into place. I closed my eyes so I could "see" the deeper tissues of the body knitting together, things I could not touch with my physical fingers.

There was a wind in the car, a wind that was chill, but held an edge of spring. I thought someone had opened a door, but when I opened my eyes, the car was closed. The wind was coming from me. I looked down at Requiem's body, and found my hands touching smooth, healed skin. There wasn't even a scar. I moved my hands to the wound on his side, at the ribs. I did it before my conscious mind could say,
Gosh, that's impossible
. I pressed my hands to his side, and I smoothed the wound away. The wind blew bits of my hair around my face. The hardened skin of blistered flesh fell away on its own from my hand, as I healed him. Dead flesh, all of it, dead flesh.

I grabbed his arms, and smoothed my hands from elbow to wrist, to hold his hands, and the skin smoothed behind my touch like a fast-forward camera trick. It wasn't possible, but I was still doing it.

The wind faltered, and I fell forward onto him. He caught me or I might have slipped to the floor of the car. Working with the dead always felt good, but it had its price, too. It was especially trying if there was no blood magic involved. It hadn't occurred to me it would be that similar to raising the dead in price.

Jason and Nathaniel were beside us. "What's wrong?" Jason asked.

Nathaniel answered, "She's exhausted."

I blinked up at him. "Are you exhausted, too?"

He shook his head. "When you shut the marks down, you shut them down. I can tell you're exhausted, but you aren't draining me. I don't think you're touching Damian either."

"I didn't want to risk the two of you again tonight."

"You shut everybody out," Jason said. "Jean-Claude is sensing more through me, right now, then you. A
pomme de sang
is not nearly the connection that you are to him."

"Too much happening," I said.

Requiem hugged me. "What can I do to make this right, m'lady? How do I repay such a miracle?"

"If we ever do this again, I need to have you take blood during it, just like a sacrifice at a zombie raising. Blood magic helps the energy."

"You need to feed," Jason said, and he had an abstracted look as if he were listening to something I couldn't hear. It was probably Jean-Claude whispering in his ear.

"Okay," I said, settling heavier onto Requiem's chest.

Jason and Nathaniel looked at each other, then back at Requiem. "Call your power, Requiem," Jason said, "call her
ardeur
. She's too weak to bind you with it, like she tried to do earlier. Feed her first, and you will be safe."

"It's like a ventriloquism act," I said, "your mouth moves but Jean-Claude's words come out."

Jason gave me the grin that was all his, and shrugged. "His words, or not, it's still true."

I rolled my head to look up at Requiem's face. "Is that why you stopped before? You were afraid I'd own you through the
ardeur
?"

"Yes," he said, "I feared I would end as London has ended, and I do not truly wish that."

"I don't think I'm up to binding anyone right now."

A look passed over his face that wasn't gentle, or hesitant. It was a very male look for a moment. "Then I can do as I wish with you."

I thought about arguing with the way he'd phrased it, but I just didn't have the energy for it. Too tired, and too drained. "Yes," I said, "you can."

He sat up, cradling me against the front of his body. He sat up, and half-carried me, until I was lying on the other end of the seat, and he was kneeling over me. His power danced over my body, and even that was energy, that was food. I watched his eyes drown in the blue depths of his own magic, until he stared down at me like one blind.

"Is this truly what m'lady wishes?"

I stared down the length of his body. So hard, so ready, almost hard enough that it must have hurt him a little. Too hard for too long is not always a good feeling. With his body practically screaming with need, he asked, asked permission one more time.

"Requiem," I said, "I promise I will always think of you as a gentleman, but I've already said yes."

"It is good to be certain," he whispered.

"Whoever taught you this caution, it wasn't me." I stroked my hand not across his chest, but just above it, playing in the energy of his aura. So much energy to play with. It made him close his eyes for a moment. "I promise,
Requiem, I'll still respect you in the morning."

That made him smile, and he said, "And you will always be m'lady." That made me laugh. Then he poured his power over my body, and the laughter changed to other sounds.

HE HELD ON to the door to raise himself above me, so that only the long, hard length of him touched me at first. His own magic had made my body tight and wet, and more than ready, so that each thrust was exquisite pleasure. A pleasure so great it was almost painful that his movement was slow, and shallow. He'd found that spot inside me, and he meant to work it, but I could feel his body fighting his own rhythm, wanting something harder, faster, less controlled. I was torn between wanting him to never stop, and knowing that we needed to hurry. But every time I opened my mouth to tell him to hurry, to let me feed, he thrust inside me again, or moved his hips just a little, and the thought died before I could say it.

The
ardeur
was raised, but even the
ardeur
seemed weak. I'd had it spread to most of the people in a room before; now, with Nathaniel and Jason trapped in a car with us, it hadn't spread to them. They were untouched. I needed to feed, not just to be strong enough to help Jean-Claude tonight, but to make certain I didn't start to suck Damian's life away.