Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [375]
36
THE DOOR CLOSED, and like magic it was quiet. The backstage area was soundproofed, but it was more than that today. It was as if with the closing of that door I could think again, really think. I knew that proximity to Jean-Claude could make things worse, usually proximity meant touching. Tonight, in the same room was too close.
I shook my head. “What the hell is happening?”
“We have a first aid kit in the dressing rooms,” Byron said. He tried to lead me toward one of the doors on the right.
I took my arm out of his grip and looked at Nathaniel. “Did I hear Jean-Claude tell you not to touch me?”
He nodded. “He’s not sure what will happen right now.” His face was very solemn, serious, closed. He was being careful around me again, and I didn’t know why.
“Have I missed something tonight?”
“You’re dripping blood,” Byron said, and he motioned at my arm.
Blood was trickling down my hand to drop, drop onto the white floor. The hallway was so white and so empty that the spot of crimson seemed loud, as if color were sound. I shook my head again. “Something’s wrong.”
“You’ve lost more blood than you realize,” Byron said.
“Anita,” Nathaniel said, and it seemed like it took longer than it should have for me to turn and look at him. “Anita, come into the dressing rooms. We’ll take care of you.”
I nodded and raised my arm up to about chest high. It would help slow the blood loss. The sleeve of my jacket was a bloody mess, and I hadn’t noticed until now. Something was terribly wrong, and I didn’t know what it was. I knew that making a new triumverate with Damian and Nathaniel was probably the cause, but that only told me why it was happening, not what was happening. Why didn’t matter very much to me right that moment; what was happening, that mattered a great deal.
Byron touched my arm, only enough to guide me through the door that Nathaniel opened for us. As I walked past Nathaniel, I felt something open between us, as if there were a door in the middle of our bodies. A door that wanted to close around us, to press us tight together.
Byron literally put his body in front of mine and kept me from touching Nathaniel. I growled at him, and Nathaniel echoed me at his back. “Ease down, kitty-cats, I am only doing what the Master of the City ordered me to do.” His eyes were a little wide, and I got a whiff not of fear but something close to it. “Do you remember what Jean-Claude’s kiss felt like out there?” He grabbed my hurt wrist and ground his fingers into it.
“That hurts,” I said, and I turned on him, angry, ready to be angry.
“But you can think now, can’t you?”
That made me take a step back into the dressing rooms beyond. Byron followed, a hand still on my wrist, but loosely now, not to hurt, but more to guide.
“What’s happening to us?” I asked.
“It looks like you’ve all hit a new power plateau,” Byron said, as he led me between the little lighted tables scattered with makeup and bits of costume.
“Which means what?” I asked.
He stopped in front of a big gray metal cabinet that was at the far end of the room. “Which means, answer my question. Do you remember what the kiss felt like in the other room?” He opened the cabinet, and it seemed to be full of cleaning supplies and extra bits of things that people might need. On the top shelf, so he had to stand on tiptoe, was a first aid kit, a big one.
“It was like he drank my soul,” and saying it out loud was too poetic for me. I blushed and tried again. “I thought he’d fed the ardeur during sex with me, but if that kiss was feeding the same thing, he’s been holding back.”
Byron tried to find enough clean space on the nearby