Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [401]
He waited for me to be horrified, but I wasn’t. If there was anyone who could resist doing the great bad thing, it was Richard. I trusted his control, not always his temper, but his control—that I trusted without doubt or reservation. I whispered, “Just because you want to do something, doesn’t mean you will do it, or even that you have to do it. You’re human, Richard, you have a mind and willpower. You aren’t just your beast.”
“You don’t understand,” he said, and the moment he said it, I knew what he’d done, by accident.
“You can feel what the zombie is doing?” I said.
He hid his face from me and scrambled to his feet, and ran. He ran out of the trees, and hit a paved road, and was across it before the headlights could be sure what they’d seen. Fast, faster, run, run. Run, but what he was running from, he couldn’t outrun, because no matter how fast, or how far, he would still be there. How do you outrun the monster, when you are the monster?
“Richard, make the zombie stop feeding on me.”
“I don’t know how,” and he was gone, crashing through the trees, but it wasn’t friendly now, or joyous.
The zombie bit me, hard, and damn it, it hurt. “Requiem, get him off of me.”
The vampire moved around so he could touch the zombie’s face and hands, but nothing holds on like a zombie. I’d had to help clean up other people’s zombies that had gone wrong, and sometimes you had to cut them apart a finger at a time to get them to let go of someone. Human teeth could still bite deep enough to sever a vein or artery. I wanted him off of me.
Requiem tried to pry him off, but he finally looked up at me. “I can pull him apart in pieces, but I cannot pull him off of you.”
I looked at the very bodyguarding werewolf and called him over. He came, face serious, hands behind his back, as if he didn’t exactly trust himself not to touch me again. Did I smell of wolf and forest, or was it the fresh blood? Don’t ask unless you want to know. I didn’t want to know.
The zombie plunged his tongue into the wound, as if he were trying to get the blood to flow faster. It hurt, and it surprised me, and I screamed, a little scream, but enough that one of the lawyers called, “Are you alright, Ms. Blake?”
“Fine,” I called back, “fine.” Mustn’t let the clients know that the zombie you raised for them is beginning to eat you. Fuck!
Using every ounce of strength he had, Graham was able to pry one finger off of my wrist, but he had to hold on to that finger, or it curled right back into place. “He shouldn’t be this strong.”
“You’ve never tried to fight zombies, have you?” I said.
He gave me wide eyes. “If they’re this strong, I don’t want to.”
“They’re not just strong, they don’t feel pain.”
“Anita, I can tear his fingers off,” Requiem said, “or break his jaw, but other than those extremities, I have no other suggestions.”
The bad part was, neither did I. The zombie bit me harder, and I knew it was only a matter of time before he hit something major. He was digging his teeth in deeper by the tiniest of increments, but eventually it was going to get bad, and I was no longer sure what would happen if a gush of fresh blood hit its mouth. I’d seen what flesh-eating zombies could do to people. I wasn’t exactly human, but I wouldn’t grow back a hand if you ripped it off.
We could burn him up, but he wouldn’t let go, and I’d burn with him. Shit.
Richard was sitting in a clearing under a tangle of naked limbs. “I have to shut the link between us, Anita. I have to. I can’t separate myself from the zombie. I keep feeling what he’s doing. Keep wanting him to find more blood.” He cradled his face in his hands, and he’d lost his shirt somewhere, so that his back was bowed and naked as the trees overhead. “I’m sorry,