Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [775]
“Anita”—and it was Jean-Claude’s voice—“Anita, you must stop this.”
He never called me Anita. It made me look at him. “Why can’t I taste you?” I asked.
“Because I am your master, and not a toy for your power.”
The look on his face frightened me, because he was frightened. I licked dry lips, and said, “I guess this answers the question. I don’t touch anyone else’s vampires.”
“No,” he said, “no.” He was at the edge of the bed. “Now shut it down.”
It took me a second to realize what he meant. My necromancy, I needed to turn it off again. I closed my eyes, and drew it back in. I drew in tight and tighter, closed and squeezed that metaphysical fist tight and hard. But it was like the hand wasn’t big enough to hold it all now. I could squeeze it down, but it leaked through as if the fingers were trying to hold sand. No, not true. I didn’t want to stop. It felt so good to wander through the vampires, better than playing with zombies. The moment I realized I was the one letting the fist leak, I was able to shut it down. It almost hurt, but I did it. I could do it. But I wondered if there would come a day when there was so much power that I wouldn’t be able to shut it down completely? I needed to talk to my magical mentor, Marianne, about that, sooner rather than later.
I opened my eyes and said, “How’s that?”
“Good,” he said, but his voice was not happy.
“That was frightening,” Elinore said. “I felt your power, as if you were licking along my skin, my…” She shivered, not in a happy way.
“Sorry,” I said.
“You could roll me,” London said, “roll me the way I can roll a human. You could, I felt it.”
“You must undo to my brother what you have done to him,” Wicked said, “or bind me as you bind him.”
I nodded. “We’ll discuss it later, okay? I’ve got a full plate today.”
“You promised me,” Wicked said.
I sighed. “Look, I didn’t know that taking blood from me instead of Jean-Claude would be that big a deal, okay? I’m doing the best I can here, Wicked. Truth was dying when I offered him blood. I saved his life, if I remember correctly, so stop being so pissy about it.” I was getting angry, because I felt guilty, and that almost always led to anger for me.
“Anita can work on your problem another day,” Requiem said. “Today is mine.”
Something in the way he said it made me look at him. He lay like he hurt, but the look on his face wasn’t about pain. It was almost anticipatory.
“What are you thinking, Requiem?” I asked.
“That you still need to feed the ardeur in front of all these good people.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“The test is to see what will happen if you feed the ardeur in front of our visitors. You know not to use your necromancy in front of them now, but this question has not been decided.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I think it has.”
“I’m with Anita on this one,” London said, “no ardeur in front of the guests. No anything much in front of the other masters.”
“That is not your call to make,” Elinore said.
“Do you think I’m wrong?” he asked.
No one answered. So I did. “No, you’re not wrong. My powers are too unpredictable to use in public right now. I just have to shield like a son of a bitch.”
“Perhaps you can control the necromancy to that degree, but the ardeur is not broken to bit and bridle, yet,” Requiem said.
“She just freed you,” Wicked said. “How can you want her to enslave you again?”
“I don’t want to be enslaved, but I do want her to feed. I want it more than I’ve wanted anything in a very long time.”
I looked at Jean-Claude. “Is he free, or not?”
“You called me back so I could choose, Anita.”
I looked at Requiem. “I don’t understand.”
“You said you would never feed the ardeur