Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [797]
I grabbed the edge of Jean-Claude’s robe. “I can’t feel Damian! I can’t feel him, at all!”
“We must breach your shields, ma petite. We must reawaken your powers.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“I am your master, Anita, my very marks can keep me out of your shields. We are running out of time for Damian. I would ask that you allow Asher and Requiem to help me breach your shields.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I do not have time to explain, but it does not truly matter which of us breaks down these new stronger walls, only that they break. Once broken, then your own power will be set free, and it will find Damian.”
I wanted to argue, but that emptiness where Damian should have been scared me. I nodded. “Do it.”
“You must take off your cross first.”
I didn’t ask how he knew I was wearing one. Richard let me slide down his body enough so I could use my hands to unhook the chain. Jean-Claude had stepped away, not far, but far enough that he would not accidentally touch it. I spilled the chain into Richard’s waiting hand.
I met his eyes, while his hand closed around my cross. “Put it in the bedside drawer,” I said.
He nodded. “So it won’t glow.”
I nodded. I admitted to myself in that one moment why I’d stopped wearing a cross most of the time. Oh, I kept one in my vampire-hunting bag, but I didn’t wear one much. To bed, but, oh, hell. I kept waiting for the cross to glow when I did something. I kept waiting for the cross to glow because of some vampiric ability that I’d inherited from Jean-Claude. I kept waiting for it to glow against me. What was left of my nerves couldn’t have handled it, today.
Richard moved across the bed enough to lean over and open the bedside table drawer. He set the cross in carefully, and closed the drawer. He crawled back across the bed, until he was kneeling in front of me again. “I spend so much effort keeping you out of my mind, my heart, and now it’s like this void inside me. I keep trying to break up with you, stupid me. It’s like trying to break up with your own hand. You can live without it, but you’re not whole.”
“Can you sense Damian?” Jean-Claude asked.
“I can sense vampires with a cross on, Jean-Claude; that’s never made any difference to my necromancy.”
“Humor me,” he said.
I humored him. I shook my head. “Empty, like he’s not there.” I’d managed to chase the fear back, but it fluttered through my stomach, tingled the tips of my fingers. “Is it too late? Please, God, don’t let it be too late.” Inside my head, I added, Don’t let me have killed him.
I watched Jean-Claude’s eyes spill blue, until his pupils and the white were lost to the glowing, deep blue of his power. I sat on the bed only a few yards from him, while his power rose enough to fill his eyes with fire, and I felt nothing. At least my necromancy should have felt it, if not the vampire marks. I’d been psychically blind, head-blind, from shock or illness before, but never to this degree. It both scared me, and gave me hope. Maybe I couldn’t sense Damian because I couldn’t have sensed anyone right then.
Richard shivered beside me, then slid to the floor. “You don’t feel that, do you?” His eyes were a little wide. The small hairs on his arms were standing at attention.
“No,” I said.
He looked at Micah and Nathaniel, who were still on the bed, though they’d moved back to give us room. “I think we all need to clear a space for them to work.”
Micah kissed my cheek. Nathaniel brushed his cheek against mine, scent-marking me. They slid off the far side of the bed. Jean-Claude moved up until he was beside the bed. He raised a hand above my face. I felt it, the press of his aura, but faintly, as if my skin were wrapped in cotton, and he could not touch me.
He laid his hand against my face, and that one touch spread in a shivering line across my skin. “Ma petite.” The words breathed along my spine, as if he’d spilled a line of water down my skin. I shivered for him again, and