Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [859]
“What’s he doing?” and that was aloud.
Jean-Claude’s voice breathed through my mind, “He is going to try to take us.”
“What is he doing to the crowd?”
“He’s trying to take us, all of us,” Auggie said, “and that’s too much power for the humans.”
“He’ll own them,” I said.
“No,” Jean-Claude said, “they are ours.” He didn’t try to fight for the minds of the crowd; he went straight for the source of our problem. He used the power of the three of us to smash into that mind.
The power staggered, as if we’d hit him, then the sound of birds filled the theatre. Twittering, crying, fluttering; the sound of hundreds of birds. The sound was so real that I searched the theatre for the flock, but there was nothing to see.
Nathaniel said, “I hear birds.”
I didn’t have time to wonder why he could hear them, too, because the birds were upon us. Feathers everywhere, touching, beating at me, trying to get me to move, to run. Jean-Claude’s hand had a death grip on mine. Auggie’s fingers dug into my shoulder, and the pain helped. It helped chase back the beating wings. I remembered the last time that a vampire’s power had beat against my body like wings. Beat against me, not to frighten or make me run, but to be let inside. The power had cried in the dark, to be let inside me. Obsidian Butterfly, Master of the City of Albuquerque, had found her way inside me. She had filled my eyes with the blackness between suns, and the cold light of stars. She had also shared her power with me. That power came again, as if the touch of wings had called it.
Auggie cursed under his breath, his hand desperate on my shoulder. Jean-Claude said, “Ma petite, do not…” But whatever I wasn’t to do he never said, because Obsidian Butterfly’s gift dropped my shields and cut me open for Merlin’s power. That metaphysical wind of wings and twittering calls poured inside me. The power poured inside me and I felt Merlin’s triumph like the scream of some huge bird of prey. He thought he’d broken my shields, broken our shields, but he was wrong.
Jean-Claude and Auggie clung to me, trying to shore up what they, too, thought was a break in our power. But it wasn’t a breach, it was a mouth.
It felt as if my body were a cave, a fleshy, soft cave, and the birds that I had heard and felt poured inside me, as if they’d found a home. I swear I could feel the brush of feathers, tiny bodies, fluttering, diving, filling me. Merlin’s power poured into me, and tried to find Jean-Claude and Auggie. The power tried to find a way out of me and into them. Merlin poured more and more power into me, and I swallowed it.
Auggie and Jean-Claude clung to me, afraid to let go, afraid not to let go, I think. So much power, so much that it began to leak through into the other two vampires. The moment it touched them, they both understood. Merlin wasn’t going to break me, we were going to eat him.
He must have figured it out at the same time, because he tried to stop the power, just cut it off. But I had the taste of him, and I didn’t want it to stop.
The torrents of invisible birds slowed, but didn’t stop. Obsidian Butterfly’s power called to them, helped me know sweet words to use, to coax that power. The power kept coming, and I felt the flash of fear. It was sweet, and good, and I longed to taste the sweat on his skin. And I could, I licked down his skin, where he watched from the shadows.
He stared at me with dark eyes that held crimson like a pinpoint tear inside them. I’d seen eyes like that before. Never were human, were you? I thought.
He tried to break the contact, and he couldn’t do it. Not with Auggie and Jean-Claude hooked up to me. He was big and bad and powerful, but he was not a Master of the City. He was not two Masters of the City, and he didn’t know what the hell I was; in that moment neither did I.
I smelled jasmine and rain. I smelled a tropical night that hadn’t existed for thousands on thousands