Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [647]
“What have you done?” the priest demanded, and his voice was too loud; it must have carried out into the crowd.
I spoke lower. “I won’t heal, not as fast as he did. It’ll prove that I’m not a lycanthrope.”
The priest’s anger filled the air like something hot and touchable. “You do not understand.”
“If someone would talk to me, instead of hugging their secrets so damn close, I wouldn’t be blundering into things.”
The priest handed the blade back to the kneeling man. He took the knife and bowed his forehead to it. Then he licked the blade, carefully around the sharp edges, until he came to the point and my blood. Then he slid the tip between his lips, into his mouth, sucking it down like a woman taking a man into her mouth. His mouth worked around the blade and I knew it was cutting him, as he swallowed it. I knew it was cutting him up, but he made it look as if it were something wonderful, orgasmic, as if he were having a very good time.
He watched me as he did it, and his eyes weren’t serene anymore. They had filled with heat. It was the same heat you could see in any man’s eyes when he was thinking about sex. But not when the man was sucking on a glass-sharp blade, cutting his mouth, tongue, throat, drinking his own blood, with a taste of my blood as a chaser.
Someone grabbed my hand, and I jumped. It was César. “We must be on stage. You must take your seat.” He was watching the kneeling man, all the men, carefully. He eased me around the group of them, and all eyes followed me like I was some wounded gazelle.
The other three women were already in place, standing behind the now dim white screen. They’d taken off some clothing. The giggling blonde was down to pale blue bra and panties, still laughing her head off. The Hispanic had taken off her skirt and was down to a pair of crimson panties that matched the red camisole she was still wearing. She’d kept the matching red high heels. She and the blonde were leaning against each other, swaying and laughing. Ramona wasn’t laughing. She still stood quietly, unmoved and unmoving.
The priest’s voice came from backstage. “Disrobe for our audience.” His voice was soft, but Ramona grabbed the bottom of her shirt and lifted. Her bra was an ordinary bra, white and simple. It wasn’t meant to be lingerie, and I doubted she’d planned on anyone seeing it tonight. She let her shirt fall to the floor. Her hands went to the top button of her pants. I pulled away from César and grabbed Ramona’s hands. “No, don’t.”
Her hands went slack in mine, as if even that small interference had broken the spell, but she didn’t look at me. She didn’t see what was in front of her, just the internal landscape that I couldn’t see.
I picked her shirt back up and placed her hands over it. She clutched it automatically, covering most of the front of her.
César took my arm. “The screen is going up. There is no time.”
The screen began to slowly lift.
“You can’t be the only one dressed,” he said. He tried to slide the jacket from my shoulders, and bared the shoulder holster.
“We’ll scare the audience,” I said.
The screen was to our knees. He grabbed the front of my shirt, jerking it out of my pants, baring my stomach. He dropped to his knees and was licking my stomach as the screen came up completely. I tried to grab a handful of hair to pull him off me, but there wasn’t enough hair to grab. The hair was much softer than it looked, much softer than my hair would have been if you shaved it to stubble. His teeth bit gently into my skin, and I put my hand under his chin, raising his face, so that he either had to take his teeth out of my skin, or bite deeper. He let go, let me raise his face to stare upward at me. There was a look in his eyes that I couldn’t read, but it was something large and more complex than you see in a stranger’s eyes. Complex I didn’t need tonight.
He was on his feet in a movement so liquid and graceful that I knew that Edward would spot him for what