Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [873]
Not ever again, hung heavy in the air, unsaid, but there all the same. Asher had had two hundred years of being at the mercy of the people who had given Jean-Claude the memories that Richard and I had flashed on. Two centuries more of that kind of care and torment. When Asher had first come to us he’d been cruel occasionally. I thought we’d cured him of it. But watching the look in his eyes now, I knew we hadn’t.
“And do you know the best part of all?” Asher asked.
Jean-Claude just shook his head.
“It will cause you pain to think of me with Narcissus. And even after I am with him, he will still not answer the question you have been wanting, so desperately, to have answered.”
Jean-Claude stiffened, hand tightening on mine. I felt him slam his own shields into place, keeping us out of what he was thinking, feeling, at that moment. The warm, roiling power between us began to dissipate. Jean-Claude had made himself part of our circuit. Now he was shutting us down, though I didn’t think it was on purpose. He just couldn’t shield himself from us and keep the flow going.
His voice came out calm, his usual bored, yet cultured, tone, “How can you be so sure that he will not talk?”
“I can be sure of what I do. And I will not give him the answer you want.”
“What answer?” I asked. “What are you guys talking about?”
The two vampires looked at each other. “Ask Jean-Claude,” Asher said.
I looked at Jean-Claude, but he was staring at Asher. In a way, the rest of us were superfluous, an audience for a show that didn’t need one.
“You’re being petty, Asher,” Richard said.
The vampire’s gaze moved to the man on my other side, and the anger in those eyes made the blue spill across the pupils in a frosted gleam. He looked blind. “Have I not earned the right to be petty, Richard?”
Richard shook his head. “Just tell him the truth.”
“There are three people in his power that I would strip for, that I would allow to touch me, and answer that so important question.” He stood in one graceful movement, like a liquid puppet on strings. He stepped close enough for the power to spill around him, bringing his breath shuddering from his lips. The power recognized him, flared stronger, as if he could act as our third, if we weren’t careful. Did the power just need a vampire, and not specifically Jean-Claude? Richard shut down his side of the power, clanging a shield in place that made me think of metal, strong and solid, uncompromising.
Asher caressed the air just above Richard’s arm and had to step away, rubbing his hands on his arms. “The power fades.” He shook himself like a dog coming out of water. “If you would say yes, his torment could end.”
I frowned at them both, not sure I was following the conversation, not sure I wanted to.
Asher turned those pale, drowning eyes to me. “Or, our fair Anita.” He was already shaking his head. “But no, I know better than to ask. I have enjoyed shocking our so heterosexual Richard by my overtures. But Anita is not so easily teased.” He came to stand in front of Jean-Claude. “And, of course, if he wanted the answer badly enough he could do it himself.”
Jean-Claude’s face was at its most arrogant. Its most hidden. “You know why I do not.”
Asher moved back to stand in front of me. “He refuses my bed, because he fears that you would . . . what is the American word . . . dump him, if you knew he were sleeping with a man. Would you?”
I had to swallow before I could answer. “Yeah.”
Asher smiled, but not like he was happy, more like it had been a predictable answer. “Then I will pleasure myself here with Narcissus, and Jean-Claude will still not know if I stay because I have become a lover of such things, or because this type of love is all that is left for me.”
“I haven’t agreed to this,” Narcissus said. “Before I take second—no fourth choice—let me see what I’m buying.”
Asher stood, turning so that his left side was towards the werehyena. He unzipped the