Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [957]
We pretty much left the conversation there. I found Asher and had him confirm the story. Hell, I waited for Willie McCoy to climb out of his coffin and heard the story from him. Damian had gone ape-shit and killed a couple that apparently hit him with their car. The man had gotten out to check on whoever they hit. They had hurt him and Damian struck out, killing the man. But the woman . . . he’d climbed into the car after her. We might have to kill him, because I hadn’t understood what my magic meant to Damian. I hadn’t understood a lot of things.
I drove out in the soft summer dusk with Nathaniel riding beside me. It had been a very long day. I was going to go home and pick up Rafael and the wererats, and Micah and his pard. He’d left a number at the shapeshifter hospital, and I’d called for it. I almost didn’t call, but we needed backup tonight. My embarrassment was a small price to pay. If I had been in contact with Jean-Claude and Richard for the last half year, I probably could have talked Richard out of doing all the shit he’d done to his pack. I’d come home to try and reestablish a relationship, or two, but I was mostly cleaning up the mess that my absence had made. Richard might be dead at the full moon, and Jacob, Ulfric. Damian might be permanently crazy and have to be destroyed. The couple that had hit him with their car would have been alive if I’d known what the hell my magic was doing.
I’d avoided a lot of Marianne’s teachings because it was too much like pure witchcraft for my monotheistic beliefs, but I knew now that I had to understand how my powers worked. I couldn’t afford to be squeamish. God kept telling me I was okay with Him. I wasn’t evil. But at some level I didn’t believe it. At some level I thought that witchcraft, raising the dead, wasn’t very Christian. If God was okay with me doing it, then what was my problem? I’d prayed about it often enough and gotten the answer more than once. The answer was to do it, that this was what I needed to be doing. If God was for it, then who was I to question it? Look where my arrogance had gotten us. Two dead, one crazy, and if Richard lost the pack . . . there’d be a lot more dead.
I felt a quietness inside me as I drove. Usually the touch of God is golden and warm, but sometimes when I’ve been really slow and not picked up on what He’s wanted for me, I get this kind of quiet sadness, like a parent watching a child learn a necessary hard lesson. I’d never once prayed to God about Richard and Jean-Claude—not about who to choose anyway. It just hadn’t seemed right to ask God to help me choose a lover, especially when I thought I knew who He’d pick. I mean vampires are evil, right?
But driving through the falling darkness, feeling His soft presence fill the car, I realized that I hadn’t asked because I’d been afraid of the answer. I drove and I prayed, and I didn’t get an answer, but I knew He heard me.
20
IT WAS FULL dark when we pulled up in front of my house. Almost every light in the house was on, like I was giving a party and no one had bothered to tell me. The driveway was full and overflowing onto the road. One of the reasons I’d rented the house was because I had no near neighbors to get caught up in whatever crisis I was having. My crises usually involved gunfire, so no neighbors to get hurt had been my primary requisite in a house. There was no one around to peek out a window and wonder what the hell was going on next door. Just trees and the lonely road, neither of which cared what I did. Or at least I didn’t think the trees cared, though Marianne might tell me