Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [998]
“What if I need to be braver than you for myself, not for you?”
I thought about that for a second or two, then said, “You’re not afraid of going down into the oubliette, are you?”
“I don’t want to go down, and I don’t want to see what they’ve done to Gregory, but I’m not as afraid as you are, no.”
“Then it doesn’t make you braver than me to go down into the hole, does it? Because it doesn’t cost you anything to go down there.”
He leaned very, very close to my ear, then breathed the barest of sounds against my skin. “Like it would cost you nothing to kill Jacob for me.”
I stiffened beside him, then turned, trying to keep the shock off my face.
“I knew that was what you were thinking the moment I saw you look at him,” Richard said.
“You’d let me do that?” I asked, voice soft, but not as soft as his had been.
“I don’t know yet. But wouldn’t your reasoning be that it would cost you nothing to do it and it would cost me dear?”
We stared at each other. I finally nodded.
He smiled. “Then let me go down the fucking hole.”
“When did you start using the F-word?”
“While you were away. I think I missed hearing it.” He grinned at me suddenly, a bright flash of smile in the dark.
I couldn’t not smile back. Kneeling by that horrible black opening, fear still flat on my tongue, his anger still riding the air between us, and we smiled at each other. “I’ll let you go down the hole first,” I said.
The smile widened until it filled his eyes, and even by starlight I could see them gleam with humor. “Okay.”
I leaned into him and gave him a quick kiss. Too quick for the powers to move between us, too quick to taste the blood in his mouth, too quick to find out if our beasts would roil through each other’s bodies. I kissed him just because I wanted to, because for the first time I thought we might both be willing to bend a little. Would it be enough? Who the hell knew? But I was hopeful. For the first time in a long time, I was truly hopeful. Without hope, love dies and parts of you wither. I didn’t know what it meant for Micah that I had hope for Richard and me. We’d talked openly about sharing, but I didn’t know how much of that had been for public show and how much had been real. But right that second, I didn’t care, I clutched that positive emotion to me and held on. Later, later, we’d worry about other things. I’d let Richard climb down first, but I’d still be going down, and I wanted that small warm hope inside my chest along with the fear.
27
RICHARD’S WEIGHT ON the rope ladder kept it tight under my hands. He’d put his flashlight on a strap around his wrist. I watched the pool of yellow light vanishing down into that narrow darkness and realized that I was still barely on the ladder, my head still aboveground.
Micah was kneeling beside the hole. “It’ll be alright,” he said.
I swallowed and looked at him, knowing my eyes were just a little wide. “I know,” but my voice came out breathy.
“You really don’t have to do this,” he said, voice soft, and as neutral as he could make it.
I frowned at him. “Don’t you start.”
“Then you better catch up with him.” His voice was a little less neutral, but I couldn’t tell what tone it held.
I started climbing down the soft roughness of the rope ladder, moving quickly, angrily. I wasn’t angry with Micah, not really. I was angry with me. The anger got me well down into the dark where the light from the flashlight below me seemed very yellow and very stark against the earthen walls.
I clung there for a second or two, staring at that hard-packed earth. I gazed up slowly and found Micah staring down at me from a distance so far away that I couldn’t tell what color his eyes or hair were. I knew it was him from the shape of his face and shoulders. My God, how deep did this pit go?
It seemed like the earthen walls were curving in towards me, like