Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [129]
I thought, “Jean-Claude, help me.”
The bathroom door opened behind us. Jason stood in the doorway with a towel wrapped around his waist.
“Go away,” Richard said.
“Help me,” I said.
I had a moment to feel sorry for Jason. He was so screwed. If he helped me, his Ulfric would be pissed. If he didn’t help me, I’d be pissed, and so would Jean-Claude. I had a moment to appreciate his dilemma, caught between the werewolf and the vampire. But even appreciating his problem, I couldn’t care as much about his problem as my own. Richard had finally inherited the ardeur, and he was using it on me.
50
JASON SPOKE SLOWLY, carefully, in that voice you use for people on ledges, when they’re far, far above the ground. “Richard, Anita, what’s happening?”
“Leave us alone, Jason,” Richard said. He tried to pull me in closer to his body.
I braced with my other arm and my knees, the way I did sometimes in judo. Not when you think you can win the fight, but when you’ve simply decided that you’ll make them hurt you before they win. I wasn’t strong enough to keep Richard from drawing me into his body, if that’s what he wanted, but I was strong enough to make him hurt me to do it. It was the best I could do. The Browning was on the bed, and truthfully, I wouldn’t shoot Richard. He knew it, and I knew it. Oh, there had been moments when I might have, and a knife I might have used, but not a gun. I wouldn’t have risked killing him. Once you give up the idea of killing someone bigger and stronger than you are, you are, to an extent, at their mercy. You better hope that they’re merciful.
I would have looked at Richard’s face to try to see if there was any mercy there, but I was afraid to meet his eyes again. It was hard enough to fight his power with just his hand on my arm. I couldn’t afford to fall into his eyes again. I wasn’t sure I would be able to crawl back out. There was something different to his version of the ardeur. For lack of a better word, there was more life to it. My strongest powers lay with the dead, not the living. Richard was so very much alive.
“It’s the ardeur,” Jason said, “but it doesn’t make me want to touch you, Anita.”
“Go back into the bathroom, Jason,” Richard said; there was a faint edge of growl to his voice now.
Jason gripped the doorjamb tight enough that his fingers mottled. “It’s so strong, I can’t breathe past it, but it’s all directed at you, Anita. I can feel it, like a thought in the air. He wants you to want him, and only him. God, it’s so strong.”
I said, “Help me.”
Richard said, “Get out.”
“Richard, Ulfric, you’re doing the very same thing you accused Jean-Claude of doing,” Jason said.
Richard’s head jerked up, and he looked at Jason. Jason looked away from that gaze. “Your eyes are glowing as if you were a vampire, Richard. I know not to look a vampire in the eyes when they look like that.” Jason let the fear sound in his voice. It sounded real, and it was one of the first times I’d realized that he was afraid of the vampires.
I kept my arm braced on the floor as Richard tried to draw me to him. But it wasn’t the strength in his hand that was hard to resist. It was the warm, crushing embrace of his power. It was like something alive, warm, and wanting. Something that pulled at me, as surely as his hand. It wasn’t just about lust, but the promise that if I would just let go, he would wrap me in the warm safety of his love, and there would be no more pain, no more uncertainty. But I’d felt something like this before. Auggie, Master of Chicago, could make you love him. But even Auggie had never made it feel like this. This felt real. But of course, it was real, or had been. Auggie had been a stranger, the logic in my head had known it was a trick, but what Richard offered felt real, because once it almost had been. Once, the belief that his love would heal all the old wounds, and finally make me feel safe, had been true. True, and a lie. Love is real, and false, even true love. Because love alone cannot keep you