Blood Noir - Laurell K. Hamilton [130]
It was that thought that helped me push against the warmth of Richard’s power. It was that thought that helped me swim against the current of his love. Just as his hands had been too rough and caused me pain, this loss was the biggest pain I had. It was the gaping black hole inside of me that had filled up with rage so long ago. It was the place that my anger came from, and went back to, like the tides of some bloody ocean. Pain always helped you push back vampire powers.
I let myself feel that loss, that I spent most of my time not thinking about. I let the rage and loss fill me, and there was no lust, no desire, no love, that could win against such sorrow.
People talk of sorrow as if it is soft, a thing of water and tears. But true sorrow is not soft. True sorrow is a thing of fire, and rock. It burns your heart, crushes your soul under the weight of mountains. It destroys, and even if you keep breathing, keep going, you die. The person you were moments ago dies, dies in the sound of screaming metal and the impact of one bad driver. Gone. Everything solid, everything real, is gone. It doesn’t come back. The world is forever fractured, so that you walk on the crust of an earth where you can always feel the heat under you, the press of lava, that is so hot it can burn flesh, melt bone, and the very air is poisonous. To survive, you swallow the heat. To keep from falling through and dying for real, you swallow all that hate. You push it down inside you, into that fresh grave that is all that is left of what you thought the world would be.
I was not foolish enough to look into his eyes, but my voice was solid, and sure of itself, as I said, “Let go of me, Richard. You can’t make me feel safe. You can’t fix what’s wrong with me.”
“I love you,” he said, and his voice was full of everything those words meant for him.
“You love me so much that you would use vampire wiles to force me into your arms.”
He stopped trying to pull me to him and came to me. He closed that small distance and wrapped his arms around me. Minutes before, held in his arms like this, I would have done anything he wanted. But it was too late. He held my body, but my heart was cold. It was the way I had lived for years. Cold and hot, sorrow and rage; it had been the world to me until Jean-Claude found a way inside the walls I’d built.
I understood in that moment why it had been Jean-Claude and not Richard who had broken down those walls. Jean-Claude had had his own sorrow and rage when I met him. He had known what it was to have everything he wanted, real love, real security, and to lose it all. Richard hadn’t understood. He had believed in the goodness of the universe. I hadn’t believed in that since I was eight. Jean-Claude hadn’t believed in words like goodness for centuries.
Sometimes it’s not the light in a person that you fall in love with, but the dark. Sometimes it’s not the optimist you need, but another pessimist to walk beside you and know, absolutely know, that the sound in the dark is a monster, and it really is as bad as you think.
Did that sound hopeless? It didn’t feel hopeless. It felt reassuring. It felt—real.
Richard held my chin in his hand. It began as a gentle gesture, but when I didn’t meet his eyes, his hand squeezed. He tried to force me to look into his eyes. I couldn’t stop him, but I could make him hurt me to do it. The pain helped me distance myself from him. He held me so close that it was like being wrapped in a warm blanket of energy, but what he meant to be comforting felt as if I were too hot. It was a choking, close heat, as if the air were too thick to breathe.
His hand on my jaw was painful, just this side of breaking bones. I kept my eyes closed, but even through closed lids I could feel the press of his gaze.
“Look at me!”