Burnt Offerings - Laurell K. Hamilton [177]
By the time most series have gotten to book seven the cast is pretty much set, but bringing in new characters to join the established cast has become a hallmark of my series. In Burnt Offerings, you’ll meet Asher and Nathaniel.
Asher was originally meant to be a villain, but almost from the first moment he stepped on stage he became more than that. He is truly a flawed hero, in that Hamlet, Prince of Denmark way. He was once one of the most beautiful men that Belle Morte had ever collected for her private harem. Then the church got hold of him and tried to burn the devil out of him with holy water, which burns vampiric flesh like acid. Half his body still has that almost heartrending beauty, but the other half has the scars of the burns.
He saw himself as ruined goods. But Jean-Claude loved him, had loved him centuries ago. They had shared the only two women that they ever loved: Belle Morte, the creator of their bloodline, and Julianna, Asher’s human servant.
Julianna was burned alive by the same people who used holy water on Asher. Jean-Claude has never truly forgiven himself for not saving them both. Asher has never forgiven him either. The twenty-plus years that the three of them spent as a ménage à trois, free from Belle Morte, was probably the happiest time of their lives, and definitely of their afterlives.
But from the first moment we saw him, Anita and I thought Asher was beautiful. We were afraid of him at first, because he was a bad guy, but he was always beautiful. Through Jean-Claude’s memories we remembered his body smooth and untouched by the holy water, but Anita fell in love with Asher just the way he is now, scars and all.
Anita and I love Asher, but there is always that suspicion that he actually loves Jean-Claude more than he loves Anita. People keep asking me when Asher will find a girl of his own. I’m no longer certain it’s a girl of his own that he wants. I think there is a certain Master Vampire of St. Louis that Asher would give anything, anything, to truly belong to again.
But I think Jean-Claude needs a third person around, to be with Asher. Belle Morte first, then Julianna, and now Anita. I guess it just depends on where you fall on the Kinsey scale.
In the books that came after Burnt Offerings, Asher would grow and change, and show that he loved Anita, too. And that he still loved Jean-Claude, and had missed him as much as he tried to hate him.
Asher has become not just one of my favorites but a fan favorite, as well. Pretty good for a character introduced seven books in.
Which brings us to Nathaniel, who is also introduced in this book. When you meet him in Burnt Offerings he’s nineteen, and to Anita he is a burden. He is another victim that she has to protect—we actually meet him in the hospital after he has nearly been killed. Since he’s a wereleopard, he’s hard to kill, but a client got out of hand. Client? He’s a high-class “escort” when we meet him, as well as a stripper at Jean-Claude’s club, Guilty Pleasures. And yeah, escort means what you think it means. He went into the hospital because he let a customer tie him up and the customer gutted him. (By the way, I didn’t make that up. Actual crime. Yeah, way creepy. I find that true crime is far more disturbing to me than anything I can make up.) Nathaniel is into bondage and submission, and he is so submissive that he won’t say no, not even to save himself. (That’s actually true of a number of people I interviewed when I was researching the BDSM scene. I found the concept that some people would let you do anything, absolutely anything to them, both horrifying and fascinating. It’s rare, but these people seemed to mean it. Luckily for them their masters, or dominants, kept them safe, even from themselves.)
Nathaniel was never intended to be a major player in the books. His character grew out of the research I’d done, and some corner of my personality I didn’t know was there, I guess. Or maybe Nathaniel just needed to be there for Anita. (If you have not read the series after book ten,