Burnt Offerings - Laurell K. Hamilton [47]
“Why is everything with you people a freaking Catch-22? You don’t do business. You just do torture,” I said.
“Are you judging us?” he asked. His voice was suddenly lower and deeper than Willie’s throat should have been able to hold. He took that last step forward, and I was suddenly touching them both. Their power flared over me; it was like being in the middle of two different fires, but it didn’t burn. The Traveler’s power was like Jean-Claude’s, cool and swimming, a breath of mortality, the touch of the grave.
The power pulled a gasp from my throat and raised every hair on my body. “Back off!” I tried to shove him away from us, but he grabbed my wrist too quick to stop, almost too quick to see. The feel of his bare skin on mine sent a wave of numbing cold through my body, like a spear of ice. He jerked me away from Jean-Claude.
Jean-Claude caught my other wrist. The moment his hand touched my skin, the cold faded. His power swept through me like a flood of warm water, and it wasn’t his power. I knew the taste of this warmth. It was Richard. Jean-Claude was drawing on Richard’s power as I’d done earlier.
He chased the Traveler’s power out of me like summer heat on ice. It was the Traveler who released me. He stepped back rubbing his hand on his coat, as if it hurt. “Jean-Claude, you have been a very naughty boy.”
Jean-Claude drew me against him, one hand resting against my neck so that his fingers touched my skin. That electric warmth was still there playing over his skin and mine, and I knew in that moment that Richard had felt our urgency, our need.
15
A NOISE TURNED us all to the far hallway. I didn’t recognize the man. He was tall, slender, dark-skinned, maybe Hispanic, maybe something more exotic. He wore nothing but a pair of black satin pants with silver embroidery along the legs. He was dragging Willie’s lady love, Hannah, by one arm.
Her mascara had run in black tears down her face. Her expensive haircut still framed her face, still brought your eyes to her strong cheekbones and full lips. But her face was like a mask now, black tears, and burgundy lipstick smeared across her lower face like a wound.
The Traveler said, “Why have you brought her here, Fernando?”
“My father is as much council as you are, Traveler.”
“I do not dispute that.”
“Yet you forbid him to come to this first meeting.”
“If he is council, then let him bend me to his will.” The Traveler’s voice was mocking. “We are all council, but we are not all equal.”
Fernando smiled. He grabbed Hannah’s beaded blue dress and tore it down her back. She screamed.
The Traveler swayed, putting a hand to his face.
“I’m going to fuck her,” Fernando said.
Balthasar strode towards them, but two leopards the size of ponies crawled from the hallway. One black, one yellow spotted, both big enough to tear him to pieces. They growled low and deep, moving on huge padded feet between Balthasar and Fernando.
Fernando grabbed Hannah around the waist, pulling her dress over her hips to expose pale blue garters. She turned and slapped him hard enough that he rocked back. She was as feminine as they come, but she was also a vampire and could have thrown him into the solid stone wall so that he stuck there.
Fernando hit her back. Blood spattered from her mouth in shining beads. She sat half-stunned on the floor. Fernando’s power boiled through the room as if he’d been holding it in check until now. Shapeshifter. Did he match the leopards that guarded his back? Maybe, but it didn’t matter what flavor he was. He picked Hannah up by the front of her dress, dragging her to her knees. He drew his hand back to hit her again.
I pulled the Browning out of the coat pocket. Willie collapsed to his knees on the floor. He stared up and said, “Angel-fangs.” He tried to stand and couldn’t. Jean-Claude picked him up under the arms and raised him easily.
Fernando hit Hannah again. A casual slap that rocked her head back and rolled her eyes to white. “He must truly love you to fight