Cerulean Sins - Laurell K. Hamilton [110]
Had Mommy Dearest tried to kill me? Or had it been accidental—or incidental? She wouldn’t have meant to kill me, but she might have done it by accident. And I’d touched enough of her thinking to know it wouldn’t bother her. She wouldn’t be sorry, she would feel no guilt. She didn’t think like a person, or rather she didn’t think like a nice, normal, civilized human. She thought like a sociopath—no empathy, no sympathy, no guilt, no compassion. In a strange way, that must be a very peaceful existence. Did you need more emotions than she possessed to be lonely? I’d think so, but I really didn’t know. Lonely was not a word I would have applied to her. If you didn’t understand the need for friendship or love, could you be lonely? I shrugged and shook my head.
“What is it?” Nathaniel asked.
“If you don’t feel love or friendship, can you be lonely?”
He raised eyebrows at me. “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
“We’ve all just brushed up against the Mother of all Vampires, and she’s more like the Mother of All Sociopaths. Human beings are rarely pure sociopaths. It’s more like they’re missing a piece here and there. True, pure sociopathy is really pretty rare, but Mommy Dearest qualifies, I think.”
“It doesn’t matter if she’s lonely,” Caleb said.
I glanced back at him. His brown eyes were very large, and underneath his fading tan he was pale. I sniffed the air before I could think, and the car was a playground of scents; the sweet musk of wolf, the clean vanilla of Nathaniel, and Caleb. Caleb smelled . . . young. I wasn’t sure how to explain it but it was as if I could smell how tender his meat would be, how fresh his blood. He smelled clean, the scent of some lightly perfumed soap coated his skin, but underneath was another scent. Bitter and sweet all at the same time, the way blood is salty and sweet at the same time.
I turned as far as the seat belt would allow and said, “You smell good, Caleb, all tender and scared.”
He was the true predator, not me, but the look he flashed me was all prey—huge eyes, face soft, lips opened just a breath. I watched his pulse beat against the skin of his neck.
I had an urge to crawl into the backseat and run my tongue over that frantic pulse, set teeth into that tender flesh, and set that pulse point free.
I had this image of Caleb’s pulse like a piece of hard candy that would come free all in one piece and be sucked and rolled around in my mouth. I knew it wasn’t like that. I knew that if I bit down the pulse would be destroyed, that it would die in a spill of red blood, but the candy imagery stayed with me, and even the thought of blood spraying in my mouth didn’t seem terrible.
I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see Caleb’s neck beating and concentrated on my own breathing. But with every breath I drew in more of that bitter sweetness, the taste of fear. I could almost taste his flesh in my mouth.
“What’s wrong with me?” I asked that out loud. “I want to tear Caleb’s pulse out of his throat. It’s too early for Jean-Claude to be awake. Besides I don’t usually want blood. Or not only blood.”
“It’s close to full moon,” Nathaniel said. “It’s one of the reasons Jason lost enough control to change all over your seats.”
I opened my eyes, turned my face to look at him, and away from Caleb’s fear. “Belle tried to get me to feed off Caleb, but she couldn’t. So why suddenly does he smell tasty?”
Nathaniel had finally found another exit back onto 44. He eased in behind a large yellow car that needed a major paint job, or maybe was in the middle of getting one, because half of it was covered in gray primer. I caught movement in the rearview mirror. It was the blue Jeep. It was at the end of the narrow street with cars on either side. It had just cleared the corner, and seen us, and now it was hanging back, hoping, I think, that we hadn’t seen it.
“Shit,” I said.
“What?” Nathaniel asked.
“That damned Jeep is at the end of the street. Nobody look back.” Everyone stopped themselves in mid-motion except for Jason. He hadn’t even tried