Cerulean Sins - Laurell K. Hamilton [173]
“Are you afraid that one touch and I will take her from you?”
“No,” Jean-Claude said, “but I know more of what your touch can do, Belle Morte, and I am not sure that Anita would care for it.”
He’d used my real name, he almost never did that. Perhaps because Belle was using my nickname, he didn’t want to.
Her anger burned the air in front of us, like a real fire, stealing the oxygen from the lungs, making it impossible to breathe, unless you took that heat into your lungs. Then they would sear, and you would die.
The heat filled her words, so that I half expected them to be burned into the very air. “Did I ask if she would care to be touched?”
“No,” Jean-Claude said, his voice was very still, and I felt him sinking away, even with his arms wrapped around me, he was sinking away, folding into that quietness that he went to when he hid from everything. I had a glimpse of that quiet place, and it was quieter than the place I went when I killed. There wasn’t even static there, only complete silence.
The emptiness filled with the smell of roses, sweet, so sweet, cloying, choking. I gasped, and all I could taste was roses. Jean-Claude caught me, or I would have fallen. The perfume of roses filled my nose, my mouth, my throat. I couldn’t swallow past it, couldn’t breathe anything but perfume. I would have screamed, but I had no air.
I heard Jean-Claude yelling, “Stop this!”
Belle laughed, and even choking to death, the sound rode through my body like a knowledgeable hand.
A hand grabbed mine, and a breath of air clawed its way down my throat, fighting its way through Belle’s power. Again if I’d had enough air, I’d have screamed. Micah’s face hovered over mine. Micah’s hand in mine.
“Non, mon chat, you are mine, as is she.” Belle knelt beside us, reaching out to touch Micah’s face.
Jean-Claude moved us all backwards, so that we collapsed on the floor at her knees, but we were out of reach again, barely. But barely was good right then.
Belle’s eyes burned with honey fire, and the nails of her hand bled copper flames on the air, as she reached for Micah. Jean-Claude tried to help us crawl away, but we’d fallen in a heap of long skirts, long coats. Death by fashion.
Belle touched Micah’s face, trailed those glowing claws down his cheek. The smell of roses closed over my head like sweet poisoned water, and I was drowning again.
Another hand on me, and this touch had nothing warm in it, it didn’t call the ardeur, it didn’t call my beast, it called something colder and more certain of itself. My necromancy came welling up and it burst over my skin, my body, and I stared up into Belle’s burning eyes, and I could breathe. My throat was sore as hell, but I could breathe.
I moved my eyes enough to see Damian holding my other hand. His eyes were wide, and I could feel his fear, but he was there, kneeling beside me, facing the power that was Belle Morte.
Belle drew Micah’s face towards hers. Her skin seemed to be made up of white light, black flame hair, the glittering molten metal of fingertips and eyes. Her lips glowed like a slash of fresh blood.
Micah’s hand convulsed in mine, so strong it hurt, and the pain helped, made my thoughts clearer, harder-edged. He made a small sound in his throat as Belle pressed her mouth to his. I knew he didn’t want to touch her, and I also knew he couldn’t refuse her.
But he was mine. Micah was mine, not hers. Mine. I sat up with Micah on one hand and Damian on the other, the warm and the cold, the live and the dead, the passion and the logic. Jean-Claude’s hands were still on my nearly bare shoulders. He strengthened me, as I strengthened him, but this power was mine, not his. The leopards weren’t his to call. They were mine.
I called that part of me that the leopards touched and realized for the first time that it wasn’t tied to Richard, or even really Jean-Claude. The leopards were mine, and Belle’s.
I sat up with my face so close to hers that the glow of her fire caressed my face, and the pleasure of that light touch sent a wave of shivers over my