Guilty Pleasures - Laurell K. Hamilton [99]
“I do,” she said.
Burchard knelt in front of her, face about chest level. Nikolaos looked over his head at me. “This,” she said, “is the fourth mark.” Her hands went to the small pearl buttons that decorated the front of the white dress. She spread the cloth wide, baring small breasts. They were a child’s breasts, small and half-formed. She drew a fingernail beside her left breast. The skin opened like earth behind a plow, spilling blood in a red line down her chest and stomach.
I could not see Burchard’s face as he leaned forward. His hands slid around her waist. His face buried between her breasts. She tensed, back arching. Soft, sucking sounds filled the room’s stillness.
I looked away, staring at anything but them, as if I had found them having sex but couldn’t leave. Valentine was staring at me. I stared back. He tipped an imaginary hat at me and flashed fangs. I ignored him.
Burchard was sitting beside the chair, half-leaning against it. His face was slack and flushed, his chest rising and falling in deep gasps. He wiped blood from his mouth with a shaking hand. Nikolaos sat very still, head back, eyes closed. Perhaps sex wasn’t such a bad analogy after all.
Nikolaos spoke with her eyes closed, head thrown back, voice thick. “Your friend, Willie, is back in a coffin. He felt sorry for Phillip. We will have to cure him of such instincts.”
She raised her head abruptly, eyes bright, almost glittering, as if they had a light all their own. “Can you see my scar today?”
I shook my head. She was the beautiful child, complete and whole. No imperfections. “You look perfect again, why?”
“Because I am expending energy to make it so. I am having to work at it.” Her voice was low and warm, a building heat like thunderstorms in the distance.
The hair at the back of my neck crawled. Something bad was about to happen.
“Jean-Claude has his followers, Anita. If I kill him, they will make him a martyr. But if I prove him weak, powerless, they just fall away and follow me, or follow no one.”
She stood, dress buttoned to her neck once more. Her cotton-white hair seemed to move as if a wind stirred it, but there was no wind. “I will destroy something Jean-Claude has given his protection to.”
How fast could I get to the knife on my leg? And what good would it do me?
“I will prove to all that Jean-Claude can protect nothing. I am master of all.”
Egocentric bitch. Winter grabbed my arm before I could do anything. Too busy watching the vampires to notice the humans.
“Go,” she said. “Kill him.”
Aubrey and Valentine stood away from the wall and bowed. Then they were gone, as if they had vanished. I turned to Nikolaos.
She smiled. “Yes, I clouded your mind, and you did not see them go.”
“Where are they going?” My stomach was tight. I think I already knew the answer.
“Jean-Claude has given Phillip his protection; thus he must die.”
“No.”
Nikolaos smiled. “Oh, but yes.”
A scream ripped through the hallway. A man’s scream. Phillip’s scream.
“No!” I half-fell to my knees; only Winter’s hand kept me from falling to the floor. I pretended to faint, sagging in his grip. He released me. I grabbed the knife from its ankle sheath. Winter and I were close to the hallway, far away from Nikolaos and her human. Maybe far enough.
Winter was staring at her as if waiting for orders. I came up off the ground and drove the knife into his groin. The knife sank in, and blood poured out as I drew the blade free and raced for the hallway.
I was at the door when the first trickle of wind oozed down my back. I didn’t look back. I opened the door.
Phillip sagged in the chains. Blood poured in a bright red flood down his chest. It splattered onto the floor, like rain. Torchlight glittered on the wet bone of his spine. Someone had ripped his throat out.
I staggered against the wall as if someone had hit me. I couldn’t get enough air. Someone kept whispering, “Oh, God, oh, God,” over and over, and it was me. I walked down the steps with my back pressed against the wall. I couldn’t take my eyes from him.