Hit List - Laurell K. Hamilton [125]
I touched the men, and they touched me, warm flesh to warm flesh, and just the feel of their hands on me threw me back to making love to them both. I had images of the sheets wrapped around Ethan, his face looking up at me as he licked; Domino pinning me to the bed, me looking back over my shoulder to see his body bow backward with that one last thrust. She tried to remember sex, and there were memories, but it had been too long and she didn’t truly understand it. She was like a sex symbol who had been told what it is to be sexy and to have sex, but not believing in her own sex appeal, and not really liking sex; it was an empty shell, pretend. There was nothing pretend about me. It wasn’t about being the prettiest, or the best, it was about enjoying it. It was about loving the men who were with you, while they were with you, and valuing every last one of them. It was, in the end, about love. The love of a lover, of friends, and of partners, of people that I never wanted to lose, and wanted to wake up beside every damn day. It was about home. Home wasn’t a place, or a building, or a tropical night full of flowers and rain. Love made home not out of boards and walls and furniture, but of hands to hold, and smiles to share, and the warmth of that body cuddled around you in the dark. I swam in the darkness of the ocean on a raft of hands, and bodies, and giving a damn what happened to them all.
We let her pour her scary, lonely, insane dark into us, and we drank it down with our comforting hands, our bodies that had made us all home, and the craziness of having too many people, too much going on, but what would we give up, who would we give up, and the answer, in the end, was not a single thing. The golden tigers were the power of the sun to bring life to the earth made flesh. They’d been created to chase back the darkness and remind us all that sometimes beauty and life triumph even on the darkest night.
When she realized that she couldn’t win, she tried to pull out of the vampire’s body. She tried to leave him to die alone, but she couldn’t back up, we wouldn’t let her. She wanted to fill us up with her power, and we let her.
Her voice in my head held the first note of panic, as she said, “If you take my power into you, you will be as I am.”
“I’m not like you,” I thought.
“You will be.”
The power felt so good, and yet I knew I was draining the life out of two people, evil vampires, but still people. I prayed, not for help to do it, but that the power wouldn’t corrupt me. That drinking in her darkness wouldn’t make me evil, too.
Using the most evil power I had, I prayed, and I didn’t burst into flames, and no one’s holy object glowed. I ate the darkness that existed before God thought light was a good idea, and he was okay with that; he created the darkness, too. He actually liked both just fine.
41
EDWARD AND THE other marshals had come to the rescue in time to free Ethan to help me and give me Domino at my back. What would have happened if they hadn’t showed up in time? It doesn’t matter, they were there, and it worked. Sometimes that’s all you’ve got; enjoy the win, don’t worry about what-ifs.
The Harlequin had left Olaf and Nicky for dead, but they’d heard Edward and the others coming, so they hadn’t had time to make sure of the deaths. Nicky healed and is back at my side. Olaf healed, too, but he, like Karlton who helped Edward ride to our rescue, didn’t pass his blood test. I wish they had killed him, because come next full moon Olaf is going to be a werelion. He vanished from the hospital. No one seems to know where he is, or what he