Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [188]
“Have you fed tonight?” Requiem asked. His voice brought me back to the dark and how far we still had to walk. It seemed like a long way, but it wasn’t that far, it just wasn’t.
“Yeah, I had dinner.”
He shook his head. “That is not what I meant.”
I thought about it for a second, or two, then said, “You mean like the ardeur?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, I fed off of you and Byron.”
“No,” he said, “you were feeding for Jean-Claude. He got that energy.”
“I guess so. But if the ardeur needs feeding it just flares up, and I have to feed.” I put my hand on his arm, because my legs were feeling wobbly.
“Perhaps you have gained more control over it?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you can go without feeding it, until you choose to feed it.”
I stopped walking and looked up at him. “What?”
“You have many of the symptoms of a vampire that has not fed enough. The blood lust rules us at first, but once we are masters, then we can go without feeding if we must. We can choose to feed.”
“But I feel like shit.”
“The choice comes with a price,” he said.
“I’m confused,” I said.
“I think it took a great deal more energy from you than it should have to raise this zombie and fight what the Ulfric did by accident. I think it took energy to defeat Primo. To feed on Byron and myself. I think that took not just physical energy, but mental, as well. You are not a creature of casual lusts, and I think it cost you more than you will admit to feed your master tonight.”
I would have argued the master part, but it was becoming a case of the lady protesting too much. “So what do I do?”
“You need to feed,” he said simply.
I gave him a look.
He smiled and raised a hand as if to prove he was innocent. “It does not have to be me, or even Graham. It does not have to be this moment, but it must be soon, Anita. Surely, you feel that.”
I just stood there and stared at him. I’d wished for control of the ardeur for so long, and now I had it, sort of. I didn’t have to feed unless I wanted to, but if I waited too long, I’d get sick. I shook my head. “I thought control of the ardeur meant you could just skip it and not feed it at all.”
“Who told you that?”
I started to say, Jean-Claude, then stopped. What had he said about the ardeur? That I’d gain control of it. That I’d learn how to feed from a distance. Had he ever promised that it would go away? No, he hadn’t. I’d just wanted control to mean it would be gone. No one had promised that. No one. Shit.
“No one,” I said, “I just heard it that way. I wanted the ardeur to be gone. I wanted it to go away, so I just kept thinking that’s what it would mean.”
“I am sorry to be the one to tell you that it is not so.”
I looked at his face, studied it. “You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
“I do not carry the ardeur. To hold the complete ardeur as our dark mistress does is very rare, even among her own bloodline.”
“Then how do you know that that’s what’s happening to me?”
“Logic,” he said, “and just because I do not carry it, does not mean I have not seen one who did.”
“Who?’
“Ligeia.” He turned away as he said the name so I couldn’t see his face.
“I don’t know the name, at least not as a vamp.”
“It does not matter, for she is dead.”
I touched his face. “What happened?” I asked.
He looked at me, but his face held that distance that the old ones have when they don’t want you to know what they’re thinking. “Belle Morte killed her.”
“Why do I feel like I should say I’m sorry for asking?”
He gave me the smallest of smiles. “Because you are not insensitive.”
That one comment let me know that Ligeia’s death meant a lot more to him than just another cruel death. She’d meant something to him, and it was none of my business.
“The customers are getting restless,” Graham called back to us. He was standing a little ahead of us with my bag in his hands. He’d given us privacy like a good bodyguard.
I looked past him and saw one of the lawyers waving at us. Restless indeed.
“Even if I was willing, I don’t think they’d wait while we went back to the car to