Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [304]
“Are you hurt?” Zerbrowski asked. He sounded like he didn’t think so, but knew something was wrong.
“No,” I said, “no, I’m not hurt.” I thought, if I can feel some of their emotions, if I can look into their faces and see memories, what else can I do?
I thought, Avery, Avery, where are you? I felt an answer, like a small play of wind against my face. I turned toward that wind, and the left-hand side of pews. “Avery, Avery, Avery.” I spoke his name, each time a little louder, not yelling, but with force in it.
A vampire stood up in the middle of a row. He was average height, with short brown hair, and a face that was handsome in a soft, unfinished way, as if he’d been barely legal when they killed him.
I held out my hand to him. “Avery, come to me, come to me, Avery, come to me.”
He started to push his way through the crowd of other people. A hand grabbed his wrist, a human woman shaking her head, saying, “Don’t go.”
He jerked away from her, and I heard his voice as if he’d been standing next to me. “I have to go, she’s calling me.” And he turned eyes to me that were lost in vampire light, burning like brown glass in the sun, but the look on his face was one I’d only seen on humans. Humans that were bespelled by vampires. Humans that couldn’t say, no.
Malcolm’s rich voice filled the room. “Children, stop him, stop him from answering her call. She’s is the Master of the City’s whore. She will corrupt our Avery.”
I have to say the whore comment pissed me off. I turned to Malcolm, and I let my anger fill my voice. “I’ll corrupt them? My God, you’ve ruined them all. You stole their mortal lives, for what, Malcolm? For what?” I yelled the last, and the words held heat like the wind from some great fire.
All those little vampires that were still held on the lines of my power cried out. I’d hurt them, and I hadn’t meant to. I tried to make it up to them, and the problem was that the anger was mine, but I wasn’t very good at comforting people. But Jean-Claude was, in a way. It was that old, old problem of his and his line of vampires. If the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems begin to look like nails. If the only tools you have are seduction and terror, and you’re trying to be nice . . . well, there you go.
65
I COULD TASTE their pulses on my tongue. Not just one, but hundreds, as if I’d suddenly had a truckload of candy shoved in my mouth. Candy that was hard and sweet and melted slow across my tongue, but it wasn’t just cherry, or grape, or root beer. It was like a thousand different flavors filled my mouth, so that instead of being delicious, it was overwhelming.
I couldn’t pick one flavor, one pulse to follow. I literally couldn’t pick just one, because I couldn’t sort them out. I was choking on too many choices. Until I could choose one thread to follow, I couldn’t swallow any of them. I collapsed to my knees, drowning in a thousand different scents, different skins. I could smell their skin, that wonderful smell at the side of the neck where the skin smells sweetest when you’re in love. But it was a different scent for each neck: aftershave, perfume, cologne, soap, sweat. It was as if I’d walked up to each of them and put my face just above their skin—close enough to kiss—and breathed in the scent of them.
Zerbrowski was beside me, his gun out, but not pointed at anyone, sort of ceilingward. “Anita, what’s wrong? Did he hurt you?”
Who, I thought? Who was he? There were so many “hes.” Which one did he mean?
I tried to swallow past all those pulses in my mouth, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t get this bite down. It was too much.
Jean-Claude’s voice was in my head. “Ma petite, you must choose.”
I managed to think, “Can’t.”
“Who did you go there to find?” he asked.
Who did I go there to find? That was a good question. Who? It all went back to who.
Zerbrowski