Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [60]
Richard’s arm was beginning to shake and collapse at the elbow. I pulled backward, and felt Damian’s windpipe begin to give. I was going to crush his neck before I broke his spine. I looked past us and found Nathaniel bent over Gregory at the foot of the stairs. Gregory wasn’t moving, but one problem at a time. I screamed, “Nathaniel!”
He turned, and there was blood all over the front of his body. I didn’t think most of it was his. His face looked surprised as if he had lost track of our fight, but he came to me. He grabbed Damian’s arm, and it was as if he’d given the vampire another target. Damian lept off of Richard and was suddenly on top of Nathaniel. I was beginning to feel positively useless. If I couldn’t choke him, wasn’t heavy enough to slow him down, wasn’t willing to break his neck, I was useless. I used what weight I had to stagger him, throw him off balance so that Nathaniel had time to get his arms up and a leg into Damian’s stomach. If Nathaniel had known how to fight, he’d have been able to do more, but at the moment just keeping the vampire from biting him was good.
Jean-Claude’s voice, soft, in my head, “You have done something to damage the bond between yourself and Damian. You must reopen it, ma petite.”
“A little busy right now,” I said.
Richard wrapped his one arm around Damian’s waist and helped me pull him off of Nathaniel. The three of us rode him down to the floor. I changed my grip on his neck to a choke hold that wouldn’t have worked at all, if Nathaniel hadn’t been pressing on his shoulder and chest and Richard sitting on the rest of him. My body was curled around his neck, using my own weight as an anchor to make it harder for him to rise and strike. But I’d tried this hold on large human males in judo class before, and it wasn’t effective, not if they had the upper body strength to sit up with me dangling from their neck. I did it now, only to control his head, his mouth, those fangs, and because I had Richard and Nathaniel to help me.
He fought us, but three on one, we had some control. Not much, but some. My voice came breathy, but clear, “What do you mean I’ve damaged the bond between Damian and me?”
“Who are you talking to?” Nathaniel asked, through gritted teeth.
“Jean-Claude,” Richard answered for me.
“Can you hear him, too?” I asked.
“Sometimes.”
I wanted to ask, “like now?” but Jean-Claude was answering me. “You have put up shields specifically against Damian, why?”
“He woke up in a flood of sunlight. It seemed to terrify him. He was so afraid. The fear was choking Nathaniel and me.”
“Both you and Nathaniel?” Jean-Claude asked. I could see him lying on the white silk sheets, his black hair spread out like a dark dream across the pillow. One hand idly touching Asher’s bare back, the way you’d drum your fingers on a desk or pet a dog, if you were thinking about other things.
“Yes, both of us.”
“I asked you when I woke, what had you done. Now, I may know.”
For once I was at least up to speed on the metaphysical disasters in my life. I got to say, “We know already.”
“Know what, ma petite?”
Damian gave a particularly violent movement, bucking me up off the floor, slamming me back down only after I felt, rather than saw the other two men, force him back down. I thought it, because I didn’t have breath to speak at the moment, That we’re a triumverate.
“I heard that,” Richard said, and there was a sullen note under his breathless exertion as if he’d thought I’d only thought it to keep it from him, or maybe I was just projecting. I was always willing to believe that Richard was being