Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [62]
“Are the words really important?” I asked.
I felt him shrug, where he sat on his silk-covered bed. “They are the words that masters of the city have spoken over their followers for thousands of years. I would not want to chance that the words are not part of the magic that will bind master to servant, by leaving them out.”
I nodded. “Did Richard hear this?”
“Non.”
“Tell him.” A moment after I said it, I was still cool and a little distant from what was happening, but I could hear it again, see it. I was sitting on my living room floor, not too far from the door, and Richard and Nathaniel were still trying to keep Damian on the floor. They were mostly succeeding, though it was hard to tell through the blood if there were any new wounds. They were all three covered in blood.
I stared down at myself and realized that the front of my body was covered in it, too. I didn’t remember getting that messy. For a moment I wondered if I’d done something that I didn’t remember, but I pushed the thought away. Time later for too much truth. Survive, keep moving, worry about what you did later. Yeah, that’s the ticket. But after a peek inside Damian’s mind, a ticket to the situational sociopath express didn’t look half bad. I knew now, for dead certain, that there were worse things.
17
DAMIAN BUCKED SO hard that he threw Nathaniel to one side. Richard’s weight alone wasn’t enough. Damian sat up, and Richard rolled off of him to keep the vampire from sinking fangs into him again.
I waved my arms and yelled, “Damian, here, I’m here!” I don’t think it was his name that attracted his attention, I think it was the movement. I’d been in his mind, I knew he was past words.
He rushed toward me, so fast he was a blur of white and red, and his eyes like green streaks. Nathaniel ran for him. I yelled, “No, let him come!”
Richard hesitated still on the floor but with his hand outstretched toward the vampire’s legs. They could have caught him again, but why? It was my blood he needed. I was calm, peaceful, it was like that quiet place I went when I killed. No fear. Nothing. I watched the vampire come at me like a comet streaking across the heavens, something elemental and otherworldly.
To say he smashed into me didn’t come close to the impact of flesh on flesh. I was on the floor breathless, sightless, and only years of training on how to fall kept me from smacking my head against the floor, or breaking a bone. I caught my breath in time to scream. Damian plunged his mouth low in my neck, just above the shoulder. It had been a long time since I’d been vampire bit without head games or sex. It hurt.
A wereleopard appeared over us, standing on crooked, almost-human legs. He was yellow and pale gold and white, with beautiful black rosettes scattered over a body that was more than a foot taller than he was in human form. The color told me it was Gregory, because Nathaniel was black in leopard form. Gregory’s chest was broader, his arms were longer, muscled, and tipped with talons like frightening knives. The face was leopard, but with something strangely different around the muzzle and the neck. He towered over us, snarling and reaching down for the vampire’s pale back. He was going to pull Damian off of me, like Richard had pushed the vampire off of himself.
I wrapped my arms around Damian’s shoulders and back, got one leg free to wrap around his waist. I held him to me and said, “No, Gregory!” If he pulled him off I’d end up hurt as bad as Richard. “You’ll tear me up worse.”
The leopardman hesitated, growling. He said in that thick voice they all had in half-human form, “He’s hurting you.”
Damian snuggled his mouth deeper into my flesh, forced a sound that was not happy out of my mouth. But I said, in a breathy voice, “When I need your help, I’ll ask for it.”
I could tell Gregory was puzzled even through the fur. I wasn’t always good at facial expressions once my friends went furry. But this one even I could read.
“Damian,” I said, my voice was soft. I wanted to see that he was in there before I said