Obsidian Butterfly - Laurell K. Hamilton [269]
The line of his jaw was pressed to my face. I could feel his mouth moving as he swallowed. I’d had vampires take blood without me being under their spell, so it had hurt. This didn’t hurt nearly as much. It was more like an overzealous lover with an ear fetish. Disturbing, but not really painful. His hand moved from my face to slide inside my bra. That I didn’t like.
“I thought you said you weren’t offering sex.”
He drew his hand out of my bra and drew back from my ear. His eyes were wide and unfocused and drowning in turquoise glow like the eyes of any vampire when its bloodlust is up. “Forgive me,” he said, “but it has been so very long since I felt life in my body.”
I thought I understood what he meant, but I was asking every question I could think of tonight. Anything to keep him talking. “What do you mean?”
He laughed and rolled on his side to prop himself up on his elbow again. He jabbed the needle into his finger again, and gasped. Blood welled up from the wound, crimson blood. He laughed again. “Your blood runs through my body, and I am mortal once more, with all the appetites of a mortal man.”
“You need blood to have blood pressure,” I said. “You’ve got your first hard-on in centuries. I get it.”
He looked down at me with drowning eyes. “You could have it.” He moved so that his body was pressed against mine, and I could feel him pressed against my jeans, eager, and ready.
I started to say my usual, no, then stopped. If my choices were being raped or being killed, when I thought that help was on the way . . . I debated, and I really don’t know what I would have said, because another of the skin-men ran in from behind us where the silent flayed ones waited.
I heard the man’s running footsteps and turned to watch him push his way through the flayed ones. He dropped to one knee in front of the Red Woman’s Husband. “My lord, armed strangers are approaching. The little brujo is with them, leading them this way.”
The Red Woman’s Husband looked at him. “Kill them. Delay them. When I have come into my power, it will be too late.”
The skin-men got weapons out of a chest and went running. I turned my head to watch the flayed ones trail after them. Only Tlaloci the priest stayed behind. It was just the three of us. Ramirez was coming. The police were coming. Surely, I could delay a few more minutes.
Fingers touched my face, moving me to look at him. “You could have been the first woman in centuries for me, but there is no time.” He began to lower his face towards me. “I am sorry that I must take you as an unwilling sacrifice because you have not harmed me or mine.”
I slipped my hand into my pocket. Fingers closed on the pen. I turned my head to the side so he couldn’t kiss me, but I was really looking to see where Tlaloci was in the room. He’d moved back to the altar. He’d thrown Paulina’s body off to one side like so much garbage. He was cleaning the altar, preparing I think for his god’s death.
The Red Woman’s Husband stroked my face, trying to turn me gently towards him. He whispered, breath warm against my face. “I will wear your heart on the necklace of tongues, so that all my followers may remember your sacrifice for all eternity.”
“How romantic,” I said. I started easing the pen out of my pocket.
“Turn to me, Anita. Do not make me hurt you.” His fingers closed on my chin and began to turn my face slowly towards his. I felt his strength in his fingers and knew he could crush my jaw with only a flexing of his hand. I couldn’t keep him from turning my face up to him. I couldn’t stop it, but I had the pen in my hand now. I had my finger on the button that would release the blade. I just had to make sure it was over his heart.
Gunfire sounded from outside the cave, and it sounded close, as if the entrance wasn’t that far away. Then there was a sound like a roaring, and I knew what it was because I’d heard it before.