The Killing Dance - Laurell K. Hamilton [131]
I stared at the standing dead. They looked back. One of the zombies was almost intact. Grey skin clung to the bones, more like clay than flesh. One blue eye stared at me. The other eye had shriveled like a raisin. It reminded me of what had happened to Sabin’s eye.
It would make more sense to say I touched the eye and healed it. Or that I thought at it and smoothed the flesh like clay. It wasn’t like that. I stared at the zombie. I touched that spark inside me that allowed me to raise the dead. I drew that part of me outward, coaxed it like feeding a small flame, and threw it outward into that one zombie. I whispered, “Live, live.”
I’d watched it before, but it never ceased to amaze me. The flesh filled out, plumping, smoothing. A warm flesh tone spread like heat across the grey skin. The dry, strawlike hair grew and curled, brown and soft. The dead eye blew up like a small balloon, filling the socket. Two good eyes looked back at me. Even the tattered clothing mended itself. He wore a vest with a gold watch chain. His clothes were a hundred years or more out of date.
“I am most impressed,” Dominic said. “If you changed his clothes, he could pass for human.”
I nodded. “I make great zombies, but that won’t help your master.”
“Call one of the vampires from the coffin room.”
“Why?” I asked.
Dominic drew a small silver knife from a sheath at his back. I hadn’t known he had a weapon. Careless of me.
“What are you going to do with that?” Jean-Claude asked.
“With your permission, I will cut one of the vampires and ask Anita to heal the wound.”
Jean-Claude considered the request, then nodded. “A small cut.”
Dominic bowed. “Of course.”
The vamps could heal a small cut on their own eventually. If I couldn’t heal it, no harm done. Though I wasn’t sure the vampires would agree with me.
“Anita,” Dominic said.
I called, “Damian, come to me.”
Jean-Claude raised his eyebrows at my choice, I think. If he expected me to call Willie, he didn’t understand. Willie was my friend. Even dead, I didn’t want to see him cut up.
Damian had tried to mind-rape a woman tonight at the club. Let him get cut up just a little.
Damian walked in, staring until he found me. His face was still blank and empty. Emptier than sleep, empty as only death can make it.
“Damian, stop.”
The vampire stopped. His eyes were the greenest I’d ever seen. Greener than Catherine’s, more cat than human.
Dominic stopped in front of Damian. He stared at the vampire. He laid the silver blade against the pale cheek and pulled the point downward, sharply.
Blood flowed down that perfect paleness in a thin crimson wash. The vampire never reacted, not even to blink.
“Anita,” Dominic said.
I stared at Damian, no, Damian’s shell. I flung power at him, into him. I willed him to live. That was the word I whispered to him.
The blood slowed, then stopped. The cut knit together seamlessly. It was . . . easy.
Dominic wiped the blood away with a handkerchief he’d drawn from his jacket pocket. Damian’s pale cheek was flawless once more.
It was Cassandra who said it first, “She could heal Sabin.”
Dominic nodded. “She just might.” He turned to me with a look of triumph, elation. “You would need the power of your triumvirate to raise Sabin during his daylight slumber, but once raised, I think you could heal him.”
“A shallow cut is one thing,” I said. “Sabin is a . . . mess.”
“Will you try?”
“If we can put these three vamps back unharmed, yeah, I’ll try.”
“Tomorrow.”
I nodded. “Why not?”
“I cannot wait to tell Sabin what I have seen