Лорел Гамильтон - Incubus Dreams

There was water seeping out from under the door, the robe under my knees was wet with it. What I thought had been the shower running was the bathtub. I could hear the difference now. Someone had flooded the bathtub. What the hell was going on?

I had the door flat against the wall now, and there was no one to be seen. There was just the bathtub with water spilling over its sides and the water still rushing out of the faucet at full blast. The lower part of my legs were soaked. It was cold, so cold. Like they’d turned on only the cold. Who took a bath in only cold water?

There was just the sink area, a partial wall, the stool, and the bathtub/ shower. The room was small enough that I could see it all in one glance. There was no place to hide. Was this joke? Had someone crept in while we slept, plugged the bathtub, and turned on the water?

Did they think we’d notice before it flooded? Did they care? Stupid joke.

I got to my feet and started wading through the water. It was ankle deep, and that seemed wrong. I mean, it shouldn’t be that deep.

The hem of the robe caught in the water, pulled in the current, like I was wading through a stream. It was like ice, so cold, so very cold.

I was standing over the bathtub now, and the water was cloudy. I couldn’t see to the bottom of the tub, and that was wrong. It wasn’t that deep. It was a white tub, and this was clear water. Why couldn’t I see through it?

I kept the gun up, but reached to turn off the water. I half-expected something to grab my hand, but it didn’t. The faucet just turned off, and the silence that followed was deafening. Small noises now, water sloshing, sliding around the room. The water cleared like a glass of water from a tap when there’s too many minerals in the water. That milky stuff settling to the bottom, and there was something in the water. Something swimming out of the murk, coming into focus.

A pale hand, a spill of red hair, and I was staring down into Damian’s face. His eyes were wide and dead, but it was daylight. He was dead. He didn’t need to breathe. He could be under water. It wouldn’t hurt him. But logic didn’t help. Seeing him floating there, I did what I would have done if he’d been human-I reached for him.

I dropped the gun to the floor and plunged my hands into the tub.

I touched him, grabbed handfuls of his shirt, and I started to pull him up, up through the water, but it was as if the water was heavier than it should have been. So heavy and so cold. He was almost at the top, almost when I realized it wasn’t water, it was ice. He was frozen in a huge block of ice, and my arms were frozen with him, trapped with him.

“Anita, Anita,” Nathaniel’s voice, his hand on my shoulder, and I woke to Jason’s bedroom. My pulse was choking me. I sat up and stared around. The bathroom door was open a crack but there was no sound of water. Dream, just a dream.

I started to shiver. Except that I was still freezing. So cold, so very cold. “I dreamed, dreamed of Damian. He was so cold, in ice.”

“Your skin is like ice,” Nathaniel said.

Jason was sitting up, his short blond hair tousled and his eyes heavy with sleep. “What’s wrong?”

Nathaniel wrapped his arms around me, rubbing his hands against my cold arms. “When did you eat last, Anita?”

“With you, the drive-up.”

“That was over twelve hours ago.” He looked at Jason. “She needs food now.”

Jason didn’t ask questions, just crawled over the bed and dropped to his knees beside the mini fridge that acted as one of his bedside tables. He pulled out a bowl of fruit-apples, bananas.

“I don’t like cold fruit,” I said.

“Anita, you dreamed about Damian because you’re eating his energy.

Eat a banana,” Nathaniel said.

I suddenly knew he was right. The cold was making me stupid. Jason handed me the fruit. But Nathaniel helped me peel it, because the shivering had gotten worse, and I couldn’t peel it. Shit.

Nathaniel fed it to me in pieces, while my teeth started to chatter. When I’d managed to get it down, the shivering was a little less, but not a lot. “Meat, protein,” Nathaniel said.

Jason lifted out a carton of Chinese takeout, but shook his head without offering it. “Too old.” He got out a flat foam container and handed it up. “Fajita fixings from El Maguey, from yesterday.”

Nathaniel opened it, lifted out a piece of the beef with his fingers, and held it close to my mouth. “Eat.”

I ate, and the meat was unbelievably good, even cold. The meat seemed to fill up more than just my stomach. I picked through the grilled onions and peppers, and ate the beef. When my skin wasn’t cold to the touch, and I’d stopped shivering, I slowed down, then shook my head. “I can’t eat any more.”

“You’ve eaten most of the meat,” Jason said. He was kneeling beside the bed, his arms propped on it, his chin resting on his arms.

“Did I hear Nathaniel say that you were eating Damian’s energy?”

I nodded.

“Jean-Claude said that you’d formed a second triumvirate with Nathaniel and Damian.”

“Apparently,” I said.

“I take it there’s a learning curve,” he said.

“You could say that. This is the second time in less than twenty-four hours that I’ve almost killed Damian.”

Jason’s eyes went wide. “How?”

“She’s trying to do what she always does,” Nathaniel said, handing the now closed box to Jason. “Barely eat, barely sleep, not do anything to take care of herself except exercise.”

“I can’t tell the cops, oh, sorry, I need a nap,” I said.

“No, but I told you that you needed to eat more. I told you that you were acting more like a lycanthrope than a vampire. All you had to do was go through another drive-up. There are all-night drive-ups.”

I didn’t like his tone. “I didn’t think of it. I just wanted to get to sleep. I was so tired I was nauseous.”

“Or maybe you were nauseous because your energy was bottoming,”

Nathaniel said, and he was angry, “but you didn’t think of that did you?”

“No, I didn’t. Happy?”

“No,” he said, “because once Damian’s dead, who do you think you’ll start draining next?” He was so angry that his eyes had darkened, so they were almost purple.

I started to be angry back, because the nightmare had scared me, and endangering Damian again had scared me. I felt stupid that I hadn’t thought to eat, when Nathaniel had explained it to me. I’d just been so tired. Come to think of it, I’d been more tired than I should have been, hadn’t I? I wanted to be angry at him, because it was my fault. I hate it when it’s my fault. I hate being wrong, especially this wrong.

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry. I am.”

“You’re not going to argue?” Jason asked.

“Why argue when I’ll lose? I was careless. It’s not just the triumvirate, or the new one, it’s theardeur. I’ve finally got it conquered, sort of.”

“What does ’sort of mean?” he asked, and came up to sit on the edge of the bed. He was nude. He’d been nude the whole time. I just really hadn’t noticed. I noticed now, and gave him very good eye contact.

“It means that theardeur doesn’t rise on its own anymore.”

“That’s a good thing, right?” Jason said, he was studying my face like he was puzzled by my expression.

“That’s the good news,” I said, “the bad news is that theardeur doesn’t rise, but it still needs to be fed. It won’t remind me, it’s time to be fed. That’s what happened with Damian earlier. I hadn’t fed theardeur in over twelve hours, a lot over, but it hadn’t raised either.”

“So you didn’t feed it,” Nathaniel said, softly.

“Exactly,” I said.