Лорел Гамильтон - Incubus Dreams

The first time I’d ever set eyes on Malcolm I’d thought him beautiful, but with even one vampire mark on me, I’d known differently. He prided himself on not using his vampire powers on us mere mortals, but he wasted enough to make himself seem handsome. That bit of mind-fucking he allowed himself. Vanity, all is vanity.

I’d also thought him one of the most powerful vampires in St. Louis once; now as he moved toward me, he seemed somehow diminished.

Or maybe I was just shielding too well now for his power to creep over me. Maybe.

He held out one of his big hands, which always seemed like they should belong on a beefier body. He held it out sort of in between Zerbrowski and me, as if he wasn’t sure who was in charge and didn’t want to offend anyone. The last time I’d seen Malcolm he hadn’t offered to shake hands. He’d known I wouldn’t take it.

Tonight, I took his hand, because Zerbrowski was only human, and whatever I was, only human didn’t cover it.

Malcolm hesitated in the middle of the handshake, as if I’d surprised him, but he recovered, smiling, his blue eyes glowing with pleasure at the opportunity to help the police. It was a lie. He didn’t want us here. He certainly didn’t want a murder involving his church. I felt nothing as our hands touched, except that he was cool, so he hadn’t fed recently. Other than that, I felt nothing, because I was shielding. I’d gotten really good at shielding lately. I realized that I’d been shielding almost as hard as I could since Jean-Claude, Richard, and I had bound ourselves together in that bed. It wasn’t just guilt that had made me afraid. So Malcolm’s hand was just a hand, cooler than human normal, but just a hand. Good.

I think we would have been fine if Malcolm hadn’t tried a little vampire power on me. Maybe I was shielding too much, hiding too much of what I was, or maybe he was simply that arrogant. Whatever, he pulsed a little power down his hand into mine.

I was dizzy for a second, and he got an image of the dead girl in the apartment before I pushed back. I was still a little fuzzy on the whole psychic thing. I tend to overcompensate when I feel attacked.

Yeah, I know, of course I overcompensated. It was so terribly me.

Malcolm stumbled back, and only my grip on his hand kept him on his feet. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in a littleO of surprise.

If he had just been some powerful vamp that tried to mind-fuck me, then I’d have taught him his lesson, and we’d have gone on about our investigation, but he was their master. I learned something in those few seconds, something I hadn’t guessed. Every human in the church had a mentor, and I’d assumed their vampire mentors were the ones that would bring them over when the time came. I knew the mentors took blood from their human trainees, but when push came to shove, Malcolm did those last three bites. Malcolm had brought over most of those hundreds, personally. Which meant when I shoved my power into him, it went through him like some huge sword. Through him and into the rest.

It was as if I could suddenly touch them, as if my hand shot through Malcolm’s palm, through him, and into their bodies. I felt their pulses, some hearts, some wrists, some necks. I felt the pulse of all those vampires, felt it sluggish and oh, so slow. So long, so long since some of them had fed as they were meant to feed. He didn’t let them hunt. He didn’t even let them go to the clubs and take willing food there. I saw an endless stream of church members garbed in white, like virgin sacrifices, offering their necks. Only taking a little blood, just enough blood, never enough to be satisfied, just enough not to die.

I saw the thick viscous punch in the parish hall, and I knew that it contained just a little blood from at least three different vamps.

Malcolm made sure of that. He didn’t want to accidentally blood oath them to someone else. But he never used his own blood, for fear of what it would mean.

Malcolm jerked away from me, but it was too late. I didn’t need him anymore.

I looked past him at a girl with long dark hair and glasses. It was the first vampire I’d ever seen with glasses. She grabbed her chest, and I knew why. Her heart was beating. But I saw other things.

I saw that once she’d been human here, and she’d knelt and given herself over, but it was a thing of chaste hands on her covered shoulders. No one had ever held her close, gripped her against their bodies, fed so powerfully that her body bucked against them, and sex was a pale thing compared to it.

“Stop it,” Malcolm said, “stop it, let them go!”

I turned slowly to look at him, and whatever he saw in my face made him take a step back. “You gave them to me,” I said, and my voice had a slow, honeyed feel to it. Power, such power. I’d learned only last night that vampires could act as a sort of witch’s familiar to me, I’d thought it needed to be a vampire that I had some connection with, but I was wrong. I could feed on them all, use them like some kind of giant undead battery.

Zerbrowski came up close to me, though even he shivered when he was close enough to whisper, “Anita, what’s happening?”

“He tried to use vampire powers to find out what I knew,” I said in that same slow, luxurious voice. It was as if my voice was something you could hold in your mouth and suck, like candy.

Jean-Claude’s trick, and the thought was enough. He was suddenly aware of me, and what was happening. But most of what was happening, he needed to know. He was the Master of the City, not Malcolm. He had tolerated the treaty that the old master had made before her death, but now… well, we’d see. But that was for another night. This night was about murder.

“Are you hurt?” Zerbrowski asked. He sounded like he didn’t think so, but knew something was wrong.

“No,” I said, “no, I’m not hurt.” I thought, if I can feel some of their emotions, if I can look into their faces and see memories, what else can I do?

I thought, Avery, Avery, where are you? I felt an answer, like a small play of wind against my face. I turned toward that wind, and the left-hand side of pews. “Avery, Avery, Avery.” I spoke his name, each time a little louder, not yelling, but with force in it.

A vampire stood up in the middle of a row. He was average height, with short brown hair, and a face that was handsome in a soft, unfinished way, as if he’d been barely legal when they killed him.

I held out my hand to him. “Avery, come to me, come to me, Avery, come to me.”

He started to push his way through the crowd of other people. A hand grabbed his wrist, a human woman shaking her head, saying, “Don’t go.”

He jerked away from her, and I heard his voice as if he’d been standing next to me. “I have to go, she’s calling me.” And he turned eyes to me that were lost in vampire light, burning like brown glass in the sun, but the look on his face was one I’d only seen on humans.

Humans that were bespelled by vampires. Humans that couldn’t say, no.

Malcolm’s rich voice filled the room. “Children, stop him, stop him from answering her call. She’s is the Master of the City’s whore. She will corrupt our Avery.”

I have to say the whore comment pissed me off. I turned to Malcolm, and I let my anger fill my voice. “I’llcorrupt them? My God, you’ve ruined them all. You stole their mortal lives, for what, Malcolm? For what? ” I yelled the last, and the words held heat like the wind from some great fire.

All those little vampires that were still held on the lines of my power cried out. I’d hurt them, and I hadn’t meant to. I tried to make it up to them, and the problem was that the anger was mine, but I wasn’t very good at comforting people. But Jean-Claude was, in a way.