Лорел Гамильтон - Incubus Dreams

I told him.

He was calm, asking questions, getting details, in his so matter-of-fact voice. Over the phone without his body posture to go by, or his face, and with him shielding like a son of a bitch, I couldn’t tell if he were truly calm, or not.

Finally, he said, “That is most interesting.”

“Don’t go all Mr. Spock on me. What do you mean that’s interesting?”

“I mean that it is interesting, ma petite. Damian is not of Belle’s line, and, thus, it should not have happened. Moreover he is a millennium old, and as you so succinctly put it, he should have been what he was, and there would be no changing it, not at this late date.”

“But it happened,” I said.

“May I speak with Damian?”

“I guess so.” I turned and held the phone out. “Jean-Claude would like to speak to you directly.”

Damian got up slowly, as if he were stiff or the floor wasn’t quite even. The floor was even, it was everything else that had gotten a little less steady. He took the phone and said, “Yes?” And from that moment on, they stopped speaking English. Surprisingly it wasn’t French, it was German. I didn’t know either vampire spoke German. If Jean-Claude changed the language because my French was getting better, then he’d outsmarted himself, because I could speak German. Not like speak it, speak it, but I could understand it when I heard it. Grandma Blake had spoken German to me from the cradle up. I’d taken it in high school as my language, because I was lazy and wanted a leg up.

I couldn’t catch every word. It had just been too long since I’d used my German, and Damian’s accent was different from any I’d ever heard, and I’d grown up around at least two. But I caught enough to know that Jean-Claude was asking him if the changes to his face had happened during sex, or just after, because Damian said something in German about it not happening just after the sex. No, about an hour or so later. I could understand Jean-Claude wanting to save my delicate sensibilities. I did have a tendency to get pissy about sex I didn’t choose myself. Then I caught the word for power, and Belle Morte’s name. Then Damian saying a lot of, nein, or not that I’ve seen, in German. He hadn’t seen me exhibit any of the powers that Jean-Claude was asking about on his end of the phone. I didn’t get it all. One, I was privy to just half the conversation, and two, my grandmother hadn’t used some of these words a lot. She and I hadn’t had a lot of talks about vampires, sex, and metaphysical powers. Funny that.

When the conversation seemed to be winding down, I told Damian that I wanted to talk to Jean-Claude before he hung up. He handed me the phone not long after, and I got to say, “Hi, ich kann Deutsch sprechen.” The silence on the other end of the phone was long. “If you didn’t want me to understand you, should have stuck to French.”

“Damian does not speak French,” he said in a very careful voice.

“Well then you are shit out of luck, aren’t you?”

“Ma petite…”

“Don’tma petite me, just tell me the truth. What other vampire powers can I expect to come on-line?”

“In all honesty, I am not sure.”

“Right.”

“Truly, ma petite, I am not. Even Belle has never transformed a vampire from another line the age of Damian. If you had asked me, I would have said it was impossible.”

That sounded like the truth. “Fine, but what powers were you asking Damian whether I had, or not, and don’t lie; if I order him to tell me everything you said, verbatim, he’ll do it. He’ll have to do it.”

“You might be surprised there, ma petite. With your greater commitment to him as your servant, he may not be as much slave to your will. I do not know that this is true, but I know that the more marks you carried of mine, the less pliable to my will you became.”

That was true. I’d always been sort of creeped out by the fact that Damian had to do everything I told him, just because I said so, but it had moments of usefulness, and now it might be gone. Well, hell.

“Fine, then just tell me yourself.”

“You do not understand, ma petite. That you could gain my abilities is unusual, but this is an ability that I do not possess, have never possessed. What has happened to Damian is something only Belle could have done, and only if he were a new vampire. So is this a new ability altogether, one I have never heard of, and if so, then what could that mean for you, ma petite, for us, and all those connected to you? What if you have gained abilities through your necromancy that we cannot begin to guess at?”

I sighed, and was suddenly tired, not scared, just tired. “You know, I am way tired of this metaphysical shit.”

“You also healed wounds with sex, without calling on Raina’s munin, is that so horrible?”

“When I didn’t do it on purpose, maybe. Think about that, Jean-Claude, I didn’t concentrate and do it on purpose. What else might I do accidentally? You don’t even know.”

It was his turn to sigh. “The only other triumvirate that included a necromancer as their human servant did not exhibit this level of… power.”

“You hesitated, what were you going to say before power?”

“You know me too well, ma petite. ”

“Just answer the question.”

“I was going to say, unpredictableness.”

I wasn’t sure that had really been what he’d meant to say, but I let it go. He’d answered the question the only way he was willing to.

I knew by now when he’d given me everything he was going to. I’d learned to let it go after that, because anything else was just frustrating, and rarely gained me anything. “Fine, I believe that you don’t know what the hell we’re doing either. Is there anyone that would have a clue about what might be happening to us?”

“I will think upon that, ma petite. There is no one that I know that has ever managed to form two triumvirates that intersect as ours seem to. But there may be those who could provide some more general information on triumvirates, or necromancy, or… in truth, ma petite, I don’t even know where to begin to ask an intelligent question. I cannot go to most master vampires in the world with these questions.

They would see it as weakness. I will think upon it and see if there is anyone we can ask.” He sounded perplexed, which I didn’t hear often in his voice.

“Alright, I’ll call Marianne and see if she or her coven have any insights. I might even ask Tammy when she and Larry get back from their honeymoon. She is a witch, and her branch of the church has been dealing with supernatural talents for centuries. Who knows, maybe they have archives?”

“That is a good thought,” he said, “Damian seems most distressed.”

“You could say that.”

“I do not know for certain, but if he were to go to his coffin and you not be near, I think he might sleep as he is meant to during the day.”

“What if he just goes buggers again?”

“Put someone downstairs to watch him. Someone, not you or Nathaniel or Richard, someone that is not part of either triumvirate.

If your watcher does not see him sleep, then they can yell for you to come and comfort him.”

It wasn’t a bad idea as ideas went, and I had nothing better.

Also, I didn’t want to spend the day baby-sitting Damian, or anybody for that matter. “I’ll talk it over with him and see if he wants to try it.”

“If he refuses, then you will, what, hold his hand all day?” There was the tiniest edge of jealousy. I hadn’t expected that.

I spoke before I had time to think, which I’d tried to stop doing.

“You’re not mad at Damian about the sex are you? It wasn’t planned.”

“Now, ma petite, not the sex, though I do not lightly share you, no matter how reasonable I seem. No, it is that the three of you seem to have shared all four marks, though until I see you all together in the flesh, I will not be able to check that for certain. But if you share four marks and suddenly Damian is able to walk about in the sunlight, I must ask myself, if I had completed our triumvirate, would I now be a daywalker?”