Blue Moon (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 8)

25

We followed Marianne and her guard, Roland, through the darkened trees. I'd have caught that damn dress on every twig and deadfall. Marianne floated through the woods as if the trees themselves let her and the dress pass gently through. Roland paced at her arm, gliding through the woods like water down a well-worn channel. Jamil, Nathaniel, and Zane moved just as gracefully. It was the rest of us that were having trouble.

My excuse was that I was human. I didn't know what Jason and Cherry's excuse was. I tried to step on a log and missed. I ended up on my stomach, arms scraping along the rough bark. I straddled it like a horse and couldn't seem to get my leg over the other side. Cherry tripped on something in the leaves and fell to her knees. I watched her get to her feet and trip over the same damn thing. This time she stayed on her knees, head down.

Jason fell in a tangle of dry tree roots at the end of the log I was sitting on. He fell on his face and cursed. When he got to his feet, there was a scrape on his chest deep enough to show blood, black in the moonlight. It reminded me of what Raina had done to him. She'd cut his chest to rags, and there wasn't a scar on him from it.

I closed my eyes and leaned over the log, resting my forearms on it. My arms hurt. I raised myself slowly and looked at them. I'd scraped them up enough so that blood was slowly filling the wounds in spots. Great.

Jason leaned against the end of the log, far enough away that we wouldn't touch. I think we were all still afraid of that. Didn't want a repeat.

"What's wrong with us?" Jason asked.

I shook my head. "I don't know."

Marianne was just suddenly there. I hadn't heard her come up. Was I losing time? Was I that out of it?

"You cast out the munin before it was ready to release you."

"So?" I said.

"So, that takes energy," she said.

"Fine, that explains me stumbling around. What about them? Why do they feel like shit?"

She gave a very small smile. "You are not the only one who fought the munin, Anita. It was you who called it, and if you had not been willing to fight it, then the other two would have been helpless before it, but they fought it as well. They struggled against the memories. That costs."

"You sound like you know," I said.

"I can call the munin. These chaotic flashes are what happens when you have a munin that hunts you, and that you do not want to embrace."

"How did you know it was chaotic?" I asked.

"I caught a glimpse or two of what you saw. The merest touch," she said.

"Why don't you feel awful?" I asked.

"I did not struggle. If you simply allow the munin to ride you, it passes much more quickly and relatively painlessly."

I half-laughed at her. "That sounds like the old advice of lie back, close your eyes, and it'll be over soon."

She turned her head to one side, long hair sliding over her shoulders like a pale ghost. "Embracing the munin can be pleasant or unpleasant, but this munin hunts you, Anita. Most of the time, a munin that tries to bond with a pack member does so out of love or shared sorrow."

I just looked at her. "It isn't love that motivates this one."

"No," she said, "I felt both the strength of her personality and her hatred of you. She chases you out of spite."

I shook my head. "Not just spite. What little is left of her enjoys the game. She's having a really good time when I channel her."

Marianne nodded. "Yes. But if you would embrace her instead of fighting, you could pick and choose among the memories. Strong ones will come easiest, but you could control more of what comes and how strongly it comes. If you would truly channel her, as you put it, then the images would be less like a movie and more ... like wearing a glove."

"Except that I'm the glove," I said, "and her personality overwhelms mine. No thanks."

"If you continue to fight this munin, it will get worse. If you will cease struggling and meet her even partway, the munin will lose some of its strength. Some feed off of love. This one feeds off of fear and hatred. Was this the old lupa? The one you killed?"

"Yeah," I said.

Marianne shivered. "I never met Raina, but even that small touch of her makes me glad she's dead. She was evil."

"She didn't see herself that way," I said. "She saw herself as more neutral than evil." I said it like I knew, and I did know. I knew because I'd worn her essence like a dress more than once.

"Very few people see their own actions as truly evil," Marianne said. "It is left to their victims to decide what is evil and what is not."

Jason raised his hand. "Evil."

Cherry echoed him. "Evil."

Nathaniel and Zane and even Jamil, raised their hands.

I raised my hand, too. "It's unanimous," I said.

Marianne laughed, and again, it was a sound equally at home in the kitchen or the bedroom. How she managed to be both wholesome and suggestive in the same breath puzzled me. Of course, a lot of things puzzled me about Marianne.

"We'll be late," Roland said. His voice was deeper than I thought it would be, low and careful, almost too old for his body. He looked peaceful enough, but I could look at him with things other than my eyes. You couldn't see it, but you could feel it. He was a mass of nervous energy. It danced along his skin, breathing out into the dark like an invisible cloud, hot, almost touchable, like steam.

"I know, Roland," she said. "I know."

"We could carry them," Jamil said.

A thrill of power flowed through the trees. It caught at my heart as if some invisible hand had touched me.

"We must go," Roland said.

"What is your problem?" I asked.

Roland looked at me with eyes that were a nice, solid darkness. "You are," he said. He spoke in a low voice, and it sounded like a threat.

Jamil moved between us so that my view of Roland was almost completely blocked, and I assumed, his view of me.

"Now, children," Marianne said, "play nicely."

"We will miss the ceremony entirely if they do not hurry," Roland said.

"If you were a true lupa," Marianne said, "you could draw energy from your wolves and give it in return like a great recycling battery." It sounded like she'd given this lecture before. I guess every pack needs a teacher. I know ours needed one sorely. I was beginning to realize that we were like children that had been raised by neglectful parents. We were grown-up, but we didn't know how to behave.

"You're psychic enough that you might be able to do it in a small way without being lukoi," Marianne said.

"I don't think I'd call being a necromancer the same thing as being psychic," Jamil said.

Marianne shrugged. "It's all much more alike than most people wish to acknowledge. Many religious groups are comfortable with psychic ability but not with magic. But call it what you will, it's either that or we call some more wolves and throw you across our shoulders."

The real trouble was that I only knew two ways to call power. One was ritual, the other was sex. I'd realized a few months ago that sex could take the place of ritual for me. Not always, and I had to be attracted to the person involved, but sometimes. I didn't really want to admit to strangers that sexual energy was one of the ways I performed magic. Even though no actual sex was involved, it was still embarrassing. Besides, doing anything sexual seemed like putting out the welcome mat for Raina's munin.

How could I explain all this to Marianne without sounding like a slut? I couldn't think of a way to explain it that didn't make me sound bad, so I wasn't going to try.

"Go on without us, Marianne. We'll get there on our own. Thanks, anyway."

She stamped her foot under that flowing gown. "Why are you so reluctant to try, Anita?"

I shook my head. "We can discuss magical metaphysics tomorrow. Right now, why don't you take your wolf and go. We'll get there, slow but sure."

"Let's go," Roland said.

Marianne looked to him, then back to me. "I was told to see if you were a danger to us, and you are not, but I don't like leaving you out here like this. The three of you are weak."

"We'll get over it," I said.

She cocked her head to one side again, hair sweeping like a white veil to frame her face. "Are you planning some sort of magic that you don't wish me to see?"

"Maybe," I said. Truth was, no. No way was I voluntarily touching Jason or Cherry again, not tonight. But if Marianne thought we were going to do something mystical but private, she might go away. I wanted her to go away.

She stood looking at me for nearly a full minute, then finally smiled, dim in the moonlight. "Very well, but do hurry. The others will grow impatient to greet Richard's human lupa. You have everyone's curiosity piqued."

"Glad to hear it. The sooner you go, the sooner we can start."

She turned without another word and started off through the trees. Roland trailed her, then took the lead. We all stood around waiting for Marianne's white dress to grow distant and ghostlike through the forest.

Finally, Jason said, "Start what?"

"Nothing," I said. "I just wanted them gone."

"Why?" Jamil asked.

I shrugged. "I don't want to be carried like a sack of potatoes." I started walking, slow but sure, towards the lupanar.