Obsidian Butterfly (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 9)

49

SOME TIME DURING the second day in the hospital they lowered the meds, and I started having the dreams. I was wandering in a maze made up of high green hedges. I was wearing a long, heavy dress, made of white silk. There were heavy things under it, weighting it down. I could feel the tightness of a corset under the dress, and I knew it wasn't my dream. I would never dream of clothing that I had never worn. I stopped running through the green maze looked up into a flawless blue sky, and shouted, "Jean-Claude!"

His voice came, rich, seductive. He could do things with his voice that most men couldn't do with their hands. "Where are you, ma petite? Where you?"

"You promised to stay out of my dreams."

"We felt you dying. We felt the marks open. We worried." I knew who "we" was. "Richard isn't invading my dreams, just you."

"I have come to warn you. If you had picked up a phone to call us, this would not be necessary."

I turned and there was a mirror in the middle of the grass and the hedges. It was a full-length mirror with a gilt edged frame. Very antique, very Louis XIV. My reflection was startling. It wasn't just the clothes. My hair was in some kind of complicated mound, with thick curls hanging down here and there. There was also more of it, and I knew at least some of it was a wig or at least hairpieces. There was even one of those beauty marks on my cheek. I expected to look ridiculous, but I didn't. I looked delicate, like a china doll, but it wasn't ridiculous. My reflection wavered, then grew taller, and it was Jean-Claude in the mirror, and my reflection had vanished.

He was tall, slender, dressed head to foot in white satin, in a suit that matched my dress. Gold brocade glittered down his sleeves, the seams of the pants. White boots rode over his knees tied with huge white and gold ribbons. It was a foppish outfit, sissy to use a modern word, but he didn't look foppish. He looked elegant and at ease like a man who'd pulled off his tie and slipped into something more comfortable. His hair fell in long black banana curls. Only the delicate masculinity of his face and his midnight blue eyes looked normal, familiar.

I shook my head, and the weight of the hair made it awkward. "I am so out of here," and I started to reach out to shred the dream.

"Wait, please, ma petite. Truly, I have a warning for you." He looked up as if seeing the mirror as a sort of prison. "This is to let you know that I will not touch you. I come only to talk."

"Then talk."

"Was it the Master of Albuquerque who harmed you?"

It seemed an odd question. "No, Itzpapalotl didn't hurt me."

He winced at her name. "Do not use her name aloud within this dream."

"Okay, but she didn't hurt me."

"But you have seen her?" he asked.

"Yes."

He looked puzzled, and he lifted a white hat and slapped it against his leg like it was a habitual gesture, though I'd never seen him do it before. But then I'd only seen him in clothes like this once before, and we'd been fighting for our lives, so there really hadn't been time to notice the small stuff.

"Albuquerque is taboo. The high council has declared the city off limits to all vampires and their minions."

"Why?"

"Because the Master of the City has slain every vampire or minion that has entered her city in the last fifty years."

I stared at him. "You're joking."

"No, ma petite, I do not joke." He looked worried, no, scared.

"She didn't try anything hostile, Jean-Claude, honest."

"Then there was a reason for it. Were the police with you?"

"No."

He shook his head, slapping the hat against his leg again. "Then she wants something from you."

"What could she want from me?"

"I do not know." He slapped the hat against his leg again and stared out at me through the glass wall.

"Has she really killed any vampire that just happened to be passing through?"

"Oui."

"Why hasn't the council sent someone to kick her ass?"

He looked down, then up, and the fear was in his eyes again. "The Council fears her, I believe."

Having met three of the council members personally, that raised my eyebrows as far as they would go. "Why? I mean I know she's powerful, but she's not that powerful."

"I do not know, ma petite, but I do know they decreed her territory taboo, rather than fight her."

That was just plain scary. "It would have been nice to know that before I got here."

"I know you value your privacy, ma petite. I have not contacted you in all these long months. I have respected your decision, but it is not merely our romance, or lack of it, that is important between us. You are my human servant whether you will or no. It means that you cannot simply enter another vampire's territory without some diplomacy."

"I'm here on police business. I thought I could enter anyone's territory as long as it was police business. I'm here as Anita Blake, preternatural expert, not as your human servant."

"Normally, that is true, but the Master whose lands you are in does not obey council decrees. She is a law unto herself."

"What does that mean for me here and now?"

"Perhaps she fears human law. Perhaps she will not harm you for fear of the humans destroying her. Your authorities can be very effective at times. Or she simply wants something from you. You've met her. What do you think?" he said.

It came to my lips before I thought about it. "Power, she's attracted to power."

"You are a necromancer."

I shook my head, and again the hairpieces made it awkward. I closed my eyes in the dream, and when I opened them, my hair just hung around my shoulders like normal. "The hair was heavy."

"It could be," he said, "I am happy that you left the dress. I cannot tell you how long I have wished to see you in something like it."

"Don't push it, Jean-Claude."

"My apologies," and he did a sweeping bow, using the hat in the gesture, so that it swept across his chest.

"I think it's more than the necromancy. She figured out that I was part of a triumvirate the first moment she met me. I felt her sift through the three of us, like unwinding a string. She knew. I think that's what she wants. She wants to figure out how it works."

"Could she repeat it?" he asked.