Incubus Dreams (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 12)

"Worry how?" I asked.

"It has been speculation for centuries whether Belle was formed into the type of," he seemed to search for a word, "creature she was by the ardeur and her powers running to flesh and pleasure, or whether she was always as she is, and the power simply made her more."

"It's been my experience, Requiem, that people become more of who they are in extremes, both good and bad. Give a truly good person power, and they're still a good person. Give a bad person power, and they're still a bad person. The question is always about the person in between. The one that isn't evil, or good, but just ordinary. You don't always know what an ordinary person is like on the inside."

He looked at me, with an odd expression on his face. "That was a very wise thing to say."

I had to smile. "You sound surprised."

He gave an almost bow from the neck, as much as he could sitting in the seat. "My apologies, but in truth I've always thought of you as more muscle than brain. Not stupid," he added hastily, "but not wise. Intelligent perhaps, but no, not wise."

"I guess I'll just take the compliment, and leave the insult alone."

"It was not meant as an insult, Anita, far from it." There was a look on his face, a feel to him, that was anxious.

"Don't worry, I won't hold it against you. A lot of people underestimate me."

"They see the delicate beauty, but not the killer," he said.

"I'm not a delicate beauty," I said.

He gave a small frown. "You are most assuredly delicate in appearance, and you are beautiful."

I shook my head. "No, I'm not. Not beautiful, pretty, maybe, but not beautiful."

His eyes widened a little. "If you do not think yourself beautiful, then you are using a different mirror from the one in front of my eyes."

"Pretty words, but I'm surrounded by some of the most beautiful men living or dead. I may clean up well, but when comparing beauty, I don't rank that high, not in this company."

"It is true, perhaps, that your beauty is not a flashy beauty, as is Asher's, or Jean-Claude's, or even your Nathaniel's, but it is beauty nonetheless. Perhaps the more precious, for it grows not at the first sight of the eye, but a little more each time one speaks with you or watches you move so commandingly into a situation, or watches the truth in your eyes when you say that you are not beautiful, and I realize that you mean it. That you are not being humble, or playing silly games, you simply do not see yourself."

"See, that's not beauty, that's pretty with a personality that you like."

"But do you not see, Anita, that there is beauty that hits the eye like a bolt of lighting, that burns and sears and blinds. It is more disaster than pleasure. But yours, yours is a beauty that lulls one into comfort, into not protecting one's eyes from the light, then one night you realize that the moon, too, has its beauty."

I shook my head. "I have no idea who you're talking about, but it's not me."

He sighed. "You are a very hard woman to compliment."

"You know, you're not the first person to say that."

He smiled. "That does not surprise me at all."

Graham let out a long, long sigh, and sort of spilled himself back up onto the seat. It was like watching liquid fall upward. He had that same liquid grace that all the wereanimals seemed to have. He leaned his head against the headrest, but at least he was upright again. He gave me a slow, lazy blink, and his eyes were a dark, wolf amber, almost brown, but I knew the difference. I'd seen it often enough.

He smiled, and even that was lazy. "That was amazing."

"I didn't do it on purpose," I said.

"I don't care."

I frowned at him.

"Can you do it again, is all I want to know."

I frowned harder.

Some of the laziness began to seep away from his face. "Look, you give me one of the most amazing orgasmic experiences of my life, and now you're acting like the injured party. You're the one that spilled all over me."

"Not on purpose," I said.

"You keep saying that, like you're apologizing, why? Why are you apologizing?"

I looked at Requiem for help, though I didn't hold much hope. But he did help. "I believe that Anita sees it as unasked-for sexual contact. A sort of rape, if you will."

"Can't rape the willing," Graham said, and he stretched himself taller in the seat, settling more into it, and his eyes were bleeding back to human.

"I didn't know you were willing, when it happened."

He nodded. "Okay, but I'm okay with it." He looked at me. "But you don't seem okay with it at all. What's wrong now?"

"What's wrong?" I asked. "I just had a flashback so strong that if I'd still been driving, we'd have wrecked. I fed it into you by accident. I didn't mean to do it. What else am I not going to mean to do?"

"She and Jean-Claude have hit a new power plateau," Requiem said.

"Oh," Graham said, as if that made perfect sense to him, "so you don't know what all the new power can do, yet."

"No," I said.

He nodded. "Yeah, that can get scary. I'm sorry, I didn't know this was the first time you'd done something like this. I enjoyed it, you don't owe me an apology."

"But what if I grab a client next time?" I said.

"You had warning," Requiem said, "or you wouldn't have pulled off the road."

"I don't think that had anything to do with new powers."

"Then why did you nearly run us up the back of three different cars?" Graham asked.

I opened my mouth, closed it, and didn't know what to say. "I think I crossed my last few lines tonight."

"What does that mean?" Graham asked.

"I broke some personal rules tonight, that's all."

"Rules that you thought would never be broken," Requiem said softly.

I looked at him, surprised. "You say that like you know."

"A person likes to think of himself in a certain way, and when something happens that makes that no longer possible, you mourn the old self. The person you thought you were."

I shook my head. "I am still the person I thought I was, damn it."

He gave a shrug that reminded me of that graceful lift of shoulders that Jean-Claude always did. "As you like, m'lady."

I turned around in my seat and put my forehead against the steering wheel. I just wanted this night over with. I didn't want to have to explain myself to anyone, let alone one of the men that I'd had sex with by accident tonight. The trouble was, I wasn't sure that I believed what I'd just said. It wasn't just the sex with Byron and Requiem, it was that tonight, for the first time, I'd let Jean-Claude into my head as far as he could go. For the first time we'd touched what might be possible if only I'd get out of our way. Until tonight, I hadn't realized how much I'd crippled us. As much in my own way as Richard. I'd thought that sleeping with Jean-Claude and doing small things with him was being his human servant. I'd learned differently less than an hour ago, and that knowledge was eating me up. It wasn't that I had crippled us as a triumvirate of power. No, I'd guessed that before, just not the amount of crippling. I thought my limits and boundaries had hobbled us, not cut both our legs off at the knees. What I hadn't expected, what I hadn't wanted to know, was how good it felt to let Jean-Claude roll me. It had been a-fucking-mazing. Peaceful and intoxicating all at the same time. I'd never really known what I was doing without, because I had been so careful not to let him show me. And he had respected my wishes.

I knew now that it had cost him dear. Cost him in power he might have had, safety he might have built for his vampires, and in the sheer pleasure he might have experienced. He'd cut himself off from so much, just because I couldn't handle it. That made me feel guilty, but part of the real problem was that after I'd let Jean-Claude in that deep, I'd then turned around and had sex with Byron, and let Requiem bite me. Two things I didn't do lightly. Yeah, it had been important, maybe urgent, maybe it had saved the lives of most of those women in that club. Maybe it had even saved Jean-Claude's life. I'd felt Primo's power and the whisper of the Dragon. But that wasn't what bothered me the most.

Jean-Claude had gained Nathaniel and Damian's neediness. What had I gained? I'd had sex with Byron and Requiem, and I didn't feel bad about it. Even now, I felt bad only because I didn't feel bad. It hadn't bothered me. That's what made me almost run into three cars, and pull into the parking lot so I could have my little moment of shock reaction.

I didn't feel guilty about Byron. I only felt guilty about not feeling guilty about it. And even now, I wanted to turn the car around and go back to Jean-Claude. I wanted him to hold me, to kiss me, to feed from me. I wanted the whole ride, now that I'd had a taste. I wanted it the way junkies want their fix. That's not love. That's control. I wouldn't let anyone control me like that. I couldn't, not and still be me.

I didn't explain any of this to Graham or Requiem. They weren't close enough to me for a heart-to-heart. I just said, "Whoever feels better to drive, drive."

"I do not know how to drive," Requiem said.

"I'll drive," Graham said, "just don't touch me while I'm behind the wheel."

"I'll do my best to resist," I said, and made it plain by my tone that it wouldn't be hard.

He laughed and got out his door to walk around. In the moments it took him to walk around the car, Requiem said, "You feel very serious tonight, Anita."

"I'm always serious," I said.

"Perhaps," he said, and he might have said more, but Graham opened the door and I got out. I walked around the car and got into the passenger seat, as Graham started the engine. "Where to?"

"Sunset Cemetery. It's less than five minutes from here."

"Do you feel well enough to raise the dead tonight?" Requiem asked.

"Just get me there, and don't let me touch any of the clients. I'll do the rest. Just don't let me fuck anybody or tear anybody's throat out."

"What if you order us to allow you to fuck someone?" Requiem asked.

"Or kill someone?" Graham said.

"I'm not planning on it tonight, okay?"

"You weren't planning on it earlier," Requiem said quietly.

Graham pulled carefully into the traffic on Gravois, as if he were trying to make up for my bad driving earlier. "What do we do if some new vampire power kicks in?" he asked, as he eased us to the first stoplight.

"Just keep me from hurting anybody," I said.

"And if the need arises for you to feed again, what then?" Requiem asked.

I turned in my seat as far as the seat belt would allow, so I could see his face in the streetlights. He was revealed in startling white light for an instant. It made his eyes glow, then shadow swept over the backseat, and his eyes faded to a dim blue glow. "What are you getting at?" I asked.

"Did you wonder why Jean-Claude chose us, and only us, to guard you tonight?"

"I had some ideas, but enlighten me."

"He wanted people with you that were strong enough and dominant enough that if they had to, they could override you. That they would use their best judgment and not blindly follow."

"Bully for you both," I said.

"But it wasn't that alone."

"Just spill it, Requiem, the foreplay is getting tiresome."

"I heard that about you," Graham said.

I turned and looked at him. "What?"

"That you don't like a lot of foreplay."

I gave him a very cold look. "One, no one that would actually know would tell you shit, and two, don't let a little metaphysical sex go to your head. Remember, I watched you writhe all over the seat, and it didn't appeal to me. It wasn't foreplay, or a preview, it was just an accident."

"Sorry."

I turned back to Requiem. "Now, you, just tell me what you need to tell me. No preface, no long explanation, just say it."

"You won't like it," he said.

"I already don't like it. Just tell me, Requiem, just tell me." I was getting a headache. I didn't know if it was loss of blood, or tension, but whatever, it was beginning to pound right behind my eye.

"He thought that if things went as badly as they could go..."

"Games, word games, just say it."

He sighed, and the sigh seemed to fill the Jeep with echoes. "If you had to feed the ardeur, or if your beast rose, we were the two most likely to survive an attack without having to resort to hurting you."

"You left something out," I said.

"I've said enough," he said.

"All of it, Requiem, I want to hear all of it."

"No," Graham said, "you don't. That tone in your voice, no you don't."

"Just drive," I said, and turned back to the vampire. "Tell me the rest."

He sighed again, and it flittered through the interior of the Jeep like it had a life of its own.

"And can the voice tricks, or you're really going to piss me off."

"My apologies, it is automatic for me, when faced with an angry woman, to try and pacify her, by whatever means."

"Talk to me, Requiem, we're almost at the cemetery. I want that last bit before we get out of the car."

He drew himself up even straighter in his seat, very formal. "We were also the two at the club most likely to be able to turn violence to seduction, if the need arose."

"He must have a high opinion of you both, or a low opinion of me."

"That last is not true, and you know it," Requiem said.

I sighed. "Just the way I'm feeling tonight."

Graham said it. "You're feeling slutty because you did Byron."

I looked at him. "Well, that's one way of putting it."

"It's exactly how you're feeling," he said, sounding sure.

"And you're sure of that?"

"The way you're acting, yeah. Besides, I know your reputation. If anyone can resist temptation it's you."

"Everyone keeps telling me that, but I don't seem to be resisting much anymore."

"I have lived with others more powerful than I in Belle Morte's line for centuries, Anita. I, more than most, know just how much you must fight every night of your existence not to be consumed by their power." He paused and then whispered so that it filled the darkened car, "If you are not careful, their beauty will become both heaven and hell, you will betray every oath, abandon every loyalty, give up your heart, your mind, your body, and your immortal soul to have them near you but one more night. Then one cold night, a hundred years after the passion is spent, and nothing but ashes remain, you look up and see someone gazing at you, and you know that look, you've seen it before. A hundred years later and someone gazes upon you as if you were heaven itself, but you know in your heart of hearts that it's not heaven you're offering them, it's hell."

I didn't know what to say to that, but Graham did.

"Now I know why they call you Requiem. You're poetic, but fucking depressing."

Tonight, I just thought he was accurate.