Incubus Dreams

His eyes widened. “What’s this for?”

“I’m going to let Truth feed on my neck. I’d rather not have to worry about whether he can touch my gun or not.”

“You don’t trust us,” Wicked said.

“I don’t trust anybody.” I started to lie down on top of Truth, but the knife was very much in the way.

Jean-Claude said inside my head, “The knife first, ma petite. ”

I knelt back and looked at the brother. “Do you want to do it, or do I do it?”

He seemed to understand without extra talk-nice for a change. “I will do it.” He took his free hand, because the other was still wrapped around his brother’s hand. He gripped the hilt of the blade and hesitated.

“It’s time, brother,” Truth said.

I moved my hair to one side so the right side of my neck stretched clean. Once the knife was out, we had a minute, maybe, to make him live, or let him die. Wicked stayed immobile, hand on his brother and the hilt.

“Do you want me to do it?” I asked.

He shook his head, but still didn’t move.

“Either you do it, or I do it… Wicked. We’re ru

“Do it,” Truth whispered, “do it.”

Wicked’s arm tensed. “Forgive me, brother,” he said, and pulled the blade out in one harsh jerk.

Blood welled up from the wound, thick, red. His body spasmed. I did what I said I’d do. How do you lay your body on top of a wounded man? The same way you do any man, if you don’t want to roll off. I laid myself on top of him, legs on either side of his body, while he spasmed under me, and fought for his life.

I laid my neck in front of his face, and he couldn’t control his body enough to feed. “Oh, shit!” I looked up and met his brother’s eyes. “Help me.”

“How?”

“Hold him up enough so he can feed.”

Wicked didn’t argue, he just moved around behind his brother, and raised his head and shoulders just enough off the ground. The spasming was growing less, but that wasn’t good, that wasn’t good at all.

Jean-Claude breathed through my body, “Kiss him.”

“What? ”I said out loud.

“What is it? ”Wicked asked.

“Give him enough energy to feed.”

“How?”

He was just in my head, not words, not exactly images, I just suddenly understood, because he understood. The vampires had a kiss of life long before we humans had artificial respiration. Once I’d thought you had to be asourdre de sang, or the person who made a vamp, to share energy like this, but I’d proven that it wasn’t true. If Jean-Claude hadn’t been so certain that it would work, I would have argued. I’d only done something similar to this once, and that had been with Asher, who was our sweetie, and who had fed on me before.

This vampire was a stranger to me, and not one of our line, but Jean-Claude’s certainty filled me, as if it were my own.

I looked into Truth’s face, and his eyes were begi

“What are you doing?” Wicked asked.

There was no time to explain. I pressed my lips to the other vampire’s mouth. His lips were so still against mine. I kissed him, and felt his death. Felt that spark flickering like a match in the wind. I breathed power into his mouth. I forced it inside him the way you force air into the dying. I breathed into his mouth and thought, Wake. Wake to us, Truth, wake to our magic. Jean-Claude used me to thrust power like a sword down the line of his body. It was sharp and painful even to me. It brought Truth gasping, sitting up off the floor, yelling. Yelling something in a language I’d never known.

“Feed,” I said, and it was Jean-Claude’s words. But it was my hand that swept my hair to the side and bared my neck to him.

He grabbed me, his hands digging into my shoulders. I saw his head coming forward, but the rest was lost to my sight. He bit me. Sudden, hard, fangs tearing my flesh. I yelled, because it hurt. There was no mind trick or sex to soften it. It just hurt.

I heard a startled male voice in the direction of the closest door. “Shit, another one!”

“She volunteered,” Smith said, “to save his life.”

“He’s a fucking corpse, you can’t save his life.”

“Marshal Blake made the decision, Roarke, go back to the others.”

“Shit,” he said again.

I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t help explain. My hands were on Truth’s arms. I think I was going to start struggling. It just fucking hurt.

Jean-Claude was there, harder in my head. “Relax, ma petite, do not fight him.”

“I’m not fighting,” I thought.

“Yes, you are. You are fighting his powers, you must lower your shields not just between yourself and me, but between him and yourself. Quickly, ma petite, quickly, or we will lose him.”

I dropped my shields, the ones that kept out all the other vamps.

The ones that were so automatic that I didn’t usually notice them. The shields that I had naturally as a necromancer. They fell down, and suddenly… it didn’t hurt anymore.

It was like suddenly being thrown into that part of sex where pain is pleasure, where the bite that you’d have slugged someone for is just the best thing you’ve ever felt.

I’d let him feed on my neck, but I’d been straining away from him, now I relaxed into him. It was like melting into a kiss that caught you off-guard, and suddenly you give in to it. You stop thinking it to death, and just let it be.

I gave myself to the feel of his mouth on my neck, the strength of his hands on my back, the press of his body against mine. His hand slid lower, down to my lower back, and farther, so that he cupped my ass. He pressed us together, bowing his neck and shoulders to keep his mouth sealed to my neck, and pressed our lower bodies tight against one another. Tight enough that I could feel him hard and thick against the front of his body.

I’d lowered my shields, all my shields. The only miracle had been that theardeur hadn’t tried to rise sooner. But it rose now, rose with the press of his body, the sucking of his mouth. Rose through my body, across my skin and into him.

He drew back from my neck with an exclamation, “Mother of Darkness save us, it’s Belle Morte!”

I met that wide-eyed gaze. His eyes were bluer now than they had been, or seemed so. “Not Belle, Truth, just me, just Jean-Claude, just us.” I whispered the last against his lips. Theardeur wanted me to kiss him, to press our mouths together and feed, energy for energy. I spoke with my mouth almost touching his, “Jean-Claude, help me, help me put the genie back in the bottle. Help me stop this.”

“If I help you shield, theardeur may spread here in the club, where I am.”

“Then feed like you did last night. Feed on the willing, but let this cup pass me by tonight. I need to catch a murderer, not fuck everyone we bring over.”

“Help us,” Truth said, “help us, master.”

I felt Jean-Claude’s surprise thrill along my skin, as if curiosity was a touch. “Does he want to stop?” His question came out of my mouth, in my voice.

“Yes,” Truth breathed it against my lips, so that I could smell my blood on his breath, “yes, help us stop this.”

“Why?” Jean-Claude asked.

This question I stopped, because I’d had enough. “Satisfy your curiosity about him later, Jean-Claude. I’ve got police waiting in the other room. I need this over with.”

“Very well, ma petite. ” It wasn’t like he reached out to me, he was already in me almost as deep as he could go. Butreaching was the only word I had for it. He didn’t shield me or Truth. He didn’t shield anything or anyone. He took theardeur that was rising in us, and did two things at once. He swallowed theardeur, and he shut down the link between him and me, tight and final, like slamming a door between us.

I was left alone pressed against Truth’s body, our faces still inches apart, but suddenly it was just us. We both let out a breath in shaking unison, as if we’d both been holding our breath.

He moved his arms away, so I could get out of his lap. There was no teasing, no sense of loss from him at the touch of theardeur and its going away. He seemed as relieved as I did. If I’d had time and could have figured out a way to ask why he was relieved, without sounding like my pride was hurt, I would have. But I had work to do, so I stood up and swayed, and only Truth’s hand on my arm kept me from bumping a wall.

“Are you alright?” Smith and Wicked asked at the same time. Smith glared at the vampire, but Wicked’s face was neutrally handsome.

“Just been donating a little too much blood lately. I’m fine.” To prove it, I stepped back from Truth’s hand. I took a few deep breaths, and I was steady. But I was really going to have to see if I could go at least a night without opening a vein.

“I felt your master’s power,” Wicked said. “My brother is bound to him, but I am not. You promised you would take us both.”

“I will, Jean-Claude will, but not tonight. This blood bank is closed for the night.”

Wicked gave me a look that said he neither believed nor trusted me. His brother was simply standing beside him, as if he’d levitated to his feet. Maybe he had. He hugged Wicked one-armed across the shoulders. “She’ll do what she promised.” Truth was smiling.

“Why, because she helped you fight off theardeur?”

“Partly.”

Wicked shook his head. “You must be even better than that felt, for Truth to trust you this much.”

“I saved his life, that tends to impress people.”

“Not him, not Truth.”

“Fine, but I’ve got to go question a murder suspect, right now.”

“We’ll go with you,” Truth said.

“Sorry, police business. Thanks for trying to catch the bad guy.”

“Your power called to us when you touched Avery,” Truth said.

“So when I said, catch him, you had to do it?”

They both nodded.

“Sorry about that.”

“I’m not,” Truth said.

Wicked gave me another cynical look. “I’ll let you know. I’m not sorry, yet.”

“Look, I give you my word that as soon as humanly possible I will give you to Jean-Claude.”

“Give me?”

I frowned. “I give my word that as soon as humanly possible I will see that you will be bound to our Master of the City, good enough?”

“Promise me that you will bind me as you bound my brother.”

“I just did.”

“No, you didn’t. For all I know you could pass me off to someone else in your master’s household. My brother and I go together. To go together, we must go in the same way.”