Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #16 - Blood Noir (2 page)

“Yeah, but Sampson went home, and Perdy didn’t.”

Sampson had gone home because St. Louis got invaded by some of the scariest vampires in the world. Jean-Claude had thought it was a bad idea to risk getting the eldest son of his friend and ally killed. Besides, Sampson was a merman, and they aren’t big on offensive abilities, at least not this far inland. Perdy was a mermaid, too. Though I’d never seen either of them turn all fishy. They just looked like people to me.

“Perdy stayed for you,” Nathaniel said.

Jason nodded. “She wanted me to be hers. She’s very jealous, very possessive. I’m just not into that.”

“So you have a woman who greets you like Anita greets me, but the rest doesn’t work.”

“No, Nathaniel. She used to greet me sort of like that, but for weeks now it’s been,
Where have
you been
?
Who have you been with? You fucked the master again, didn’t you? You fucked Asher,
didn’t you? You were with Anita again, weren’t you?”

“I’ve put you on the back burner for feeding me,” I said. “I got the impression Perdy didn’t want to share you that much, but I had no idea she thought you were doing more than just donating blood to the vampires.”

“She’s like crazy jealous, and she won’t believe me when I tell her I haven’t been with anyone else. It’s why I asked Jean-Claude to take me out of your feeding schedule for a while. I thought if I stopped having sex with the only other person I was really having sex with that Perdy would calm down.”

Nathaniel and I exchanged glances across the table. He shrugged. I asked the question. “Did it work?”

“No,” he said. He took another drink of coffee, and it must have finished the cup because he got up and went for the French press beside the sink. He took the coffee cozy off of it, then put it back on without filling his cup. He set the cup in the sink.

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BloodNoir

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“I don’t want more coffee.”

“You can never have too much coffee,” I said.

He turned and smiled at me. “You think so, but the rest of us get a little OD’ed on your level of caffeine.”

“What happened, Jason?” I asked.

The smile slipped a little more. He was solemn when he turned to us. He leaned his back against the cabinets, crossed his arms across his chest, and again didn’t quite meet our eyes.

“She wanted me to marry her. Till death do us part and all that. She’s a mermaid, which means she’ll outlive me. She can live for hundreds of years, not immortal like a vampire, but close.”

“You didn’t want to marry her,” I said, softly.

He shook his head. “She’s obsessed with me. She says she loves me, but it doesn’t feel like love. It feels like I’m smothering.”

“She’s not the right one, then.”

He grinned, and it almost reached his eyes. “Look who’s talking about the right one. You can’t pick just one either.”

“That’s different.”

“Why, because you’re a living vampire who feeds off sex, so you have to have a bevy of lovers?

The
ardeur
is like the perfect excuse to never have to say you’re sorry.”

“I’d change it if I could, you know that.”

He came to me then, put his arms around my shoulders, and rested his cheek on the top of my head. “I didn’t mean to make you sad, Anita. God knows I didn’t. Please, don’t tell me you’d change it if you could. You love Nathaniel, and Micah. They love you. You love Jean-Claude and Asher, and they love you. You’re still a little confused about what to do with Damian, but you’ll get there.”

I shook my head and stood up, moving away from him. “Don’t forget Requiem, and London, and sometimes Richard. Oh, wait, and the swan king pops in now and then, no pun intended.” It sounded angry and bitter, and I was glad.

“I didn’t mean to say the wrong thing. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, or to have another woman mad at me tonight. Please, Anita, please, don’t be mad. I’m upset. You have no idea how upset. Please, please, I’m a bastard, but don’t be mad.”

He held his hand out to me. His face pleaded along with his words. I’d never seen his eyes full of quite this kind of pain. The look in his eyes was more than just losing a girlfriend he didn’t want anymore.

I held out my hand, but made him take the step to close our fingers around each other. His eyes glittered in the overhead lights.

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BloodNoir

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I took his hand, held it. His breath came in a soft gasp, and I thought for a second he was going to cry, but he just looked at me. His eyes that had glistened a moment before were almost dead, as if whatever he was feeling he’d locked away somewhere. In a way, to me, that was worse. I went to him, and he wrapped his arms around me as if he were at the edge of a cliff and I were his only handhold. That quiet holding on was so…male. A woman would have cried, or talked more, but for a man, after a certain point this is their pain.

I held him back, tried to tell him it would be all right. I whispered it into his hair, against his cheek. “It’s all right, Jason. It’s all right.”

Nathaniel came up behind him and wrapped his arms around us both. He pressed his cheek against his friend’s hair and said, “We’re here, Jason. We’re here for you.”

Jason just held on wordless, motionless, the strength in his arms, shoulders, pressing against me, but it wasn’t about sex. I’d never been pressed so close to any man and thought only,
God, what’s
wrong?
Either he had loved Perdy and now he was regretting letting her go, or the other shoe hadn’t dropped. What else could be wrong?

We ended up on the floor of the kitchen, simply sitting in a row with our backs to the kitchen island. He still hadn’t said what else was wrong, or that he was desperately in love with Perdy and how could he fix it? I kept waiting for him to share. If he’d been a girl friend I’d have asked by now, but guy friends are different. Sometimes you have to sneak up on them like some sort of wild animal, no wereanimal pun intended; all men are leery of their emotions, spook them and they’ll shut down. If you’re careful, quiet, not too eager, sometimes you’ll learn more. Of course, sometimes you have to club men over the head with some question to get any sense out of them, but they prefer to speak from a quiet place.

Jason had his head against Nathaniel’s shoulder, and a hand on my leg. At least he, like most of the men in my life, was cuddlier than most. I appreciated that. Jason’s voice came flat, empty, as if he were afraid to let his voice feel anything. “My father’s dying of cancer. My mom called last night just after Perdy and I broke up.”

I exchanged a glance with Nathaniel. His wide eyes let me know that it was news to him, too.

“Jesus, Jason, I’m sorry,” I said.

“We hate each other, of course, and now the cold bastard’s dying and I won’t have time to forgive him before he dies.”

“What can we do?” Nathaniel asked, softly.

He smiled, a little weak, a little watered down, but he managed it. I thought it was a good sign. I hoped it was. “You really want to know?”

“Name it,” I said.

He smiled again, but his eyes flinched, as if I’d hit him instead of told him I’d do anything he wanted if it would take the pain away.

“Perdy isn’t here to tell me
don’t
, or to tell you
don’t
. I’m a free man again.” He tried for a laugh, but it was a sound more like a sob.

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“I get it,” Nathaniel said.

I frowned at him. “Then explain it to me, because I don’t.”

“He wants to have sex with you again.”

“What?” I said.

“Perdy can’t tell him, or you, no anymore. You can be lovers again.”

“You mean now, like in right now?”

Nathaniel gave a half-shrug. Jason moved his head off the other man’s shoulder. He dropped his hand away from my leg.

“It’s okay, Anita, I’ve fucked this up. I know this isn’t the way to approach you. But my head is so ugly tonight; I just can’t seem to think clearly.”

He pushed to his feet and started for the doorway.

I opened my mouth to say
don’t go, and yes.
I closed it without saying any of it out loud, and looked at Nathaniel. I frowned at him. He was more than just my sweetie. The
ardeur
made me a sort of living vampire who fed off sex, but with the downsides came some interesting upsides. Nathaniel was my animal to call, which meant he was like my familiar. We shared emotions, power, and sometimes thoughts. “You’re projecting inside my head, aren’t you?”

“You can shut me out if you want,” he said.

Jason hesitated just short of the doorway. He frowned at us both. “I’m missing something.”

I looked into the face of a man that I loved. “Is this really what you want?”

“He’s my friend.”

“You know, most guys don’t want their girlfriends to sleep with their friends.”

“If you’d never slept with Jason, that would be different, but you have. Why is it wrong to sleep with him tonight?”

I opened my mouth to say something reasonable, then closed it, because for the life of me, I couldn’t come up with a clearheaded answer. Why was it wrong to sleep with Jason tonight? Because I hadn’t planned on it? Because it felt slutty? Were any of those reasons good reasons?

Jason stopped in the doorway, caught between the light of the kitchen and the darkness of the living room beyond. “I’ve made you feel sorry for me. I’m not sure I want that to be your motivation for taking me to bed.”

“Once upon a time, you wouldn’t have cared why you got to sleep with me.”

“I was a slut, I know.”

“I didn’t mean that, Jason.”

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“Stay here tonight,” Nathaniel said.

He half-turned so he could see us, but his face was still mostly in shadow. “Why? Why do you want me to stay?”

I shrugged at Nathaniel, with a this-was-your-idea expression.

“Because you’re our friend. Because we care about you.”

“And you, Anita, what’s your motivation?”

I looked up at him. There was something defiant about the set of his shoulders, as if he expected me to hurt him. I tried very hard not to do that. “It just seems wrong for you to walk out the door right now. Stay, if the sex is an issue, then just stay for a big puppy pile. We can actually just sleep.”

He shook his head. “You never want to make me just sleep, Anita.”

That made me uncomfortable. “I don’t know what to say to that, Jason.”

“Say you want me.”

I started to say something, but Nathaniel touched my hand. “He needs the truth, Anita.”

“And what is the truth?” I asked, taking my hand away from his.

“Tell him how you feel, really feel about him.”

I took a deep breath and thought about the truth; what was the truth? “You are one of the best friends I have, Jason, and you shouldn’t be alone tonight.”

“Jean-Claude would let me sleep with him.”

“But you wouldn’t let him hold you while you feel miserable.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t?”

“Call it a hunch.”

He stood frozen in the doorway as if he couldn’t decide, or as if part of him wanted to and part of him didn’t. I’d made him come to me to hold his hand. Now I went to him. I wrapped my arms around him. He stayed stiff and unyielding. I pressed my head to his shoulder. “Stay with us tonight, Jason, please.”

He whispered against my hair, “Why?”

“Because you want to.”

“Not good enough,” he whispered.

“Because I can feel how much it would hurt Nathaniel to see you leave tonight, and know that you didn’t have anyone to hold you while you slept.”

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“It’s not sleep I want, Anita. I’m afraid to sleep. I’m afraid I’ll dream. Last night was…bad.”

I lifted my face up to look at him. “You found all this out last night?”

He nodded.

“Bad dreams?” I made it a question.

“The worst; something about the news about my dad just raked a lot of shit up.”

Nathaniel’s need pushed at me, almost staggering in his desire to have Jason stay. I tried to shield against him, but realized that one of the reasons I couldn’t shield was that I agreed with him. A large part of me felt Jason should stay. Nathaniel was right; Jason was already on my list of lovers. Why was it wrong for me to admit that it was fun to sleep with Jason? Why was it always wrong for me to admit that I simply wanted to be with someone? Not because I had no choice, but because for once, I did?

He kissed my forehead. “I’ll go home.”

I hugged him tighter, kept him in the doorway. “It would be lovely if you stayed.”

He looked startled. “You sound like you mean that.”

I nodded. “I do.”

He smiled, and it was a shadow of his usual one. “Somewhere in there did you actually say
please
?”

I smiled at him. “I think I did.”

“I’ve never heard you ask a man to please stay with you.”

“I don’t usually have to.”

“Stay with us tonight,” Nathaniel said.

I nodded. “Stay.”

“The bed will be a little crowded when Micah gets home.”

“He’s out of town,” I said.

“A new wereleopard wanted to join our pard. He’s off interviewing,” Nathaniel said. Jason nodded. “I like Micah, you know that.”

“But he’s not your best friend like Nathaniel is, and he’s not a girl,” I said. Jason nodded again. “Tonight, I don’t really want an audience.”

“Damian is even sleeping over with his latest vampire lover,” Nathaniel said. “We have the house to ourselves.”

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