Cravings (8 page)

I came back to the kitchen, on my knees, screaming.

Nathaniel reached out towards me, and I slapped at his hands, because I
didn't trust myself to touch him. I could still taste the meat, the blood, feel
it going down Richard's throat. It wasn't horror that made me slap at Nathaniel.
It was that I had liked it. Gloried in the feel of blood raining down on me. The
struggles of the animal had excited me, made the kill all the sweeter. Always
when I touched Richard, there had been hesitation, regret, revulsion about what
he was, but there had been no hesitation in that shared vision. He had been the
wolf, and he had brought the deer down, taken its life, and there had been no
regret. His beast had fed, and for this one moment, the man in him had not
cared.

I shut down every shield I had between him and me, and it was only then that
I felt him look up, felt him raise his bloody muzzle, and look as if he could
see me watching him. He licked his bloody lips, and the only thought I had from
him was good. It was good, and there was more, and he would feed.

I couldn't seem to cut myself off from him. Couldn't shut it down. I did not
want to feel him sink teeth into the deer again. I did not want to be in his
head for the next bite. I reached out to Jean-Claude. Reached out for help, and
found… blood.

His mouth was locked on a throat, fangs buried into that flesh. I smelled
that flesh, knew that scent, knew it was Jason, his
pomme de sang
, that
he held clasped in his arms, clasped tighter than you hold a lover, because a
lover does not struggle, a lover does not feel their death in your kiss.

The blood was so sweet, sweeter than the deer's had been. Sweeter, cleaner,
better. And part of that better was the feel of his arms locked around us,
holding us as tight as we held him. Part of what made this more was the embrace.
The feel of Jason's heart beating inside his chest, beating against the front of
our bodies, so that we could feel the franticness of it, as the heart began to
realize something was wrong, and the more frightened it got, the more blood it
pumped, the more of that sweet warmth poured down our throats.

All I could taste was blood. All I could smell was blood. It spilled down my
throat, and I couldn't breathe. I was drowning. Drowning in Jason's blood. The
world had run red, and I was lost. A pulse, a pulse in that red darkness. A
pulse, a heartbeat, that found me, that brought me out.

Two things came to me at once. I was lying on cool tile, and someone had me
by the wrist. Their hand on my wrist. I opened my eyes, and found Nathaniel
kneeling beside me. His hand on my wrist. The pulse in the palm of his hand beat
against the pulse in my wrist. It was as if I could feel the blood running up
his arm, smell it, almost taste it.

I rolled closer to him, curled my body around his legs, laid my head upon his
thigh. He smelled so warm. I kissed the edge of his thigh, and he opened his
legs for me, let my face slip between them, so that the next kiss was against
the smooth warmth of his inner thigh. I licked along that warm, warm skin. He
shuddered, and his pulse sped against mine. The pulse in the palm of his hand
pushing against the pulse in my wrist, as if his heartbeat wanted inside me. But
it wasn't his heartbeat that he wanted inside me.

A roll of my eyes, and I could see him swollen and tight against the front of
his shorts. I licked up the line of his thigh, licked closer and closer to that
thin line of satin that stretched over the front of his body.

I tasted his pulse against my lips, but it wasn't an echo from his hand. My
mouth was over the pulse in his inner thigh. He let go of my wrist, as if now we
didn't need it, we had another pulse, another, sweeter place to explore. I could
smell the blood just under his skin, like some exotic perfume. I pressed my
mouth over that quivering heat, kissed the blood just under his skin. Licked the
jumping thud of his pulse, just a quick flick of my tongue. It tasted like his
skin, sweet and clean, but it also tasted of blood, sweet copper pennies on my
tongue.

I bit him, lightly, and he cried out above me. I slid hands over his thigh,
held it tight, so that the next bite was harder, deeper. His meat filled my
mouth for a second, and I could taste the pulse under his skin. Knew that if I
bit down, that blood would pour into my mouth, that his heart would spill itself
down my throat as if it wanted to die.

I stayed with my teeth around his pulse, fought with myself not to bite down,
not to bring that hot, red rush. I could not let go, and it was taking
everything I had not to finish it. I reached down those metaphysical cords that
bound me to Jean-Claude and Richard. I had a confusing image of meat and
viscera, and other bodies crowding close. The pack was feeding. I shoved that
image away, because it wanted me to bite down. Richard's muzzle was buried deep
into the warmth of the body, buried in the sweet things inside. I had to run
from those feelings, before I fed on Nathaniel the way they were feeding on the
deer.

I found Jason lying pale on Jean-Claude's bed, bleeding on the sheets.
Jean-Claude's blood thirst was quenched but there were other hungers. He looked
up at me, as if he could see me. His eyes were drowning blue, and I felt it, the
ardeur had risen in him. Risen in a wave of heat that left him staring down at
Jason's still form with thoughts that had nothing to do with blood.

He spoke, his voice echoing through me. "I must shut you out,
ma petite
,
something is wrong tonight. You will force me to do things I do not wish to do.
Feed the ardeur,
ma petite
, choose its flame, before another hunger
comes and carries you away." With that, he was gone. Gone as if a door had
slammed shut between us. I had a moment to realize that he'd slammed a door
between not just himself, but Richard and me, as well. So that I was suddenly
cut adrift.

I was alone with the feel of Nathaniel's pulse in my mouth. His flesh was so
warm, so warm, and his pulse beat like something alive inside his skin. I wanted
to free that struggling, quivering thing. I wanted to break it free of its cage.
To free Nathaniel of this cage of flesh. To set him free.

I fought not to bite down, because some part of me knew that if I once tasted
blood that I would feed. I would feed, and Nathaniel might not survive it.

A hand grabbed mine, grabbed mine and held on. I knew who it was before I
raised my face from Nathaniel's thigh. Damian knelt beside us. His touch helped
me get to my knees, helped me think, at least a little. But the ardeur didn't go
away. It pulled back like the ocean drawing back from the shore, but it didn't
leave, and I knew it would come back. Another wave was building, and when it
crashed over us, we needed a plan.

"Something's wrong," I said, and my voice shook. I held on to Damian's hand
like it was the last solid thing in the world.

"I felt the ardeur rise, and I thought, great, just great, left out again.
Then it changed."

"It felt wonderful," Nathaniel's voice came distant and dreamy, as if all
he'd been having was good foreplay.

"Didn't you feel it change?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Weren't you afraid?"

"No," he said, "I knew you wouldn't hurt me."

"I'm glad one of us was so sure."

He raised up onto his knees, from where he'd half swooned. "Trust yourself.
Trust what you feel. It changed when you tried to fight it. Stop fighting it."
He leaned in towards me. "Let me be your food."

I shook my head, and clung to Damian's hand, but it was as if I could feel
the tide rushing back towards the shore. Feel the wave building, building, and
when it came, it would sweep us away. I didn't want to be swept away.

"If Jean-Claude told you to feed the ardeur, then feed it," Damian said.
"What I felt from you just now was closer to blood lust." His face was very
serious, sorrowful even. "You don't want to know what blood lust can make you
do, Anita. You don't want that."

"Why is it different tonight?" It was a child asking someone to explain why
the monster under the bed has grown a new and scarier head.

"I don't know, but I do know that for the first time when you touch me, I
feel it. A dim echo, but I feel it. Always before, Anita, when you touched me,
it went away." He made a movement with his fingers like putting out a candle,
"snuffed out. Tonight…" He leaned over my hand, and I knew he was going to lay
his lips across my knuckles. One of the gifts of the ardeur is that it lets you
look inside someone's heart. It lets you see what they truly feel. When his lips
touched my skin, I felt what Damian was feeling. Satisfaction. Eagerness. Worry,
but that was fast fading under the feel of his lips on my skin. He wanted. He
wanted me. He wanted to feed the hunger of his skin. The hunger of his body, not
so much for orgasm but for that need to be held close and tight, that need we
all have to press our nakedness against someone else's. I felt his loneliness,
and his need, even if it was only for one night, not to be lonely, not to be
exiled down in the dark, alone. I saw how he felt about his coffin down in the
basement. It was not his room. It was not his in any way. It was just the place
he went to die every dawn. The place where he went to die, alone, knowing that
he would rise as he had died, alone. I saw the endless stream of women that he
had fed on, like pages in a book, a blonde, a brunette, the one with a tattoo on
her neck, dark skin, pale skin, the one with blue hair, an endless stream of
necks and wrists, and their eager eyes, and grasping hands, and nearly every
night, it was in public view, as part of the floor show at Danse Macabre. So
that even his feedings were not private. Even that was not special. It was
eating so you wouldn't die, with no meaning to it.

In the center of his being was a great emptiness.

I was supposed to be his master. I was supposed to take care of him, and I
hadn't known. I hadn't asked and I'd been so busy trying not to be tied to
another man through some weird metaphysical shit that I hadn't noticed that
Damian's life sucked.

"I'm sorry, Damian, I…" I don't know what I would have said, because his fingers touched my lips, and I couldn't think. His
fingers held heat and weight that they'd never had before.

His eyes widened, surprised, I think, as surprised as I was at the sensation.
Or did my lips give heat to his skin, too? Did my lips suddenly feel swollen and
eager as his fingertips did to me, as if both mouth and fingers were suddenly
more?

I moved my lips against his touch, a bare movement, just enough to press my
mouth against the ripeness of his fingers; barely enough to call it a kiss, but
it wasn't his skin I tasted, or not the skin I was touching. It was as if I laid
my mouth against the most intimate parts of him. There was the hard, solid press
of his fingers, but the taste, the smell of him, was the perfume of lower
things, as if I were a dog on the scent of where I wanted to be.

His breath drew in a shaking gasp, and when I rolled my eyes up to see his
face, the look in his eyes was one of drowning, as if I already touched what I
could taste. His eyes filled with emerald fire, and just like that there was a
line of desire carved from my mouth down his fingers, his hand, his arm, his
chest, his hips, to the center of his body. I could feel him thick and rich and
full of blood. Could taste the warmth of him as if my mouth were nestled against
his groin. I could taste him, feel him, and when I slipped my mouth over the
tips of his fingers, slid something so much smaller, harder into my mouth; his
green eyes rolled back into his head, ginger lashes fluttering downward. His
breath sighed out in one word, "Master."

I knew he was right, in that one moment, I knew, because I remembered being
on the other side of such a kiss. Jean-Claude could push desire through me as if
his kiss were a finger drawn across my body, down my very nerves so that he
touched things that no hand or finger could ever caress. For the first time I
felt the other side of such a touch; felt what Jean-Claude had felt for years.
He'd tasted my most intimate parts, long before he'd ever been allowed to touch
them, or even see them. I felt what he'd felt, and it was wondrous.

Nathaniel touched my hand. I think I'd actually forgotten about him,
forgotten about anything but the sensation of Damian's flesh against mine. Then
Nathaniel touched me and I could feel his body through the palm of my hand as if
a line ran from the pulse in my palm down his body in a long line of heat and
desire and… power.

I felt that power flare outward from my mouth and hand to their bodies. It
was my power, the power Jean-Claude had woken in me by his marks, but it was
also my power, my necromancy that burned like some cold fire through Damian's
body, but when it hit Nathnaiel's body, the power changed, shifted, became
something warm and alive. In the blink of an eye, the power flared through me,
through all of us, but it wasn't sex that I felt anymore, it was pain. I was
trapped between ice and fire; a cold so intense that it burned, and the fire
burned because that was what it was. It was as if half the blood in my body had
turned to ice, so that nothing flowed, and I was dying; and the other half of my
body held blood that was molten like melted gold, and my skin could not hold it.
I was melting, dying. I screamed, and the men screamed with me. It was the sound
of Nathaniel and Damian, their screams, not my own, that dragged some part of me
above the pain.

That one blinded, aching part knew that if I let this consume me, we would
all die, and that was not acceptable. I had to find a way to ride this, to
control this, or we would be destroyed. But how do you control something that
you don't understand? How do you ride something you can't see, or even touch? I
realized in that moment that I touched nothing. That somewhere in the pain I'd
let go of both of them. My skin was empty of their touch, but the link between
us was still there. One of us, or all of us, had tried to save ourselves by
letting go, but this was not a magic so easily defeated. I knelt alone on the
floor, touching no one and nothing, but I could feel them. Feel their hearts in
their chests as if I could have reached out my hand and carved those warm,
beating organs from their bodies; as if their flesh was water to me. The image
was so strong, so real, that it made me open my eyes, helped me ride down the
pain.