Incubus Dreams (16 page)

G
REGORY CRAWLED TO
us on all fours, sniffing just above our bodies. He said in that growling voice, “Me next.”

I had to look up and back over my shoulder to give him the look he deserved, but looking back with him on all fours gave me a sight line down his body, and suddenly I was more embarrassed than I had been. Shapeshifters look sort of like they do in the movies in half-man form, but there is one big difference. They have genitalia, and right at that moment Gregory was very, very happy to be here. I think what bothered me more than the erection was that he'd gotten it from watching me have sex with Damian. For some reason, unfair probably, it bothered me that Gregory had enjoyed the show.

“Back off, Gregory,” I said, and my voice sounded harsh and like I meant it, even while I blushed.

He did his kitty-cat impression of a smile and backed off, literally. He put his head down, and crawled backward, abasing himself. It was a gesture closer to a real wolf than a real leopard, but wereanimals are people at heart, and some gestures just translate better to our human brains. Abasing yourself by going low is one of those gestures.

Damian was looking down at me, and the look was not one that I'd ever seen on a man's face just after finishing sex. He looked sad, and I remembered the burst of emotion at the end. Sorrow covering the pleasure like evil chocolate ruining your ice cream.

But it was more than the look on his face. I realized that I could feel his sadness. Feel it, not like it was my own, but like it was a coat that clung to my skin. I was still hooked up to him emotionally, well, not just emotionally. I could feel him plunged deep inside me, his weight still pinning my lower body. Touching made any sort of metaphysical intermingling worse. I needed to stop touching him. And not just him.

Nathaniel lay beside us, his fingers still tangled in mine. The side of his body pressed up against me, so that our bodies touched from shoulder to hip. He must have scooted closer when Damian finished. I think I would
have remembered if Nathaniel's body had been touching mine during the act. Wouldn't I?

His lavender eyes were unfocused, almost sleepy. What came through his skin was contentment. Contentment like a great warm ocean that filled him, floated him, held him, rocked him. Maybe I stared at him too long, or maybe he sensed my own growing unease, because his eyes focused, sharpened, and the look in them wasn't the least bit sleepy. It was almost an anticipatory look, as if he were already thinking about next time. Since I didn't think he'd had a first time yet, it helped clear my head. Anger always did.

“Everybody off, out of the pool,” I said.

Damian's sorrow was almost like rain on my skin. Nathaniel wasn't sad. He went straight to panic, afraid he'd done something wrong. “It's alright, Nathaniel, you're alright. We're all alright.” I wasn't sure I actually believed that down to my toes, but the panic subsided, and everybody got off of me. Yeah. Though Damian's sadness clung to me like I'd walked through some metaphysical cobweb.

While we were getting untangled, Micah came through the splintered door. I'd been found in compromising positions by boyfriends before, but never with less embarrassment. He didn't ask stupid questions or make me feel like a slut. In fact he concentrated on the most important thing. “Wow,” he said, and the wow seemed to take in the blood scattered here and there on the floor and the walls, the injuries that he could see on most of us, the broken door, all of it, but what he said outloud was, “Is everybody alright?”

I started to get up off the floor, and Damian offered me a hand up. I wouldn't have taken it normally, but we'd just had sex, and it seemed odd to slap away his hand. The moment my hand touched his, I realized it was more than that. That need to put my skin against his was still there. One moment of good sex didn't take away centuries of need. Sex was like some kind of fuel like food—you burned it up and needed more.

I got my hand out of his and took a slightly shaky step away from Nathaniel and Damian. A little distance would be helpful, I hoped. “We'll all live,” I said.

“Good.” He cocked his head to one side and said, “I didn't know that Damian could walk around this early in the day.”

“He can't,” I said.

“Do I say the obvious, ‘but he is walking around during the day,' or do you want me to just stop asking questions?”

I was suddenly tired, and I probably wasn't the only one. “Have you been to bed at all?”

He shook his head, and as if I'd reminded him, he rubbed his chartreuse
eyes, his sunglasses already tucked into the front of his shirt. “When I drove the guy home from the bar, he had a live-in girlfriend and a child. Girlfriend started a fight about his drinking. Anger does not help you fight the change.”

“Did he shift?” I asked.

“No, but it was close, and he's so new . . .” Micah shook his head again. “I'd feel better if the girlfriend was a little more understanding about how dangerous he could be. She just didn't seem to understand.”

“She didn't want to understand,” Richard said.

Micah turned and looked at him. I realized that of all the people in the room, Richard had been the only one that Micah hadn't really looked at. “Then you've met Patrick's girlfriend.”

Richard started to shake his head, stopped in mid-motion, and winced. “No, but I've seen it. The human spouse just doesn't want to understand that they're married to a monster.” I think he meant it to sound matter-of-fact, but it didn't. It sounded bitter.

I'd never made Richard feel like that, that I knew of; no, he'd spent a great deal more time making me feel like a monster. So I let it go. I let it go because I didn't know what to say, or if there was anything to say. Okay, I had one thing to say. “The coalition is offering a monthly meeting for family members. I thought we'd given flyers out to the werewolves.”

Richard got to his feet, cradling his arm. “This is my Patrick, Patrick Cook?”

Micah said, “Yes.”

“And you've been baby-sitting him all night?”

“Yes,” Micah said, again.

Richard looked down at the floor, then back up. He met Micah's gaze, but his face wasn't completely happy about it. “Thank you for looking after my wolf.”

“The wolves are part of the coalition, too,” Micah said, “I'd do the same for anyone's people.”

“All the same, thank you.”

“Don't mention it.”

There was one of those awkward silences. I hated to leave everybody alone, but I really needed a shower. The shower would hurt the wound on my throat, but I'd just had sex without a condom, which meant all the mess had gone into me, but it wouldn't stay there. So needed to clean up. Truthfully, I'd have preferred a condom, but it hadn't occurred to me until afterward. Tammy had gotten pregnant on the pill. Yeah, she had fallen afoul of the fact that antibiotics don't mix well with the pill, but still. That one percent chance suddenly seemed like it wasn't good odds. Damian was a
thousand-year-old vampire; chances were he was infertile, but still . . . It was one thing getting pregnant by a boyfriend, but pregnant by someone who wasn't even that . . . well, that seemed somehow worse. “I'm taking a shower.”

They all looked at me. I guess it was abrupt. “I'm sorry, but I just can't stand here like this anymore. So everybody behave themselves. I'll be as quick as I can.”

“I'll call for a doctor,” Micah said.

I nodded. “Good, good.” I suddenly had to not be there, naked, smelling of fresh sex, with Richard and Micah in the same room. Having Damian and Nathaniel naked didn't help my comfort level. I was fairly comfortable around nudity in general now, but specific nudity, that was still a problem. For more reasons than I was comfortable with, I needed to leave the room.

“By the way, there's a woman crying in your car in the driveway,” Micah said.

“My car?” I asked.

“No, Richard's, or at least I assume it's Richard's. I know Gregory's car, and that's not the one she's in.”

Richard cursed under his breath, something he rarely did. “Clair, I forgot about Clair.”

“Who's Clair?” I asked.

He hesitated, then said, “My girlfriend,” then he was walking to the door holding his arm like it hurt to walk that fast.

His girlfriend, and I'm buck naked the first time she sees me. Great. Well, at least she hadn't seen me fuck Damian. That helped. Sure, great. Just great. I was shaking my head as I went toward the bathroom.

It was Gregory, in his growling voice, who said, “I guess it's none of my business, but should Richard really be in front of the house where cars could see him? He is covered in blood.”

I turned and looked at the leopardman and said, “Shit, no.” I started for the door, and Micah stopped me. “I'll go. I'm the only one that they wouldn't call the cops on right now.” He squeezed my shoulder and smiled at me.

I realized that I hadn't kissed him hello, I always kissed him hello. Of course, I was still covered in blood and other bodily fluids, and none of them were his, but he might not understand that that was why I hadn't wanted to get too close. Some of my confusion must have shown on my face, because his smile widened. He turned me around by the shoulders, gave me a little push toward the bathroom, and slapped me on the ass. “Get cleaned up, I'll take care of things here.”

“I can't believe you just did that,” I said.

“Did what?” he said, and he was grinning at me.

I could probably count on one hand the number of times Micah had grinned at me. His eyes were sparkling with laughter as if it were all he could do not to let it out. I was happy to see him having this good a time, really I was. But I wasn't sure what was funny, and I didn't have the courage to ask. It was probably something that would be at my expense, or something I'd just done that he found cute. I was not cute. Confused, fucked-up, bruised, but not cute. Nathaniel and Damian knew better, but as I passed Gregory, I had to say, “If you touch my ass, I will rip you a new one.” I said it as I moved past him, not even pausing.

“You're no fun,” he growled.

I looked back just before I turned out of sight of him. “Oh, I'm a lot of fun, just not for you.”

He snarled at me. “Bitch.”

“Woof, woof,” I said, and finally made it into the bathroom.

I
TRIED NOT
to think in the shower. Thinking bad; hot water good. I turned the shower head to as hard as the water would go and the let the water beat against my body, finding bruises I didn't know I had. Once I would have been hurt, really hurt, by the beating that Damian had given me. Thanks to Jean-Claude's vampire marks I was just a little stiff. The bite would take the longest to heal, and even that would be gone in few days, a week at the outside. The healing was great, the rest of it . . . well, let's just say the jury was still out.

I heard a noise over the pounding water. It took me a minute to realize that someone was knocking at the door. I tried to ignore it. The knocking stopped for a second, and I thought, oh, good, but it started again, louder, as if whoever was knocking thought I hadn't heard the first time.

I sighed, turned off the water, and called, “What?”

“Damian isn't doing well,” Nathaniel said through the closed door.

I stood there a second water dripping into my eyes, and said, “What do you mean, Damian's not doing well?”

“Can't you feel it?”

I thought about it. I thought about Damian, and suddenly fear was like a crushing weight on my chest. It staggered me for a second, and I was glad there was a safety bar in the shower to grab on to. It was a shadow of what had driven him to run screaming through the house. I wasn't sure we'd all survive him doing it twice. “I'm coming.”

I squeezed out my hair, wound a towel around it, and was trying to towel off enough for a robe, when the door sprang open. Gregory came first in his fur suit, one clawed hand under Damian's arm. Richard had the other arm. They half-dragged, half-carried him through the door. They carried him toward me, and his fear rode before him. I'd felt fear before, but not like this. It crushed my chest so that I couldn't breathe, closed my throat. The fear had weight enough to slam me to the floor, as if something had smashed into me. It wasn't my pulse I was choking on, it was as if the terror itself were wet
silk, and I was trying to swallow it. Slick, wet, suffocating, more real than any fear I'd ever felt. Not real the way an emotion is real, but real the way a rock, a chair, or an animal is real. Fear had become something . . . more.

They dropped Damian into my lap, and it was as if every part of my skin ran with chills, and then every inch of my skin tried to crawl away. Tried to crawl away and leave my body to die. My skin would have saved itself if it hadn't been trapped against my body. The rest of me would have gone with it, but we were trapped under Damian's weight. Trapped in his fear, frozen in it. If I could have breathed, I would have screamed, but all I could do was drown. Drown in Damian's fear.

Someone touched my shoulder, but it was distant. As if no one's skin were as real to me as Damian's. Someone shook me, sharp and hard. My breath came in a huge gasp, as if I hadn't been breathing for a long time, when my breath came out, it was a shriek.

I was staring up into Richard's startled face. It was his hand on my shoulder. Him kneeling beside us. “Anita, Anita, can you hear me?”

I grabbed Richard's arm, my other hand clutching Damian to me, as if I were afraid if I let him go he'd be lost. As if the fear were some horrible beast that could literally eat him up, and destroy him.

Richard shook me again. “Anita, say something.”

“God, it's so . . . awful.”

Damian nodded his head against my stomach. He'd been lying almost limply against me, but now he grabbed me around the waist and hip, his hands holding on as if I were the last solid thing in the world. I felt a burst of emotion from him, and it was gratitude. He was grateful that I could share his fear. Sharing it seemed to make it less, or make it more bearable.

That thought, that sharing fear made it easier to bear, brought a memory. It wasn't my memory. It was a face that I had never seen before, but one that Damian knew as well as his own. All high angles and strong lines, a scar from his forehead to his cheek, where he'd been cut in the first raid we'd gone on. She-who-made-us said once that the scar saved his life, because without it, his hair was more blond than hers, his eyes more blue. That scar ruined his handsomeness enough for her to leave him whole. For even men who were too fair were not safe from her envy. The only name I heard in my head was Perrin, but I knew that wasn't right. That hadn't been his name, anymore than Damian had been mine, ours, his.

I smelled vanilla and felt something thick and warm glide over my skin. I blinked awake, if
awake
was the right word. Nathaniel was kneeling beside us. He'd undone his braid so that the vanilla scent of his hair had perfumed around me. His hair cascaded around him and spilled over the side of my
body, pooling into my lap, covering Damian like a blanket, if a blanket could flow like liquid over a body. Nathaniel had covered us in his hair, but had very carefully avoided touching our skin with his. He was so close to us that not touching took effort, so close it was as if a sigh would have pressed the line of his body against mine. But he stayed that near painful inch away, letting only scent and the furred glide of hair reach us. The only thing he gave me of his skin was the warmth of it, which even from a distance I could feel. Heat trembling against my skin, as if the warmth of him breathed outward and wanted to touch me. Maybe it did.

It had been such a smart way to bring me out of Damian's memory without risking Nathaniel being dragged into it himself. So smart, but a plan is only as good as everyone in it. Damian moved in my lap, and I had a second to realize what he was going to do. I drew a breath to warn Nathaniel, but didn't have time to breath out. It was that quick.

Damian grabbed Nathaniel's arm, and that one touch was enough. It was like drowning in light. As if the world had caught fire and become heat, and heat was golden like the color yellow had spilled out and covered everything. Yellow warmth, golden heat. Our eyes were dazzled by it. We were blind in the light. There was nothing but the light and the touch of her small hands, and Perrin's hand in mine. His hand so large, firm, an anchor in the nightmare of the light. Her hands caressed, but it wasn't real. She'd dragged us into the light to drink our fear, not our sex.

She tore his hand away from mine, and her voice, which once I'd thought beautiful, sounded like an evil whine in my head, poisonous, because I could not tell her no. “One to burn, one to keep.”

Perrin turned, framed for a moment in the light. His hair as yellow as the light itself, his eyes like the sky beyond the window. He was tall, his shoulders so wide that he filled most of the window. He'd always been a big man even among big men. Some of the towns we'd raided, people had run screaming, “Giant!” or their word for it.

Perrin stood, covered in the light. Covered in the light, but not burning. The words that had begun this folly came back, “Perhaps the reason they can walk out with you in the sun, Moroven, is not you sharing power with them, but that they have gained power of their own, to sun walk.” A messenger from the council had said the evil words and left it as a poisonous flea in she-who-made-us's ear. For a heart's beat we thought the messenger had spoken true. We thought Perrin stood in the light on his own power. For one glorious second, we believed. But the look on his face wasn't triumphant, it was frightened. That one look was enough. Something was wrong.

The smoke began to curl off his skin, just like in the movies. The part that was still me, still Anita, thought
but that's not right.
All the vampires that I'd seen die by sunlight just burst into flames. No smoke, no waiting, just instant inferno, poof. My puzzlement helped drag us back from the edge of terror. It helped us watch smoke rise from Perrin's skin, kept the horror from choking us. Flames burst along his skin, and for the blink of an eye he was haloed by rich orange and gold flames. His long yellow hair fluttered in the wind of the heat. A moment to think,
how pretty,
then the flames ate over him and his skin crawled with fire.

Perrin shrieked.
Shrieked,
for scream did not describe that sound coming from a man's mouth.

We screamed because we had to. All the horror, the sorrow, the fear had to come out our mouths, or it would have burst out of our skin and shattered our minds. We screamed because it was all that kept us from going mad.

I suddenly smelled forest, that rich green smell of the deep woods—half Christmas tree pine and half fresh-turned earth. I stared at the burning vampire, my lifelong friend, my brother, but I was calm. All I could smell was forest, not the salt of ocean, not anything, then there was something else—wolf. The sweet musk of wolf. Richard.

The thought of him made the scent of forest and fur override everything else. The memory began to fade. Literally, the images became misty, and we began to draw away from that awful room. Perrin's voice floated down all those years, his scream turned distant by the fading. He began by screaming her name, the name I'd heard used for she-who-made-them, “Moroven, Moroven,” but the screams changed, became another name, “Nemhain!” I had enough left of Damian's mind in me to understand that Nemhain was her secret name, her true name. Over and over again, Perrin screamed her name, and Damian echoed it, his screams, which were louder now as the memory faded, his screams were her name, “Nemhain!”

We spilled back into the now, into the floor of my bathroom, into Richard's hand on my arm. I started to look into his face, but Damian came to his knees, as if he would run toward something I couldn't see. I wrapped my hands around his waist and chest. Nathaniel had a death grip on Damian's arm. We held him, as if he could still run to Perrin's fire and destroy himself. He was still screaming, “Nemhain, Nemhain, curse you!” He collapsed so suddenly that I'd have fallen back into the glass doors of the shower if Richard hadn't caught me with a hand across my back. Nathaniel caught Damian around one shoulder, slowing his fall. Damian was still talking in a voice that was more sob than whisper, “Curse you, Nemhain, curse you.” He curled into a ball in my lap, pushing me hard into the curve of
Richard's arm. Nathaniel stroked Damian's hair, over and over, the way you'd comfort a child.

He was still muttering her name, and literally cursing her, when the world suddenly drowned in fear. It was as if terror could become air and you had to breathe it in or you would die, but breathing it in was dying, too. It was all death. All fear. It roared through my head, thoughtless, formless, fear so pure that it stopped my heartbeat for a second, a hesitation, as if my heart would simply stop from fear. Dying of fright wasn't just a saying. There was a breathless moment where I waited for my heart to decide whether it would beat again, or whether silence was better, anything to escape. Anything.

The support of Richard's arm vanished, and I was left with the cold press of glass behind me, as if he'd closed the door to support me, so he wouldn't have to touch me anymore.

My breath came out in a rattle, and my heart leaped in my chest, and hurt as if it had bruised itself against my body. My chest hurt, my throat hurt, and still the air was fear made real. Every breath seemed to draw her in deeper. Because it was a her. It was Nemhain, Moroven, Damian's maker, and Perrin's. It wasn't just a superstition that you did not speak her name. Her name had conjured her power, brought us to her attention. I expected a voice to match the terror, but there was silence, a silence so loud that all I could hear was the beating of the blood in my veins. My heart thundering inside my body. Then I heard another heartbeat, faster, more frightened even than mine. How could he live so afraid?

I turned my head slowly, because I couldn't do anything else. I made myself turn through the fear and look at Nathaniel. His eyes were so wide they flashed white, and he was gulping at the air as if he was having trouble breathing it down. As if he would choke on the fear.

Damian lay like the dead in my lap. His eyes were closed, and he wasn't breathing. There was no heartbeat to hear. The thought came,
She's taken what she gave him,
but on the heels of that thought came another.
He's mine. I make his heart beat. I make the blood move in his veins. He's mine. Not yours. Not anymore. Mine.

Nathaniel's fingers dug into my arm, and he was gasping as if some invisible hand were choking off his air. I didn't think that was really happening, but he was choking on the fear. Choking on her power. I met his terrified gaze and tried to say his name, tried to say anything, but no sound came out. I tried to call power, anything, but I couldn't think. Fear had stolen my thoughts, my logic, my power. No, no, some small part of me knew that wasn't true. She was just another vampire. Just another vampire. I was a
necromancer. She could not do this to me. Part of me believed that, but most of me was fighting too hard to breathe to think at all.

If I'd had air enough, I'd have screamed. Not my fear, but my frustration. I didn't know how to fight this. She wasn't trying to mark any of us as servants, or seduce us, or control us. She simply had sent terror like some invisible wind to kill if it could, or not. She didn't care. There was no malice here, no strong emotion of any kind, except the fear, and the fear was a sending. She felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I didn't know how to fight against nothing. I didn't know what to do. We were dying, and I didn't know what to do.