Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Book 14. Danse Macabre(141)

I looked up at him, from inches away. His eyes were perfectly brown, warm, and full of so much emotion. «You'd be free.»

He shook his head, his eyes shiny. «I don't want to be free that badly.»

«Don't you?» I asked.

«No, this price is too high. Don't leave me, not like this.» He held me close, his hair long enough now that it tickled along my face. I buried my face in the warm, sweet scent of his neck, but I knew it was a lie.

I cuddled against him, as tight and close as I could. I buried myself against the warmth and strength of him, and it still felt wonderful. It still felt so right, but I knew it wasn't. We were both too stubborn for it to work.

I was crying again, and wasn't sure why. Crying my regrets out against the warmth of Richard's neck. The coulda-beens, shoulda-beens, woulda-beens. I wrapped myself around him, legs, arms, all of it, and clung to him, clung to him and cried.

A hand stroked the back of my hair, and a voice said, «Ma petite, ma petite, drop these shields, let us inside again.»

I turned my head to look at him while I clung to Richard. I stared up into that face, those midnight-blue eyes. His hand stroked along the edge of my face, and it wasn't enough. Whatever I'd done to myself, I'd walled myself up tight. Since I hadn't tried to cut myself off on purpose, I didn't know how to undo what I'd done. How do you undo an accident?

I tried to explain. «I'm head-blind. I can't feel anything metaphysically. I didn't mean to cut us up.» I knew now I'd survive what I'd tried to do, but would everyone else? I reached out to Damian. Even dead in his coffin for the day, I should have been able to sense him. Nothing. Fear washed over me, and all the warmth I'd started to regain flowed away on that tide of fear.

I grabbed the edge of Jean-Claude's robe. «I can't feel Damian! I can't feel him, at all!»

«We must breach your shields, ma petite. We must reawaken your powers.»

I nodded. «Yes.»

«I am your master, Anita, my very marks can keep me out of your shields. We are running out of time for Damian. I would ask that you allow Asher and Requiem to help me breach your shields.»

«I don't understand.»

«I do not have time to explain, but it does not truly matter which of us breaks down these new stronger walls, only that they break. Once broken, then your own power will be set free, and it will find Damian.»

I wanted to argue, but that emptiness where Damian should have been scared me. I nodded. «Do it.»

«You must take off your cross first.»

I didn't ask how he knew I was wearing one. Richard let me slide down his body enough so I could use my hands to unhook the chain. Jean-Claude had stepped away, not far, but far enough that he would not accidentally touch it. I spilled the chain into Richard's waiting hand.

I met his eyes, while his hand closed around my cross. «Put it in the bedside drawer,» I said.

He nodded. «So it won't glow.»

I nodded. I admitted to myself in that one moment why I'd stopped wearing a cross most of the time. Oh, I kept one in my vampire-hunting bag, but I didn't wear one much. To bed, but, oh, hell. I kept waiting for the cross to glow when I did something. I kept waiting for the cross to glow because of some vampiric ability that I'd inherited from Jean-Claude. I kept waiting for it to glow against me. What was left of my nerves couldn't have handled it, today.

Richard moved across the bed enough to lean over and open the bedside table drawer. He set the cross in carefully, and closed the drawer. He crawled back across the bed, until he was kneeling in front of me again. «I spend so much effort keeping you out of my mind, my heart, and now it's like this void inside me. I keep trying to break up with you, stupid me. It's like trying to break up with your own hand. You can live without it, but you're not whole.»

«Can you sense Damian?» Jean-Claude asked.

«I can sense vampires with a cross on, Jean-Claude; that's never made any difference to my necromancy.»

«Humor me,» he said.

I humored him. I shook my head. «Empty, like he's not there.» I'd managed to chase the fear back, but it fluttered through my stomach, tingled the tips of my fingers. «Is it too late? Please, God, don't let it be too late.» Inside my head, I added, Don't let me have killed him.

I watched Jean-Claude's eyes spill blue, until his pupils and the white were lost to the glowing, deep blue of his power. I sat on the bed only a few yards from him, while his power rose enough to fill his eyes with fire, and I felt nothing. At least my necromancy should have felt it, if not the vampire marks. I'd been psychically blind, head-blind, from shock or illness before, but never to this degree. It both scared me, and gave me hope. Maybe I couldn't sense Damian because I couldn't have sensed anyone right then.