I fell back against the seat, my head thrown back, and it was as if all the pleasure of it was suddenly there again, rolling over me, through me. It wasn’t the exact experience, but like a strong, strong, echo. Strong enough to shake my body against the seat and leave my hands clawing at the air, as if I needed something to hold on to, anything to hold on to.
I heard Requiem’s voice: “No, don’t touch…” And I found something to hold on to.
Graham had tried to grab me, hold me down, keep me from hurting myself. I think he’d thought I was having a fit. His hand touched mine, and my hand convulsed around his, and it was as if from the moment our palms locked together that all that memory, all that pleasure, poured down my hand and into him.
Graham shuddered against me. I felt the shiver of it go down his arm, and it threw him against the seat so hard the Jeep shook from the impact. I let him have the memory, the pleasure, the sights and smells of it, I let it all pour away from me and into him. It wasn’t a conscious thought, because I hadn’t known until I did it that I could put it into someone else and not have to be pulled along for the ride.
I didn’t mean to do it, but I wasn’t unhappy about it. I was glad, for once, to be the calm one on the other side of the seat, while I watched Graham writhing in just the echo of what we’d done. I was glad it wasn’t me. Because I knew now why I’d had the shocky reaction earlier, before the metaphysics had gotten out of hand.
I killed without thinking much about it. Not in cold blood, but if it came time to kill, I had no real problem with it. I’d mourned the fact that killing had stopped bothering me. Then on my first trip to Tennessee to help Richard back when we were still a couple, I’d tortured someone. The bad guys had sent us Richard’s mother’s finger in a little box, along with a lock of his brother Daniel’s hair. We had a time limit to find them, and we already knew that they’d been tortured. The man who’d delivered the box had bragged that they’d both been raped. I’d tortured him, made him tell us where they were, and when we were done with him, I’d shot him in the head, and made the screaming stop. I’d done it to save Richard’s family, and because I couldn’t see another way to do it. I’d done it because I never ask anyone to do anything that I’m not willing to do myself. It’s a rule.
Of course, before that, my rule had been I did not do torture. That was a line I did not cross, and I’d crossed it. The terrible part was that I hadn’t regretted doing it, only having to do it. He’d raped Richard’s mother, if I could have I’d have killed him slower, but that wasn’t in me, not even for what he’d done. We’d saved them, but before all of it, the Zeeman’s had been like the Waltons, and now they weren’t. They weren’t broken completely, but they weren’t as fixed as when they started, either. I’d killed the men that did it, or helped them get killed, but all the revenge in the world wouldn’t really fix what was broken.
How do you give someone back their innocence? That wonderful sense of perfect safety that only exists for people that have never really had anything bad happen to them. How do you give that back? I wish I knew.
I’d crossed a lot of lines over the years, but one line I’d never crossed until tonight had been I didn’t have sex just to feed. I didn’t have sex with strangers. Byron and Requiem were strangers. I’d known them for two weeks, give or take. I had fucked them because Jean-Claude needed me to feed.
Requiem had moved to one side of the backseat, so he was close enough to see my face and to watch Graham still twitching on the front seat, but not close enough so I could touch him easily. “You had a flashback, didn’t you?”
I nodded, still staring at the werewolf in my front seat.
“Has that ever happened before?”
“Only after Asher rolled me completely with his mind, and we all had sex.” I didn’t look at him as I spoke, I watched Graham’s body begin to grow quiet.
“But Asher was not involved tonight.”
“No,” I said, “he wasn’t.” My voice sounded very even, very neutral, empty. Empty, just like I felt.
“Did you know that you could send that memory into someone else?”
“No,” I said.
Graham’s eyes were fluttering, like butterflies trying to open, but not able to do it. He looked boneless, as if he could have slid into the floorboard, if his body had been a little less solid.
“You spilled it into him, then watched him writhe. How did it make you feel?”
I shook my head. “Nothing, just glad for once that it wasn’t me twisting in the seat.”
He moved to lean against the back of Graham’s seat, a little closer to me. “Is that true? Is that really how you feel about it?”
I moved my whole head to meet his eyes, as if a glance wasn’t enough. I let him see how dead my eyes felt, how empty I was inside.
“You’re a master vamp, can’t you smell it if I’m lying?”
He licked his lips like he was nervous. “The last vampire I knew that could do what you just did, did it on purpose. She would recall a memory of pleasure, and she would pick someone to give it to. It could be a reward, and it was, but it could also be punishment. Sometimes she would choose someone who did not wish to feel such pleasures, and she would force them to experience it.”
“A kind of rape,” I said.
He nodded.
“You’re talking about Belle Morte, aren’t you?”
He nodded, again.
“She enjoyed watching them writhe, especially if they didn’t want to do it,” I said.
“You say that as a statement, not a question.”
“I’ve met her, remember?”
“You are exactly right. She loved watching prim, proper women and men, forced to spill themselves upon the floor and flop about, experiencing a pleasure greater than any they had ever felt before. It pleased her to watch the righteous brought low.”
“Yeah, that sounds like her.”
“But you truly felt nothing. It did not excite you to watch Graham writhe.”
“Why should it?”
He smiled then, and there was relief in his eyes. “That you would ask the question makes me worry less about you.”
“Worry how?” I asked.
“It has been speculation for centuries whether Belle was formed into the type of,” he seemed to search for a word, “creature she was by theardeur and her powers running to flesh and pleasure, or whether she was always as she is, and the power simply made her more.”
“It’s been my experience, Requiem, that people become more of who they are in extremes, both good and bad. Give a truly good person power, and they’re still a good person. Give a bad person power, and they’re still a bad person. The question is always about the person in between. The one that isn’t evil, or good, but just ordinary. You don’t always know what an ordinary person is like on the inside.”
He looked at me, with an odd expression on his face. “That was a very wise thing to say.”
I had to smile. “You sound surprised.”
He gave an almost bow from the neck, as much as he could sitting in the seat. “My apologies, but in truth I’ve always thought of you as more muscle than brain. Not stupid,” he added hastily, “but not wise.
Intelligent perhaps, but no, not wise.”
“I guess I’ll just take the compliment, and leave the insult alone.”
“It was not meant as an insult, Anita, far from it.” There was a look on his face, a feel to him, that was anxious.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you. A lot of people underestimate me.”
“They see the delicate beauty, but not the killer,” he said.
“I’m not a delicate beauty,” I said.
He gave a small frown. “You are most assuredly delicate in appearance, and you are beautiful.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m not. Not beautiful, pretty, maybe, but not beautiful.”
His eyes widened a little. “If you do not think yourself beautiful, then you are using a different mirror from the one in front of my eyes.”
“Pretty words, but I’m surrounded by some of the most beautiful men living or dead. I may clean up well, but when comparing beauty, I don’t rank that high, not in this company.”