His tanned flesh showed pale through the black cloth, as if some invisible knife were slashing rips in it. He straightened up. One sleeve had ripped so badly at the shoulder that it flapped around his upper arm. The seams at the top of his chest were like twin smiles.
"I feel a draft," he said. He turned and showed me his back. The shirt had peeled off his back, hanging in tatters.
"It's trashed," I said.
"Too much weight lifting since I was measured for the shirt."
"You are perilously close to being too muscular," I said.
"Can you ever be too muscular?" he asked.
"Yes, you can," I said.
"You don't like it?" he asked. He wadded his hands into the front of the shirt and pulled. The silk tore into black shreds, ripping like a soft scream. He tossed the silk at me. I caught it by reflex, not thinking.
He grabbed what was left of the shirt across his shoulders and pulled it over his head, exposing every inch of his chest, his shoulders. He strained his arms upward, making the muscles mold against his skin from stomach to shoulder.
It didn't just make me catch my breath, it made me catch and hold, forgetting to breathe for a few seconds, so that when I did remember, my breath came out in a shaky gasp. So much for being cool and sophisticated.
He lowered his arms and all that was left were the sleeves. He pulled them off like a stripper removing long gloves and let the bits of silk fall to the ground. He stood looking at me, nude from the waist up.
"Am I supposed to applaud or say, 'My, my, Mr. Zeeman, what big shoulders you have'? I'm aware that you have a great body, Richard. You don't have to rub my face in it."
He moved into me until he was standing so close that a hard thought would have made us touch. "What a good idea," he said.
I frowned at him, because I wasn't following. "What's a good idea?"
"Rubbing your face in my body," he said, his voice so low that it was almost a whisper.
I blushed and hoped he couldn't see it in the dark. "It's an expression, Richard. You know I didn't mean it."
"I know," he said, "but it's still a good idea."
I stepped back. "Go away, Richard."
"You don't know the way to the lupanar," he said.
"I'll find it on my own; thanks, anyway."
He started to reach out to touch my face, and I almost stumbled backing up. He flashed me a quick smile and was gone, running through the trees. I could feel the roil of power like wind in a sail. He rode the energy of the woods, the night, the moon overhead, and if I wanted to, I could go along for the ride. I stood there, hugging my arms, concentrating everything I had on blocking him out, cutting the power between us.
When I felt alone and locked within my own skin again, I opened my eyes. Jason was standing so close it made me jump. It also made me realize how careless I'd been.
"Damn, Jason, you scared me."
"Sorry. I thought someone should stay behind and make sure no vampires made off with you."
"Thanks, I mean that."
"You all right?" he asked.
I shook my head. "I'm fine."
He grinned, and there was almost enough moonlight to see the laughter in his eyes. "He's getting better at it," Jason said.
"Getting better at what?" I asked. "Being Ulfric?"
"Seducing you," Jason said.
I stared at him.
"You know how I was jealous of the way you looked at Asher?"
I nodded.
"The way you look at Richard ... " He just shook his head. "It's something."
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "It doesn't matter."
"It matters," he said. "It doesn't make you happy, but it matters."
And to that, there wasn't a damn thing I could say. We started walking through the woods in the general direction everyone else had been going. We didn't need no stinking directions.
18
We found the lupanar, and we didn't need directions. We had Jason's nose and my ability to sense the dead. I'd assumed that all lupanars were the same, but yards away from this one, I knew I was wrong. Whatever lay up ahead had death mixed in with it: old death. It felt almost like a restless grave. Sometimes you'd be out in the woods and find one. An old grave where someone was buried without rites, just a shallow hole in the ground. The dead don't much care for shallow holes. It needs to be deep and wide or they get restless. Cremation takes care of all of it, actually. I'd never met a ghost of someone who had been cremated.
We could see the soft shine of lanterns through the trees when Jason stopped, touching my arm for attention. "I don't like what I'm smelling," he said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"A body aboveground for a long time."
"A zombie?" I made it a question.
He shook his head. "No, drier, older than that."
We both looked at each other. I was pretty sure we were both thinking the same thing. Rotting vampire. I realized that I was clutching his arm, and he was clutching mine. We stood in the dark like children wondering if that noise was really a monster or if it was the wind. Neither of us took that next step to find out. If we'd had covers, we'd have been under them.
If we'd gone in there just to kill them, I'd have been all right. A slash-and-burn operation was my style lately. Every time we approached the vamps on their own territory by their own rules, we got hurt. I realized suddenly how much I did not want to walk into that place and negotiate with the monsters. I wanted to press a gun under Colin's chin and pull the trigger. I wanted done with it. I did not want to walk in there and give him power over me through some ancient rules of hospitality among the terminally anemic.
Damian came gliding through the trees. He was dressed in the standard uniform of black leather pants so tight you knew that nothing else was under them but vampire. But he was wearing a black silk T-shirt with a scooped neck. It looked almost like a woman's shirt. His shoulder-length hair helped the illusion of feminity, but the chest and shoulders that peeked out of the shirt ruined the effect: masculine, definitely masculine.
Jason was wearing an almost identical outfit, except the shirt and pants were satin. Though the knee-high boots were identical. For the first time, I realized that Jason was broader through the shoulders than Damian. Had that just happened recently? I looked from the werewolf to the vampire and shook my head. They grow up so fast.
What I said out loud was, "You guys look like backup singers for a Gothic band."
"Everyone's waiting for you," Damian said.
I realized that I still didn't want to go. I felt Jason shake his head. "No," he said.
"You're afraid," Damian said.
Jason nodded. I frowned. Jason and I were both usually braver than this, no matter what nasty things were in the next room -- or the next clearing, as the case may be.
"What's up, Damian? What's happening?"
"I told you what Colin was."
"You called him a night hag. He can feed off fear. Was that supposed to be a clue?" I asked.
"He can also cause fear in others," Damian said.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to relax my hold on Jason's arm. He kept his death grip. "That makes sense," I said. "They can always guarantee a meal that way, right?"
Damian nodded. "But he also enjoys it. Fear is like a drug to a night hag. My old master said it was better than blood, because she could walk through a world of fear. If she desired it, she could move through a world that trembled, ever so slightly, at her passing."
"And that's what Colin is doing tonight?" I said.
Jason dropped his hand from my arm. He stayed close enough that our arms brushed, but we weren't huddling in the dark like rabbits.
"I can usually tell when a vamp is doing mind stuff on me. He's good."
"This is different from the other master-level powers, Anita. My first master said it was like breathing to a human, something you did without thinking about it. She could intensify it, but she could never really stop it. A low level dread surrounded her at all times."
"Was she scary in bed?" Jason asked. I think he meant it as a joke.
The look on Damian's face even by moonlight wasn't funny. "Yes," he said. "Yes, she was." He looked at me, and there was an intensity in his face that I didn't like. He actually reached out to me, then let his hand drop.
He finally said. "Some of the masters can feed off of other things, not just fear. "