Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,86

it was amazing, but I knew that it was like trying to explain color to the blind. How do you explain red without resorting to heat? Fire, but that’s orange and yellow, even blue, and white-hot heat is a term for a reason. How do you explain red to someone who has never seen it? How did the beast explain scent to my nearly blind human nose?

It wasn’t until the leopard rubbed its big head against my hand that I realized I was crying. I was crying because I couldn’t understand and for the first time I understood, maybe, just how much I was missing.

Nicky wrapped one arm around me, leaving room for the leopard to rub and lean against my legs. I didn’t so much pet him as let him roll the thick velvet of his fur underneath my hand. I wondered how much his leopard understood of why I was crying, but like any domestic cat he knew I was sad and that was enough. Nicky could feel my emotions and was compelled to try to make me feel better. It was part of the compulsion of being a Bride, though as I leaned into the muscled warmth of his chest underneath the leather jacket, I thought maybe we should start calling him my Groom. We’d come up with the term Bride because of Dracula and his Brides. He was the most famous vampire that had held the ability, but it didn’t mean that the language couldn’t change. I realized I was using the words and their meanings to help me pull away from that world of scent and alien sensations that Nathaniel’s leopard had given me. I thought about slang, and how language evolves, because it was something that no animal would have given a shit about. It helped me stuff myself back into me, this body, this mind, these limited senses. I thought things as alien to the leopard and the lion inside me as the world of scent was to me, and it helped me ground and center into myself again.

Ares was standing a little to the side of us, looking out into the dark. ‘God, they’re loud.’

I raised my head from Nicky’s chest and listened. The leopard leaned hard against my leg, and I expected to feel him go still under my head listening, too, but he didn’t. He’d ‘heard,’ or scented the police coming closer minutes ago, while I was wrapped up in my tears, the touch of the two of them, and my human thoughts.

Nicky kissed my forehead. ‘You got too much of Nathaniel’s leopard in your human mind, didn’t you?’

I looked up at him, brushing at the drying tears on my face. ‘Yeah, how did you know?’

‘I got some of the sensations you were trying to deal with, like bleed-over.’ He rested his cheek on the top of my head and pressed me against his chest. The leopard licked my hand and made a small snuffing sound.

‘I don’t catch sensations from you like that.’

‘You can’t feel my emotions either, but I feel yours,’ he said.

I frowned, thinking about it. ‘Being my Bride, my Groom, seems really one-sided, as if I’m not supposed to give a damn about your feelings and needs, just you about mine.’

‘Yes,’ he said. His body snuggled closer around me and seemed to include the leopard at our feet in the motion, so that Nathaniel rubbed in between our legs, not trying to separate us, but making it a group cuddle. The energy was peaceful, comforting; the only person in the snuggle who thought we shouldn’t be so happy about it all was me. It still bothered me that I had possessed Nicky so completely. As if he sensed it, and maybe he did, he said, ‘I’ve never been happier than since you brought me to St Louis, Anita.’

I pulled my face back enough to see his face as I said, ‘Doesn’t it bother you that it’s all vampire powers and mind tricks?’

‘No,’ he said, and he kissed me, softly, and whispered against my lips, ‘I’m happy; why does it matter how it happened?’

I wanted to say, But it does matter, but I didn’t. I let him kiss me again, let Nathaniel wind his leopard between our legs like a huge housecat. He started to purr and the sound of it vibrated up our bodies like some happy, contented motor wrapped in fur, muscle, and beauty, because he was beautiful in this form, too. I stood there tasting