His mouth locked against the wound and he began to feed. I thought I'd have to try and force my power into him or lower my shields and let him inside my power, let him drink it away. But moments after his teeth pierced my skin, something flared between us. Power, bond, magic. It raised every hair on my body.
Damian cuddled against the front of me, pressing our chests to one another, and the power burst over us in a rush that filled the room with sighing. Distantly I realized that there was a wind and it was coming from us. A wind forged of the cool touch of vampire and the chill control of necromancy. A wind forged of us.
Damian was like a feeding thing at my throat. The power took the pain, turned it into something else. I felt his mouth at my throat, felt him swallowing my blood, my life, my power. I gathered it all into us and thrust it back into Damian. I fed it into him with my blood.
I visualized his skin whole and perfect. I felt the power spill down his body. I felt us push out the other. I could feel it flowing out of us, not onto the floor but into the floor, past the floor, into the ground below. We were exorcising it, ridding ourselves of it. It was no more.
The two of us knelt bathed in power. A wind trailed Damian's hair across my face, and I knew the wind was us. It was Damian who drew back, trailing power between us like the broken shreds of some dream.
He knelt in front of me, lifting his hands to my face. They were healed, under the remnants of that black ooze, his hands were healed. His arms healed. He cradled my face in his hands and kissed me. The power was still there. It flowed over us, through his mouth, in a line of energy that burned.
I drew back from Damian's kiss. I managed to sit up.
"Anita."
I looked at Damian.
"Thank you," he said.
I nodded. "You're welcome."
"Now," Asher said, "I think it is time for showers all around." He stood, pants covered in black goop. It was on his hands, too, and I couldn't remember when he'd touched Damian or the floor.
I could feel the stuff clinging to my bare back where Damian had touched me. My pants were soaked with it from the knees down. The clothes would have to be burned or at least thrown away. This was one of the reasons I kept a pair of coveralls in my Jeep to put on over my clothes at crime scenes and some zombie raisings. Of course, I hadn't expected to get this messy before I'd even left the damn cabin.
"Showers sound great," I said. "You first."
"May I suggest that you go first. A hot shower is a wonderful luxury, but for Damian and me it is a luxury, not a necessity."
"Good point," I said. My hair had kept the stuff from soaking to my scalp, but I could feel it when I touched my hair.
It. I kept saying, "it." I was shying away from the fact that "it" was Damian's body rotted and leaked out upon the floor. Sometimes when it's too horrible you have to distance yourself from it. Language is a good way to do that. Victims become an "it" very quickly, because sometimes it's too horrible even to say, "he," or "she." When you're scraping pieces of someone's loved one off your hands, it has to be an "it." Has to be, or you run screaming. So, I was covered in black, greenish it.
I washed my hands thoroughly enough so I could dig through my suitcase without contaminating the clothes. I'd picked out jeans and a polo shirt. Asher appeared behind me. I looked up at him.
"What?" I asked. It sounded rude even to me. "I mean, what now?"
Asher rewarded me with a smile. "We will have to meet Colin tonight."
I nodded. "Oh, yeah. He is definitely on my dance card for tonight."
He smiled and shook his head. "We cannot kill him, Anita."
I stared at him. "You mean we can't, as in it's too hard a job or we can't, as in we shouldn't do it?"
"Perhaps both, but certainly the latter."
I stood. "He sent Nathaniel to us to die." I looked into the suitcase, not seeing it, just not wanting to look up. There was a rim of blackness at the base of my fingernails that the scrubbing at the sink hadn't lifted. There had been a moment when the power broke between us, and I knew it would work, but until that second ... I had tried very hard not to think about it. It was only after I'd gone into the bathroom to clean my hands off that I started to shake. I'd stayed in the bathroom until my hands were steady. The fear was under control, all that was left was anger.
"I do not think anyone was meant to die, Anita. I think it was a test."
"A test of what?" I asked.
"How much power we truly have. In a way it was a compliment. He would never have contaminated Nathaniel if he thought we had no hope of saving him."
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because, to kill a pomme de sangof another master vampire is a mortal insult. Wars have begun over less."