"Laurell K. Hamilton - Anita Blake 06 - Killing Dance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

me. She dates me without the aid of vampire glamor. Why should I not be
pleased?"
Listening to him talk you'd have thought it was all his own idea. Fact was,
he'd tried his best to mark me, and I'd managed to escape. We were dating
because he'd blackmailed me. Date him or he'd kill my other boyfriend.
Jean-Claude had managed to make it all work to his advantage. Why was I not
surprised?
"Until her death you cannot mark any other human," Sabin said. "You have
cut yourself off from a great deal of power."
"I am aware of what I have done," Jean-Claude said.
Sabin laughed, and it was chokingly bitter. "We all do strange things for
love."
I would have given a lot to see Jean-Claude's face at that moment. All I
could see was his long black hair spilling over his jacket, black on black.
His shoulders stiffened, hands sliding across the blotter on my desk. Then he
went very still. That awful waiting stillness that only the old vampires have,
as if, if they held still long enough, they would simply disappear.
"Is that what has brought you here, Sabin? Love?" Jean-Claude's voice was
neutral, empty.
 Sabin's laughter rode the air like broken glass. It felt like the very
sound of it hurt something deep inside me. I didn't like it.
"Enough games," I said, "let's get it done."
"Is she always this impatient?" Dumare asked.
"Yes," Jean-Claude said.
Dumare smiled, bright and empty as a lightbulb. "Did Jean-Claude tell you
why we wished to see you?"
"He said Sabin caught some sort of disease from trying to go cold turkey."
The vampire across the room laughed again, flinging it like a weapon across
the room. "Cold turkey, very good, Ms. Blake, very good."
The laughter ate over me like small cutting blades. I'd never experienced
anything like that from just a voice. In a fight, it would have been
distracting. Heck, it was distracting now. I felt liquid slide down my
forehead. I raised my left hand to it. My fingers came away smeared with
blood. I drew the Browning and stepped away from the wall. I aimed it at the
black figure across the room. "He does that again, and I'll shoot him."
Jean-Claude rose slowly from the chair. His power flowed over me like a
cool wind, raising goose bumps on my arms. He raised one pale hand, gone
nearly translucent with power. Blood flowed down that gleaming skin.
Dumare stayed in his chair, but he, too, was bleeding from a cut nearly
identical to mine. Dumare wiped the blood away, still smiling. "The gun will
not be necessary," he said.
"You have abused my hospitality," Jean-Claude said. His voice filled the
room with hissing echoes.
"There is nothing I can say to apologize," Sabin said. "But I did not mean
to do it. I am using so much of my power just to maintain myself that I do not
have the control I once did."
I moved slowly away from the wall, gun still pointed. I wanted to see
Jean-Claude's face. I needed to see how badly he was hurt. I eased around the
desk until I could see him from the corner of my eye. His face was untouched,
flawless and gleaming like mother of pearl.