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Carol-Anne, how did you feel when the cops wouldn't let you leave, or your
professor wouldn't take your paper?
"Pissed off." I said shortly, and he arched an eyebrow. It had been a quick
answer, but not an honest one. I thought it over, carefully. "Powerless." I
said after a moment, and he nodded.
"You felt guilty after your moment with Johnson yesterday afternoon why?" He
knew the answer. So did I for that matter, but I still felt awful about it,
and it was hard to say.
"I felt like I'd...abused him somehow." I said slowly, looking away. "Like I'd
taken advantage of him...and used my power all wrong.
Green nodded his head, apparently satisfied. "To use power, Corinne, you need
to feel powerful. You need to be aware that you can do something. I'd told you
that you possessed some abilities, and you believed in them and consciously
used them it came naturally. Those other times you'd felt as though you had no
recourse nothing to stand on. You didn't use power because you didn't know you
had it. You only use it when you realize it's there.
"How very zen." I said dryly.
"I try." He grinned back. He turned back to his workstation and sat down, and
I continued to look at him thoughtfully. He was genuinely a nice guy nothing
I had seen since that first night had changed my mind about that.
But he obviously knew how to use power. I'd seen Renny chasing around in
were-cat form, and occasionally as a human. There was a sadness in her eyes,
in the slight curve to her shoulders that might never truly go away, but she
would live. For a while there, I was afraid she wouldn't, and I was fairly
sure that every time her emptiness threatened to overwhelm her, she ended up
in Green's room, in his bed, and he kissed her and made it better. This house
and these grounds alone were a testament to Green's power. For five acres in
any direction the grounds were a cool, misty garden, full of rioting color and
streams that seemed to begin and end in nowhere. Only the dome of the house
itself consisted of the red dust and dry pine trees that made up this part of
the foothills, after the sentinel oak and scorched straw gave way to it back
around Auburn. Nothing in this part of the country resembled Green's land even
in temperature, which, in June, should have been in the nineties. In fact, the
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mound over the house, was in the nineties. But around the house proper, it was
a cool seventy-eight Fahrenheit.
If that wasn't use of power, what was? But it wasn't abuse of power. Even
taking Renny to bed wasn't abuse of power. In fact, I'd seen him, once, after
she'd been with him. He'd stumbled out of his bedroom half blind with
exhaustion, red-eyed, almost weeping, and Bliss and a host of other nymphs,
sprites, whatever the hell they were, had swarmed around Green, well, purring
was the best I could phrase it. And suddenly he hadn't looked so haggard
anymore.
So I was beginning to understand I was new to sex, myself, but I was beginning
to understand its nature:
Sex was love if you were lucky.
Sex was healing if you were good.
Sex was release at the barest minimum.
Sex was power in any form.
Green wielded sex with affection and kindness and an honest goodwill towards
those who sought him out for protection and companionship. It made sense, I
told myself. Everyone was attracted to Green. I was no exception. And the fact
that I was sleeping with Adrian only made the attraction stronger both the men
had an easy familiarity about them friends, lovers, family. I was just sort of
pulled into their circle. It was comfortable there, I realized. Kind. Kindness
is underrated.
"What are you thinking?" He asked suddenly, and I had to shake myself aware. I
had been, I realized, staring at him as he worked.
"Kindness is underrated." I said truthfully.
He grinned again, more wicked than ever. "I'm not always kind." He chuckled,
then made a shooing motion with his hand. "Go away, Cory I've got things to
do, and you are way too distracting.
I stuck my tongue out at him. "Are all the were-folk accounted for?" I asked.
Green shook his head no. That had been their priority, for the last two
days they were finally at a place where they could be reasonably sure that
anyone not accounted for was probably dead. It had taken a toll on all of
them the vampires especially.
Although it's pretty hard for people to get attached to their food, it's
pretty easy for vampires. Because the were-folk replenished their blood supply
every time they morphed, they were an ideal part of the vampire food chain.
And because they didn't weaken or die off, they were also usually very good
friends. Adrian seemed to know every victim of what had been called (with a
certain grim sense of humor) the 'greasy spot syndrome' personally. Mitch had
been the first victim we knew of. Part of our little jaunt to the river the
night before had been so Adrian and his crew could feed. There were always
parties down at Clementine this time of year especially on the weekends.
Adrian, Grace, and a host of around twenty to thirty other vampires just slid
into the crowd, and.. lets just say the party got really interesting for a
number of the young rednecks whooping it up. Feeding is a sensual experience,
and there were a number of people who woke up this morning missing clothes and
no small amount of dignity but with some very erotic memories. I took a
certain amount of satisfaction in watching the homo-phobic captain of my high
school football team go off in the woods to get high (or so he thought) with a
very beautiful, very male buddy of Adrian's. I bet he had a few surprises last
night that he would prefer to forget this morning.
That had been about the time I had wandered to the lake to swim. Uncomfortable
doesn't even begin to describe the sensation of being in the middle of a
hallucinogenic vampire orgy and knowing your own personal vampire was out in [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]