CHAPTER 71

They wrestled Little Henry into handcuffs on the metal bed rails, but he continued to thrash and jerk so much that Nicky said, 'The railings aren't going to hold; hurry.'

There was no beast inside Little Henry for me to call to mine. He wasn't a vampire that I could call with my necromancy. I'd broken ties between both types of preternaturals and their vampire masters, but I'd never tried to break a human free. I wasn't exactly sure how to do it, but Nicky was right; whatever I was going to do I needed to hurry.

I started with touch, because all vampire powers are greater with skin on skin. The moment I touched him I felt the power of the vampire. My cross flared white, hot, incandescent white just like the police officers' crosses had. Henry screamed louder, his voice growing ragged with the abuse. I tried to trace the power backward, but it was like I got lost inside Henry, like the very warmth and humanness of him somehow confused my power.

'Shit,' I said.

'What's wrong?' Dr Aimes asked, hovering close.

'If he were a lycanthrope or a vampire I could do this, but human is harder.'

'Do what? What are you trying to do?'

'Break him free of the vampire that's possessed him.'

'That's not possible,' Deputy Al said.

'I've done it before,' I said.

'It's impossible; once a vampire has you, they have you,' Al said.

I shook my head. 'Not to me, it's not impossible to me.'

I thought about shoving the cross into his skin. It would chase the vampire back for a few moments, but it wouldn't free someone who was already this deeply entrenched.

I walked around the bed to Nicky. 'Help me get into the bed.'

Nicky didn't question it, just picked me up.

Dr Aimes said, 'What are you going to do, Marshal?'

'I need to see his eyes, and I'm too damn short.'

Nicky helped lift me over those long, muscled arms that were still straining against the cuffs and the narrow metal bars of the bed. Two officers were still holding down his legs, or he would have bucked me off the bed. I tried to stay high on my knees above his body, but he was thrashing too much; I knelt over his chest, using both hands to grab his head. He was still shrieking, the sound so loud with me above his face that it was almost painful. My cross flared so bright that I was nearly blinded by it. I needed to see his eyes, and I couldn't. Did I dare take off the cross? But the other holy objects were so bright I wasn't sure it would make that much difference.

The skin of his face was cool against my hands, and I could feel the vampire inside him. I decided to treat him as if he weren't human, as if I had every right to expect him to respond to my power. 'Henry Crawford, Henry, look at me!' I put energy and power into my words.

He stopped struggling and blinked up at me through the edge of the lighted cross. 'Henry, Henry, can you hear me?'

He blinked, staring up at me as if he didn't know what I was.

'Henry, can you hear me?'

'I hear you,' he whispered.

'I'm going to set you free.'

'You can't. He told me I'm his forever.'

'He lied,' I said. 'They all lie.'

'Who?' he asked.

'Vampires.'

The cross light faded a little so I could see how green and brown his eyes were. Most people with hazel eyes really have brown eyes with a hint of gray, or green, but Little Henry's eyes really were green and brown all mixed together. I watched the pain and confusion in those eyes, and then I saw it, like a reflection of something dark. I would never know if I'd truly 'seen' it, or if it was my mind translating the untranslatable. The next moment the vampire threw its power into Henry and tried for me, but vampire was something I could understand. I'd fought two other necromancers that had come back from the dead; one had almost killed me, but that was before I accepted what I was, who I was, and what that meant.

The vampire filled Henry with terror, and he drew breath to scream again, but I sent love in the place of fear. I sent the soft warmth of welcome and friendship; I offered a hand in the darkness. I offered Henry Crawford hope and a way out. I shone a light into the darkness that the vampire offered, and Henry turned to it the way humans always do; we need hope almost more than anything else, for without it we are lost. I helped Henry find his way back from the hell that the vampire had trapped him in, and I saw what he'd done to him. This vampire fed on fear and he'd kept Henry in perpetual terror during the day so he could feed off Henry's fear.

'You evil bastard,' I whispered.

His voice came out of Henry's mouth, but it wasn't Henry's voice. 'I am not evil, Anita Blake; he is mine, my slave to do with as I wish.'

'No, I say you cannot have him.'

'It is too late, he is mine!'

'Bullshit!' I threw my power into Henry, threw my necromancy into him like a guided missile seeking its target. Henry was just the sky that I was flying through, searching for the vampire, and Henry wanted to help me, because I had offered him the first peace and hope that he had since the vampires took him. Henry helped me, by wanting me to win. He opened himself up and didn't fight me as I sent a psychic gift into him that had no business being in a human being. I tried to make it a gentle passing, but in honesty I wanted the vampire more.

'He is mine, Anita Blake, mine!'

'NO!' I saw the vampire's body wrapped in dark cloth in what looked like a cave, or bare stone at least. It turned its head, and it was emaciated, skeletal, but the eyes the eyes were alive, burning with fire as dark as the night itself.

'Yes, necromancer, the Mother of All Things breathed her power into me when you drank her down. She tried to escape to my body, but you would not let her go; thus I have her power but am free of her control. She did not control all the vampires merely for her own enjoyment. Some of us she controlled so we did not destroy all that is.'

'You can't destroy all that is,' I said.

'I can destroy all humans, with my power and hers combined. I am free from this body and free to enter others. The Mother took me with her when she tried to possess you and Jean-Claude and your others, but now I do not need anyone's help to ride the bodies of others.'

'Who are you?'

'Do you not recognize the feel of me, Anita? You and your lovers have tasted my power before. You denied me deaths once, but you and the police fed me in the mountains, and again in the hospital; with every death, I fed and grew stronger.'

'You are not the Lover of Death, you can't be.'

'Why can I not?'

'Your power feels completely different.'

'I was reborn when you slew our Mother; she filled me with her darkness, and I felt you filled with it, too. We are all that is left of her, Anita Blake, you and I.'

I stared into Henry's eyes and saw a body so ravaged by time that if he hadn't opened his eyes and moved I'd have taken him for a corpse, a long-dead corpse. 'You were in the basement. You just entered one of the zombies so you could move better in daylight. How did you get your body out in time and not burn?'

'I am the creator of my line; you know that rotting vampires do not burn in the sun. The flesh eaters are swift and strong; I carried myself to safety and hid in the woods while you killed all my hard work.'

'Apparently, you got some of Marmee Noir's necromancy that I didn't, but I got something you didn't get.'