Circus Of The Damned by Laurell K. Hamilton

Circus Of The Damned by Laurell K. Hamilton

Year Published: 1995

My Rating: 5 stars

320 pages

This is the third book in the Anita Blake series.

Another murder has been commited and Anita is called again by the police to help. It seems that vampires are responsible, so who better to ask than the Master of the City, Jean-Claude, so she goes to see him in the Circus of the Damned.
She then gets into action with a huge cobra, some werewolves and ends up face to face with another master vampire who wants her as his human servant just like Jean-Claude.

The city seems to have so many masters fighting for the city and to be leader with Anita in the middle.

Even Humans First are lookin for the master of the city to get rid of him..

Battles, battles and more battles.. It it so action filled with a lot of sexual tension between Jean-Claude and his 'ma petite', with him trying to complete the process of making her his human servant.

I totally enjoyed this book and have started the forth book already..

Quotes I enjoyed from this book:
Whoever had murdered him had drained him completely. Good to the last drop? I fought the urge to smile and lost. If you spend a lot of time staring at corpses, you get a peculiar sense of humor. you have to, or you will go startk raving mad.

Visions of vampire victims danced in my head. And every one of them was partially my fault, because I was too chickenshit to go see the Master. If I could stop the killings now, with just one dead, I'd risk my soul daily. Guilt is a wonderful motivator.

"Where did you find her, Jean-Claude? The kitten has teeth."
'tell Yasmeen what the vampires call you, anita."
It sounded too much like an order, but this didn't seem the time to bitch at him. "The Executioner."
Yasmeen's eyes widened; then she smiled, flashing a lot of fang. "I thought you'd be taller."
"It disappoints me, too, sometimes," I said.

Jean-Claude's words blew through my mind like flower petals. I could even have sworn I smelled flowers. His voice had never held the scent of perfume before.

"Can the sarcasm," he said.
"Please, I always use fresh sarcasm, never canned."

But there is another kind of ghost. Psychic impressions, strong emotions, soak into the walls and floors of a building. It's like an emotional tape recorder. Sometimes with video images, sometimes just sound, sometimes just a shiver down your spine when you walk over a certain spot.

Fresh death smells like a cross between a slaughterhouse and an outhouse. shit and blood is what death smells like.

"You mean I have a sort of power over vampires, too?"
"If you could learn to harness your talents, Ms. Blake, yes, you have a certain power over all the dead, in their many guises."

"I feel like one,
Who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead, and all but he departed," I said.

He knelt in front of me again, but was careful not to touch me. "You desire me as a woman desires a man. Is that not better than some stranger taking you by force?"
"You didn't ask my permission for the first two marks. They weren't by choice."
"I am asking permission now. Let me share with you the third mark."

I stared at Jean-Claude still huddled on the corner of the bed. He lokked adorable, and if I'd had a gun, I'd have shot him on the spot.

"Jean-claude looked up with blood all over his face and said, 'I have not waited this long to take what I want her to give freely. It is a temptation.' Then he looked down at you, and there was something in his face, Anita. It was scary as hell. He really believes you'll come around. That you'll ... love him."