Year Published: 1997
My Rating: 5 stars
368 pages
This is the 6th book in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series.
The tension in this book is so intense!! It was so hot I was worried my Kindle would melt :)
Anita finds herself a target with a price on her head, $500,000 that is! Who wants her out of the picture permanently and willing to pay that much money for it to happen, ASAP?
Sabin an out of town vampire, is in town seeking the help of Anita's powers to heal him from a progressive illnes.
Besides that, the conflict between Marcus and Richard is heating up and has to be resolved, once and for all!
Jean-Claude is as persistent as ever, and sexy as hell. Together with Richard and Anita, they try using their combined powers to their advantage and to win the war with Marcus as a team.
The end has a turning point for the series, since Anita at last chooses to break her celibacy and choose a partner. I won't say who so I don't spoil the ending. But it turns out AMAZING!!
I loved this book from page one till the last page, action and tension built up like no other book in this series till now.. I hope the next book is no less :)
Highly recommended to all Anita fans :)
Quotes I enjoyed from the book:
Dumare looked at Jean-Claude. He gave a gentle, condescending smile. "Do you have such poor control over your human servant?"
I didn't have to see Jean-Claude's smile to know it was there. "Oh, you are on your own with ma petite. She is my human servant, so declared before the council, but she answers to no one."
"She is the executioner and has more vampire kills than any other human. She is a necromancer of such power that you have traveled halfway around the world to consult her. She is my human servant without a mark to hold her to me. She dates me without the aid of vampire gloamor. Why should I not be pleased?"
Somewhere out there, by tomorrow, someone would have my name on a to-do list. Pick up dry cleaning, buy groceries, kill Anita Blake.
There were nights when I thought that Jean-Claude and I deserved each other.
I walked into the bedroom, searching for the phone. I was having a little trouble remembering where I'd left it, as if it ever moved from the nightstand. shock is always fun.
He glanced back at the dead man, who was bleeding all over my white carpet. "Dating you is never boring, I'll give you that."
"And it's dangerous," I said, "Don't forget dangerous."
No way should we walk into one of Raina's little shows without more people. No way. Jean-Claude would never have tolerated Raina and Marcus's games. They'd be dead by now, and we'd all be safe. I would have trusted jean-Claude at my back tonight. he wouldn't flinch.
"In some ways you are as sentimental as Richard," she said. "But you could kill us, all of us, even Stephen's brother, and feel nothing."
I met her honey brown eyes and said, "I'd feel something."
"What?" she said.
"Safer," I said.
He was one of those men who were pretty rather than handsome, lovely as a doll. Staring up at me with his blue eyes, he looked about twelve. The look on his face was what did it, like he was expecting me to kick him, and he'd let me because he couldn't stop me.
"Kill one person and the rest will back down."
He glared up at me, outraged. "You mean make an example of one of them?"
Put that way, it sounded sort of cold-blooded, but truth was truth. "yeah, that's what I mean."
"Oh, i like her," Sylvie said.
"I knew you would," Jason said.
"The first time I woke up in the morning with a man curled around me, I wanted it to be you."
Jean-Claude didn't mind killing people. Once upon a time, I'd thought that made him monstrous. Now I agreed with him. Will the real monster please stand up?
"You know that Raina has forbidden us to make you lukoi. she's afraid if you joined us, you'd be a better bitch than she is."
"How flattering," I whispered.
"I will kill anyone who breaks my word. I have spoken, and it is law."
"The great Jean-Claude driven to celibacy by a human. People are laughing behind your back."
"Celibacy?" I asked.
Jean-Claude glanced at me, then sighed. "Until you give up your nunnish ways, ma petite, I am playing monk."
"I don't like you using me like some kind of bogeyman for vampires. I'm not that scary."
"No, but I have encouraged the illusion."
"I didn't think there was enough of you left to have such needs," Jean-Claude said.
Sabin grimaced. "It is a cruel illness. Not all of my body has rotted away. The need remains, though the vessel is so grotesque that no one will touch me, not by choice."
"Mind if I freshen up?"
"Whatever I have is yours, ma petite. You should know that by now."
Jean-Claude slid off the bed. He moved towards me, and I had to look at the floor. I wanted badly to be held, to be comforted. If it had been Richard, I'd have gone to him. but it wasn't Richard.
Jean-Claude touched my cheek and raised my face until I had to look at him. "I have lived for over three hundred years. In that time, the ideal of beauty has changed many times. Large breasts, small, thin, curved, tall, short, they have all been the height of beauty at one time or another. But in all that time, ma petite, I have never desired anyone the way I desire you." He leaned towards me, and i didn't move away. His lips brushed mine in a gentle kiss.
"I have played the mortal for you these many months. i thought in March when you held my naked body, when you shared blood with me, that it would be a changing point for us. That you would give in to your desire and admit your feelings for me."
"You won't kill Richard because it would hurt me?"
"Oui."
"I tried to play the mortal for you, ma petite. But richard is much better at being human than I am. I have not been truly human for so very long. If I cannot be the better man, let me be the better monster."
He lay down beside me, one hand across my stomach, his head cradled on my shoulder. His bare chest and stomach lay across my arm. His skin was almost hot, feverish. he'd never felt like that before. His heart pounded against my skin like a captive bird.
Richard stared down at me, and the look in his true brown eyes was lost, hopeless. A little boy who's discovered the monster under the bed is actually real, and it's screwing Mommy.
"There are moments when honor is all that is left,"
Raina curled on the edge of the stone chair. Her long auburn hair was done in an elaborate swirl of soft curls on top of her head, down along her face. A gold chain cut across her forehead with a diamond the size of my thumb in it. More diamonds burned like white fire at her throat. She was absolutely naked except for a sprinkling of gold glitter, done thick enough on her nipples to make them seem metallic. A diamond anklet glittered on her right ankle. three gold chains rode low on her hips, and that was it.
And I'd complained about my outfit.
"Two alphas fight for you here tonight. One of us will leave this circle alive. One of us will feed you tonight. Drink of our blood, eat of our flesh. We are pack. We are lukoi. We are one."
"Mon Dieu, what has happened?" He tried to hug me, but I pushed him away.
"You'll get it all over you."
He stared at the thick, clear gunk on his hand. "How did you get this close to a shapeshifting werewolf?" An idea flowed across his face. "It's Richard. You saw him change."
I nodded. "He changed on top of me. It was ... Oh, god, oh, God, oh, God."
Jean-Claude pulled me into his arms. I pushed at him. "You'll ruin your clothes."
"Ma petite, ma petite, it's all right. It is all right."
I wanted desperately to see his face and was afraid to look up.
His fingertips brushed my shoulders, sliding down the wet skin. I shivered and glanced up. The look on his face caught my breath in my throat. Tenderness, need, amazement.
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