Extraits de The Harlequin (15ème tome)

J'avais le premier chapitre mais comme vous l'avez déjà, je ne le remets pas. Pour ce qui est des autres extraits, ils sont chronologiques mais je ne peux vous dire à quel moment précisément ils se déroulent dans l'histoire. Euh, je ne les ai pas traduis (lire l'anglais c'est dans mes cordes mais la traduction .... ). Pour l'instant je ne vous mets que les 2 premiers extraits car ça prend pas mal de temps de tout taper, surtout que ces deux là sont vachement longs. Enfin, je trouve.

Le premier extrait nous parle de la conversation entre Anita et Edward lorsqu'elle l'appelle à la rescousse.

I sat on the edge of the bathtub, waiting for Edwrd to come to the phone. I’d insisted on privacy for the phone call, thought I’d told Jean-Claude and Micah who I was trying to call. Jean-Claude had said only, “Help would not be unwelcome.” The commend said, clearly, that he xas xorried. The more worried I realized he was, the more worried I got.

I heard noise over the phone, movement. The phone was picked up, and I heard Edward’s voice say, “Hang up the other extension, Peter”. A second later he spoke directly into the phone. “Anita, Peter said you needed help, my kind of help.” His voice was empty middle-of-nowhere accent. It was his normal voice; when he was playing Ted Forrester, good ol’ boy, he had a drawl.

“I didn’t say I needed hel,” I said.

“Then why did you call?”

“Can’t I just call to that?”

He laughed, and the laugh was strangely familiar. I realized it was an echo of Peter’s laugh earlier, or maybe Peter’s laugh was an echo of Edward’s. They weren’t genetically related, I knew that so what was with the laugh? Imitation, maybe.

“You would never call me just to chat, Anita. That’s not what we do for each other.” Helaughed again, and murmures, “Called to chat”, as if the idea was too ridiculous for words.

“I do not need you to be condescending, thanks anyway”. I was angry and had no right to be. I’d called him, and it was me I was angry at. I was wishing I hadn’t called for so many reasons.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, not taking offense. He knew me too well to let a little angry outburst bother him.

I opened my mouth, closed it, then said, “I’m trying to decide where to start.”

“Start with the dangerous part?” There, that was Edward, not “start at the beginnine”, but “start with the dangerous part”.

“I did call for backup, but I have toher backup already. It’s not you, but it’s not a bunch of amateurs either.” I was being honest. The wererats were almost completely ex-military, ex-police, or ex-criminals. Some of the werehu=yenas were the same flavor of professional. I had help. I shoudn’t have called Edward.

“You sound like you’re trying to talk yourself out os asking me for help,” he said, and his voice was curious-not warried, just curious.

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Because Peter answering the phone made me realize that it’s not all fun and games anymore. If I get you killed, then they lose another father. I don’t want to have to explain that to Peter, or Donna, oe Becca.”

“But especially Peter,” he said.

“Yeah”, I said.

“Since you can’t lie to me, just tell me, Anita.” His voice was a little softer now, a little feeling to it. Edward liked me; we were friends. He’d miss me if I was gone, ad I miss him, but there was still a litlle question about whether one day, we’d find ourselves on the opposite sides of a problem, and have to finally see wich of us was the better man. I was hopping that day never came, because there was no way for me to win the fight now; dead or alive, we’d both lose.

“Do you know what the Harlequin is?” I asked.

“A French clown?” he said, and let himself sound puzzled.

“Do you know it in any other context?”

“Twenty questions isn’t like you, Anita; just talk.”

“I just wanted to see if I was the only vampire hunter extraordinarire who was totally in the dark about this. It makes me feel a little better tht you don’t know about them either. Apparently Jean-Claude is right, they really are a big, dark secret.”

“Talk.” He said.

I talked. I told him what I knex about the Harlequin and his band. It really wasn’t that much. He was quiet so long that I said, “Edward, I can hear you breathing, but ...”

“I’m here, Anita. Just thinking.”

“Thinking what?” I asked.

“That you always let me play with the best toys.” And his voice wasn’t empty now, it was eager.

“And what if these toys finally manage to be bigger and badder than you and me?”

“Then we die.”

“Just like that?” I said. “You wouldn”t have regrets?”

“You mean Donna and the kids?”

“Yes,” I said, and I stood, starting to pace the bathroom.

“I would regret leaving them.”

“Then don’t come,” I said.

“And if you get killed, I’d always believe that I could saved you. No, Anita, I’ll come, but I will bring backup.”

“Not anyone too crazy, okay?”

He laughed, that chuckle of true delight taht I’d heard maybe six times in the entire six years I’d known him. "I can’t promise that, Anita.”

“Fine, but Edward, I’m serious, I don’t want to get yo killed on them.”

“I can’t stop being who I am just because I love Donna, Anita. I can’t stop being what I am because I’ve got the kids to think about.”

“Why not?” I asked, and I was thinking of a conversation Richard and I had had when we thought I was pregnant. He’d expected that pregnant I’d stop being a federal marshal or a vampire hunter. I’d hadn’t agreed.

Voilà la suite (c'était trop long pour tenir en un seul message)

“Anita, are you there? Anita, answer me.”

“Sorry, Edward, I didn’t hear a damn thing you said”.

“You’re a thousand miles away inside your own thoughts. That’s not a good place to be in the middle of a firefight.”

“It hasn’t come to a firefight yet,” I said.

“You know what I mean, Anita. I have to round up my backup, and arrange transport. That’ll take a day or so. I’ll be there as soon as I can, but you need to watch your bask until I get there.”

“I’ll do my best not to get killed before you get here.”

“This isn’t funny, Anita. You seem seriously distracted.”

I thought about it for a moment, tne realized what was wrong. I was happy for the first time in my life. I loved the men I was living with. I, like Edward, had a family to protect, and mine wouldn’t be tucked safely in New Mexico while we cleaned this up. “I just realized that I’ve got my own family here, and I don’t like them being on the firing line. I don’t like that a lot.”

“Who are you worried about?” he asked.

“Nathaniel, Micah, Jean-Claude, all of them.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting your new lovers.”

It took me a minute to realize. “You’ve never met Micah and Nathaniel, I’d forgotten that.”

“Jean-Claude can handle himself, Anita, as well as anyone in this situation. It sounds like the shapeshifters have you covered for ow. Micah is head of the local wereleopards. He didn’t get the job on his winning personality. He’s a survivor and a fighter, or he’d be dead laready.”

“Is this supposed to be a pep talk?” I asked.

He gave a sound that was almost a laugh. “Yeah.”

“Well, you suck at it.”

He laughed then. “Which of your lovers is cannon fodder, Anita? Who are you really the most worried about?”

I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and said, “Nathaniel”.

“Why him?”

“Because he’s not a fighter. I’ve taken him to the gun range and he fnows the basics.” I remembered a moment whan Chimera, a very bad guy, had come to town. I remembered an ambush, when Nathaniel had been with me. I’d forgotten. He’d killed someone, and I’d forgotten. I hadn’t even thought how it mighthave affected him. Some dominant leopard queen I was. Fuck.

“Anita, you still there?”

“Yeah, I just remembered something, that I guess I was tryinf to forget. Nathaniel shot someone, killed him to save me. One of the wererats had gotten killed, and he picked up the guy’s gun, and used it just like I’d taught him.” I was suddenly cold down to my toes. All the awful things taht people had made Nathaniel do over the years while he xas on the street, and it had been me taht forced him to kill. He’d done it out of love, but motive didn’t change the end product. Someone was still dead.

“He’ll do, Anita.” The was a tone to Edward’s voice. Approval, maybe.

“Listen, I need to get off the phone and start gathering backup. Gathering the men will take longer than transport or the weaponry. Let me ask you about the rumors. I’ve heard, and you tell me if they’re lies.”

“Ask,” I said, not sure I wanted him to ask at all.

“That’ Jean-Claude has become his own bloodline and broken from his old mistress.”

I was surprised, very surprised. “How the hell did that rumor get started?”

“We’re wasting time, Anita: true or false?”

“Part true. He is his own bloodline. That makes it so he doesn’t have to answer to his old mistress, but he hasn’t broken with Europe. He’s just stopped being Belle Morte’s beck-and-call boy.”

“That you’ve got a string of lovers among Jean-Claude’s vamps and the local shapeshifters.”

I really didn’t want to answer this question. Was I embarrassed? Yes. “I don’t see what my love life has to do with the Harlequin coming to town.”

“Let’s just say that the answer to this question will decide me on whether I ask something else, something I didn’t believe. Now I’m geginning to wonder.”

“Wonder what?” I asked.

“Answer the question, Anita: do you have a string of lovers?”

i sighed, and said, “Define ‘string.’”

“More than two or three, I guess.” He sounded uncertain.

“Yes, then.”

He was quiet for a second, then cntinued. “That Jean-Claude makes everyone male or female fuck him before they can join his kiss.”

“Not true.”

“That he makes the men fuck you?”

“Not true, and someone’s having a better fantasy life with my life than I am.”

He gave a small laugh, then said, “If you had told me no on the first question I wouldn’t even ask this next one, but here it is: That you’re some kind of daywalking vampire thet feeds off sex instead of blood. I don’t believe that one, but I thought you might be interested in what some of your fellow monster hunters are saying about you. I think they’re just jealous of your kill count.”

I swallowed hard and went back to sit on the edge of the tub.

“Anita,” he said, “you’re awfully quiet.”

“I know.”

“Anita, it’s not true. You’re not a daywalking vamp.

“”Not the vamire part, not exactly.”

“How ‘not exactly’?”

“Do you know the term ardeur?”

“I know the French word, but that’s not what you mean, is it?”

I explained, briefly, as coldly as I could, just the facts, what the ardeur was.

“You have to fuck people every few hours, or what?”

“I start drainig the life out of Damian and then Nathaniel.”

“What?”

“A have a vampire servant and an animal call.”

“What!” i’d never heard him sound so astonished.

I repeated myself.

“There isn’t even a rumor about this, Anita. Human servants can’t have vampire servants, it doesn’t work that way.”

“I know that,” I said.

“Nathaniel is your animal to call?”

“Apparently.”

“Does the council know this?”

“Yep”.

“Well, shit, no wonder they sicced their dogs on you. Your’re lucky they didn’t just kill you.”

“The council is divided on the appropriate action to take about Jean-Claude and us.”

“Divided how?”

“Some of them want us dead, but it’s not a majority vote. They can’t agree.”

“So the Harlequin comes to break the tie, is taht it?” he asked.

“Maybe. Honestly, I’m not sure.”

“Is there anything else you’ve done that might make them decide to kill you quicker, like before I can get there?”

I thought about the fact that I might be a panwere. I thought about a lot of things, then sighed. Then I tought of one thing we’d done that might bother the oter Masters of the City in the united States enough to cry for council help. “Maybe.”

“How ‘maybe’? Anita, can you wait for me to get backup, or do I ned to get on a plane and get my ass to St. Louis, to back you? That’s what I need to know.”

“Truth, Edward, I don’t know. Jean-Claude ant I did something back in November that was pretty powerful. It might be enough to scare the Harlequin.”

“What did you do?”

“We had a little private get-together with a couple of the Master of the City who were visiting. The two taht Jean-Claude calls friends.”

“And,” he said.

“And Belle Morte interfered from all the way in Europe. She messed with me and the Master of Ghicago.”

“Augustine,” he said, “Auggie to his friends.”

“You know him?”

“Of him,” Edward said.

“Then you know how powerful he is.”

“Yes.”

“We rolled him, Edward.”

“Rolled how?” he asked.

“Jean-Claude and I fed off him, we both fed the ardeur off him. We fed on him, and though him we fed on every person he had brought to our lands. We did this massive feed on them all. It was an amazing power rush, and all of us–vamps, beasties, anyone tied to either Jean-Claude or me by metaphysics- gained power from it.”

“I’ll contact the backup I want; they xan join me later. I’ll be on ground in –“ he paused as he checked his watch- “four hours, five at the outside. I’ll be in St. Louis before sundown.”

“You think it’s that serious?” I asked.

“If I were a vampire, and you had a vampire servant, I might kill you just for that. But if you guys rolled Augustine, one of the most powerful masters in this country, then yeah, Anita, they’ll be nervous. I’m just surprised the Harlequin didn’t hit St. Louis earlier.”

“I think they needed the excuse of Malcom and his misbehaving church. The council is truly divided about Jean-Claude and his power base. I think maybe the council wouldn’t agree to let the Harlequin mear us, but now that they’re here xhexking out the Church of Eternal Life, well, two birds with one stone.”

“Sounds reasonable,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can, Anita.”

“Thanks, Edward.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll see you in a few hours, Anita. Watch your back like a son of bitch. If these guys are masters thay may have wereanimals and humans to do their daywalking. Just because the sun is up doesn’t make you safe.”

“I know that, Edward. I probably know that better than you do.”

“Maybe, but be careful until I get there.”

“I’ll do my best.” But I was already talking to an empty phone line. He’d hung up. I hung up, too.

Alors maintenant, une scène entre Anita et Richard. Comme vous pourrez le voir, c'était bien parti mais Ricahrd étant ce qu'il est, il casse légèrement l'ambiance (comme d'hab.)


The bathroom door closed, firmly. Richard stood there, holding me, as if it were effortless, as if I weighed nothing and he could have done it all night. Sometimes it bugged me to know how much stronger the men were than I was, but not this morning. This morning, it seemed comforting.

He carried me to the edge of the tub. The water wes very loud, rushing into the huge tub. Jean-Claude had explained to me that the swan spout that filled it was hooked up to a system that filled the tub extra fast. I had a tub almost that big at home and apparently my system was like his, a quick fill. Since I had bought the house with the tub and system en place I hadn’t eralized ther was anything special about it. High-tech tubs, who knew? Richard hugged me, and again I got a flash of that amazing strength. “I want to check the water, but I’m realyy enjoying carrying you.”

“Me, too,” I said.

He rested his face against my hair. “Really?”

“Yes,” I said, and I would have whispered it, except the water loud enough that true whispering wasn’t possible.

He stepped into the water with me in his arms. I laughed and lifted enough to see his face. “Shouldn’t you check the temperature first?”

The look on his face made the laughter leak away. Eager, amazed, just so many emotions. Lately when we’d been together the only thing I’d seen in his face had been lust. We’d both shut down our emotions, kept ourselves safe. It had had that feel of sex et the end of a relationship, when sex is all you have left, and it isn’t enough.

“The temperature’ fine,” he said, voice soft. He knelt down, still holding me. He folded all that six feet end change down into the water, and just above his waist, the water hit me. It was warm, almost hot. The water slid over my body like another set of hands, gliding, exploring. He was right, the temperature was fine.

He wispered against my hair, “How much do you hurt?”

“I ache all over”.

“We’ll get cleaned up first then, let your body soak in the water. Hot water helps.” He kissed my forehead, then lowered us both down into the water, so that he was almost loating with me held acroos his chest. He let go of me with one arm, so he could half swim, half pull us to the water faucet. My legs trailed ot into the water, but the rest of me was held tight to his chest. He sat down against the side of the tub. The water came to his upper chest, which meant it was chin deep to me. He kept me pinned to the front of his body, and I was okay with that. Touching was good.

“Enough water?” he made it a question.

“Yes,” I said.

He reached back and turned off the water, then he settled down in the water with me cuddled against the front of his body. The height difference was enough that to keep my chin above water I couldn’t cup my body against anything but his chest and stomach, with the rest of my body mostly floating. It was probably just as well; if too much of him touched me, I tended to get distracted. We were going to some of the aches and pains drift away before we got distracted. He kissed the side of my face, and I settled into his arms, and the warm, warm water.

It was relaxing, or chould have been, but there was a kermnel of me that couldn’t relax completely. What was wrong?

“What’s wrong?” Richard asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’re tense.”

I sighed. “I don’t know.”

His hand slid down the side of my body, to cup my hip. “It seems like unles we’re having sex, you get tene when we’re alone.”

“I don’t mean to,” I said.

He wraped his arms around me and forced my body lower, as he rose up, so that certain parts of his anatomy were touching me. He wasn’t as har as he got, but even partially erect he was a special treat. The feel of him pressed to the back of my butt felt wonderful. It made me writhe against him, which made his body react, growing, moving against my body. It was all involuntary, and I loved knowing that I affected him like that. He pushed against me, and it brought a small sound from his lips.

“So quick, so eager, God, I do love that about you.” He whipered it against my face.

“I wanted to make love to you months before you’d say yes.”

“I was afrais.” He nuzzled my neck, biting just a little.

That little biting make me writhe more. The aches and pains were starting to fade under the first wave of endorphins, those happy little chemicals. “Afraid of what?” I whispered.

He bit harder, and my spine bowed with it. “You.”

“Why?”

he cupped his mouth around the side of my throat, and bit down. I cried out for him; my nails clawed at his arms. I finally had to say, “Enough, enough.”

He eased back and turned me in the water, so that I was facing him. He drew me in against the front of his body, and he was hard and eager now. The feel of him against the front of my body made me cry out.

He cupped my ass, pressed me harder against the front of him. I pushed at his body, almost like I wanted to get away, but that wasn’t what I was thinking. It was just almost too much, for some reason. The feel of him so eager, so big, trapped between our bodies. It was almost too much.

He shuddered, head back, voice panting, “God, Anita, God, I love the way you react to me. I do love it!”

I wrapped my body around him, pressed the lenght of him against the most intimate part of me. It made me cry out and press myself tighter against him.

He pushed me against the side of the tub and moved his hips away enough to try to angle himself for my opening. I didn’t protest until the tip of him started inside, and my body let me know that hte combination of water, which is not a lubricant, lack of foreplay, and his size, meant this wasn’t going to work.

I half-patted, half-slapped his chest. “Too big, you’re too big.”

“The water,” he said, breathy. He leaned his hand on the sides of the tub, face down, the head of him still inside me. “If you release the ardeur, we can do it.”

“But I’ll be sore afterward, and so will you.”

He moved his hips a little, and the sensation, even tight, made me catch my breath. “Not too sore,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “trust me. I don’t want to be walking funny tomorrow.”

He raised his head enough to frown at me. “We’ve never done this before like this-how can you be so sure?”

Shit. I stared up at him with his body inside mine, and didn’t know what to say. The truth was Micah and I had done it, but that seemed impolitic to say the teast, in this moment. I tried to think of something that wouldn’t make him feel bad. But I waited too long.

He said, “Just say it, Anita, just say it.”

“I want to make love with you, richard, I don’t want to fight.”

He pulled back enough so he wasn’t inside me anymore. He stayed with his arms on either side of the tub, fraiming me. The look on his face was cautious now, almost as if he were steeling himself for bad news. It wasn’t the look i wanted on his face right now.

“Say it, Anita.” His voice sounded tired.

“I tried it with someone else.”

“Why did it hurt?”

“Don’t make me say it, Richard, please.”

“Say it,” and his voice was harsher now.

I sighed. “Fine, because he was too big for it not to hurt.”

“Who?”

“Don’t do this, Richard.”

“Who?” This time it was a demand.

I gave him angry eyes. “Who do you think?”

“I don’t know; you’ve added at least two men to your list, and I’ve never seen either of them erect.”

I dunked under his arm and half-swam to the other side of the pool. “Tell me what you want me to say, Richard.”

“Is it your two new vampires?”

“Are you wanting to know how you measure up to Requiem and London? Is that what you’re actually wanting to know?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

I crossed my arms under my breasts, the water helping, since they floated. “I cannot believe you’re asking this.”

“It’s an easy question, Anita.”

“Do you actually want to know if you’re bigger than they are?”

“I’m so jealous of them that I can’t see straight, so yeah, I want to know. I want to know that I’m still the best’endowed man in your bed.”

“You know, I don’t actually get out a ruler and measure everybody.”

“So they are big.”

“Jesus, ary and Joseph.” I covered my face with my hands. “No, no, they aren’t as well endowed as you are. Happy?” I lowered my hands, and found that it wasn’t a happy look on his face.

“Then who is?”

I’d managed for months to not have this discussion, this specifically with anyone. Of course, it would be Richard who pushed it. “Micah, okay? Micah.”

“Is that why you love him?”

“Jesus, no, Richard, you should know better than most that a really big cock is not enough to win my heart.”

“Then why him? Why are you liiving with him and not me?”

I sighed. We weren’t going to have sex. We were going to have therapy. Sweet Mary, Mother of God, I did not want to do this. “Don’t do this, not now, not today.”

“I need to understand what went wrong before I can move on, Anita. I’m sorry, but I do.”

I shook my head and tried to settle into the water, but it wasn’t soothing anymore. It was just wet. “Fine. Do remember I’m living with Nathaniel, too. You always seem to forget him, or discount him.”

“He’s not dominant, Anita. In the world of wereanimals that makes him discountable.”

“But in the world of my affections, richard, he is not discountable.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t, and I’m sorry you don’t, but it’s still the truth. I’m living with Micah and Nathaniel, not just Micah. The fact that Nathaniel isn’t a dominant doesn’t make me love him less.”

“How can you sit there like this and tell me you love someone else? Don’t you know how much that hurts me?”

“You wanted this talk, not me. I wanted to make love. I wanted to clean up, feed the ardeur, and b together, but you had to get all hung up on the size of everyone’s equipment. I know it’s a guy thing to worry about that, but this wasn’t the time to bring it up.”

“You’re right, it was stupid, but I”m stupid around you, Anita. You make me say things, do things, that I knwo are bad for the relationship.”

“I don’t make you do anything. You choose to say and do things that spoil stuff. Your choice, not mine.”

“Fine, you’re right. I choose to say and do this shit. I could heve let it go, and we’d be having sex right now, and it would be grat sex. But I really do want to know what Micah has that I don’t. What magic does he have that made you move him into your house, live with him, when you wouldn’r do it for me?”

Voilà, c'est tout pour l'instant car il faut que je continue à taper le reste.
Eh bien, j'espère que ces deux extraits vous ont plus.

En ce qui concerne la conversation entre Anita et Edward, je pense que les renforts auront la forme, l'allure et le tempérament de ... Olaf! Vous me direz ce que vous penser de ma petite théorie.

Pour ce qui est de Richard, il a enfin compris que tout ce qui l'a séparé d'Anita jusqu'à maintenant, c'est sa haine de lui-même (enfin! c'est pas trop tôt.) On peut toujours espérer qu'il va désormais s'améliorer et qu'il ne fera plus chier Anita. Je rêve tout éveiller? Peut-être.

Désolée de proposer ça que maintenant Estelle, mais vu que je l'ai moi aussi, on pourrait se partager le boulot si tu veux. J'ai pas mal de temps libre au labo en ce moment, donc bon... Enfin, c'est toi qui decide, et si c'est ok, on s'organise.

Sauf que je viens de voir que t'en as fait la plus grande partie deja.....

Thriller, Thriller*
(* : sur l'air de thriller de Mickael Jackson)

Bien sûr moi et l'anglais = 2 (voir 3)

Citation :

Pour ce qui est de Richard, il a enfin compris que tout ce qui l'a séparé d'Anita jusqu'à maintenant, c'est sa haine de lui-même (enfin! c'est pas trop tôt.)

C'est pas possible !! Il va pleuvoir des escargots extraterrestres !

il aura fallu attendre pas mal de tomes pour qu'il s'en rende compte, son cas n'est pas si desespéré que ça tout compte fait !

Merci de ta proposition Asher lady, mais comme tu l'a dit, il ne reste plus grand chose donc je m'occuperai de la suite. De plus, moi aussi j'ai du temps libre puisque mes partiels sont finis.

Je vous mets donc la suite le plus vite possible.

Whouah!!!!!!!!!!!! Je veux ce livre, ça va être trop bon

Et pour ta supposition Estelle :

Spoiler:

Je me demande comment ça va se passer entre les renforts et Anita. J'ai trop hate d'avoir la suite moi aussi mais il va falloir que je pratique la patience (ce qui est trés dur car j'attends la version poche:pale: )

Idem pour moi... Et si on regarde les temps standards, on aura pas The Harlequin en poche avant avril prochain.
Heureusement, va y avoir Mistral's kiss en octobre, le comics relié en juin, et probablement, pour ceux qui suivent, Eclipse (la suite de Tentation et Fascination) pour cet été.

Eclipse est prévu pour novembre non ?

Ah ouais? En fait j'ai juste fait des suppositions en analysant blablabla mais je m'ai peut etre trompée... Ou alors toi t'as lu une date quelque part!

EDIT: Sur amazon, y a que la date de la sortie en anglais: aout 2007.

En effet, je pourrai toujours patienter avec Mistral's kiss. Quoique il va falloir que j'attende octobre (selon amazon) pour l'avoir

Pour ce qui est du comics, je ne l'ai pas. Les extraits que j'ai pu voir grâce à vous ne m'ont pas plu, surtout les dessins. Je ne m'imaginais pas Jean-Claude ainsi. Il est vraiment trop blanc (ok, pour un vampire c'est normal mais quand même !). Et pour ce qui est de Tentation et Fascination, je ne connais pas.

J'ai vu cette date sur le site de la Crypte et aillerus mais je ne me souviens plus d'où...

Asher lady a écrit:

Eclipse (la suite de Tentation et Fascination) pour cet été.

cela parle de quoi ? je connais pas non plus

Y a une critique de cette serie dans critique d'auteur je crois: Stephenie Meyer.

ok merci j'irai voir

Voilà un autre extrait qui nous montre que de l'action est en perspective. Malheureusement, cet extrait ne nous donne que l'eau à la bouche. J'aurai aimé qu'il se poursuive un peu plus. Mais bon, il ne faut tout de même pas demander la lune.



I couldn’t breathe, my heart was touching stone, and I couldn’t breathe.dy, oh, God, he was dying. Jean-Claude tried to heal him, and that forced me to feel what Richard’s claws had done to the vampire’s body. His heart stuttered, hesitated. Sweet Jesus, no Richard had stabbed him in the heart. Jean-Claudefelt the power we’d taken into their injuries, and it should have been enough, but it was as if there was something in Richard’s injuries that ate the power, but didn’t heal him. I saw something like a shadow on Richard’s back.

Jean-Claude whispered, “Harlequin.”

We were dying, my chest squeezed tight and tighter, I couldn’t breathe. I oly half-felt when Raphael lowered me to the floor and tried to get me to say something to him. I used my last bit of air to whisper, “Help us.”

Raphael said, “Anything.” His shields were still down. I took their energy, again, but not to feed, to strike out.

Jean-Claude cried out in my mind, “Non, ma petite.” But it was too late; with my last thought, before darkness swallowed us all, I took the power of Raphael and the wererats and I stuck out at that phantom on Richard’s back. If I could have thought clearly, I might have thought, die, but the darkness was eating us, and all I had time to do was strike. I saw her, not them, two cloaked figures in a dark room, a dark hotel room. Two white masks lay beside them on the bed. One sat, the other knelt behind her. They were both petite and dark haired. They looked up startled, as if they could see me and what came with me. I got a good look at the pale, upturned faces; the long brown hair, and a shade darker than the other; one brown eyes, one gray; both glowing with power. They’d combined thier powers; somehow they’d combined to hit us. I don’t know what they saw, but they both cried out. The kneeling one tried to shield the other with her body, then the power hit them. It sent them crashing to the floor and into the nightstand. The lamp fell over on top of them and shattered. It knocked over the phone and a notepad. I read the name of the hotel on the notepad. I knew where they were. They fell into a heap and didn’t move again. Y last waking thought was, good.

Voici les deux derniers extraits que j'ai. Le premier c'est un pasage entre Anita et Belle Morte. Je sens que Belle Morte va plus la lacher d'une seconde notre petite Anita.


I dreamed, or maybe I didn’t. But if It was heaven, it was too scary, and if it was hell, it wasn’t quite scary enough. I was at a ball, everyone in glittering clothes from centuries before I was born. Then the first couple turned to me and they were masked. Everyone was wearing the Harlequin’s white masks. I stumbled back from the dancers and found that I was wearing a silver and white dress that was too wide to be graceful, and too tight through the ribs to breathe well. One of the couples bumped me and my heart was suddenly in my throat. My chest was tight and tighter, as if some huge fist were crushing my ribs. I fell to my knees and the dancers moved wide around me in a spill of skirts and petticoasts. Their dresses brushed me as they whirled faceless around me.

A voice came to the dream, Belle Morte’s purring contralto. “Ma petite, you are dying.”

The hem of a crimson dress was at my hands. She knelt beside me. She was still the brunette beauty who had nearly conquered all of Europe once. All that dark hair piled atop her head, leaving her neck in that pale white curve that we’d always loved. We ... I tried to feel the rest of that we, but where Jean-Claude should have been was this awful blankness.

She leaned over me as I fell to the floor. “He is almost gone, our Jean-Claude,” she said. Her amber-brown eyes didn’t seem worried. She was simply making an observation. “Why do you not ask for my help, ma petite?”

I wanted to say, why would you help us, but there was no air to say anything. My spine tried to bow in the tightness of the corset as I gasped like a fish left to die on the shore.

“Oh,” she said, and with a flick of her will the dream changed. We were in her bedroom, on her huge four-poster bed. She knelt above me, with a huge knife in her hand. The world was going gray; I wasn’t even afraid.

My body jerked, the corset gave, and I could suddenly breathe a little better. My chest still hurt, and I breathed too shallowly, but I could breathe. I looked down to find that she had cut the bodice of the dress all the way through to the corset, so that there was a line of bare skin from my neck to my waist. She laid the knife beside her knees, and spread the stays of the corset a little wider, as if she meant to skin me out of the dress, but she went back to kneeling beside me in her red, red dress. Her skni seemed to glow against the crimson cloth.

“What happens in my dreams can be very real, ma petite. Corsets here made your breathing there herder. You don’t have enough breath to spare.”

”What’s happening?”

She lay down beside me, her head on the pillow I was lying upon. A little close for comfort, but I didn’t have the energy to spare for moving. “I felt Jean-Claude’s light snuffed out.”

“He’s not dead,” I whispered.

“Can you sense him?”

It must have shown on my face, because she said, “Shhh, you are correct, he is not gone completely, but he is close to the edge. You are keeping him, both of them, alive. You and your second triumvirate of power. Something Jean-Claude did in this new emergency has taught you better control of the power between you an d your other triumvirate, your kitty and your vampire.”

I swallowed, and it hurt, though I couldn’t remember why it should. “Nathaniel, Damian.” I was feeling a little better, well enough, to be afraid. I’d almost drained both of them to death once or twice.

“Do not fear for them. They are well enough, but they are feeding for you, giving you their enerdy as they are supposed to do in emergencies,” she said, and stroked my forehead, tracing down the edge of my jaw. It was an idle movement, the way you’d stroke the curse of a couch you were sitting on. “The masks of the Harlequin were in your mind, ma petite. Have they come to your territory?”

I wanted to tell her to stop calling me ma petite, but air was precious so I answered, “Yes.”

“Show me,” she said.

Not “Tell me,” but “Show me.” I said, “How?”

“You are Belle Morte’s line; how do we trade power?”

I frowned up at her.

“Kiss me, and but think of it, and I will know what you know.”

I don’t know if I would kissed her voluntarily, because I didn’t get a chance to decide. She pressed those ruby lips to my mouth, and I was suffocating aain. I couldn’t breathe. I pushed at her, and she thought inside my head, “Think of the Harlequin.” I t was as if it were an order, and my mind did what she asked.

I thought of the meeting wth Malcolm and his fear. I went back through the date with Nathaniel and the mask in the bathroom. The second mask with the musical notes on it, and the meeting planned. The mark on me, and the scent of wolf, and Jake keeping me safe. Then the last memory, where I saw my men dying, and the ghost shape on Richard, and the feeding with Raphael. She slowed the memories there, lingering on the rat king’s powers, then let the memories go back to speeding along, and using Raphael’s power to attack the one that had attacked us. It was the last memory that she slowed down wompletely. She stared at the pale faces of the vampires, the long dark hair, the glowing eyes, brown and gray respectively. Belle Morte studied the faces of the other vampires. She whispered, “Morgana, and Nivia.” The memory ended, and Belle Morte was simply lying beside me, propped on the pillows.

I whispered, “You know them.”

“Yes, but not that they were Harlequin. It is a deep, dark, secret who is and who is not one of them. They are spies and secrecy is their lifeblood. By their hands the Harlequin have broken their most profound taboo.”

“What taboo?” I asked.

“They are neutral, ma petite, utterly neutral, or how can they dispense justice? Did they give you a black mask? I did not see it in your memories.”

“No, only the two white.”

She laughed, and her face shone with joy. My heart hurt, but not from a physical blow. It hurt the way it sometimes does when you see someone you once adored do something to remind you why you loved them, and you know that that laugh will never again be for you.

“They have broken the law then, the law they swore to uphold. Unless they deliver the black mask, they are not allowed to bring death. For Morgana and Nivia, it means something worse.”

“What?” I asked.

“Disbandment. They will be no more, and those that are not killed will be forced to go back to their bloodlines, their old masters. To be neutral the Harlequin are freed of their ties to their creators. They are a law unto themselves, but if they are breaking the law, then they will be broken.”

“Why does that ...” I had to draw a breath to finish. “-make you so happy?”

She pouted out that full lower lip, and said, “Poor thing, so hurt. I will help you.”

“Appreciate the offer, but,” and I had to work for breath, “help us, why?”

“Because you alive are witness enough to destroy the power of the Harlequin.”

“Why” breath, “do you care?”

“They were once the private guards of the Mistress of the Dark. She is waking, I know that now.”

“But when she wakes,” breath, ”she won’t have them”.

“Présicément,” Belle said.

“But you need me, us, alive.”

“Yes,” she said, and she looked at me the way that a hawk must look at a wounded mouse: eager, anticipatory.

“Make you mad?” I whispered, and had to cough. It wasn’t my throat that was closing off. I didn’t think it was Jean-Claude’s. Something bad was happening to Richard.

“I don”t hate you, ma petite, you will be. Jean-Claude is near death and he protected you from me. I will save you all, but I will do it in a way that you will not like.” She leaned our faces close. The hand that had been caressing my face was suddenly firm and solid as metal against my cheek, keeping me turned toward that lovely face. She began to lean in for a kiss.

I spoke before our mouths touched, “A win-win situation, for you.”

“Oh, yes.” She whispered it against my lips, then she kissed me. But she didn’t just kiss me, she opened the ardeur between us. One moment all I could think about was breathing, just t keep breathing, and that I really didn’t want her to touch me, and the next she was kissing me, and I was kissing heer back.

My hands slid over that satin dress, and the body underneath, and my hands knew that body. Though my hands were smaller than they should have been. Jean-Claude’s memories kept getting in the way, coloring what was happening. When her mouth found my breast, and sucked, it startled me, because the body I was remembering didn’t have breasts. She bit me, driving dainty fangs around my nipple. It made me cry out, brought my body writhing off the bed. She raised a bloody mouth and smiled at me, her eyes filled with dark amber light. She climbed my body and pressed that bloody mouth to mine. I kissed that mouth as if it were air, and food, and water, all rolled into one. I marveled at how small her mouth was, how dainty. How I’d longeg to kiss this mouth again. I knew in this moment what I had never know from Jean-Claude, how much it had cost him to leave her. They say that once you love Belle Morte you nerver stop, and I knew in that kiss, with her body on top of mine, that it was true. He still loved her, would always love her, and nothing would change that, not even me.

The ardeur started to feed then, at that bloody kiss, but this was Belle Morte, the creator of the ardeur. You did not feed from her and stop. You fed until she stopped you.

The knife cur us out of the dresses, and where it nicked the skin we licked and drank each other’s blood, and it didn’t seem wrong, or a bad thing to do. The taste of her blood was sweet, and slow, and I knew that vampire blood was not a meal, but it could be foreplay.

I ended up on top of her, and my body kept forgetting that it wasn’t male. I pressed her to the bed, with my body between her legs. But I could not do what I was remembering. I swore in frustration, because more than anything in the world in that moment I wanted to pierce her body. I wanted to plunge parts that I did not have into parts of her that I did.

She lay underneath me with that dark hair spilling around her body, across the silk of the pillows. Her lips parted, her eyes filled with that eager light. I knew whar she was, knew it better through Jean-Claude tna most. I knew that she would slit my throat and make love in the blood while I died, but in that oment with her looking up at us, I didn’t care. I just wanted her to keep looking at us that way.

She laid me back against the sheetes and began to kiss her way down my body. I watched her eyes roll up, watcing my face, as she licked, and bit, and drew small pinpricks of blood where dainty fangs ierced too close. It wasn’t my memory that made me writhe at the sight of her over my groin. At first, ti felt wrong, because i was expecting a different sensation, but Belle had spent two thousand years learning about pleasure, and she knew this pleasure, too. I gazed down at her with her mouth between my legs, and her tongue found me, traced me, licked me, and finally che sucked me, lightly at first, then deeper and deeper, until fangs bit deep as she sucked me, and I wasn’t certain if it was the pleasure taht brought the orgasm, or the pain. The ardeur fed, and fed, and fed.

I screamed, and writhed, and clawed at the pillows, and only after I lay back boneless, eyes fluttering blind with pleasure, did she raise her face from my body.

She tarted up at me with eyes that glowed so bright, she looked blind with power. She laughed, and the sound trailed down my body and made me cry out again. “I do see what he sees in you, ma petite, I truly do. I have fed you enough to keep you all alive, but Morgana and Nivia, and any of the Harlequin that took part in this, will have not know that I know.”

I tried to say, tell people, but my mouth couldn’t work quite yet. Hell, if there’d been an emergency I couldn’t have rolled off the bed, and it wasn’t the medical emergency part htat kept me lying there. It was a few thousand years of practiced sex that made me lie there and look at her, or try to look at her. The world was still white-edged with orgasm.

“I believe that they have allies for their illegal activities among the council, so I must go slowly here, but you need to be well there.” She smiled at me, and it was the smile that the serpent must have used in the Garden of Eden: want a bite of apple, little girl? “I will send a call out to my bloodline in your territory. Jean-Claude is still too hurt to stop it. I will talk to them as of old, before they had Jean-Claude’s new power to hide behind. When you wake, you will need powerful food for the ardeur. You must share that power with Jean-Claude ans your wolf.”

I managed to whisper, “I don’t know how to do that.”

“You will,” she said, and she came to straddle my bosy, leaning in until our lips met. I could taste my body on her mouth. We kissed, and the dream broke, and I woke, with the taste of her kiss on my lips.

Et maintenant, une petite conversation ente Anita et Edward.


He smiled down at me, shaking his head. Standing there, looking down at me, Edward looked pleasant, like the end product of a few generations of WASP breeding; blond hair, blue eyes, maybe a little sort at five-eight, but he would have fit in, in so many places. Then the polished charm began to melt away, like magic. I watched the real Edward fill his eyes, and turn them from warm to cold as a deep winter sky. The color of his eyes was the same, but the look in them wasn’t. The face was still, and showed nothing. If I hadn’t had vampires to compare with, I’d have said Edward ave better empty face than anyone I kew.

Once, seeing Edward at my bebside would have meant he’d come t kill me. Now it meant I was safe. We were all safe, or as safe as we could be. Edward couldn’t do much about metaphysical powers, but I trusted him to take care of the Harlequin’s weapons and fighting skills. The magic was my department, but no one did armed combat better than Edward.

“Hey,” I said, and my voice still sounded dry.

His lips twitched. “Couldn’t stay alive for just five more hours, huh?” His voice held an edge of the smile that had been there, then settled to that empty middle-of-nowhere voice, no accent, no hint of where he’d started life.

“’m alive”, I said.

“They had to restart your heart twice, Anita.”

Lilian, who had made herself scarce, came to stand beside him. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t scare my patient.”

“She likes the truth,” he said, without even looking at her.

“He’s right, doc,”I said.

She sighed. “Fine, but let’s ease her into it, she’s been mostly dead all day.”

It took me a second to realize she’s made a joke. Edward gave her a look, then turned back to me. “According to the vamps we don’t have time to ease you into it.”

“Tell me what’s been happening,” I said.

‘There’s too much, Anita. If I telle you everuthing, it will be dawn and your little vampires will be dead for good.”

“Telle me what I need to know then,” I said.

“Jean-Claude used a lot of energy to wake every vamp in the city before he passed out.”

I was there when he did it.”

“Don’t interrupt.” He was way too solem for my comfort. “The vamps and shapeshfthers came up with a plan that they think will net the most power for you to feed into Jean-Claude and Richard in the shortest amount of time.”

“Why are you telling me this? Why not Asher, or ...”

“You interrupted,” he said, eyes cold, and face still so serious.

“Sorry,” I said.

Lilian made a noise that made us both look at her. “You said she’d take the news better from you, but I didn’t believe you. I believe you now.”

He gave her a look.

“Sorry, I’ll stand over here and stop wasting time.” She moved away from us.

He continued. “I don’t like the plan and you’ going to hate it, but I’ve listened to their reasoning and it’s the best plan we’we got.”

I raised a hand.

He actually smiled, but it never quite reached his eyes. “es.”

“You think it’s a good plan?” I asked.

“I couldn’t come up with a better one.”

I looked at him. “Really?”

He nodded. “Really.”

The fact that he couldn’t come up with a better plan said a lot. Said enough that I didn’t argue. “Okay, tell me the plan,” I said.

“You feed the ardeur on the head of another animal group, and take their energy y you did the wererats.” He didn’t flinch or hesitate even though he’d only known about the ardeur for a few hours. He’d landed in the middle of a crisis of metaphysical proportions and it hadn’t fazed him, or if it had, it didn’t show. In that moment I loved him, in a guy-buddy sort of way. He’d never fail me, or fuck with me, and I loved him for it.

“Which animal group?” I asked.

“The swams,” he said.

I gave him a surprised face. “Say again?”

He smiled, that cold smile, but it was a real smile; he as amused. “I take it the swan king is not your buddy.”

“Not in that way. He and all the heads of the animal groups have been over to the house for dinner, but ...” I shook my head and swallowed past that feeling of something in my throat that wasn’t there, like a phantom pain. “I’ve nerver thought of him in that way, and there are larger, more powerful groups in St. Louis than the swams.”

“You knocked most of the wererats cold when you fed on their king,” Edward said.

“I did what?”

“You heard me.”

I remembered Jean-Claude’s voice in my head, saying no when I went back for that last bit of energy from Raphael. “I didn’t mean to,” I said.

Lilian peered around Edward’s shoulder. “You’re just lucky I was one of the few that didn’t go down.”

“Why didn’t yo?”

She looked thoughtful, and sad, then shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“We don’t have time to worry about the why?” Edward siad.

“Agreed,” Lilian said.

I just nodded.

“The wererats still aren’t a hundrer percent, Anita. You did real number on them. We can’t afford for you to do the same to the werehyenas.”

“Not a problem, Narcissus is sooo not on my to-do list.”

His lips twhiched, almost a smile, then he gave in and laughed. “I’ve met him now, and ...” He just shook his head, and said, “I wouldn’t want to do him either, but he did come through for us. He let us have all the werehyenas that we asked for.”

A thought occurred to me. “If most of our muscle were knocked out, why didn’t the Harlequin attack attack us?”

He nodded. “I don’t know why they didn’t attack.”

“They’re supposed to be this uber-fighting team. Sort of you as a vampire; they should have attacked.”

“Asher and the other vampires have speculated a lot about why the Harlequin didn’t push the advantage. I’ll tell you all of it later, but ight now ...” He made a movement as if to take my hand, then his hands fell bakc. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

I frowned at him. “You know I do.”

“Then I’ve got the defenses covered, Anita. But only you can channel enough energy to Jean-Claude to keep the little vampires alive.”

I wanted to ask so many things, but he was right. I had to trust Edward to do his job, and I did, but ... “There aren’t that many swanmanes in the city,” I said.

“We asked the werelions first, but their Rex refused.”

“Joseph refused to help us?” I was shocked, and let it show

“Yes.”

“We’ve bent ovr backward for the lions. Hell, I save his life once or twice.”

“His wife said he wasn’t having sex with anyone but her.”

“This isn’t about sex, edward.”

He strugged.

“The lions would let hte vampires die.” I said it out loud because I needed to hear it. I couldn’t quite believe it.

“That’s how I’ take it,” he said.

We looked at each other, and I felt my eyes go as cold as his. I think we were thinking the same thing. The lions would suffer for this. Ungrateful bastards.



J'adore la fin de ce passage. Vive Anita et Edward . Je sens que les lions vont passer un sacré quart-d'heure . Génial! Anita redeviens elle même (j'espère que Laurell continuera sur cette voie car j'aimais bien Anita tirant sur tout ce qui bougeait ou l'ennuyait)

Mais y'a pleins de passage à la fin de ton livre la vache!