Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I was embarrassed to have forgotten all about the little family that was now spending more time in my house than I was. "I wouldn't have even thought to phone them. I'm sorry."

  "We have it covered, Anita, but we have it covered because I'm getting on the plane along with Nathaniel."

  "I'm sorry, Sin. I didn't even think about the fact that Nathaniel does most of the cooking and meal planning."

  "Nathaniel and Nicky both told me as soon as they found out so I could start planning. Nathaniel seems a little caught up with Damian, so Nicky's been helping me plan."

  "But I didn't tell you, which was shitty of me."

  He nodded, shrugged, and then said, "Shitty will about cover it, yeah."

  "Sin and I started out talking meals, but he had a new idea that was more about the personal stuff."

  "Do I want to know?" I asked.

  "I think it explains some things," Nicky said.

  I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and looked at Sin. "Okay, I'm listening."

  "We are listening," Jean-Claude said.

  Sin swallowed and suddenly looked younger than nineteen, almost as young as the teenager I'd first met. "We all share each other's emotions, thoughts, feelings. I know that how we met and the age difference bother Anita, but I wondered if maybe the fact that Jean-Claude has kept me at arm's length emotionally is impacting how she feels about me."

  "What are you saying?" I asked.

  "Jean-Claude works really hard to be a good guardian for me. He's started calling me nephew as my nickname to emphasize that I'm not his boyfriend, or boy toy, or sexual anything. I appreciate the effort he's made, but what if his working so hard to keep me in the 'child' box, the 'son' box, has made it harder for you to feel romantically toward me?"

  I shook my head. "I came into our relationship having these issues, before Jean-Claude ever met you."

  "We were both pretty traumatized by the Mother of All Darkness, Anita."

  "You didn't seem traumatized. You seemed . . . besotted with me," I said.

  "You were the first sex I'd ever had. That can be pretty overwhelming."

  I thought about the discovery, just minutes before, of Asher being Jean-Claude's first male lover. It explained so much about why he'd put up with so much bad behavior from Asher for so long.

  "You're saying that the 'oh boy it's sex' made you seem less traumatized to me."

  "Something like that."

  I looked at Jean-Claude. "Could Sin be right? Could your trying so hard to keep him in the 'child/nephew' box impact how I feel about him?"

  "Perhaps."

  Nicky asked, "How does it make you feel when you catch some of Anita's sexual attraction to Sin?"

  Jean-Claude had gone very still, his face an almost unreadable mask, beautiful to look at it, but distant. He was trying very hard not to share anything he was feeling or thinking. "I distance myself from it when she is feeling amorous toward our young prince."

  "Sin's right: You have started calling him the young prince or nephew, all terms to help remind you that he's so young and that you think of him as a younger relative, so the incest taboo attaches to him."

  "You know, this much therapy is really not making me want to feed the ardeur on anyone, right now," I said.

  "You must feed before you get on the plane, ma petite. Your fear of flying could weaken your control over it, and that would be regrettable in the airplane."

  I stared at him. "How regrettable?" I asked.

  "If you lost control completely, the pilot could be involved, and how regrettable would depend on where in the flight you were when it happened, ma petite."

  I swallowed but seemed to have a lump in my throat that wouldn't go down. I had to cough to clear it.

  "You're actually pale," Sin said.

  "I don't like to fly," I said.

  "You're afraid to fly," Nicky said.

  "Stop helping me," I said.

  He smiled, but it was gentle. "I am trying to help you."

  I looked into that one clear blue eye and held my hand out to him. "I know you are."

  He came and took my hand in his. "You are Jean-Claude's human servant, Anita. That means his attitudes and emotions affect you."

  "Our moods can affect each other," I said.

  He squeezed my hand and said, "Then maybe Sin is right."

  I looked at Jean-Claude, who was standing close to us. He was still giving a polite blank face, which meant he was hiding his feelings and thoughts as hard as he could. I looked at him. "You agreed with me, Jean-Claude, that the fact that the Mother of All Darkness mind-fucked Sin and me that first time together was what made me not be in love with him."

  "Of course that impacted how you would think of him, ma petite. How could it not?"

  "Yes, but is your putting him in the 'son I never had' box making it worse?"

  "I do not know, and that is the truth."

  "Then why are you hiding what you're feeling so hard right now?"

  "Because it had not occurred to me that my effort to treat Cynric as a good legal guardian should have stopped your ability to love him as you might have."

  "You feel stupid for having missed the possibility," Nicky said.

  "I would not have put it that way, Nicky, but yes."

  "So am I right?" Sin asked.

  "I cannot tell you that you are wrong," Jean-Claude said.

  "See?" Nicky said. "You're right and you're wrong."

  "It's like Schrodinger's cat," I said, "alive and dead at the same time until someone opens the box."

  "And what determines if the cat is alive or dead?" Sin asked.

  "Leave the metaphors behind, neveu. It is my attitude that may have killed the cat."

  "For it to affect Anita this much, you must have been fighting pretty hard to keep Sin in the 'young nephew' box," Nicky said.

  "I am his legal guardian. Bibiana and Max trusted me with Cynric's well-being. I have tried to do what is right by him."

  "You've been wonderful, Jean-Claude," Sin said, moving toward the three of us.

  "I have done my best."

  "No one could have done better," Cynric said.

  "Agreed," I said.

  "Agreed," Nicky said.

  "But did my efforts cost Cynric Anita's love?"

  "Let us worry about that," I said.

  "No, Anita. Jean-Claude needs to help us see if this is really the problem," Sin said.

  "How?" I asked.

  "How can I remedy this harm I may have caused?"

  "I'm right about saving Nicky as food for the trip."

  "The reasoning is sound," Jean-Claude said.

  "Feed on me tonight. If your putting me in the 'nephew' box is really hurting Anita's ability to love me, then it should help change that. If it doesn't change anything, then that's not it."

  "It is a dangerous experiment, nephew."

  "If it doesn't change her feelings toward me, then you don't have to take blood from me again."

  "It may not be that simple, Cynric," Jean-Claude said.

  "You've called me Cynric at least three times. You never forget that I prefer to be called Sin."

  "Perhaps I am trying to distance myself even more? Sin is a rather provocative word to use as a name."

  Sin frowned. "Have I missed something here?"

  "What do you mean?" Jean-Claude asked.

  Nicky shook my hand in his. "I think I got this one."

  I glanced up at him, because I was still a step behind.

  "Sin was only seventeen when he came to live here. He's grown over half a foot taller, hit the gym, and started filling out all that height."

  "What's your point?" I asked.

  "He's not just handsome. He's borderline pretty, a beautiful man who is over six feet tall, and athletic."

  I wasn't following for a second, and then I caught up all at once. "Oh . . . crap," I said.

  "Exactly."

  "I'm still lost," Sin said.

  "Jean-Claude only started calli
ng you his nephew in the last year or so, right?" Nicky said.

  "I guess so."

  "Until about a year ago you hadn't gotten that secondary muscle development or filled out your face and the rest of you."

  Sin blinked and then the light dawned all across his face. He looked surprised, then went pale, and then he blushed. He got control of himself and finally was able to look at Jean-Claude, who was wearing as careful an expression as I'd ever seen on him. "You've been so good, honorable, and I come in here and step all over it. God, Jean-Claude, I'm sorry for that."

  "And if my efforts to be honorable have kept Anita from giving you her heart, then I am sorry for that."

  "Now that we're all sorry, do I stay, or do I go?" Nicky asked.

  I kept holding his hand, but I narrowed my eyes at him.

  "Don't give me the look, Anita. You need to feed before you get on the plane and we are running out of time." He squeezed my hand to take some of the seriousness out of his words.

  "Practical and correct, as usual, Nicky," Jean-Claude said, "and I may have a compromise."

  "What kind of compromise?" Sin asked, and sounded positively suspicious. It sounded like my tone of voice. Had he learned it from me, or had he inherited it through the metaphysics between us? We'd never really know, but it made me wonder what else he might have picked up from me, or me from him. Maybe I'd finally be able to throw a decent spiral football since Sin was Mr. Quarterback.

  "I would like you to see me take blood from Nicky, before I do so from you, Sin."

  "Sometimes it's good to see what you're asking for beforehand," Nicky said.

  "Are you saying that it weirds you out to donate blood?" Sin asked.

  "If I didn't have qualms about it, I'd have done it sooner."

  Qualms so didn't sound like a word that Nicky would have chosen to use when he first came to us. I guess we were all learning from each other.

  "So you take blood from Nicky, and then what?" Sin asked; those big dark blue eyes were narrowed and again it was my expression on his face.

  "If ma petite approves, then she will feed the ardeur from you, and we will share her as you have with the other men." Jean-Claude met that suspicious expression with one that was elegant, calm, and as unreadable as the dark side of the moon.

  They both looked at me. Nicky squeezed my hand gently. I glanced up at him and then back at the other two men. "So it's going to be a foursome?" I asked.

  "It would seem so," Jean-Claude said, still in that careful, pleasant voice.

  "Just so you know, Sin, normally you'd want to make sure you negotiated how much the other two men touch you while everyone's touching the girl," Nicky said.

  "You and I already had this talk."

  "But you didn't have it with Jean-Claude yet."

  Sin looked at the vampire and there was no suspicion on his face now; in fact, he looked very certain, almost arrogant. In that moment I realized that he was a handsome man who knew he was handsome. That was a change from when he first came to us, and maybe not a change for the better, but there it was on his face in the way he stood so tall and strong. There was suddenly a nearly touchable sense of physicality around him. It was part natural athlete and part his inner beast peeking out.

  "I don't have to have the talk with Jean-Claude. He's more nervous of me than I am of him." The look he gave the other man then was pure predator, and suddenly I wasn't so worried about Sin's delicate sensibilities.

  "Then perhaps we should discuss my boundaries, rather than yours," Jean-Claude said.

  "Perhaps we should," Sin said, and walked toward us all like he walked onto the football field, or went up to a starting block for track, like he owned it, and he knew he would win. Victory wasn't a question; it was a given. When I'd met Cynric he'd been a shy, uncertain sixteen-year-old boy, but he had survived the Mother of All Darkness trying to do the darkest of magic on us. He hadn't just survived physically, but mentally, and emotionally he seemed to have come out of it better than some of the other, older weretigers. I should have understood that kind of strength grows into more. Watching him walk toward us, toward Jean-Claude, I finally realized that the scared boy I remembered wasn't Cynric anymore. He was Sin, and he'd chosen the name. It had been another clue about who he had become. You have to have a certain level of machismo to choose and carry a name like that. Looking at him now, I realized it suited him. How had I missed it?

  29

  NICKY STRIPPED HIS shirt off first. He wasn't much for a slow reveal when he was in the room with me and other men. I wasn't sure if it was that he didn't want to compete with men who took their clothes off onstage professionally, or if once he revealed that massive, muscular upper body he didn't feel like he had to compete with anyone. I'd seen men move or stop lifting weights next to him in the gym when he was working out. Anyone who wouldn't even lift next to him was never going to get naked in bed with him, but lucky for us none of those men were in the bedroom with us. Nicky had helped teach Sin how to lift weights and Jean-Claude had no desire to bulk up as much as the werelion.

  In fact, Jean-Claude came up behind him and trailed his hand across those muscular shoulders and made an appreciative sound, something he'd never done before with Nicky. In fact, he put his arm around the other man's shoulders and neck; the inches of extra height allowed him to lean his face against the side of Nicky's head, black curls against the straight blond hair. They were opposites in almost every way, which wasn't a bad thing, just a thing.

  Nicky stiffened, and Jean-Claude leaned in and whispered something in his ear; as his lips moved the werelion relaxed. Whatever Jean-Claude was telling him reassured him, or pleased him, because he smiled.

  Jean-Claude laid the softest of kisses against the other man's cheek.

  "You don't have to put on a show for me," Sin said.

  "I am not putting on a show for you, Sin. I am admiring what I will be plunging my . . ." And he hesitated just long enough to let Nicky's mind fill in the blank before saying, "Fangs into tonight."

  Sin looked at them, eyes narrowing.

  Jean-Claude wrapped both arms around those oh-so-broad shoulders. Nicky gripped the vampire's arm and rubbed his face against Jean-Claude's hair as if he were scent-marking. The vampire laid his lips against Nicky's cheek even more delicately than before so that he put a line of the gentlest of kisses from cheek to neck. Nicky closed his eyes and turned his head to the other side so that the strong line of his neck was stretched bare and waiting. All that strength of that muscular upper body was suddenly turned in Jean-Claude's arms into something submissive, takeable. I'd never seen anything like that between them before.

  Sin looked at me, and again it was my suspicion on his face, or maybe now it was his own. "They're trying to scare me off. It's not going to work."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I said, and walked to the other men. It wasn't that the two men didn't touch when Jean-Claude fed on Nicky, but they didn't touch quite like this, so it was a show for Sin, but if the men were willing to do it I wasn't going to ruin it for them. Besides, I was sleeping with all of them and I liked to see my men enjoying each other. I slid my hands around Nicky's bare waist. The touch made him open his eye, and I was gazing up into their faces as I caressed the narrowness of his waist until I touched Jean-Claude's shirt and the firmness of his body underneath it. I rose up on tiptoes to offer a kiss. Nicky's arm pressed against my back, and Jean-Claude unfolded one arm from around his shoulders to push his hand underneath my hair to caress the back of my neck so that when I kissed Nicky it was his hand pressing my chest against Nicky's naked upper body, but it was Jean-Claude's hand that pressed my face tighter into the kiss.

  I kissed him until my pulse was in my throat, and I drew back, breathless, to turn to Jean-Claude, who bent over Nicky's shoulder. I had to stretch to meet him with Nicky's body between us, but his height in the boots and me going nearly on pointe let us kiss. Nicky put his hands around my waist. I felt him dip like he'd bent his knees a
little, and then he lifted me up so that Jean-Claude and I could kiss more. Either my feet could dangle in the air or I could do the airborne version of popping one foot up behind me, which was what I did. Jean-Claude kept his hand at the back of my neck, but this time he pressed me in against his own lips. I wrapped one arm around the vampire and the other one around the werelion. My tongue slid between his fangs, and he kissed me harder. Nicky put one arm around my waist and held me pinned against his chest, freeing up his other hand to grab my ass.

  "I've shared Anita with Nathaniel and Micah at the same time. Unless Jean-Claude is planning to mouth-kiss Nicky next, I've seen the show."

  Jean-Claude and I pulled back, looked at each other, then at Nicky. Nicky turned his head not to me, but to the other man, offering a kiss, which he'd never done before with any of the other men in my life. Jean-Claude looked at him, smiled, and then leaned into the kiss. I was still in their arms held close and tight, so that I got to watch the kiss so close that I could have joined it, if I could have figured out where my lips would go.

  Nicky's mouth worked, putting more into the kiss than just a touching of lips. Jean-Claude responded to the eagerness, his other hand playing in the blond hair as he kissed him back. Seeing them kiss excited me, but being this close to it tensed things low in my body so hard and so tight it was a pleasure bordering on pain. It stole my breath, parted my lips as if I'd drawn a breath to blow out a candle.

  Another hand touched my face, made me turn to find Sin there. He kissed me while the two men were still kissing each other. Sin's kiss was as eager as ever; if he was bothered by anything the others were doing it didn't show, as he wrapped his arms around the three of us. I didn't fight the eagerness of his mouth on mine as Jean-Claude transferred his hand from the back of my neck to wrap around Sin and draw him in tighter against the side of Nicky's body and me. Nicky flexed his arm around my waist, almost crushing me against his chest, and the extra force was enough to draw eager noises from me that Sin licked and finally bit gently away.

  I felt Jean-Claude's power like an early-spring wind with that edge of winter's cold still riding it, but the promise of warmth and flowers to come. Once it would have been only the chill of the grave, but the more wereanimals I connected to, the warmer his energy had become. I drew back from Sin, and the other two men had drawn back from each other. There was a crimson dot on the edge of Nicky's lower lip. Jean-Claude's eyes had bled to solid shining blue.