Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "I woke in the dark and I didn't know where I was, but I could feel Nathaniel's fear and yours, and . . ." He reached out to us through the crowd of too many bodies in too small a space. Nathaniel went to that outstretched hand, and the moment they touched, I couldn't taste my pulse on my tongue anymore. Even letting Nicky hold me with all that strength hadn't calmed me this much, so I pushed away from him and went for them. I took Damian's other hand and was calmer yet, but when Nathaniel's other hand was in mine so I was touching both of them at the same time, I was almost eerily calm. It was like on the plane flying to Ireland, calm beyond all reason.

  "How do they do that for you?" Dev asked.

  Nathaniel turned to him. "I can help Damian do this, but I couldn't help us with Flannery's aunt and her mind games."

  "We all have our talents," I said, my voice calm, because with the two men holding me, I was about as calm as I got outside of special circumstances.

  "But mine never seem to be exactly what you need," Dev said.

  "Your talents were exactly what I needed in the first pub with the Fey."

  He smiled for me, but not like he believed it. Normally I'd have tried to figure out how to make him feel better, but confusing relationship issues would have to wait. "Riley said that she would kill his sister and mother if she found out what he'd done."

  Nathaniel shook his head. "No, she's going to cut him again and this time she won't stop." Even with the three of us held in that unnatural calm, the fear of that shared nightmare thrilled through us and into Damian. He'd been dead to the world while we dreamed, but now he saw what we'd seen and felt, and it was pretty awful even secondhand.

  "She'd never touched Riley when I left, but it's been five years. I guess he's old enough for her now," Damian said, his hands clutching ours so tight, it almost hurt.

  "Do you know him personally?" I asked.

  "I know most of the Roane around her, at least by sight."

  "Do you have a phone number for Riley? We need to warn him."

  "It was just a nightmare," Dev said.

  "No," Damian said, "I never had a number for him. He was a teenager, eighteen or nineteen at most. His mother helps take care of the fortress, so Riley was just Isabel's son."

  "Neither of you does dream magic," Kaazim said. "Could you both be panicking over a shared nightmare?"

  We both shook our heads. "I wish, but no, somehow she was in our dreams, or we were in hers," I said.

  Nathaniel looked at me, his eyes as pale as I'd ever seen them, lavender gray. "She knows that we saw his scars, Anita."

  "Yeah, because when she showed us the nightmare, I wondered where his scars were."

  "I wondered the same thing, Anita. It was like we were remembering him from today, but it was mixed up with her memory of hurting him."

  I nodded. "Yes."

  "We have to warn him," Nathaniel said.

  "How? He has our phone numbers, but we don't have his."

  "Flannery's aunt might know how to contact him," Dev said.

  "Do you have a number for his mother?" I asked Damian.

  "No, there's no phone at the castle, and She-Who-Made-Me doesn't like cell phones. She doesn't like most of the new technology."

  I realized that I was still nude, so were Nathaniel and Dev, but their nudity didn't bother me. I squeezed Damian's and Nathaniel's hands once more for luck and let go so I could start getting dressed. The calmness that had been keeping my emotions in check faded when I stopped touching them. I'd known it would, but it was still a shock to taste my pulse in my throat again. It was as if the calmness had stopped the panic but not helped me process it. Just one minute calm, and the next I was back to having woken from a gruesome nightmare. The calm that the three of us shared didn't allow us to skip the bad stuff; it merely delayed us having to deal with it.

  Nathaniel clutched at Damian and reached for me again. "I love you, but we have to get dressed and find him before she does."

  "Riley said that he was in Dublin for work, but that the Wicked Bitch isn't here. We'll find him," Nicky said.

  "If she sends one of the other Roane into the town to call Riley home, he will have to go to her," Damian said.

  "Why does he have to go?" Dev asked.

  "Because his mother and his sister are both still at the castle with She-Who-Made-Me."

  "She uses family members as hostages to make sure the Selkie who travel outside for work obey her," I said.

  "Riley's sister can't be more than sixteen now. She was just a little girl when I left."

  "This is not your fault, Damian," I said. I had underwear and a bra on, but I was struggling with the jeans. I'd picked out a pair of date jeans, not work jeans. Skinny date jeans weren't good for wearing weapons. I stripped the jeans off and started pulling clothes out of my open suitcase.

  "Anita, Anita, let me help," Nathaniel said, and knelt beside me to reach into the part that was still packed and magically got out a pair of black tactical pants and a fresh T-shirt. He'd packed the suitcase, so he knew where everything was; even if I had packed it, I still wouldn't have remembered it all.

  He got his own clothes out before he stood back up. I had the pants on by the time he'd chosen his outfit.

  Nicky turned to Dev. "If you're coming with us, get dressed fast."

  "Do I have time to just change into fresh clothes?" Damian asked.

  "I don't know. Do you?" Nicky asked.

  Damian stripped off his shirt in one smooth motion and went for his own suitcase.

  "Why doesn't someone call Flannery and ask if his aunt Nim knows how to contact Riley?" Dev asked.

  I stopped in my frantic scramble for clothes. "That was smart, but I don't have a number for him either."

  "I'll call Edward," Nicky said.

  "Since when do you have his cell phone?" I asked.

  Nicky just smiled at me and started to punch in buttons on his phone.

  Dev started getting dressed. I had everything on but my boots and weapons. He'd never be dressed in time to go with us.

  Dev's voice was muffled as he pulled his shirt on over his head and asked, "Where are we going if we don't know where Riley is now?"

  "Girlfriend's work," I said as I got my first gun settled on my belt.

  Nicky got off the phone. "Edward is calling Nolan to contact Flannery."

  "Great," I said.

  Damian was dressed in fresh clothes, including a coat that I'd never seen before and a pair of nice but utilitarian-looking boots. His jeans were tucked into the boots. His crimson hair fell loose around the shoulders of the warm, weather-resistant coat so that he looked like a male model in an outdoorsy-clothes commercial. The clothes were right, but he was too pretty to actually hike in them.

  Nicky waved his hand in front of my face. It startled me. "Do you have all the weapons you need?"

  "Sorry. It's not like me to get that distracted in an emergency." I checked the two wrist-sheath knives with their high silver content and the big blade down my spine in its custom-made holster, which attached to the shoulder rig. It held mostly extra ammo now, and it attached to the gun belt where my main handgun sat in an inner pants holster. If I could have figured out a different way to carry the big knife, I'd have gotten rid of the custom-made shoulder holster, but it was great for extra ammo and a smaller backup gun. I put the AR-15 on its tactical sling across my body over the T-shirt and sweatshirt I was going to wear under my coat. I'd have to leave the coat unfastened to be able to get to the AR, but I couldn't open-carry, not in Ireland. Hell, back home in the States, it would have freaked people out, even with the words U.S. Marshal emblazoned on the back of my Windbreaker.

  I was already missing my Bantam shotgun, which was back in the armory at Nolan's compound along with a few other things, but there was just no way to keep all our dangerous stuff at the hotel. They'd offer you a safe if you had expensive jewelry, but I'd never seen a hotel, no matter how nice, that offered you a secure weapon locker. It was always a problem when tr
aveling for business.

  My phone rang and it was Edward's ringtone, so I picked up. "Wait for Nolan's people to get there before you go out, Anita."

  "We're big boys and girls. I don't think we need to wait for a babysitter."

  "You don't have Irish credentials, and neither do I. We need someone with us who has credentials. That's part of the deal I made for all of you when you came into the country, remember?"

  "I remember something vague about Nolan's people being with us when we were out in the city."

  "I won't make you wait for me, but don't leave the hotel without at least one of Nolan's people with you. Promise me, Anita."

  "Damn it, Edward, did Flannery have a way of contacting Riley?"

  "Flannery is trying to get hold of his aunt now."

  "Then we need to get to the restaurant before his girlfriend is off shift for the day."

  "I know that, Anita."

  "What's the worst that could happen if we get caught in Dublin without proper ID?" I asked.

  "You could be deported or even jailed if you get the wrong Garda and the wrong judge."

  Oh. "Okay, good point. How long until Nolan's people arrive, and where the hell are you that someone else will get to the hotel first?"

  "I'm trying to convince the police that you won't start slaughtering people in the streets and you really will be useful to the investigation."

  "I thought we'd settled all that before I got on the plane."

  "So did I," he said, and he sounded tired and frustrated, and underneath that was anger. Eventually, if they kept pushing him, they'd get to his anger and stay there.

  Nicky's phone rang. He listened and then hung up. "Donahue and Brennan are downstairs to escort us where we need to go."

  "How did they get your number?"

  "I told Edward to give it to whoever needed it."

  "Good thinking." I looked around the room. Everyone looked dressed and ready to go. Jake, Kaazim, Ethan, and Domino were waiting out in the hallway for us. Fortune stuck her head out of her room long enough to kiss Nathaniel and me good-bye, and then she went back to sleep. She had Echo in her room still waiting for nightfall. She couldn't leave Echo unprotected, and we didn't need the whole crew for this. Magda and Socrates were still at Nolan's compound trying to make friends with the rest of his people. After what she'd done to one of their new superstrong cells, I really hoped Nolan had a plan B.

  Donnie met us in the lobby, smiling. Brennan, a lot less happy, was behind her. Honestly, I was surprised to see him, but I did my best to just take it in stride. Apparently, medical had cleared him, and Nolan thought he could handle the assignment. "Forrester says you need an escort," he said.

  "Actually, he said babysitter," Donnie said, grinning.

  "I appreciate you keeping us legal," I said, and kept walking toward the door. They fell in behind and to the side of me.

  "What's the emergency?" she asked.

  "We may have inadvertently let the bad guy know we were contacted by a local today." Jake and Kaazim did the bodyguard thing at the door, checking for safety and holding the door for me.

  "Unless you know something we don't, we don't know who the villain of the piece is yet," Brennan said.

  "Let me rephrase, then: the suspected bad guy."

  "Who do you suspect?" he asked.

  "Where are you parked, and will it hold all of us?" I asked.

  "Not far and yes," Donnie said.

  "Lead us to the car."

  "You do know that you don't outrank us, right?" Brennan said.

  Donnie went to the left and kept walking. We followed her with Brennan keeping up, but not happy about it. "Are you deliberately ignoring my questions?" he asked.

  "I'll answer them in the car on the way, Brennan, but I'd really like to find our local informant before he ends up tortured and killed."

  "Tortured and killed? What are you talking about, Blake? You're here to help us with our vampire problem, not to get involved in another crime."

  "I'm hoping to stop another crime from happening--if that's okay with you?" I walked past him with Nicky at my back. Brennan stopped asking questions and just caught up with Donnie. I fought the urge to start jogging down the sidewalk. We didn't need to attract that much attention yet. It was still daylight. Riley would probably be safe until nightfall. Of course, Damian was awake already, and about the time I had decided to jog, Donnie had stopped at a van. I could save the running for later.

  53

  WE COULDN'T FIND Riley. We couldn't find his girlfriend. It was like the harder we tried to locate them, the more lost they became. Our last hope was that Flannery's aunt would come through, but the last info from him was that Auntie Nim didn't have much to do with the Roanes, because they weren't her creatures. It was as if people refused to do business with the werewolves in St. Louis because wolf was Jean-Claude's animal to call, and their Ulfric was his moitie bete. I still thought it was interesting that Flannery's Fey relatives had known about the vampires in Ireland all this time, but they hadn't shared the news with him, not even after vampires had started showing up in Dublin. I actually asked him why they didn't tell him sooner. His answer: "I asked them if they knew anything about the new vampires in Dublin. I didn't ask them if there were other vampires in Ireland outside the city." Apparently the Irish Fey answered direct questions, but what you didn't ask, they didn't answer, even if logically it was connected. An important safety tip to remember if I had to question any of them on this trip.

  I'd set my phone alarm to the time when Jean-Claude typically woke for the night in St. Louis, but I didn't need an alarm. I felt him wake for the night, thousands of miles away. I knew when his eyes opened for the first time to stare at the ceiling, felt the warmth of the body curled beside him, one arm flung across his stomach. I knew by the size and weight of the arm that it was Richard, because I had the only other men in his life who had that kind of size and muscle. He knew I was sitting in the back of the van with Nathaniel beside me. I saw, felt, smelled the warm darkness of his bed and Richard's body fever warm beside him. His shoulder-length hair in a wild tangle hiding the handsome face. I couldn't remember the last time Richard had slept over with any of us. Jean-Claude's voice whispered through my head, "Ma petite, what have you been doing while I slept?"

  Just hearing him, feeling him inside me like that, felt as if I could finally take a deep breath and let go of some tension that I hadn't known I was holding. Nathaniel gripped my hand tighter. I knew he felt it, too, because we were touching when it happened. Damian reached from the seat behind me, where he'd been out of direct sunlight in the more enclosed depths of the van, but now he reached into the sunlight from the windows so he could touch my shoulder, and there was that jump of connection from him to me, to Nathaniel, and to Jean-Claude, and then Richard stirred in the bed. I knew he was awake, had a moment of seeing the darkened room through his eyes and Jean-Claude's so that it was almost dizzying. I was glad I wasn't driving when it happened. Damian squeezed my shoulder as his other hand found Nathaniel's arm, and the world steadied again. I could still see the ceiling above the temporary bed and missed the old canopy, could feel my head resting on Jean-Claude's shoulder and arm while my other arm was across his body and my only view was silk sheets and the white gleam of the vampire's body. I knew they were both nude, and the moment I thought it, I realized that I had thought it too loudly and that they'd both heard me, and suddenly there was awkwardness in the nudity that hadn't been there before. Why? Because I hadn't just thought nude; I'd thought about the possibilities of them in the bed, wrapped in silk, naked. That was all me, and I tried to make that thought loud, too.

  Richard started to get up, spilling the sheets down his chest, baring his upper body, opening up the cocoon of warmth his body had made beside Jean-Claude. Then a sense of calm washed over all of us, as in all five of us. The beginnings of unease in Richard quieted. He lay back down in the sheets, finding the warmth his body had made for him overnight. It put him
back beside Jean-Claude, who lay very still, waiting for the other man to decide what he was doing. I could feel everyone more clearly in my head in that moment than Jean-Claude. He was very carefully neutral, though I could feel the tension in his body through the connection to Richard.

  Nathaniel leaned back toward Damian, who leaned forward, his long hair sliding forward like a veil to cover the sides of his face from the sunlight. His hair wasn't much of a barrier, but it was better than bare skin in bare light. He'd kept the sunglasses on; they wouldn't come off until we were in a dark room or night fell. Nathaniel stroked that red hair and then rubbed his cheek along Damian's face like a cat scent-marking. Damian laughed and leaned his face against the other man's so that Nathaniel could hold him as much as the seat belts would allow.

  I felt Richard's surprise at the interaction. It was a big change in Damian's comfort level about touching other men. Richard moved up higher on the pillows so that he was taller than Jean-Claude, but he didn't move away from him, just moved his arm so that it lay across his chest and not his stomach. It left Jean-Claude's arm around Richard so that they held each other, though I knew that if Jean-Claude were more certain of his welcome, he'd have held him differently.

  Richard said out loud, "Relax, Jean-Claude. Just relax. Cuddle if you want to cuddle, but don't lie here feeling this tense. It's not a trap, I promise," because we'd all heard Jean-Claude's thought, because it was too loud to hide. "It's a trap, a girl trap." Girl traps aren't about genitalia; they're about that more feminine habit of saying, Do this or Don't do that, and punishing the masculine half of the couple for doing what the feminine half asked/told him to do in the first place. There are girl traps and boy stupid, but it's not always women who set the traps, and it's not always men who are stupid. We all take turns.

  Jean-Claude relaxed slowly, inch by cautious inch. The way that Richard was lying across his arm, it was more comfortable and natural for him to curl his arm around the other man's back and turn a little into Richard. They were only an inch apart in height, but the way Richard had fixed himself on the bed made him seem much taller, except that I could feel where everyone's legs were, and it was an illusion. An illusion of dominance, and I had a moment to hear, feel, realize that part of the two men's problem with each other was that they were both dominant. I don't mean in a bondage-and-submission way, but just big, athletic, dominant men who were both used to winning. Jean-Claude had spent too many centuries at the mercy of other masters to be as obvious about it as Richard could be, but it was there as they lay as entwined as I'd seen them in a very long time. Who would submit? Who would bend first? Without me there to help them bridge that decision, they were stalemated. Asher helped them, too, sometimes, but if he hadn't been in the doghouse, Richard wouldn't have been there at all.