Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "You gain power through Jean-Claude's vampire marks, through being his human servant."

  "Yeah, but that doesn't explain everything I can do."

  "You came with your own power, Anita."

  "I'm sorry I accidentally bound you and Nathaniel into a triumvirate of power."

  "You saved my life more than once with your power, Anita; I don't regret being bound to you. The only thing I regret is that you grew closer to Nathaniel than to me."

  "You and your lady love, Cardinale, asked me to back off and let the two of you be monogamous together. I respected the request."

  "You had already fallen in love with Nathaniel, and were so not in love with me. Don't blame that on Cardinale's relationship with me."

  "I'm not, but we were lovers before you and she went monogamous."

  "You slept with me less than you sleep with Richard now."

  "Look, I'm sorry you're hurting, or scared, or sick, or whatever, but it wasn't just me that contributed to whatever is happening, or not happening, between us."

  "I know that."

  "Do you? Because you don't sound like you do."

  "I could say you're my master, so responsibility ultimately lies with you, but that would piss you off and I don't want to do that."

  "You're doing a damn good job, if that's not what you want, and Cardinale hates me. I don't see her letting you and me get closer in any way."

  "She's not happy about anyone being near me who isn't her, but I can't go on like this, Anita. You keep saying that vampires don't sleep, or have nightmares, and you're right, but vampires also don't have human masters, not even necromancers. I believe that whatever is happening to me is tied to the triumvirate not working the way it should."

  "How do you envision it working?" I asked.

  "More like the one that Jean-Claude has with you and Richard Zeeman, our local werewolf king."

  "And that would mean what, exactly?"

  "Don't be coy, Anita."

  "I'm not being coy. I'm not good enough at it to try. I genuinely don't know what you're getting at, because Jean-Claude and I don't see Richard much at all anymore. He's dating other people, off trying to find someone to marry and do the white-picket-fence thing."

  "You see him at least once a month."

  "For sex and bondage, yes. Wait. Are you wanting to have sex with Nathaniel and me?"

  "The look on your face, Anita. Is the thought of us being lovers again such a bad one?"

  This was the guy version of the girl trap: a question where there either is no winning answer or one where you have only one answer that won't start a fight. This was one of those questions, but luckily I could answer truthfully and not hurt his feelings.

  "No, it's not a bad thought. You're beautiful and you're good in bed; it's not that."

  "Then what is it?"

  "If you sleep with me, let alone with me and Nathaniel, it will cost you Cardinale, because she won't stand for it."

  He nodded one more time. "I know, but I need to figure out what's happening to me, Anita, and for that I need you and Nathaniel to be closer to me. I need our triumvirate of power to work more like you, Jean-Claude, and Richard do."

  "We don't always work that well," I said.

  "Your triumvirate with them works better than the one you have with Nathaniel and me," he said.

  I couldn't really argue with that, so I didn't try. "Okay, but before we do anything that would piss Cardinale off, we are going to talk to her first. If we can do this without it costing your relationship, then we will."

  "Why do you care so much about my relationship with her?"

  "I caught enough of your emotions to know you were in love with her; that's important, and I don't want to screw that up because the metaphysics between us has gotten weird."

  "You really do want everyone around you to be happy, don't you?"

  "Yeah, doesn't everyone want that for their friends?"

  He smiled then, and shook his head. "No, Anita. No, they don't."

  "If you really care for people, you want them to be happy, Damian; otherwise you don't actually care for them."

  "You don't think like any other woman I've ever met."

  "Oh, come on, in centuries of life you've never met another woman who thinks like I do?"

  "I swear to you, Anita, you are unique in a lot of ways."

  "Unique is usually a polite way of saying weird."

  He grinned, gave a little laugh. "Well, that, too, but weird isn't always bad."

  I smiled. "No. No, it's not; in fact, sometimes weird is exactly what you need."

  "I'm a vampire and you're a necromancer. I think weird is where we start."

  I laughed then, and debated how much of the case in Ireland I could share with him. One of the side effects he had from being my vampire servant was that if I told him not to tell anyone else what I told him, he couldn't. He couldn't seem to disobey a direct order from me, which wasn't typical for human servants. It certainly wasn't how I was with Jean-Claude.

  "You're thinking something that's made you very serious."

  "If I told you that there were vampires in Ireland that were taking victims and making no effort to hide them, what would you say?"

  "I'd say it's not the work of the vampire that made me. She would never be so careless hiding bodies."

  "I'm not sure how many we have dead so far; the others just wander the streets or take themselves to a hospital with complete amnesia about how they got hurt."

  It was his turn to look serious. "She would never let people wander around like that. It would attract far too much attention. How many victims so far?"

  "At least half a dozen."

  "She would kill a vampire of her kiss that was so careless."

  "So you're saying it's not your old group?"

  He shook his head. "No, Anita, She-Who-Made-Me would never risk the humans knowing about us."

  "Even in modern times when more countries are making you legal?"

  "She's one of the old ones who don't believe the new attitudes will last. She said that staying hidden was the only true safety from the plague of humanity."

  "She called us a plague, really?"

  He nodded. "She didn't seem to like humans much. If she could have fed off something else and stayed alive as a vampire, I think she would have done so."

  "A vampire that tries to feed on animals starts to rot," I said.

  "I remember what Sabine looked like," Damian said, and shuddered. It had been worth a shudder or two.

  "Yeah, and once a vampire gets damaged like that there's no healing it, so you guys have to feed on humans."

  "She enjoyed tormenting humans and having sex with us if it suited her, but she didn't seem to actually like us, or maybe she didn't truly like anyone."

  The timer on my phone sounded. I turned off the alarm and stood up. "Jean-Claude made me promise not to be late tonight, but is there anything you can tell me about vampires in Ireland that might help explain what's happening?"

  "The only thing I can think of is that her power is finally fading enough that she has lost control of some of her vampires and they are mad with power now," he said, standing too.

  "Why would she suddenly start to lose power after all this time?"

  "I do not know. She was very in control of them when I left Ireland five years ago."

  "Could it be vampires from out of the country that she doesn't control?"

  "It is possible, I suppose."

  "But you don't believe it," I said.

  "No, I don't. She-Who-Made-Me is very covetous of her power and control. She would not allow some upstart vampires to come as near to her as Dublin and make her existence difficult without making their existence impossible."

  "You mean she'd kill them."

  "Oh yes, but you need to go. I will think upon what I know about my old mistress and her retinue, but this has to be someone or something new in Ireland. Within her fortress she was mad and capricious, but outside it she was
very disciplined. Whatever is doing this doesn't seem very disciplined. In fact, I'd say it was new vampires learning how to control themselves, but she could hunt them down easily and destroy them, or 'invite' them to join her kiss." He made little air quotes around invite.

  "Join us or die, huh?"

  "Something like that. Jean-Claude cautioned me to make certain you leave by about now," he said, glancing at the wall clock.

  I let the surprise show on my face. "I don't think he's ever talked to one of my other people before like that."

  "He didn't want you to get distracted by me."

  "Fine. I'll fill Jean-Claude and Nathaniel in on what's happening with you and we'll come up with a plan."

  He offered his hand to me, as if it were any other meeting, and I took it the same way. We forgot that weird was where we started. Power jumped between our skin in a wash of heat, as if a sudden fever had gripped us both. The last time I'd touched him there'd been attraction, power, magic, but not like this heat wave.

  I let go of his hand, but he held on, until I said, "Let go of me, Damian," and he had to let go, because I'd ordered him to do it.

  Our hands parted, but it was like pulling our hands out of some invisible taffy: sticky, sweet, and trying to hold on to both of us. We stood there staring at each other, both of us breathing fast, chests rising and falling with the need for air as if we'd been running.

  "What the hell was that?" I gasped it, because I didn't have air for anything else. I was even sweating, just a little.

  "I don't know," he whispered, and there was the faintest dew of sweat on his face. The sweat should have been pinkish with blood, but it was darker than that, more red than pink. One drop of that bloody sweat trailed down his face and took my gaze with it, to find more sweat down the middle of that bare line of chest, so that it looked like he was bleeding from a hundred tiny puncture wounds, except it was the fine pores of his skin. He wasn't wounded; he wasn't even truly bleeding; there was always a little blood in a vampire's sweat, enough to make the clear liquid slightly pink.

  I watched Damian bleed down the paper whiteness of his skin, and knew something was wrong, as in call-a-doctor wrong, but who do you call when a vampire gets "sick"? Since they didn't get sick in any traditional sense, there weren't a lot of doctors that specialized.

  Damian touched his fingers to his skin and stared at the blood on them. "What is happening to me, Anita?"

  "I don't know," I said.

  "You're a necromancer and my master; shouldn't you know something?"

  I felt that little spurt of anger but pushed it down, because he was right. "Yeah, I should, but I don't. I'm sorry for that."

  He got some Kleenex from his desk drawer and started dabbing at the bloody sweat. The tissues came away soaked. "I woke from the nightmares like this today, Anita, drenched in blood. I ruined the sheets and Cardinale just lay there in the bloody bed like the corpse she was."

  I stared at him, because I'd never heard a vampire describe another vampire like that before. "Damian . . ." I reached out to touch him, comfort him, but stopped myself before I finished the gesture; shaking hands had been exciting enough.

  "Whatever is wrong with me is getting worse, Anita." He threw the bloody Kleenex in the small office wastebasket.

  "We'll talk to Jean-Claude first."

  "And if he doesn't know what's wrong with me, what's second?"

  "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," I said.

  "If Jean-Claude doesn't have an answer for this, Anita, then you and Nathaniel and I have to make our metaphysics work better."

  "Even if it costs you Cardinale?"

  He stripped off his coat and held it out by two fingers away from his body. Blood was still beading on the skin between his shoulder blades. Shouldn't it have soaked into the coat? He turned around and fresh blood was sweating onto his chest and forehead.

  "Cardinale said she'd rather I keep having nightmares than have me sleep with someone else." He wiped at the fresh blood with more Kleenex, until it was all a bloody mess. "I can feel it dripping down my back," he said with distaste.

  "It is, but I'm afraid to touch you again after the handshake," I said.

  "Nothing personal, but I don't want to bleed more," he said.

  "Maybe Jean-Claude can help us figure out why my touch made you do this," I said.

  "The next time we touch he should be in the room."

  "And Nathaniel," I said.

  "And maybe some security guards," Damian said, as he threw more bloody tissues into the trash can.

  "Why security?" I asked.

  "The last time things went wrong with me, Anita, I killed innocent humans, just slaughtered them. I don't remember doing it, but I believe that I did. I was worse than a freshly risen vampire, more like one of the revenants that never regains its mind."

  "You didn't have any of these symptoms before last time, did you?"

  "No, no nightmares, no bloody sweats, no power jumps, just out of my head with bloodlust."

  "That was different, then, Damian."

  "Was it?"

  "You said it yourself: The symptoms are different."

  "I suppose."

  "You just went crazy that time, Damian."

  "No, I didn't just go crazy, Anita. You had cut me off from my connection to you and instead of dying finally and completely, I was old enough, or powerful enough, to go crazy."

  "Damian . . ."

  "I know you haven't cut me off from your power as my master this time, Anita, but you've still distanced yourself from me."

  "Because you and Cardinale asked me to."

  "We did, but I didn't understand how much I would miss interacting with you and Nathaniel."

  "We were never that close, the three of us."

  "No, but I feel the lack of you both, somehow."

  Since Nathaniel had said almost the same thing about Damian a few months back, I wasn't sure what to say; I didn't seem to miss Damian as much as my other fiance did. "I did what you asked, Damian."

  "Maybe I'm unasking," he said.

  "What does that mean?" I asked.

  "It means that I'm lonely."

  "You live and work with Cardinale, and you're in love with her."

  "I know that."

  I wanted to ask, Then how can you be lonely? But I wasn't sure how to say it. He said it for me. "I thought being in love meant you'd never be lonely again, that it would be like coming home in every sense of the word."

  "It is like that," I said, and couldn't help but smile as I said it.

  He shook his head. "That smile on your face, that's what I wanted to feel, but it's not like that with Cardinale, not anymore."

  I didn't know what to say to that, so I said, "The bleeding has almost stopped."

  "Oh good, I've stopped sweating blood for the second time today." He threw the last of the bloody Kleenex in the small trash can and turned to me with angry eyes. "Jean-Claude told me if I went mad again he might have to kill me."

  "I remember," I said.

  "You can't let me hurt innocent people again, Anita."

  "I know," I said.

  "I told Cardinale about the last time something went wrong with me, and I honestly think she'd prefer me dead than with someone else. How can that be love, Anita? How can she prefer me insane and having to be killed like an animal to me sleeping with other people?"

  Again, I had no good answer, so I said nothing. I rarely got in trouble saying nothing.

  "Answer me, Anita. How is that love?"

  Of course, not everyone will let you say nothing; sometimes they demand more than that, even when there's nothing good to say. "I don't know, Damian."

  "You don't know, or you know that isn't love--it's obsession?"

  "Since I'm the other woman as far as Cardinale is concerned, I'd rather not comment."

  "She-Who-Made-Me didn't understand love, but she understood being obsessed with someone. She'd find someone among the prisoners or the would-be treasure
seekers who would come to the castle; like ordering pizza, the food comes to you." He laughed, but it was a bad sound, the kind of laughter that made you cringe or want to cry. "She'd pick one special person to tease and torment and maybe fuck. Sometimes they thought she loved them, but it was the kind of obsession that scientists feel for insects, so beautiful until you kill it, stuff it, and put a pin through it."

  I fought not to point out that insects aren't stuffed, and not to ask if She-Who-Made-Him actually stuffed or pinned her victims. Neither comment would help the pain in his eyes, so I let them both go. I can be taught.

  "You can't equate Cardinale with her," I said, finally.

  "Why not? Maybe after so many centuries with She-Who-Made-Me, obsession is all I understand? What if that's what I saw in Cardinale? What if years of being tormented have made me mistake someone who wants to possess me for someone who wants to love me?"

  "I don't even know what to say to that, Damian, except it's probably above my pay grade on the therapy scale and it sounds like a question for a real therapist."

  He nodded. "Maybe it is."

  "When do you get off work tonight?" I asked.

  "Two hours before dawn."

  "You and Cardinale live at the Circus, so you'll be heading that way anyway. We'll see you an hour before dawn."

  "That won't give us much time."

  "I'll fill Jean-Claude and Nathaniel in on everything, so we'll have less to explain."

  "An hour is still not much time to solve the unsolvable," he said.

  "Jean-Claude doesn't have to die at dawn, if I'm touching him, and you aren't dying at dawn. That gives us more time," I said.

  He seemed to think about that, then nodded, putting his coat over the back of his chair so his hands were free. He stood there bare from the waist up, except for the blood that was beginning to dry on his back. "A bright side to this cursed sleep, then," he said.

  "Most vampires are a little afraid of that moment when they die each day," I said.

  "I think a part of me would be relieved to finally die for real."

  "Are you thinking suicidal thoughts?" I asked, because you have to ask, or you won't know.

  "No, I was raised to believe a death in battle meant a good afterlife, and I was fighting when She-Who-Made-Me took my life."

  "You mean Valhalla and all that."

  He grinned. "Yes, Valhalla and all that."

  "So you count that moment as your death, and wouldn't count dying as a vampire now?" I asked, because it was me and I wanted to know.