Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Nathaniel looked at me from the other side of our vampire third, and he was as calm as I was; we were both working through our fears. No, we were both working through Damian's fears.

  "First, the three of you need to clean up. I will have the bed stripped and see what can be done with it."

  "How come you're not bloody?" the brunette guard asked.

  "Because I noticed it starting and got out of the way."

  "Why didn't you wake us?" I asked.

  "I felt it was important to see it play out."

  "Thanks a lot," I said, as I started crawling across the bloody sheets toward the edge of the bed. Nathaniel was crawling to join me.

  "Ma petite, you are forgetting someone."

  I stopped and looked where he was nodding. Damian was still staring at himself as if he were trapped in another nightmare, but this one he couldn't wake up from. I wanted to help him, but if I was choking on his fear from here, touching him would make it worse.

  I said out loud, "If I touch him I'm not sure I can stop his fear from overwhelming me."

  "Try. Just try, ma petite."

  I swallowed hard, and so didn't want to, but Jean-Claude was right: I had to try. I crawled back to Damian and reached out to him. He jerked back from me. "No, don't. I'm unclean. Can't you see that there's something wrong with me?"

  Nathaniel had crawled back with me. "You aren't unclean, Damian."

  "We aren't vampires. We won't catch anything," I said, as I reached out slowly, the way you approach a skittish animal.

  "Anita . . ."

  "Let me try, Damian."

  "Let us both try," Nathaniel said.

  His eyes looked so green in their mask of blood, like a macabre Christmas image, but he sat still and let me touch his arm. The moment I did, my pulse slowed, and so did his. It was like touching him calmed us both. Nathaniel touched his other arm and it was like a circuit completed; we'd plugged in the last thing and with that sense of completion there was a peacefulness that I hadn't thought possible while we were sitting in the blood-soaked sheets.

  I looked back over my shoulder at Jean-Claude. "How did you know that would happen?"

  "I did not know for certain, but in the past Damian has been your calm center in the midst of emotion. I thought it might work both ways."

  Damian took my hand in his and the last of the fear receded like the sea pulling back from the shore. He blinked at me. "Thank you. Thank you both."

  "What now?" I asked Jean-Claude.

  "Now, you need a shower. For such as this, the bathtub attached to this room will not do."

  "I mean after the shower."

  "Come back here and if the bed is fit to sleep on we will try. If not, we will use one of the guest rooms for the rest of the day."

  "I don't want to sleep again," Damian said. "Did you see the nightmare I shared with Anita and Nathaniel?"

  "No," he said.

  "Then you don't understand."

  "I can see the aftermath of the dream, Damian. I understand that it was terrible enough to make you sweat blood."

  I started pulling Damian by the hand toward the edge of the bed. Nathaniel helped me tug him toward the edge of the bed. "Let's clean up and then we'll talk about what comes next," I said.

  Jean-Claude took pictures of us with his cell phone before we left to shower. "If we find a doctor to consult, we can show them pictures of this," he'd said, and it made sense, though it felt like being part of a crime scene evidence collection.

  Jean-Claude sent with us the two guards who had come through the door. "They are not to be left alone," were his orders.

  "What does that mean?" I asked, as I stood there holding Damian's hand.

  "It means we do not know what is happening, ma petite, and it would be beyond careless of me to send you and Nathaniel off alone with Damian without other eyes to watch over you."

  "You think I'm a danger to Anita?"

  "Are you not ravenous?"

  "Hungry, no."

  "After losing so much blood, mon ami, you should be."

  Damian nodded. "I learned to control all my needs centuries ago, Jean-Claude. She-Who-Made-Me used every need and want against us. It was better to feel nothing, want nothing, than to give her that opening."

  "I have known very few vampires that could control their bloodlust to that degree."

  "She would deny us blood until we felt crazed with the need for it. She liked letting the starved vampires free on prisoners. It was . . ." Damian shook his head. "I both witnessed such feedings and partook in them. I thought I had control of that part of me until a few years back when I lost myself and attacked those people."

  I squeezed his hand. "That was my fault. I didn't know I was your master and if I did, I didn't understand what it meant."

  "Your power being withdrawn from me drove me mad, yes, but it wasn't your teeth, your strength, that slaughtered that poor couple."

  "I thought you did not remember what you had done, mon ami," Jean-Claude said.

  "I still don't, but I believe you when you say I did it." He raised my hand back up, waving our clasped hands. "With Anita's hand in mine, I can control myself, and not be the beast that She-Who-Made-Me could reduce me to." He raised his other hand, where Nathaniel was still holding on. "With both their hands in mine, I can be more than I was."

  "If I truly believed you dangerous, I would not allow them to leave this room with you, but I would like help to be there if something else unusual happens, that is all."

  I wasn't sure I believed it either, but I took it at face value. Though I did ask, "Wait. Does not taking their eyes off us mean they have to watch us in the shower, or can they just stand outside the door?"

  The guard with pale brown hair said, "We don't donate blood, or anything else. We just do our jobs."

  "I was not volunteering you as food," Jean-Claude said.

  "If they can wait outside the door, then it's not a problem," I said.

  "I'd prefer a closer eye," Jean-Claude said.

  "They can wait outside the showers. We'll be fine," I said, and we led Damian to the door, where one guard opened it and the other followed behind. I was calm enough now that I wasn't happy that Jean-Claude was casually encouraging strange men to watch me shower. Yes, they were shapeshifters, which meant nudity didn't mean much to them, but I wasn't a shapeshifter and I didn't want two new guards that I didn't know at all watching us in the showers. I wouldn't argue with Jean-Claude anymore, but once we were out of his sight, then I'd argue with the two guards he was sending with us. I had a much better chance of winning the argument with them than with Jean-Claude.

  7

  I'D MANAGED TO ask the two guards' names by the time we were walking past the group showers. Brunette was Barry, Barry the Brunette, and pale brown was Harris. I wasn't sure if it was his first or last name, and I didn't ask. They both felt like a lot of the new guards, interchangeable, as if someone had hired them from the same pool of tall, athletic, younger men, mostly white, though not all, and unfinished in a way that the guards that Rafael's people hired weren't. In an effort to get a greater variety of wereanimals into our personal guards, we'd let other groups besides the wererats offer up candidates for guard duty; so far no one was better than Rafael's rats, some of the werehyenas, and the Harlequin. They were the personal guards of the old queen of vampires and they were the best of the best, but then they'd had hundreds, sometimes thousands of years to practice their skills. It was hard to compete with that when you were under thirty like most of the new guards; but still Barry and Harris didn't fill me with the same confidence that some of our longer-term guards did.

  I had no intention of us using the group showers. We'd use the shower in the room that Nathaniel and I shared with Micah. We could hear the noise from the group showers down the hallway. Men laughing, calling out to each other, and just the energy of so many athletic and professionally competent violent men contained in good-natured rivalry, because that was always an underlying energy
to the guards. The type of men who are good at the job description are always speculating who's the best, the fastest, the strongest; who will win. Add that they were all wereanimals, and the testosterone level could be enough to drown in; normally I was okay with that, but not today.

  I felt Nathaniel flinch on the other side of Damian, and that was about how I felt, too. It was like it was too much energy to deal with while all three of us were still raw from the dream.

  We were almost past the showers when I realized the noise inside was a lot less. It was reduced from a rollicking noise fest to almost silence. It was like being in the forest when the birds and crickets stop singing--you know something's wrong. I had left the bedroom with only my Browning in my hand, because lingerie sucks for places to put weapons. I fought the urge to point the gun at the door, and the fact that the two guards with us didn't react to the sudden silence made me take points away from them.

  The guards inside the shower spilled out of the doorway in front of us, some low to the ground on their knees, others standing; some of them took cover around the edge of the doorway, and others just filled the hallway, weapons in hand and mostly nude. There was a moment when you almost felt them hesitate as they saw us, and then the weapons steadied--all pointing at Damian. It was interesting that they just assumed Nathaniel and I were innocent of whatever carnage had happened.

  "Ease down," I said.

  They all ignored me; not good.

  "It's Damian's blood, not mine."

  That made some of them glance at each other, as if looking for a clue, but most of them stayed with their guns nice and steady. One gun moved a fraction and was pointing at me; how could I tell? When you've had enough guns pointed directly at you, you get very sensitive to that kind of thing.

  It was Ricky again. He'd used up all my goodwill at Danse Macabre last time I saw him. "Unless you're going to shoot me, move the gun off me, now," I said in a low voice.

  "If that's Damian's blood, then you're more dangerous than he is." His voice was as steady as his hand, but there was an edge of anger to that calm.

  One of the other guards, naked in the doorway, said, "Ricky, are you pointing your gun at one of our main protectees?"

  Harris moved in front of us to act as a meat shield. Barry had his gun out, but neither of them wanted to draw down on this many of their fellow guards. I sympathized, but I also knew I'd be reporting their lack of enthusiasm for protecting my life. Since that was one of their main jobs, it wasn't reassuring.

  I called out over the broad shoulders of my meat shield. "Ricky, the last time I saw you, Echo was telling you you'd fucked up, and now you've pointed a gun at me. You just don't want this job, do you?"

  "You show up covered in blood and tell us it doesn't belong to the vampire--what are we supposed to think?" he asked. He even sounded like he might believe it. Maybe I had scared him more the first time we met than I realized. Sometimes, once you've used basically vampire powers on someone and let them keep the memory of what you did, they never get over it. I know I've held grudges against real vampires for shit like that.

  I heard other sounds and knew the guards were closing around Ricky. They'd report what he'd done, because the only thing that hurts a bodyguard's reputation worse than having a client die on their watch is one of their own security specialists killing the client.

  "You all smelled the fresh blood, but we were right on top of you before you reacted to it."

  "Yeah." It was Bobby Lee wearing a pair of boxers and holding a Smith & Wesson M&P loose in his hands. His body was lean and muscled in that way that long-distance runners get sometimes; there was almost no body fat to him, so he looked impressively cut, each muscle showing under his skin, but it was a little too lean, and I wondered if he was eating enough. Bobby Lee was one of the men most likely to be sent out of country on mercenary work for the wererats that had nothing to do with us, and everyone deals with the stress of that kind of work differently. His short blond hair was still on end, but his gold-framed glasses showed that his medium-brown eyes were steady. He was always steady, was Bobby Lee, but I'd be talking to some of the other guards I trusted to see if he was doing okay.

  "I didn't make Damian bleed. I just woke up in the mess with him."

  "Well, darlin', if you didn't hurt him, who did? Because this is too much blood to be losing." He always had a slight Southern accent, and every woman was darlin'; when he was under stress, the accent got thicker and he started adding honey chile and sugar.

  "It's a long story, Bobby Lee, but if you want to help these two walk us to Nathaniel and Micah's room so we can use the shower, I'll fill you in."

  "Happy to help, ma'am. Can you give me a minute to get dressed and rearmed?"

  "Sure."

  He smiled, and then his brown eyes swam to black. His rat eyes in his human face. "Just so you know, darlin', the blood doesn't smell like vampire. It smells warmer than that."

  I felt the jump of energy through the guards as their beasts flashed through them. I was suddenly looking at amber, orange, red, brown, and more black--wolf, lion, hyena, rat. I fought with everything I had not to shiver or show any sign of fear. Damian had gone so still that if I hadn't been holding his hand I wouldn't have been able to feel him there at all. I felt more from Nathaniel on the other side of him, even though we were both holding hands with the vampire and not each other.

  The guards' energy whispered through me and I could see my own beasts inside me the way you see dreams in your head. My wolf, my lion, my hyena, my leopard, and my newest beast, rat, all looked up and their energy ran over my skin and spilled out toward the energy in the hallway. I had enough control now to make sure that was all that happened, and I was happy for that as I looked at them all, because smelling like fresh blood around a bunch of wereanimals isn't always good for your health, even if you had your own monster to throw back at theirs.

  "And just like that, we don't know whether to fight you, fuck you, or eat you." Ricky again, though he was unarmed now with other guards on either side of him in a way that they usually reserved for bad guys.

  "Two out of three isn't happening, Ricky boy, but that first one, maybe we should meet on the practice mats and see what happens."

  "And when I start to win, you'll use your magic and cheat."

  "If we meet on the mats, I promise not to eat your anger, or raise the ardeur."

  "You'd fight me fair?"

  "You're six feet plus to my five-three, so I'm not sure there's any way to have a fair fight between us, but if you mean I won't use any preternatural abilities that we don't both have, then yeah--a fair fight."

  "Yeah, I'd like that, a lot." He gave me a look that held something close to hate. I'd humiliated him the first time we met. Yes, he'd started it, but I might have taken it too far, and if I did, then his reaction to me today was my fault. I was supposed to be his boss, so I'd try to fix it the only way I knew how, by letting him win. He was a big guy, and he was training with our guards, so I didn't expect to win; and because I didn't expect it, losing in a match with someone to call it before he hurt me didn't risk any ego on my part, and it might restore some of his. But this was the last chance for Ricky; if he ever stepped out of line after I saw him on the practice mats, either he was gone or he'd keep pushing until he got dead, and that was about as gone as you could get. I felt vaguely like it was my fault for messing with him the first time, so I'd literally go to the mats with him.

  "Let me get this thing with Damian fixed, and we'll set something up," I said.

  "Tomorrow?" Ricky asked.

  "I don't think my problem will fix that soon," Damian said, and he managed to sound disdainful and sad at the same time.

  "No," Nathaniel said, "it won't be tomorrow."

  Ricky frowned at us, and just like the first time I'd met him, I wasn't sure he was the brightest bulb in the box. It was one of the things that had contributed to our misunderstanding. I had overestimated how much he understood of what I was saying un
til it was too late.

  "It may be a few days," I said, "but you'll get your chance on the practice mat with me."

  "You promise?" he said.

  "I already did."

  Ricky nodded and for the first time I saw something on his face besides fear, or hatred. I wasn't sure that his being eager to beat the shit out of me was really an improvement, but some days you take what you can get.

  8

  BOBBY LEE CAME back out minutes later with his still-wet hair combed in place. He was all in black, which was the unofficial uniform for the guards. Fully armed, he had on a black T-shirt, black tactical pants, a good leather belt with a black-on-black buckle, and matching boots laced up so that his pants were inside the tops of them. Most former military I knew wore their pants that way. Hell, I had all the same clothes and had started wearing them when I was out in the field serving a warrant of execution with the Marshals Service. I'd never been in the military but a lot of my friends had been, and a lot of the police I worked with had been, and I was always willing to learn from other people's experience. I still wore jeans a lot, but more and more tactical pants were becoming my go-to. It was partially the extra pockets, so damn useful.

  "How you doing, Bobby Lee?" I asked.

  He gave me a look, and then he smiled; the smile lines around his eyes seemed deeper, but his brown eyes shone with humor. "Darlin', you are covered in blood, holding a naked gun in one hand and a blood-soaked vampire in the other one, with your blood-covered boyfriend holding the vampire's other hand. Shouldn't I be asking you that question?"

  He had a point. I laughed. "I'll stop throwing stones at your glass house until I get mine in order. I get it."

  His smile widened into a grin. "Thank you, sugar. Now, let's get you to some showers that aren't full of shapeshifters that think all this fresh blood makes you smell good enough to eat."

  I frowned at him, studying his face. Bobby Lee never flirted with me, so either the double entendre was unintentional, or it was just a statement of fact. Looking into his eyes, I thought the latter. "I've been around most of the guards with blood on me, or they've been around each other when they've been hurt in practice. Why is this more of a temptation?"