Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Jean-Claude's power whispered through my mind. "Ma petite, why have you not fed?"

  "We're too controlled," I said out loud.

  Nathaniel turned to me, kissing me with the taste of the other man still on his lips. He drew back enough to say, "I can fix that." He lowered his mouth to my breast and began to kiss and suck on it the same way he'd kissed my mouth, as if he wanted to lick the taste of every inch of me. It was the way he'd kissed Damian, so he could bring the scent and taste of his mouth to mine.

  He drew my nipple out with his teeth in a line of flesh that felt so good, it was almost pain, almost but not quite. Damian's body was pressed tight against me again. I was making small, eager noises as Nathaniel sucked my breast, then turned to the other breast, whispering, "Oh, look, a second one."

  "Be less controlled then, ma petite," Jean-Claude whispered through my head, as Nathaniel began to suck at my breast as if he were trying to feed from it. Since lycanthropes fed by biting off chunks of flesh I had to call, "Yellow." He eased down to a point where it felt good again, and I moaned for him. Damian pressed harder against my ass, and I rubbed against him, feeling him grow achingly hard. I wanted him inside me, wanted it so badly. It was as if all the months of avoiding each other, of letting him be with Cardinale and not us, were concentrated down to this one moment in time. Desire . . . It was as if desire were a drug that someone had injected straight into our bodies.

  "Fuck me," I said.

  "Fuck her," Nathaniel said.

  "Please," I said.

  "Fuck her," Nathaniel repeated, kneeling down in front of me, letting the water pound against the front of my body and pour over his head, plastering his hair against the back of his body like a second skin. He pushed his hands against my hips, driving me even harder against Damian's body.

  Damian cried out, "Gods!"

  "No more control," Nathaniel said, "no more waiting."

  There were too many words in the sentence. I couldn't think with Damian pressing against me, his hands cupping my breasts. Nathaniel's fingers digging into my hips, his body covered in water and the drowning color of his own hair. "What?" I asked.

  Nathaniel stared up at me, and the lavender of his irises spilled out over his eyes, so that he stared up at me blind with his own power. "I want this," he said.

  "I want this," Damian said. I turned to look over my shoulder to find that the vampire's eyes were a solid, shining green.

  "We want this," they said, and their voices echoed each other just a second out of sync.

  "We want this," I said, even as I knew that I wasn't a hundred percent sure that was true.

  "Ma petite, lower your shields and let them inside."

  "I don't know how," I said.

  "I do," Nathaniel said.

  I stared down into his flower-colored eyes and said, "What?"

  "Look at me," he said.

  "Look at us," Damian said, but I couldn't look at both of them at the same time. I stared down into the drowning lavender of Nathaniel's eyes and couldn't look away. Jean-Claude couldn't capture me with his eyes--no vampire could--but staring down into Nathaniel's eyes I couldn't look away. I couldn't do anything but stare down as his eyes started to glow like that streak of lavender in a sunset. I fell into that glowing sunset as if the world had become light and all I could do was fall into the light and wait for something to catch me.

  14

  I WOKE IN a welter of sheets on the bed in our room. I didn't remember leaving the bathroom, or getting into the bed. Nathaniel's arm pinned me around the waist, his hair lying in a tangled mass as if he'd gone to sleep with it wet. Damian lay on the other side of him. He was on his back, his face peaceful with sleep. Nathaniel's other arm was flung across his waist, so he had gone to sleep hugging us both. I lay there trying to remember what had happened earlier. I remembered getting in the shower. I remembered some foreplay, and then . . . nothing.

  My body was letting me know that we'd had sex, because what goes in has to come out eventually. From the feel of things we hadn't used condoms. I didn't use them with Nathaniel, but I would have with Damian. Had I? Had I just had multiple intercourse with Nathaniel and that was what I was feeling? I'd check the trash can in the bedroom and bathroom to make certain. If I didn't find a used condom in any of them, then I'd know we all forgot the most important safety rule of safe sex. I was on birth control and neither the vampire nor the lycanthrope could carry any sexually transmitted diseases, but still . . . what the fuck were we all thinking?

  I tried to sit up, but Nathaniel snuggled tighter so that his arm pinned me to the bed and tight to his body. Damian hadn't moved at all. I looked at him and held my breath while I looked to see if he was breathing, but his chest never moved. Vampires didn't have to breathe. I stretched out a hand across Nathaniel's shoulders until I could touch Damian's arm. His skin was cool to the touch, and for the first time ever, I found my lover's flesh gone cold comforting. He'd died like a good vampire should. There'd be no nightmares for us the rest of today, so at least whatever we'd done had helped.

  But what had we done to cure him? I couldn't remember a damned thing after we got in the shower. Okay, we got in the shower, and then . . . What?

  I lay there with Nathaniel hugging us both while he slept, and there was something. A memory, a thought, a . . . something. It was like the harder I thought at it, the more my mind shied away from it. Sex, even sex with the ardeur, had never been like this unless something else was interfering with us. The Mother of All Darkness could cause blackouts, and so had Belle Morte and the Lover of Death. Two of the three were dead, because I'd helped kill them; that left Belle Morte, but this was too subtle for her. She liked you to know that she'd fucked you over. So if it wasn't another vampire, then why couldn't I remember what had happened?

  I glanced at the bedside clock and had to do a double take. It said it was almost one p.m., which meant we'd been in here almost seven hours. That wasn't possible. The first trickle of fear tightened my stomach and made it a little harder to take a deep breath. The last time I'd lost this much time had been because of the vampire council, or Mommy Darkest. We'd destroyed the power of the first and killed the second. I remembered Kaazim's words, that the Mother's power was inside me, and that her power might be acting in ways that I didn't understand at all.

  I tried to move and again Nathaniel's arm tightened around me, holding me in place, but this time it panicked me. I had one of those claustrophobic moments where I had to get out of the bed. I had to find out what had happened and how long we had really been in this room. I was able to sit up, but Nathaniel's arm squeezed around my waist, so that moving off the bed wasn't happening. Nothing was wrong, no one was hurting me, but I was suddenly choking on panic. I pushed at Nathaniel's shoulder hard enough that he raised his head and blinked at me groggily.

  "Up!" I said, my voice strident.

  "Up what?" he mumbled.

  "I need up, out of bed."

  He rose up on one elbow, letting me go and asking, "What's wrong?"

  I looked down into his lavender eyes and I remembered his eyes glowing in the shower. I backed out of the bed so fast I half-fell to the floor. He came to the edge of the bed and looked down at me.

  "Anita, what's wrong?"

  "I don't know." But that was a lie. I did know, or thought I did. I just didn't want to say it out loud.

  "Did you have a nightmare?" he asked.

  I got to my feet and shook my head. "No. Did you?"

  "No, I slept great. How about you?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "What do you mean, you're not sure?"

  "What do you remember from after we got in the shower?" I asked.

  He gave a very self-satisfied grin, like the proverbial cat that ate the canary. "Everything."

  "Define everything."

  "The sex was amazing, even for us."

  "We had sex with Damian," I said.

  Nathaniel's smile began to dim. "Are you saying you don't remember ha
ving sex with Damian?"

  I shook my head.

  He sat up in the bed, and without him to hold Damian in place the vampire slid down the pillows to lie awkward as a broken doll. The angle of his head alone let me know for certain that he was dead to the world, because asleep he'd have changed position. The angle of his neck was so awkward that it looked almost broken. If I could have changed it without getting back on the bed I'd have done it, but at that second nothing would have gotten me back on the bed. I was so scared my skin was cold.

  My voice was only a little breathy as I said, "I don't remember the actual sex."

  He frowned and sat up in bed, the sheets pooling behind him so that he was nude as he sat there looking concerned. "I don't understand."

  "Neither do I," I said.

  "You look scared."

  I nodded.

  "Are you scared of . . . me?"

  "I'm scared of whatever made me not remember the last few hours."

  "Are you seriously saying you don't remember any of the sex?"

  "The last thing I remember was your eyes glowing and you said, I want this."

  "Then we had amazing sex," he said.

  "I don't remember that part, Nathaniel."

  "You don't remember Damian fucking you?"

  "No, I don't."

  "Or me going down on him for the first time?"

  "No."

  "Or him taking blood from me so we could all keep having sex?" Nathaniel moved his tangled hair to one side so I could see the fang marks in his neck.

  "I don't remember that."

  "What's the last thing you do remember?"

  "I told you, your eyes glowing, and Damian's eyes glowing."

  "Your eyes glowed, too, Anita, like brown diamonds in the sun."

  "I'll take your word for it, but I don't remember it."

  "You should remember, Anita."

  "I don't."

  "Why don't you?"

  "I don't know."

  He glanced behind him at the other man lifeless in the bed. "I hope Damian remembers more of it than you do. We hit some serious firsts. It would be sad if I was the only one that remembered them."

  "We need to talk to Jean-Claude," I said.

  "Why?"

  "Because I don't remember anything, Nathaniel. I mean, nothing after your eyes started to glow."

  "Everyone's eyes glowed, Anita, not just mine."

  "I'll take your word for it, but I honestly don't remember."

  He slipped off the bed and I took a step back. He went very still, his face very serious. "You're not just afraid. You're afraid of me."

  "I think so."

  "Why? I would never hurt you, Anita."

  "Logically I know that, but this isn't about logic."

  "No, it's all about emotion for you. I can smell it."

  "Smell what, my emotions?"

  "Your fear," he said, his voice calm as if he didn't want to add any more emotion to the situation. It was usually the way that Micah talked to me when I was upset, but I guess we'd been dating enough so that we all knew how to handle each other now.

  "Anita, I don't know what happened, or why you can't remember everything, but if we did get rolled by some bigger vampire, don't do to me what you've done to Sin, or Jean-Claude and Richard in the past."

  "And what is that? What did I do to them?" I could hear the fear and edge of anger in my voice.

  "Let your fear of what happened paint everyone involved with the same issues. It would break my heart if you treated me that way."

  I stared into that handsome face and didn't know what to say.

  "I don't think I'd deal as well with it as they do."

  "What does that mean?" And my voice was still strident with the first stirrings of anger, because it would help chase away the fear.

  "It means don't blame me, or Damian, when we got rolled, too."

  "But you remember. If you'd been rolled, you wouldn't remember."

  "I don't know why I remember, but you and Damian said yes to everything we did. I hate the idea that you don't remember saying yes, and hope like hell that Damian remembers later."

  I glanced at the vampire lying broken-looking in the bed. "Can you change his position? He looks . . . broken."

  "Can it really hurt him to lie like that?" he asked.

  "No, but it just looks uncomfortable."

  Nathaniel didn't argue, just climbed back onto the bed and moved the vampire until he was lying in a more normal sleeping position. His body moved as only the dead can, boneless and hard to keep where you put it, so that the head kept lolling to one side at that broken-neck angle. Nathaniel finally had to use the pillows to prop the vampire's head at an angle that made me happier.

  "Let's go find Jean-Claude; he should be awake by now," I said.

  "You'll want to at least finger-comb your hair," he said, smiling.

  I frowned at him. "Do you really think I care how my hair looks right now?"

  "No, but you might if you look in the mirror."

  I half-smiled and shook my head. "For you to keep insisting, it must be bad."

  "Pretty bad. I think we all forgot to put hair-care products and conditioner on after we finished the shower part."

  "You never forget hair-care products," I said.

  He frowned. "True."

  "Are you sure you remember everything that happened?" I asked.

  "I thought I did, but now I'm not sure."

  I reached up and touched my hair, but just feeling it didn't seem so bad. I started to walk to the bathroom, but Nathaniel followed me, and I had to stop him. "I don't want to be in the bathroom with anyone but me right now, Nathaniel."

  He looked so sad.

  "I'm sorry, Nathaniel, but until we figure out what just happened I need a little space."

  "Don't pull away, Anita."

  "I want some privacy in the bathroom. I don't think that's asking too much," I said.

  He nodded and let me walk away alone, but his shoulders slumped forward, every line of him sadder than a few seconds ago. I wanted to run and hug him close, erase all the sadness from him, but I had a right to go to the bathroom alone, damn it. I had a right to a little privacy, a little space, even with him.

  I closed the door, but standing there in the room where I'd lost time wasn't good. I suddenly wanted out of the room as much as I'd wanted out of the bed. I opened the door and came to stand outside, breathing hard.

  "Anita, are you okay? Did something happen in the room just now?"

  I shook my head. "Going to leave the door open, okay?"

  "Okay, I won't try to come in while you're in there."

  "Thank you," I said.

  "I don't know what's wrong, but I don't want to make it worse," he said.

  "I know you don't." I moved back into the bathroom to look in the mirror and instantly understood why Nathaniel had said something. My curls didn't always look great after I slept on them wet, but this was spectacularly bad, even for me. It looked like I had lopsided horns, along with other odd protuberances in between. Just sleeping on my hair wet wouldn't do this; it was like we'd put in shampoo and just left it in, or gotten crazed with hair-care products but never smoothed the hair into place. Once I saw my hair, I knew that Nathaniel didn't remember everything either. He'd never have let me sleep with this much stuff in my hair without helping me neaten it. Nathaniel thought he remembered the entire thing, but he didn't.

  I did my best to splash water on it and try to help matters, but I finally let Nathaniel in to try to help me. He finally ended by braiding it close to my head with a promise to help me wash it out later. He had to braid his own hair, too. We'd both have to start over with our hair later, but there was no way I was getting back into the shower until I'd spoken with Jean-Claude. I needed to know who had rolled us, and why. Some older vampires will fuck with you just to fuck with you, but most of them have a purpose if they torment you; call it sadism with a reason. I needed to know that reason, and Jean-Claude needed to k
now there was still someone big and bad enough to roll me that thoroughly, because if they could do that without alerting him to it, then they were serious bad-asses. Every time we destroyed the great evil, another one seemed to rise up in its place like an evil version of "Nature abhors a vacuum." It was almost like the Mother of All Darkness had kept the other bad vampires in line, and now that she was gone, they were trying their supervillain wings out. I was getting real tired of being the target du jour for them.

  15

  "MA PETITE, I do not believe that it is an outside force that has cost you time."

  "Then what was it?" I demanded, as I paced the room. We were back in his bedroom but had to sit in the chairs around the faux fireplace, because the bed where he usually liked to lounge had been reduced to nothing but the bed frame. The custom-made mattress and bed frame were ruined by the blood that Damian had shed. The cleanup crew that was made up of our own people wouldn't guarantee that they could fix it. It would take weeks or even months to get a custom replacement.

  He glanced at Nathaniel, who had curled up in front of the electric fire wearing nothing but a pair of silky black shorts and the long braid of his hair.

  "Cats always find the warmest place in a room," Jean-Claude said.

  "I wish you would let the electric fire run when we sleep in here," Nathaniel said.

  "I cannot trust that it will not spark and catch fire while I am unable to save myself."

  "Modern electricity is a lot safer than it used to be," Nathaniel said.

  Jean-Claude nodded. "Logically, yes, but some worries are not about logic."

  "We have another big bad vampire attacking us and you're worried about being warm while we sleep. If I were any warmer sleeping between you and Micah, I'd melt."

  "I'm usually on the end, so warmer would be good for me," Nathaniel said.

  "How can you be so calm?" I asked him.

  He shrugged and stared at the flickering flames. "The ardeur was fed. We all feel better. Damian is even dead for the day. Nothing seems to be wrong; why aren't you calmer?" He looked up at me as I paced.