Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "He was one of the vampire council, and one of the oldest vampires I'd ever met until Marmee Noir. He came to town to try to kill Jean-Claude and take over St. Louis."

  "I thought the old council members gave up any chance at their own territories when they took a council seat," Sin said, looking at us over his knees, so that his dark blue eyes glittered in the artificial firelight.

  "That's true," I said.

  "The Earthmover did not come to rule St. Louis," Jean-Claude said. "He came to take over here and use my vampires as his tools to cause a vampire incident so terrible it would repeal the new laws and make us illegal monsters again."

  "Why would a vampire want to go back to having no rights?" he asked.

  I answered, "He thought that legal vampires would eventually spread across the earth and turn so many humans into vampires that they'd basically run out of food, and thus they'd die out along with the humans. Mutually assured destruction for humans and vampires."

  "The Earthmover sought to make vampires illegal again, so we would go back to the shadows where he thought we belonged. He thought the old system guaranteed that vampire numbers would stay smaller, because we had to stay hidden, and thus we would not overpopulate and depopulate our only food source."

  "Humans and wereanimals," Sin said.

  Jean-Claude nodded. "He talked only of humans, but yes."

  "I've listened to the Harlequin and most of the older vamps see us, all of us shapeshifters, as lesser."

  "It is a sadly common attitude among the oldest of us."

  "Well, it sucks," he said.

  "Yes, it does, which is why I am doing my best to promote newer and more progressive attitudes among them."

  One of the guards by the door cleared his throat. We looked at him. It was Emmanuel, one of Rafael's wererats; his hair was pale brown, cut short, and his pale gray eyes looked paler in the permanent tan of his face. He wasn't the tallest or the most muscled, but he excelled at everything physical: hand-to-hand, blade work, shooting; he was even good at undercover work. He was also handsome in that clean-cut sort of way. He looked like he should be walking around a college campus somewhere worrying about passing algebra and how it would affect his athletic scholarship, but he was actually a lot more deadly than some of the guards who walked around throwing attitude all over the place.

  "Yes, Emmanuel?" Jean-Claude said.

  "Some of us really appreciate how hard you try to make the older vampires treat us like we're people."

  "Yeah, we do," said the second guard, and I realized it was the new guard, Harris, from yesterday, or was it the day before? Though he was all white-bread as far as I knew, his hair was almost the same shade of brown as Emmanuel's, and Harris was the one with brown eyes.

  "It is good to know that our efforts are appreciated," Jean-Claude said with a graceful incline of his head.

  "I know that some of the older vamps here in this country and in Europe aren't too happy about it, so I just wanted to say thank you."

  Jean-Claude smiled. "You are most welcome, Emmanuel, and . . . Harry, is it?"

  "Harris, sir."

  "Harris."

  "I see your pal Barry isn't with you tonight," I said.

  He made a face and then fought back to bodyguard neutral. "He's not my friend."

  "We let Barry and another guard go," Emmanuel said.

  "I've got one more chance to prove I'm not like Barry," Harris said.

  "Claudia and Fredo have decided to pair the new guards with more experienced guards--no newbies teamed up together."

  I looked at Emmanuel and nodded. "Agreed."

  There was a knock on the door, but it opened before we could say anything. It was Nicky with Magda and her master, Giacomo. He was taller than anyone else in the room except Sin. His shoulders were as broad as Nicky's, or damn close, but whereas Nicky had that upside-down triangle that bodybuilders had, Giacomo was built like an old-time refrigerator, a big rectangle of muscle. You wouldn't think he had the same kind of muscle that Nicky did, because his was hidden under an extra layer of flesh, but it was under there. I'd seen them lift weights in friendly competitions in the gym. The other guards would place bets on who could lift more, or do the most reps. It was like the room had shrunk around them.

  Giacomo went to one knee in front of Jean-Claude. "My King, how may we serve you?"

  Magda had gone to one knee beside him, though she almost never did it when Giacomo wasn't with her. If she thought it was excessive she kept her head lowered so it didn't show on her face. Giacomo was her master metaphysically, and that would be true until one of them died. Marriage had nothing on magic for longevity.

  "Rise, Giacomo. I've told you such displays are not necessary in private."

  He raised the nearly perfect roundness of his face, the dark brown of one eye and the pale milky blue of the other set in tight folds. The scar that bisected his right eye curved through his eyebrow and onto his cheek. I'd thought he was blind in the eye, and so had some of the other guards in fight practice. They'd tried to go for his blind side and he'd kicked their asses, because the eye worked, not as well as the other one, but he could see out of it.

  Giacomo rose as he was bid and gave that nearly infectious smile of his. Nicky was just behind him and Magda. He still had his hair swept to one side so that the scars over his right eye were visible. The two big men stood there with their different scars over the same eye, and it was striking. Two such men with similar injuries on the same eye, what were the odds?

  Nicky led Magda and Giacomo to where the floor was broken. They stared down at it and then Giacomo leaned into Nicky and whispered something. Nicky told Emmanuel and Harris to man the door from the other side, and they did it, though Emmanuel looked back as he closed the door.

  "Why did we need privacy?" I asked.

  "Because I know who did this," Giacomo said.

  "Who?" Sin said, coming to stand beside Jean-Claude and me.

  "You."

  Sin blinked at him. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have any ability to do . . . whatever this is," he said, waving vaguely in the floor's direction.

  Magda said, "Did you feel a rush of power just before it happened?"

  "We were having sex. I wasn't thinking about anything else."

  "Actually, there was a rush of power from him," I said.

  "It was just my beast, Anita. You know that orgasm is one of the times that the inner beast comes closest to the surface."

  "I know. That's why all the good little boy and girl shapeshifters get chained up for their first orgasms so they don't kill anyone by accident."

  "You were sensing that," he said.

  "Did you change shape?" Magda asked.

  He shook his head.

  Giacomo looked at us. "My King, did you sense anything from him?"

  "As he said, we were having sex with Anita between us. It is always magical to be with her when she feeds the ardeur. It tends to blind you to any other power."

  "It can be quite overwhelming," Magda said.

  "Then perhaps the young prince did not understand what was happening."

  "I did not do that," Sin said, pointing at the floor.

  "You are a pureblooded blue clan tiger."

  "I know that."

  "Earth is what your clan controlled."

  "I know blue tiger is earth, red is fire, white is metal, black is water, and gold is sun, or controls all the other clans," Sin said, repeating it the way you'd say something you were forced to memorize in school but didn't really want to.

  "Have you seen Crispin call the small lightning to his hands?"

  "It's like super static electricity, is all," Sin said.

  "But it is still the power of his clan manifesting since he became Anita's white tiger to call, and the prince of the red clan can now call fire to his hands after becoming Anita's red tiger."

  "A little super static electricity and fire like a match appearing in your hand is not the same thing as crac
king the floor open," Sin said, pointing at the damage again. I could feel his fear bubbling along my own stomach.

  "Our new Queen has not seen the red prince in over a year, and Crispin is no longer blessed to be among her lovers, but you are much admired by her," Giacomo said, being so polite about it that it sounded like he wasn't talking about sex at all.

  "Wait," I said. "Are you saying that Sin's power is more because I'm sleeping with him regularly?"

  "Yes, because it is the coin of your vampire line. If you had been descended from a different bloodline, then other types of proximity would have had a similar effect."

  "So if Anita slept more often with the other two, then their power would grow?" Magda asked.

  "I believe so."

  "So why hasn't Dev's power grown? She and Jean-Claude are sleeping with him regularly," Sin asked.

  "He has the ability to shapeshift into a lion, as well as a gold tiger, and he has gifted Micah with a second beast shape as well; I would say that Dev's powers are growing."

  "Crispin and the red tiger both showed their powers years ago. I've never had anything like this happen before," Sin said.

  "Some things take time," Giacomo said.

  "Domino and I slept with Anita the same night, a few months after Crispin. Are you saying that we'll both get powers?"

  "I have never heard of someone who had mixed clan blood exhibiting their bloodlines' powers."

  "So because Domino is half white clan and half black, you think he won't exhibit any of the clan magic?" I asked.

  "I have seen the tiger clans when they were at their most powerful, and only the pureblooded among them could work their most powerful spells."

  "So why did it take this long for Sin? He's pureblooded blue tiger," I asked.

  "He was too young."

  "He's been legally an adult for a couple of years," I said.

  "Legal adulthood by modern standards is merely an agreed-upon number. Some teenagers I see in this country are very grown-up years before they are eighteen, and others seem to be stuck in a perpetual childhood," Giacomo said.

  "Are you saying this proves I'm an adult blue tiger?"

  "Yes, Cynric, that is exactly what I am saying."

  "Sin, not Cynric," he said automatically.

  "It is your choice, but Prince Cynric seems to roll off the tongue a little more sweetly than Prince Sin."

  "Prince Sin sounds like a rock star name," I said, smiling and taking his hand to take the sting out of it.

  "Nah," Nicky said, "it's a porn star name."

  "I'm not Prince anything. It's just Sin."

  "Legally it's still Cynric," Jean-Claude said.

  Sin frowned at him; again there was that echo of the younger Cynric when sullen was more his style. It was not a style that was going to win him the brass ring--oh, my bad, the gold ring. Jean-Claude would never do anything as inexpensive as brass.

  "By any name, you have grown into your powers of earth," Giacomo said.

  "Or perhaps it is that this is the first time he has been intimate with both Anita and me?"

  "Perhaps," Giacomo said.

  "You said yourself that Dev has gained power and he is lover to us both."

  "So is Fortune, and she hasn't manifested earth powers, and she's older than me by centuries, so she was old enough."

  "But she is not Anita's blue tiger to call. You are," Giacomo said.

  "If I did tear up the floor, I didn't do it on purpose and I don't know how to do it again."

  "It is like your inner beast, Cynric--Sin--you will learn how to control it and how to use it more knowledgeably as you have more practice," Giacomo said.

  "If this is my power, then how dangerous is it going to be? I mean, my tiger form could kill people if I weren't in control of it. Legends say that the blue tigers could cause earthquakes and destroy entire armies. That's an exaggeration, right?"

  "No, it is not an exaggeration. I have stood upon a mountain and watched ten of your clan call their magic together and raise the earth itself against an enemy army. You on your own, even with more training, could not wreak such havoc. I am glad to see that the clan that raised you told you the history of your people, but do not fear your powers."

  "Queen Bibiana made certain that I knew the history of all the clans. We thought the gold tigers were extinct centuries ago, so Bibiana wanted the white clan, her clan, to be up to speed on all the legends and history so they could lead if it was needed."

  "I'm not sure the other remaining clans would allow that," Giacomo said.

  Sin shrugged. "Bibi wanted us ready, just in case. She knew the red tigers' queen wasn't teaching anyone the legends, because she'd asked. Their queen thought the legends were done, because the gold tigers were gone, and the only known blue tigers and black tigers left were enslaved to the Harlequin, who served the Mother of All Darkness, our greatest enemy. No offense on the enslaved part."

  "None taken. When our Dark Mother was still alive we were all slave to her plans and wishes," Giacomo said.

  "We have all been slaves to one vampire or another in our time," Jean-Claude said.

  Giacomo bowed to him. "True and wise words, Your Highness."

  "The main reason she has agents looking at foundlings across the world is to find any survivors of the lost clans," Sin said.

  "I would have said there would be no survivors, but here you are, my prince. The new genetic tests have proven that you are as pure of blood as Fortune, who is the last of the blue clan that I knew to be alive," Giacomo said. There was something about the way he looked at Sin that I didn't like. He was centuries older than Jean-Claude, so he should have been even better at hiding his expressions, but I'd noticed that a lot of the Harlequin weren't that good at schooling their faces. I'd asked Echo about it and been told, We wore masks almost all the time; no one saw our face except when we played a part to gather information, and then we were playing human. We needed our faces to show emotions. It was as good an explanation as any.

  "I was nearly two when someone left me at a church. I was well fed, well clothed, a happy well-adjusted toddler. Someone took care of me for all that time and then just left me."

  "There were rumors of clan tigers here in this country, but we were not the ones sent to investigate," Magda said.

  "Bibi figured that either my parents had left me to save me from what was hunting them, or they had died and whoever they left me with didn't want to deal with a baby."

  I put my arms around his bare waist and hugged him. He looked down at me, but his face still held that edge of anger, sullenness, and deeper in those rich blue eyes was the uncertainty of it. How could they leave me? Why would they leave me? Was it something I did? Why didn't they want me? All the questions that children who are lost ask about their past.

  Jean-Claude gripped Sin's shoulder tight. I expected him to hug us, but he didn't. He kept that almost-artificial distance from us. I put an arm around both their waists and tried to draw us into a group hug, but Jean-Claude resisted.

  Sin looked at him then. "You're afraid to hug me now. Why?"

  "Let us say that I am no longer certain of how to interact with you."

  A look of absolute pain came over his face, and the emotion of it crashed the shields between us. He was sad and scared that he'd screwed up a relationship that he valued. He suddenly felt very young in my head, because it hadn't occurred to him that sleeping together even just this much would change things between them.

  Nicky came over and wrapped us all in one huge group hug. "Don't get weird about it, Jean-Claude."

  Jean-Claude hesitated for a minute and then finally hugged us all, so that we were entwined and it wasn't sexual. It was comforting. It was . . . family. Sin's muscled shoulders began to shake, and it took me a second to realize he was crying. Jean-Claude touched his face and dried the tears away with his hands. The look he gave Sin wasn't romantic; it was very much Uncle Jean-Claude to his beloved nephew, and that was why he wouldn't be able to put a rin
g on it. Sin had to decide if he was willing to lose Jean-Claude as his "uncle," his father figure, to make him a romantic partner, but he had to decide, because he and Jean-Claude couldn't do both.

  32

  WE SAID GOOD-BYE to everyone at the Circus rather than at the airport for a lot of reasons. One, it made more sense from a security point of view. Two, we were already needing two large SUVs to get the luggage and us to the airport; it would have taken even more to get everyone to the airport who wanted to say good-bye. Three, we could say good-bye as enthusiastically as we wanted to without someone snapping a picture with their cell phone and posting it on the Internet. Jean-Claude was the vampire of everyone's dreams, which meant that just snapping a good picture with your phone could get you money from some gossip sites.

  The luggage had been carried up the long steps by other guards like overly muscled ants trip after trip. They'd loaded everything into the cars outside, and it was time to go. Jean-Claude and I had kissed good-bye in private, but seeing him standing there made me want to do it again. He broke from the kiss to touch the ring on my left hand. It was platinum, white gold, channel-set with white diamonds and one large oval dark blue sapphire. All the stones were set into the metal and, it was all smooth so that it wouldn't catch on anything, including the rubber gloves that I wore at crime scenes. The ring was still shining and beautiful, but it was practical, and I needed that for my job. Most cops wore plain bands or nothing to work, but Jean-Claude had wanted me to wear his promise ring always, and his promise would never be just a plain band of gold. No, he was all about the shiny.

  "Ma petite," he said as he turned the ring on my finger, "I never thought to see my ring upon your finger, and now all I can think of is how much I want to add a wedding ring to it."

  "We're working on it," I said, looking up into that almost painfully beautiful face.

  "Yes. Yes, we are," he said, smiling down at me. I'd shared enough of his thoughts to know that he thought I was beautiful and sexy and utterly desirable, but I didn't understand it. I was good at sex, so maybe the sexy part, but I was also a royal pain in the ass in other areas. He had been one of the most beautiful men in the world for centuries. How does one mortal woman, any woman, compare to that?

  Nathaniel put his hand over ours, wrapping his hand so that we were all touching the ring, or maybe the ring was touching us. "It's a promise ring not just for you and Anita, but for all of us." He raised his face for a kiss, and who would be able to turn Nathaniel down? They kissed, and just watching them so close, while we all held hands, made things low in my body tighten. It was a less chaste kiss than the one they'd had in the bedroom when Damian was with us. I realized that both times it had been Nathaniel who upped the ante, not Jean-Claude. Was the great seducer being seduced? I didn't have a problem with it. The men in my life being closer to each other usually worked in my favor. Micah might feel differently, but he wasn't here right now, so I just enjoyed touching them both and having my ringside seat for their kiss.