Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "I am fine alone, Nathaniel."

  "Good for you; I'm not."

  Asher was finally yelling back at Kane behind us. The bodyguards were moving in to help contain them since their fights sometimes erupted into real violence. I looked at Asher, and touching Jean-Claude, I saw him through more years than I'd been alive. I saw him through true love and romance and loss and so much, but all I could think was, did we really want to hit this mess again? The answer from Jean-Claude's emotions was a resounding yes!

  Nathaniel touched us both, hugging us close. "I miss him, too, Jean-Claude. I can't find anyone else who can do what he does for me in the dungeon, but look at him with Kane. Asher chose to tie himself to Kane for all eternity as master and animal to call. Kane isn't that powerful. He isn't the head of an animal group. What kind of master vampire would tie themselves to Kane?"

  "I tied you and Damian to me by accident, so I don't have many stones to throw on that one."

  "You were brand-new to the power. Asher isn't."

  "I have never said that Asher was wise," Jean-Claude said.

  "Well, that's true," I said.

  Nathaniel looked back at the fight. "I was addicted to sex. Asher is addicted to the idea of true love. Addictions never end in anything but misery."

  "Do you not believe that Asher could break his addiction as you did yours?" Jean-Claude asked.

  "The apology was epic, but the fight with Kane is just the same old shit."

  I looked at Nathaniel as if I'd never seen him before. "That was like a mix of me and you talking," I said out loud.

  "We all gain something from our metaphysical ties. Maybe I gained a little more toughness."

  "What did I gain?"

  "You're picking up too much of Jean-Claude's emotions to think clearly," Nathaniel said.

  I gazed up at the vampire in my arms. "Yeah, I guess I am."

  "Jean-Claude, Jason will be in from New York tomorrow. Micah's hoping to be home in a couple of days."

  "You talked to Micah about this?" I asked.

  "Of course I did." Nathaniel looked surprised that I hadn't thought he would.

  "I guess I thought you were mad at him."

  "He didn't say no, Anita. He just never saw himself married to another man, so he's working his way through it."

  Jean-Claude hugged Nathaniel. "We all have our drama, do we not, pussycat?"

  Nathaniel smiled. "Yeah." He hugged him back and nestled his head against the taller man's shoulder. Again, it was an escalation of physicality between them, and it was Nathaniel who was pushing the envelope again. I was beginning to think that Micah wasn't the only long game he was playing. Hell, Nathaniel had pursued me for years before I finally realized I loved him. He didn't catch me. I just stopped fighting what was already true. My issues had nearly cost me one of the loves of my own life.

  Nathaniel was a submissive personality, but I was learning slowly that submissive didn't mean weak, and that really all the power is with the sub, because once they safeword, then everything stops. I watched him cuddling with Jean-Claude and realized that it might not just be the dungeon where Nathaniel had power.

  "By tomorrow night you won't be alone," he said. "Can you resist Asher for that long?"

  "Do you really think I am that weak around him?"

  "Do you?" Nathaniel asked him back.

  I watched the two men, the demand in Nathaniel's face and the doubt in Jean-Claude's. "I will not be that weak."

  "Just hold out until Jason gets here tomorrow. He'll help you."

  Jean-Claude's phone rang. He was going to ignore it, but the ringtone was the one we both had for Richard Zeeman, our almost long-lost third. We hadn't seen him in weeks. He'd been off on some trip for the college he taught at. Jean-Claude hit the button with the sounds of the fight behind us escalating, so there was no way Richard wouldn't hear it over the phone. It made us walk out from the curtained living room, and when Nathaniel opened the big dungeon-looking door to the bottom of the stairs we all went through, so that Jean-Claude could hear.

  He made small noises, mostly yes and hmm sounds. He hung up and looked at me. "Richard is coming to spend the night and help me talk to Asher and Kane."

  "I didn't call Richard," Nathaniel said.

  "Me either."

  "He says that Rafael called him after he heard the news from Micah. Apparently, our pussycat is not the only one who does not trust me alone with Asher, even for a night." Jean-Claude stared at the phone in his hand and then looked up at us. "Richard has not stayed overnight in the same bed with me in nearly a year. Apparently no one trusts my judgment about this."

  "You were in love with Asher for centuries, and your happiest memories were the twenty years you and he had with Julianna. Jean-Claude, that much history is hard for anyone to resist," I said.

  Jean-Claude glanced back at the door. We couldn't hear the fight through the dungeon door. It was nearly soundproof. "I will walk up with you. Richard should be here soon after that." And just like that he acknowledged that he didn't trust his judgment around Asher either.

  33

  I USED TO think that my fear of flying was based on not knowing the pilot. Had he been drug-tested recently? Was he well rested? Trustworthy? How about the plane? Was it flightworthy? Was the maintenance crew that last looked at it competent? Were the parts going to fall off if everything shook too much? I mean, how well made was this plane? But I knew Jean-Claude's pilot. I knew he was drug-free, well rested, trustworthy, and had a wife and two kids to come home to, so he wanted to live as much as any of us. I knew the jet was well serviced and well maintained, because Jean-Claude saw to it. Micah double-checked it since he used the plane more than anyone. I trusted both of them to value us enough to make sure it all worked. I'd had to own that my phobia wasn't based on any of those things. It was a phobia from a commercial airline flight that had gone dangerously wrong but hadn't quite crashed, and ever since then I'd hated flying. Okay, since then I'd been terrified of flying and hated it.

  Jean-Claude's new plane seated fifteen and even had a section that could be curtained off, in case someone wanted some privacy, though since everyone I was traveling with had super-hearing, the privacy was very illusionary. There was a mini-bar and food on board. If we crashed in the Andes--not that we were going anywhere near them on this flight, but if we did--we wouldn't have to resort to cannibalism for at least a couple of weeks.

  The seats were comfortable and swiveled so that you only sat two by two, but the seats faced each other in four-person conversation groups, or you could swivel and talk to the people on the other side of the narrow aisle without having to turn your head. I mean why make that much effort, right? I'd been on one flight years ago that had probably been the victim of a micro burst, which you actually couldn't control at all. You could be properly maintained, mechanically sound, with the best crew in the world, and micro bursts didn't care, which led me all the way back to--how was I possibly going to do eight and a half hours on a plane without running screaming up and down the tiny aisle?

  I texted all the people that I was metaphysically connected to who weren't on the plane with me and told them, Shields up. I'd started doing that after Sin had requested I always tell them when I was about to fly. Apparently he'd been in the middle of his driving lesson when I took off and it had not gone well. All strong emotions were potentially shareable, and I really was afraid to fly. It was a scheduled, knowable moment when my emotions were going to run amok, so I group-texted everyone. Yay technology, making polyamorous relationships better since the iPhone was invented.

  Nathaniel sat beside me, holding my hand. I had a death grip on the armrest as the jet began to taxi down the runway. I was seriously working on controlling my breathing, because to panic, at least to have a full-blown panic attack, you had to lose control of your breathing first. If I controlled my breathing I could control my heart rate, my pulse, and keep myself from spilling over the edge into hysterics. I hadn't actually cried on a plane
in a few years, but I had bloodied Micah's leg through a pair of jeans once when he was my plane buddy. At least if I bloodied Nathaniel's hand he'd enjoy it; Micah not so much.

  "Anita, look at me."

  I swallowed hard, still fighting to keep my pulse from trying to jump out of my throat, and turned to look at him. I was suddenly staring into those big lavender eyes from inches away. I was just suddenly calmer. I wasn't sure if it was the fact that I loved him, or that he was sharing his own calm with me. Maybe it was both?

  "We're going to Ireland to catch the bad guys, and then we get to see Ireland together." He squeezed my hand and I realized that he was excited about the trip. It was one of those moments when I felt the age difference, or the experience difference between us. I'd never brought him on a police investigation trip on purpose. He'd been with me when crimes happened and we were suddenly ass-deep in alligators, but I'd never deliberately taken him into the lion's den before. I suddenly remembered why. I was going to spend most of the trip looking at dead bodies and hunting rogue vampires through the city. It was like we were going on two very different trips.

  Nicky leaned across from the seats in front of us and put his big hand over mine. "We've got this, Anita."

  I looked at him and felt that sense of calmness that he usually made me feel. He'd fixed his hair back so that improbable fall of bangs hid his right eye again. I looked at that one blue eye and wished I'd had a hand free to touch that long fall of bangs and let him know how much I valued that he let me see all of him.

  The plane was gaining speed. I started to tense up even with both of them touching me, but Damian leaned forward and wrapped his hand over Nathaniel's hand where he held mine so that he was touching both of us and I was suddenly calm. I looked into those grass-green eyes and did a slow blink. Calm became something solid and sure. I felt the plane leave the ground and that spurt of fear shot through me, but Damian leaned in closer and the green of his eyes seemed to fill my vision. I was calm again, so calm.

  I could feel the plane climbing, but it didn't seem to matter. It would be fine. We would be fine. It was fine. I was fine. I did a long blink and took a deep, slow breath.

  "How do you feel?" Damian asked in a low, even voice.

  "Fine, good," I said, and my voice was low and even, too.

  He smiled at me and I smiled back.

  "We need to bring him on all of our out-of-town trips," Dev said from the seat behind us.

  "I thought you were all upset that you didn't get his seat," Domino said.

  "I was," Dev said, "but I couldn't have calmed Anita down like that, so I take it back. Damian can have my seat on the plane if he can do that every time."

  I blinked past Damian's red hair to Dev's white-blond, but whereas Damian's fell down well past his shoulders, Dev's barely touched his shoulders, and those shoulders were almost twice the width of the vampire's. Mephistopheles--our Devil as Asher had called him--was a big guy, and would have looked bigger if he hadn't been sitting so close behind Nicky, who made everyone on the plane except for Giacomo look smaller. Dev would probably have seemed bigger as well if he hadn't been sitting beside his cousin, Pride, who was almost as broad through the shoulders and as wide through the chest. Pride's eyes were rings that managed to be both pale and bright at the same time. Dev's eyes were pale blue with a ring of golden brown around the pupils so that it was as if his eyes were hazel, if blue eyes could be hazel. Most people looked into those pretty eyes and that was all they saw, but if you knew what you were looking at you knew they were tiger eyes. It was the eyes they'd been born with, because all the pureblooded clan tigers had the eyes of their beast half permanently in their human faces. Both those faces were model handsome, Dev's a little more square jawed than Pride's, but all the gold clan tigers were handsome, or beautiful, as if they'd been bred for height, athletic ability, and beauty. The other tiger clans had some people who were pretty, but it wasn't all of them; of course the two largest clans had three to four times as many members as the gold clan, so maybe it was what happened when your genetic pool was too small--everyone started to look alike. You think that would give you deformity or physical weakness, but sometimes it's like breeding for the best racehorses. They're all beautiful, athletic, fast as fuck, and a little high-strung. That about covered it. Dev and Pride were two of the calmest and most even-tempered, which was why they were the only two on regular guard duty with me or Micah.

  We hadn't told Dev yet that Asher wanted to apologize to him, too. There hadn't been time, and now didn't seem to be the time either. I was feeling calmer than I'd ever been on a plane. Talking about Asher would upset me, and talking to Dev about Asher would probably upset me more, so fuck it. I'd keep this strange new calm as long as I could. There'd be time to discuss the vampire who broke Dev's heart and then tap-danced on the pieces later, when we were safe on the ground. Just thinking that much started the fear bubbling up again.

  Damian said, "Anita."

  His saying my name made me look at him and into those impossibly green eyes. The fear receded again like waves pulling back from the sea, and I was back to walking on that calm metaphorical beach. It was better than any meditation I'd ever managed to do.

  Socrates asked, "Anita, how do you feel?"

  It made me turn and look at him sitting across the aisle from Damian. Socrates' newly short hair was almost shaved so that the tight curl of his hair was completely gone. His face seemed bare, shorn, which would have robbed most men of some of their beauty; I was a big one for nice hair, but his face could carry it. It made his brown eyes look larger, and the dark planes of his face seemed more prominent so that an attractive face had become handsome. Which meant he'd always been handsome. I just hadn't noticed.

  "Anita, can you hear me?" he asked.

  I nodded. "I hear you."

  "Okay, how do you feel?"

  "I feel . . . fine, good, though every time I think that part I know I shouldn't be fine on an airplane, and that makes me poke at it and realize that it's not me."

  Magda spoke from the seat behind him. "Please leave well enough alone, Socrates. Anita is happy enough, aren't you?"

  I nodded.

  "Fine. I'll leave it alone while we're in the air, but I have some questions when we land."

  "When we land," she said.

  Socrates looked back at her. "You're okay with this?"

  "Have you ever flown with Anita before?" Dev asked.

  "No."

  "I have; trust me, this is good."

  Nathaniel said, "She's fine, Socrates, I promise."

  "Please don't make me overthink this," I said.

  Socrates held his hands up as if to say okay, and settled back in his chair. Domino was sitting beside him, watching me with his red-and-yellow fire-colored eyes. They were so much more exotic than the golden tigers' eyes, even Dev's blue-brown ones. The black clan could never pass for human with those blaze-colored eyes.

  Ethan, sitting just behind Domino, looked at me with soft gray eyes. They were tiger eyes in a human face, too, but the color, like the golden tigers, helped him pass for human. Though I'd learned that they looked like tiger eyes, all the clan tigers' eyes that they had from birth functioned more like human eyes for seeing. It meant they didn't need prescription glasses to read, or see far off the way that Micah did with his permanent cat eyes. They looked like tiger eyes, but they functioned more like exotic human ones. Until Micah had admitted his need for glasses, I'd never asked the clan tigers how it worked. Unless you ask, you never know. Ethan's hair was white-blond with gray highlights, or I guess gray lowlights, but there was a streak of dark red that ran from the curls at the front to the back of his head. It wasn't a talented dye job, just natural coloring. He was part white tiger, which gave him the white-blond hair and the paler skin tone, but blue tiger had mixed with the white to make gray in his hair, and the red streak was red tiger clan. What didn't show physically was that he also had gold tiger inside him. He'd gained that as a form after he
met me, but he'd always been able to change into three forms; now he had four. If he'd been black tiger clan he'd have been a clean sweep of all of them. His mother had been red tiger clan, his father white, but where the blue and gold had snuck in no one knew. Both parents were supposed to be pure red clan and white clan, respectively. Guess not.

  Ethan looked back at me. "Anita, is there something you wanted?"

  I blinked at him and said, very calmly, "A lot of the clan tigers were pushing me to date you more seriously because you have most of the bloodlines."

  Damian's hand tightened a little around my and Nathaniel's hands as if he were afraid I'd say the wrong thing. I didn't plan on it. Nicky's hand stayed neutral on my leg as if he knew better, or didn't care about Ethan's feelings; it could go either way with him.

  Ethan nodded. "I remember; it was a way for you to not choose among the clans but marry most of them. My mixed heritage that had made none of the red clan want to mate with me was suddenly an asset."

  "I know the clan that raised you treated you like shit," I said.

  "You rescued me," he said with a smile.

  "I'm sorry that after I rescued you my dance card was too full for the romance you wanted, but I saw Nilda kissing you good-bye in the parking lot. I didn't know she had that kind of happiness in her. I really thought she was too crazy to date. I'm glad I was wrong and that you found each other," I said.

  Ethan smiled that smile you get when you're first in love. "All the ancient werebears are a little crazy, but Nilda just needed love and couples therapy."

  "You went to couples therapy when you'd just started dating each other?" Socrates asked, turning in his seat to look at the other man.

  "She was on the list for mandatory therapy or she'd be fired from the guard. It scared her to go, so I told her I'd go with her if it would help, and it turned into couples therapy after a while."

  Socrates shook his head. "You must have wanted to be with her bad, or you're just a better person than I am. When my wife asked for therapy, I said no."

  "She was in the parking lot kissing you good-bye. Did she forgive you?"

  "No, she left me. I think I wanted her to leave when I first became a shapeshifter. I thought I was a danger to her and our son, and then the hyena group in L.A. was crazy violent. It wasn't until I came out here that I thought I had a job and a life that wouldn't endanger them."