Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I wanted to leave the plane desperately, but I didn't want to leave Damian behind. I'd never had to travel with a vampire that I was responsible for, and during the daylight dead-as-a-doornail time, Nathaniel and I were his only protection.

  Magda spoke from the other side of the curtain where she was standing between the two "sleeping" vampires. "Go. I will wait with our masters, and Damian."

  That seemed to be good enough for Fortune, because she exited the plane with the others. Nicky, Nathaniel, and Dev were still with me. "I thought you'd be the first one out the door," Dev said with a smile.

  "I think I just needed a minute to get myself ready to meet the Irish authorities," I said.

  Socrates poked his head through the open door. "We need you and your passports and cards out here."

  I tried to stand up, and I say tried, because my seat belt was still fastened, and I damn near bisected myself trying to stand. It was the little things that kept me humble.

  35

  I STEPPED OFF the plane onto the tarmac, or asphalt, or whatever you call the artificial covering of every major airport in the world, and fought off an urge to go down on my knees and hug that rocklike surface. I often felt this way when I got off a plane and back to terra firma, but the urge wasn't usually this strong. Nathaniel took my hand as I got off the little folding steps from the plane. He looked around us and said, "It doesn't look very Irish."

  The building and surrounding area were just an airport like almost every other private area of every other airport that I'd ever been to, so it wasn't that it wasn't Irish; it wasn't anything. If you traveled and only saw airports and hotels, then every place was the same. Even internationally, if you stayed in a chain hotel and people spoke English around you, it was like you never left home, except you were away from your actual house, your stuff, and the people you loved. Of course, this time that last part wasn't true.

  I looked at Nathaniel with his auburn hair looking surprisingly red in the watery sunlight. The sky was gray with clouds and there was the feel of rain in the air. We had packed rain gear for all of us who already had some. We'd have to buy some for Nathaniel and Damian, but most of the rest of us had some. Mine had the U.S. Marshal logo all over it, so if the local police wanted me to wear something more neutral I'd go shopping, but until they made me I'd wear what I had. At that moment I was wearing a light leather jacket that probably wouldn't like being rained on any more than the one that Nathaniel was wearing. Most everyone else either was wearing leather or already had their raincoats on. Most of the coats were lined, so they were probably better for the temperature than the leather jackets and would definitely be winners when the rain started. Though they wouldn't be nearly as fun to cuddle. I ran my hand down Nathaniel's back and the leather was soft and pettable. Of course, I could feel the firm line of his shoulders and back under the leather, so that might have made me lean toward leather as opposed to raincoats. I looked around at everyone as they unloaded the luggage from the belly of the plane and thought I'd have to touch Nicky and see if I had the same reaction. Maybe it was just the person and not the coat, or maybe it was both?

  A uniformed official came out of the building with Socrates, who said, "Which of you has Damian's passport?"

  "I do," Nathaniel said, and he went back to the airplane with them so the uniform could look at the "sleeping" vampire and make sure we weren't trying to pull a switch. Since people look different awake and alive, I wondered how hard it was to be sure the pictures matched the vampires. I could do it, because I looked at people alive and dead a lot, but I let it go and moved into the building with the others. I had my own passport and the card that matched the necklace tucked under my shirt against my skin that said I carried lycanthropy. The last time I'd traveled out of the country I hadn't needed anything but my passport. I wasn't really wild about the change.

  It wasn't until the uniformed officials inside the building spoke in an Irish accent that it suddenly seemed like we might be in Ireland. It was perfectly understandable, but it gave me the feeling I'd stepped into a movie, because that was the only place I'd ever heard the real accent up until that moment. Damian and others could sort of do one on command, but it wasn't the same. I don't know if the other felt like an act, or if the lilt and rhythm of the customs people were a slightly different accent. Either way, standing there while they inspected everyone's passports and the medical alert cards was less real somehow. I don't think I ever thought I'd see Ireland in person. I sure as hell never thought I'd see it with over a dozen people who included three vampires and ten lycanthropes. Once I'd thought I was the scourge of bad little vampires and rogue shapeshifters everywhere, and now here I was, one of them. Or that's what my own medical alert card said. Lycanthrope carrier, like I was something hauling dangerous freight across the world.

  A uniformed woman said, "Congratulations, it's a beautiful ring."

  I looked down at my left hand and the platinum ring with its channel-set white diamonds and big sapphire: my work ring. It was all I could do not to say, You should see the other ring. That one lived in a safe at the Circus of the Damned while we waited for yet another compromise engagement ring to be finished that would be the one that went with the wedding ring that was also still being handcrafted. The one in the safe was the ring Jean-Claude had given to me for the video proposal. It was all white diamonds, really big white diamonds. The center stone was so many carats that rabbits should have followed me everywhere I went. I always felt like I had a sign over my head when I wore it: Please mug me. If I ever forgot myself and punched someone in the face while wearing it, I'd scar them for life. It was a very big ring, very flashy, incredibly expensive, and theatrical. It had looked great in the video and pictures that the engagement coordinator had had taken for us. Yes, there really are engagement coordinators, because asking someone to marry you has to be almost as big a production as the wedding now, or it does when you're the King. The video had gone viral on YouTube and outed me in a major way as Jean-Claude's fiancee. At least the woman hadn't seen the video and didn't ask me where that ring had gone, or if I had broken up with that beautiful vampire, and who this ring was from--I'd had all those reactions to the work ring.

  "Thank you," I said, smiling like I meant it.

  The gentleman working with her leaned over from looking at Dev's medical alert card and double-checking that it matched his bracelet to say, "Which of them is the lucky man?"

  My smile widened. "He's at home."

  The woman looked up at the men with me, hesitating here and there in a more lingering way than she had before. I guess I couldn't blame her; after all, if you don't meet people at work, where do you meet them?

  "Very sad he couldn't come with us. It would have been so much more romantic," Dev said.

  I wasn't sure exactly where we were going, but I played along. "It would have been."

  "Now, Marshal Blake, you know the romance has to wait until the work is done," said a man's voice with a thick American Western drawl.

  I turned to find Edward in full U.S. Marshal Ted Forrester guise walking toward us. He tipped his white cowboy hat back on his head and grinned at me. I probably looked surprised. I would never get used to how completely Edward could vanish into Ted Forrester. I'd only learned recently that Theodore Forrester was his legal birth name. He'd always just been Edward to me. Ted was a good ol' boy. Edward was not. They were the same person, so they were both five-eight, though he always seemed taller, yellow-blond hair cut short, mostly hidden under the hat, pale blue eyes, a lean, in-shape body that didn't look as strong as he actually was; I could never decide if it was genetic and he couldn't bulk up, or if he thought lifting was too boring and didn't bother. He pushed away from the wall and walked toward us in his jeans, which fit tight over the cowboy boots. He was wearing a white button-up shirt over a black T-shirt. The smile on his face was Ted's smile, so it was all for the customs officials. He knew he didn't have to waste his good-ol'-boy act on me and my people; we knew
his true identity, and Ted wasn't it.

  "Hey, Ted, I was beginning to wonder when you'd show up," I said, smiling my real smile, because I really was happy to see him.

  "If you'd come in on a commercial flight I'd have been able to check a timetable, but the fancy private jets are harder to time." He tipped his hat at the lady customs official, and she was flustered by it. Edward was so solidly in the "best friend" box for me that I had trouble seeing him as this handsome, flirtatious man, but other women seemed to see it just fine.

  He looked at some of the people with me. "This isn't who we discussed," he said, and the real Edward had eased into his Ted voice, just a little.

  "Long story," I said.

  He let it go, because he knew that meant I couldn't tell him in front of strangers. He eyed them all, and it wasn't Ted looking out of his face now. Even Ted's slightly rounded shoulders were gone, replaced by Edward's upright, shoulders-back, I-was-in-the-military stance. The customs official who had been flattered was looking at him warily now. She'd been on the job long enough to know trouble when she saw it; good on her.

  Edward looked at me when he got to Dev and Domino, because he'd been there to see Dev have his moment under fire, when he'd broken down completely. In his defense, the zombie fight in the basement of the hospital had been one of the worst things I'd ever done, even by my standards. It had been a really harsh introduction to my job for Dev. He flat-out told me he didn't want to go zombie fighting with me again. Domino hadn't liked a homegrown zombie of mine that we'd had to burn in a cemetery, and I'd told Edward about it, so he knew neither of them were my top choices. He'd tell me which of the others he didn't like later.

  "Later," I said.

  "Can't wait," he said with a smile as he crawled back into his Ted skin and just folded back into the charming cowboy act. To her credit the customs official didn't buy it now; she knew something odd was happening and she wanted no part of the blond man with his identity crisis.

  We were joined by another man; he was taller than Edward, though not as tall as Dev. It was nice when I had a variety of heights that I actually knew to compare new people to, so the new guy was five-eleven, or six feet tops. I was never good at subtracting the inch or more that even work boots could give a person, and he was wearing the kind of boots that SWAT wore in the field. The kind that I had in my luggage. His uniform was black, from the tac pants to the long-sleeved button-up shirt. It bulked out from the body armor underneath it, but I didn't need that hint; the sidearm worn out where we could all see it was clue enough.

  His dark brown eyes scanned the room and us. His hair was a rich brown that was almost a dark auburn, and might be under the right light. Nathaniel's hair was solidly on the red side of auburn, but most people with the hair color leaned more to brown. He had a good face, but the level of energy and edge of threat he brought into the room took away all my interest in him as a man. He raised my hackles, and the energy in the room from the real wereanimals told me that it wasn't just me.

  He stared back and didn't try to hide his own hostility, and in fact . . . he added his own energy to the room. Edward went up to him, and I knew before he introduced Captain Nolan that this would be his work acquaintance, Brian. I also knew that he wasn't plain-vanilla human before Edward called me up to introduce us.

  "So you're Anita Blake," he said, his Irish accent softening the near-hostility in his voice.

  "And you must be Brian," I said, smiling sweetly. I even worked to push it up into my own brown eyes. If I could do it for clients at Animators Inc., I could do it to piss off the cranky Irishman.

  He raised his eyebrows at me, then glanced back at Ted/Edward. "Well, Forrester, are we all going to be on a first-name basis?"

  "I call Anita by her first name and she calls me Ted."

  "And the rest of . . . her crew?"

  "First-name basis," I said.

  Captain Brian Nolan shook his head. "I can use your call sign if you prefer, Forrester, but I just can't call you Ted."

  "Theodore," I suggested, doing my best innocent face.

  Nolan frowned at me. "No."

  Edward smiled at both of us. I think he was genuinely enjoying introducing us. His eyes were bluer than normal, and his breathing had sped up a little. I think he liked the energy rising in the room, and the sense of potential carnage.

  "Have it your way," Edward said, and turned to me. "Anita Blake, this is Brian Nolan. Nolan, Blake."

  "Captain Nolan," he said, narrowing his brown eyes.

  "Fine, then it's Marshal Blake," I said, but I was smiling.

  "Am I amusing the two of you?" Nolan asked.

  "A little bit," I said.

  "You always amused me," Edward said, smiling his Ted smile.

  Nolan scowled at us. "I don't think I like your attitude, Blake."

  "I'm not thrilled with yours either, Nolan, but we don't have to like each other to work together."

  He frowned harder, putting deep lines in his forehead and between his eyebrows. It made me add a few more years onto his age, which I'd have called at early thirties; now maybe forty wasn't out of the question. Once people got to a certain age I just sucked at guessing.

  "It would make things easier, though, if we liked each other, at least a little bit," Dev said, coming up smiling and just giving off this vibe of being happy to be there, happy to meet Nolan, and just doing his best to turn the energy in a friendlier direction.

  He held out his hand and said, "I'm Mephistopheles."

  Nolan didn't shake his hand. "What the fuck did you do to earn that as a nickname?"

  Dev made a sad face and said, "Sadly, it's not a nickname." He held up his passport so the other man could see it clearly. It read, "Mephistopheles Devlin Devereux."

  Nolan actually stopped being angry; his face folded into something human and much more attractive. "That's a hell of a name, Devereux."

  "I go by Dev."

  "I don't blame you," he said with the Irish thicker in his voice. He almost smiled at the thought of going through life with such a name.

  The first and last name were his parents' fault, but I knew that he'd chosen Devlin as his middle name himself. When the gold tigers reached age ten, they got to choose that part of their name. Most chose very simple names, or normal-sounding ones, but little Mephistopheles had chosen the name that sounded most like the nickname he'd already earned, Devil.

  "Devereux is French," Nolan said, and started speaking in fluent and very rapid French.

  Dev shook his head, smiling. "Most Americans don't speak the language of their ancestral country; sorry."

  Nolan turned to Pride, who had moved up beside his cousin. "And you are?"

  "Pride Christensen."

  "Is Pride a nickname?"

  He just held his passport out for Nolan. It read, Pride Christensen. No middle name, because he had never chosen one.

  "If you had the same last names, I'd ask if you were brothers."

  "Cousins," Dev said, smiling and clapping Pride on the back.

  Pride raised an eyebrow at him and frowned. "Will you ever grow up?"

  "Will you ever get the stick out of your ass and learn to have fun?" Dev countered.

  Pride rolled his eyes and moved away from his smiling cousin.

  Nolan actually did smile, so there was a human being in there somewhere. Good to know. He turned to Fortune, who was next closest. "And you are?"

  "Sofie Fortunada," she said, smiling.

  Edward interrupted, "Captain Nolan wants to see everyone's passports and get names, which he'll run through every database he can find." We'd already been warned this was not just likely, but a given, which was why everyone had chosen identities that had nothing questionable attached to them. It would so have ruined the trip if someone's name came up on an Interpol list for something. But there would be no issue with Magda Sanderson, Jacob Pennyfeather, Ethan Flynn, Domino Santana, Kaazim Fath, Russell Jones, or Nicky Murdoch.

  Everyone just lined up and sh
owed him their passports, much as they had for the nicer and more polite customs officials. In fact, the woman said, "We've already checked their passports and their cards."

  "I don't need to see their cards to know they're shifters," Nolan said, and he made the last word sound like it was something nasty. He was rapidly losing all his brownie points with me.

  He looked at the passports as if he expected some of them to be fake. The customs officials were all getting a little insulted, because he made it obvious that he didn't trust them to have checked the documents sufficiently. That extra energy that rode around him was beginning to prickle along my skin like insects marching. It was almost like some lycanthrope energy I'd felt before I carried my own flavor of it, but if he'd been a shapeshifter himself, why would he need us to bring our own to play with his team?

  "I guess you'll do. Grab your other gear off the plane and let's go," he said at last.

  The female customs official said, "If there's more luggage coming off that plane, we have to inspect it."

  Nolan turned back to her, took an ID out of one of the Velcro pockets on his pants, and showed it to her.

  She scowled at him, very unhappy. "You can't keep doing this."