Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "Have you ever used tranquilizers on them in your job?"

  Edward and I both shook our heads. I said, "The dose needed to make it work also runs the risk of stopping their heart. Heart damage is one of the few ways to kill almost everything, and you don't want to be in the middle of giving a were-anything CPR when it wakes up angry with you."

  Flannery laughed, but it was more nerves than humor, I think.

  "You have something to add?" Nolan asked.

  "No, sir . . . I mean, yes, sir."

  "Talk."

  "Maybe there's a way to use magic to slow down or even contain the supernatural beings."

  "You mean casting spells?" I asked.

  He smiled. "Something like that, yes."

  "The witches I know in the United States might be able to do something to help strengthen the door, and I guess you could work a containment spell on vampires not being able to cross the threshold, but it wouldn't help you against lycanthropes," I said.

  "The more powerful the vampire, the fewer spells that will contain them," Magda said.

  "True," I said.

  "I would like to sit down with all of you who know magic and discuss possibilities," Flannery said.

  "Are you a witch?"

  "No."

  "Are you a practitioner of the occult arts?" Edward asked.

  Flannery looked at him and smiled. "Yes."

  I looked at Edward. "I've never heard anyone call it that outside of books."

  "You haven't traveled in Europe as much as I have."

  I nodded. "Okay, Flannery, if you aren't a witch, but you are a practitioner, then what kind of practitioner are you?"

  "Here they would call me a Fairy Doctor."

  "You get your power from the Fey, the little people," I said.

  He nodded, smiling wider. "I'm impressed, Marshal. Outside of Ireland, most people don't know the term."

  "Someone who visited your country explained it to me."

  "Would I recognize the name?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Outside of Ireland, what would they call you?" Socrates asked. It was a good question.

  "Not much. My powers are tied to the gentle folk of this land, literally this soil. I have to be in a country long enough to persuade what few Fey remain there to help me. All the local nature spirits are very leery of strangers and strange magic."

  "Have you ever persuaded foreign . . . gentle folk to work with you?" I asked.

  "I have, but even with them it didn't work as well as it does here with my more familiar friends."

  Edward said, "Let's discuss ways to contain the vampires before they wake up for the night."

  "Good idea," Nolan said, "though I think, Mort, you should report to medical, too, just in case some of those bruises and scrapes are more serious than you think."

  "I'm fine, sir."

  Nolan just looked at him. Mort grinned. "Yes, sir."

  "The gentle folk may be able to help us contain the vampires," Flannery said.

  "They haven't helped much up to this point," Nolan said.

  Flannery smiled. "I hadn't met Marshal Blake and her people. I've told my friends enough that they would like to meet face-to-face."

  "What does meeting us have to do with the . . . gentle folk helping with the vampire problem?" I asked.

  "If the Fey like you, they may agree to helping more," Flannery said.

  "Do you mean they could have been helping this whole time and have refused?" Edward asked.

  "Don't judge them by human motives. It will just frustrate you," Nolan said.

  Edward frowned. "I think Marshal Forrester should not come to the meeting," Flannery said.

  "Where Anita goes, I go."

  "You're not magical enough, Forrester. I'm sorry, but the wee folk prefer different energy."

  "If they don't like you, they won't meet with you," Nolan said.

  "I don't want Anita going alone," Edward said.

  "You and I can wait in the car, but we can't go in if the Fey say no. If we try to crash the meeting, they won't help us."

  "Anita is not going alone," Edward repeated.

  "Oh, she won't be alone. They want to meet some of the people she brought to our shores," Flannery said.

  "Like who?" I asked.

  Flannery flashed me a bright smile. "I'll give you a list."

  "Jake needs to be on that list," Edward said.

  That surprised me. I'd have thought he'd say Nicky.

  We finally got to leave the hallway. Mort went to medical, though I was pretty sure he was fine. It wasn't until Edward wanted to include Jake in our meeting that I began to think we were going to talk about more than just containing the prisoners. I was pretty sure I knew why he wanted to include the only werewolf we had brought with us. Edward had noticed Nolan losing control for that moment in the hallway. If anyone in the group knew Nolan's secret, I was betting it was Flannery. When you work with what amounts to nature spirits, it's hard to miss a werewolf. If he had missed it, then my opinion of Flannery's magical abilities was going to be low before we ever started comparing notes.

  47

  WE SETTLED IN the back of the truck, which was beginning to feel like our home away from home, for privacy, and I put Domino up front with the driver. Flannery told me that not everyone could go in to meet and greet, but I was free to bring more people, so I did.

  "Safety tip: Don't admit to being able to see the gentle folk unless Flannery asks a direct question," Nolan said.

  "Why not?" Nicky asked.

  "Because not all of them like being spied on, and back in the old days, they'd ask which eye you could see them with and blind you in that eye."

  "I'm already down an eye," he said.

  "We'll talk about what we saw and didn't see when we're all alone and inside somewhere in the city," I said.

  "That would be best," Nolan said. We'd already asked Nolan, and Flannery was the only one of his people who knew his secret, so we could talk freely about that, at least.

  I wasn't sure how to start the talk, but Flannery was. "Before we talk other magic, we should discuss what happened with Captain Nolan in the hallway."

  Nolan startled badly enough I could tell from the back. "I don't know what you mean, Flannery."

  "Captain, please, I felt your wolf stronger than I've felt it in months."

  "No one else noticed."

  "I did," I said.

  "You felt my beast, because you have your own."

  "I saw your eyes change, Brian," Edward said.

  Nolan looked at him. "You did not."

  "You were so busy trying not to flash the color change down the hall toward your people that you didn't think I was standing beside you. I saw your eyes change, but I felt the energy roll off you, too."

  "You never felt it when we worked together in the past."

  "I didn't know what I was feeling back then. I'd barely started working with preternatural stuff. I have years more practice under my belt, and I know what I felt."

  "How could you differentiate between me, Blake, Sanderson, Murdock, or Jones?"

  "I've worked with Anita too long not to know what her energy feels like; same for Murdock. The others not as much, but I still knew how many shapeshifters were in that hallway from the feel of their energy. I'll be honest: if I hadn't seen your eyes I wouldn't have been sure it was you, but I would have known it had to be either you or Mortimer, because that's the direction I was sensing it from."

  "All right, so you sensed me."

  "Is it just being around so many other people with similar gifts that roused your wolf?" Flannery asked.

  "No." This from Jake.

  "What was it, then?" Nolan asked, and he was a little defensive like Brennan had been inside.

  "When is the last time you were around a woman of your kind?" Jake asked.

  "I see my mother at least once a month."

  Jake smiled, gently, as if he were trying to lead him through something hard. "No, I mean a
woman who is someone you could have a romantic relationship with, Captain Nolan."

  "Years."

  "Have you been around any female werewolves that are like me?"

  "Only to fight them in other countries."

  "So, again, no chance for romance."

  "I suppose not."

  "Then Anita is the first she-wolf you have met in years who isn't trying to kill you, or isn't closely related to you."

  "Are you saying that my wolf reacted that strongly just because she's a female wolf?"

  "Something like that."

  He shook his head. "I'm not saying you're wrong, Pennyfeather, but I haven't reacted that way to a she-wolf since I was a teenager. Why now?"

  It took me a second to remember that Jake was Pennyfeather. Jake asked, "When is the last time you let yourself become a wolf?"

  Nolan took in a lot of the damp, fresh-smelling air, and then let it out in a rush. "I don't remember."

  "Your people may be able to go for years without changing form, but your other half is still in there with all the same needs and wants of any creature."

  "How long since you had a date?" Edward asked.

  Nolan frowned, and again I had the urge to smooth his forehead and see if the lines would soften. I didn't act on the impulse, but it was an unusual thought for me with a stranger. I wondered if my inner wolf was behind it.

  "I don't really date anymore."

  "How long since you had sex with someone else?" Edward asked.

  Nolan scowled, hands going into fists. I thought for a second we might get to see another fight, but he controlled everything but his voice, which was dark and low with suppressed anger. "That is not your business."

  "That's answer enough, so that long," Edward said.

  I think Nolan started counting to twenty, very slowly, in his head so he didn't take a swing at Edward. Since I had on occasion done the same thing with him, I really couldn't throw stones.

  "That will make it harder to be around Anita," Jake said.

  "Why?" Nolan asked.

  "Because she's a she-wolf and your wolf recognizes that."

  He stared at Jake for a second. "You're joking."

  "We are all attracted to those who carry similar energy, Captain."

  "So is it hard for you to be around Anita?"

  "No, but I've had far more practice interacting with other female werewolves than you have. Also, I become my other form at least once a month. I feed my body's needs and wants, Captain. You, it seems, do not."

  "I told you, we're dying out, and those of us who are left don't want their children to be wolves. I can't tell you about a single child of people who kept their tail into adulthood. In the seventeen and eighteen hundreds the British used the tails on our soldiers as propaganda to prove that the Irish weren't human, that all of us were just animals, so it didn't matter if they slaughtered us or starved us. We went from being a people proud of their heritage to one that began to believe the lies. What if we were just animals, not the Irish, but us, the wolves of Ireland?"

  "That was not true then, and it is not true now," Jake said.

  "I reacted to Blake's wolf like I was in heat; that's not human."

  "You've never been a pretty girl at a bar on a Saturday night. Trust me, Nolan, men behave a lot more animalistic than you did in the hallway," I said.

  "That has been true of men and pretty girls for forever and a day," Magda said.

  "On behalf of all my sex, my deepest apologies," Jake said. The rest of the men wisely said nothing.

  "You just need a woman in your life," Edward said.

  "You sound like my ma."

  Edward grinned at him. "I hope we can visit before we leave. She hears that I'm married with two kids, she'll give you even more grief about it."

  "If I understand it, you're not married yet, and if Ma finds out you're living in sin with kids in the house, you're the one that will get the grief."

  Edward gave a smile that gave me a sudden glimpse of what he might have been at twenty when he met Nolan. I'd never met anyone who had known him this long. I so needed to ask questions of him when Edward wasn't around.

  As if he read my mind, Edward said, "I think Anita is hoping to see some of the countryside with her lovers before we all go home."

  "My ma wouldn't know what to do with you, Blake. Too much sin for any one woman, is likely what she'd say."

  "I think I'm offended," I said.

  "I think we all are," Dev said.

  "It's nothing personal. My ma is a big one for finding sin in people."

  "Nolan's mother didn't like me much either. She doesn't hold with folks that work with the Fey," Flannery said.

  He grinned at me, his teeth strong and so white that I was beginning to think he'd had them bleached, which didn't fit with his messy hair, which couldn't seem to decide if it was wavy or curly, and he kept running his hands through it and trying to push it back away from his ears. It was longer than regulation for any army or police force I was familiar with, but the rest of him screamed someone who had been in a uniform most of his adult life. I wondered if the longer hair was an effort to look less like a uniformed officer; if so, he'd been in Nolan's unit awhile.

  "What's wrong with working with the Fey?" Dev asked.

  "My ma doesn't like anything that makes a person stand out as different," Nolan said.

  "Because she's hiding her differences?" I asked.

  He nodded.

  "I asked to meet her," Flannery said. "There are so few native wolves left in Ireland, I wanted to meet Captain Nolan's family."

  "Ma was right mad when she figured out he was a Fairy Doctor."

  "She got more worried when she found out I had never married."

  Nolan laughed. "She was torn between fixing you up with a local girl and keeping the Fey away from her friends."

  "So she'd want all of us to be married?" Nathaniel asked.

  "Oh yes."

  "Could you tell she was a wolf when you met her?" Jake asked.

  Flannery shook his head. "I could tell there was something Fey about her, but not what."

  "Is it Fey to be an Irish wolf?" I asked.

  "It's why they don't like any of the wolves that cut off their tails. They love their own deformities, but they would see it as a betrayal of their heritage," Nolan said.

  "Your tail was not a deformity," Flannery said.

  "You tell that to the other lads in school and their families," Nolan said.

  We were all quiet for a few minutes as the truck whirred along the road.

  "Being different is always hard," I said. "You know that vampire that tried to use me as a human sacrifice?"

  "I remember the story," Flannery said.

  "His friend was a necromancer, too. They approached me initially to combine our powers and help heal the vampire."

  "Ah, well I'm sorry for that, but I assure you that I only want to do positive magic. Human sacrifice does not qualify as positive magic."

  "Is that what they call it now?" Jake asked.

  "Call what?" he asked him.

  "Is it positive magic instead of white magic now?"

  "Yes, actually that is the new, more politically correct phrase."

  "I guess black magic being bad and white magic being good doesn't match the new social justice climate," I said.

  "The last necromancer we dealt with felt like her magic should wither the grass as she walked," Flannery said, and that memory stole the smile from his face and made his eyes look haunted. It was the kind of look that combat gave you, or working violent crimes too long. You were haunted not by real ghosts, but by the ghosts of memory. Real ghosts were sort of boring, and not really a problem if you ignored them and didn't feed them power by paying attention to them. The ghosts of the past didn't go away because you ignored them.

  "Some of the people with my psychic ability give the rest of us a bad name."

  He looked startled. "You think it's a psychic ability?"

  "Ye
ah."

  "But you do magical rituals to raise the dead. If it were purely a psychic ability, there'd be no ritual needed."

  I opened my mouth, closed it, and finally said, "I raised my first zombie spontaneously when I was a child. I didn't do a damn bit of ritual for it."

  "Who was it?" he asked.

  "What, not who. It was my dog. She came home and crawled into bed with me. I thought she was alive again, at first."

  "That should make your power metaphysical, not mystical, but . . ." And it was his turn to hesitate, as if he were trying to pick his words more carefully.

  "But what?" I asked.

  "Maybe you are a psychic just like a natural witch, but I've never known a necromancer who didn't need magic ritual to raise the dead."

  "I'm a special little snowflake," I said.

  "Maybe, or maybe you're the kind of necromancer that the legends tell about."

  "What legends?"

  Nolan said, "Please, Blake, don't play stupid."

  "Yeah, yeah, raise an army of the dead and conquer the world. Legends and myths say that witch kings and voodoo queens keep trying it, and keep failing at it."

  "I saw some of the films from Colorado last year," Flannery said.

  "You raised an army of the dead," Nolan said.

  "Only to combat the one that the bad guy had already raised," I said.

  "But you still raised all the dead for miles around the city of Boulder, Colorado," Flannery said.

  I shrugged, not sure what to say.

  "That is legendary magic, Blake," Flannery said.

  "Do I blush and say Aw shucks?"

  "If the land and the gentle folk like you, Blake, then that's good enough for me."

  Nolan said, "Flannery is my expert on magic, so if he likes you, then that's good enough for me, too."

  "When did you fight this other necromancer?" Jake asked.

  "Just a few months ago. I'd never seen anything like it, until I saw the videos from Colorado and what Blake did there."

  "Was she human?" Jake asked. "The necromancer, I mean."

  Flannery nodded. "As far as we could tell, yes."

  "You've thought of something," Nolan said.

  Jake smiled and looked so friendly, so open. "Anita fought a vampire that could raise zombies just last year, and you fought a human necromancer within the same year. I just find that an interesting coincidence."

  "You don't think it's a coincidence any more than we do," Nolan said.

  "I don't know what you mean," Jake said.

  "People hadn't seen a real necromancer in living memory, and now suddenly we've got three," Nolan said.