Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Nathaniel and Dev both noticed the napkin. Jake probably did, too, but he didn't show it. I tried to act as normal as Jake and Kaazim, but I knew I failed. I wasn't sure I was even as smooth as Nathaniel. Dev was strangely good at it, too.

  The waitress set the drink down on the napkin, and the moisture began to smear the writing almost immediately. She didn't look at me again, just handed out the other drinks. I checked my watch for the time and started keeping track of it. Was I supposed to go alone, or were there other people getting messages with their drinks? I was bad at undercover work for more than one reason. It made me antsy and gave me a huge urge to poke at things.

  Edward got up first, though he had to make people move for him to get out. He didn't announce he was going to the bathroom, but it seemed logical. If I'd had Magda or Fortune with me, we could have done the girl thing of never going to the bathroom alone and I'd have had bodyguards with me, but being the only girl made it sort of awkward. Flannery got up next.

  At four minutes, I made my apologies and got up from the table to meet our mystery woman. Dev started to rise, but Nicky beat him to it. He followed at my back like a shadow with no apologies that he was doing anything but guarding me. So much for clandestine.

  The bathrooms were in a narrow hallway of their own that had another exit at the end of it. Nicky and I started to have a discussion on him checking the room first, but the door opened enough that Edward was able to motion us both inside. Flannery was already leaning against the sinks, looking unhappy. Once the door closed behind us, he let me know why he was unhappy.

  "You cannot trust them, Forrester. It's why they weren't at the other meeting."

  "If they are her animals to call, then they should know more about the local vampires than anyone we've interviewed so far," Edward said.

  "Who are we talking about?" I asked.

  "The local Selkies."

  "Roanes for Ireland," Flannery said.

  "Roanes, Selkies, whatever--who are they?" Nicky asked.

  "Seal people," I said.

  "You mean wereseals?" he asked.

  "No, they're more like the clan tigers, born seals, not made by an attack," I said.

  "They are also the animals tied to the vampire master of Ireland," Flannery said. "They may give us information, or they may spy for her. Until we know for certain that she isn't behind the vampires spreading through Dublin, we have to treat her as our major suspect for the mastermind behind all of it."

  "Why are you suddenly so reluctant to talk to another supernatural being?" I asked.

  "Because Auntie Nim warned me that the Roane are so terrified of their mistress, they will do anything she commands. If they fail her, she tortures or kills them. If that was the price for disobeying her, then they cannot be trusted, Blake."

  "Or maybe that gives them the best reason to be trustworthy," I said.

  There was a soft knock at the door, and our brown-haired waitress stuck her head in, as if checking that we were all there. She looked even paler than she had before; she was scared. Was she a seal maiden like in the old stories? The next person through the door was a man. He was only a little taller than me, about Mort's height, but he was more obviously muscled, as if he'd bulk up if he tried harder. His hair was black, straight, and long enough that he ran a hand through it to tuck it behind his ears. He had large, dark eyes so truly black that the color of his iris made it impossible to tell that he even had a pupil in the middle of that perfect liquid blackness. The eyes dominated his face the way that Nathaniel's could, and he was almost as fair of face as my fiance.

  "My girl has put a closed sign outside the door, so we won't be disturbed, but we still must be quick." His voice held an accent that I hadn't heard before, smoother or heavier. I wanted to hear him say something else, just so I could hear the cadence of it.

  Edward made the introductions. "Riley, this is Anita Blake, Nicky Murdock, and you know Flannery, I think."

  "Not personally, but of him. Tell your aunt that we have nothing to do with this plague of the dead here in Dublin."

  "You as in your people, or you as in your master?" Flannery asked.

  "I speak for myself and no one else, but my people are not involved. I do not believe our mistress has done this, but I stay as far away from her as allowed. I am not part of her inner circle, but one of many of us who work here and other cities to bring in money for our people and for her. Other than some rents from properties she brings in nothing, like some great bloodsucking parasite."

  "If neither you nor the Wicked Bitch of Ireland is behind the vampires in Dublin, then who is?" I asked.

  "I don't know."

  I frowned at him.

  Edward saved me from asking, "Then why so much secrecy if you don't know anything?"

  "I knew that you were Anita Blake's partner in the United States Marshal program. It's her that I wanted to meet."

  "Why?" Edward said, and there was almost no happy Ted in that one word, just cold suspicion.

  "We hear that Jean-Claude is fair and just, that he's forcing the vampires to treat their animals with fairness. We also hear good things about Micah Callahan and the Coalition he runs. We need help."

  "What kind of help?" I asked.

  "Our mistress has always been harsh, but lately she seems to have grown both in power and in cruelty. She is punishing us as never before. I fear--we all fear--what she will do next."

  "Is she breaking the law?"

  "Human law, yes. Vampire law that says we are her animals to use and abuse as she sees fit, no."

  "That second part isn't as true as it was," I said.

  "Can we appeal to Jean-Claude or Callahan for help?"

  "The Coalition mostly handles disputes between animal groups, not vampires and the groups."

  "Then as the new king, can Jean-Claude intercede for us with our mistress, before she destroys us as a people?"

  "Is it that bad?"

  "We are told you brought Damian back to Ireland with you. Is that true?"

  "And if it is, what of it?" Nicky said.

  Riley looked at the big man, but he wasn't afraid of him. "Ask him what she is capable of, and tell him when he wakes for the night that she has grown worse. She tortures those we love so she can feed on both their terror and ours for them. Those of us allowed to go out for work can never take all our families with us, so she has a hostage in case we try to leave her territory. We all know what will happen to those left behind if we try to escape, but many of us want to leave her."

  "I can talk to Jean-Claude, but I can't promise anything," I said.

  He started to take my hand, but Nicky got in the way so Riley had to just drop his hands to his side and plead just with his eyes. They were good at being sad, those eyes. "Tell him we would do anything to be free of her."

  "Anything is a big offer," I said. "Do you understand what it could mean?"

  "I know that we will never be truly safe until she's dead, truly dead."

  "I'm not an assassin, Mr. Riley."

  "I know you kill vampires in America."

  "When I have a legal order of execution on a vampire who's killed people, yes."

  "She's killed hundreds over the centuries."

  "I can't convict her for centuries-old crimes. No one can," I said.

  "She is hurting, torturing, maiming people here and now, in this time."

  "If you can prove that, then the Irish police may be able to help you."

  "If she finds out that I spoke against her to you, she will kill me or have me killed. You'll never find the body either, for the sea does not give up its dead."

  "What do you want me to do for you, Mr. Riley? What can I do for you that's worth that risk?"

  "There is a new vampire ruler for the first time in thousands of years. He seems to believe in equality for all preternatural beings. I ask--no, I beg--for his aid against the abusive monster that creates and feeds upon my people."

  "I'll talk to him, but the original deal with the
European vampires was that Jean-Claude just rules America."

  "Maybe that's why she's gotten worse: She doesn't think anyone can touch her now." He shuddered, pulling his coat a little tighter around himself.

  "You could probably have gotten the same response in an email to him or Micah," I said.

  He looked at me then, with sorrow in his face. It was the kind of look you see on the news when people stagger out of natural disasters or war zones. "Some things you can't put in an email," he said, and raised his shirt. His stomach was covered in scars. I'd seen worse, but not many.

  Flannery made a sharp hiss between his teeth before he could stop himself. Edward showed nothing. Nicky was very still beside me. What did you say in the face of torture like that?

  "She did this to me, because I was too afraid of her to want to bed her. She started cutting me and told me if I didn't find my desire that she'd cut lower and make certain I never desired anyone ever again. Somehow I found a way to . . . do what she demanded." He slid his shirt back in place, covering up the wounds.

  "Evil bitch," Nicky said low and with feeling. It had to hit some of the issues from his own abuse.

  "She is that," Riley said.

  "You're proof, Riley," Flannery said. "Come to the police station. I'll help you fill out a complaint."

  "My mother and sister are still back there with the evil bitch. I can't go to the police unless I can free my family first."

  "We can't arrest her without a charge."

  "And you can't rescue my family before you arrest her, I know. Don't you think we've thought about going to the human police before?"

  "If your family is being held against their will, then that's kidnapping or something, right?" I asked.

  "Yes," Flannery said; his whole attitude had changed once he saw the scars.

  "She is inside a fortress that has stood for centuries. You cannot rescue all her hostages before you enter her den, and she will kill them."

  "I'll find out what we can do," Flannery said.

  "No, you must give me your word of honor that you will not tell the other officers."

  "You've reported a crime to me, to all of us, and we all have badges."

  "I did not come to you as U.S. Marshals and Irish Garda. I came to you as a Fairy Doctor, a vampire queen, and Death, because that is what the vampires call you, Marshal Forrester. If I wanted to sign the death warrant for my mother and sister, I would have walked into a Dublin police station years ago."

  Riley finally got Flannery's word of honor that he wouldn't tell any other officers or Gardai but only other Fey. If they could help the Roane, then the Roane would take the help. "I have been too long. I must go," he said, and he left with our cell phone numbers memorized, but he wouldn't give us a number at which to contact him. He was too afraid that his phone could be taken and my name would be found in the contacts list.

  The waitress shooed the men out and finally me, and started mopping the floor, because that was the story she'd told her boss: Someone had made such a mess, she had to mop the floor. She didn't want to talk to us anymore, so we went back to the table. The food was waiting for us. The stew was amazing, served with dark, sweet bread. I had three glasses of water, along with two Cokes, so I was hydrated and caffeinated. Life was good.

  Edward dropped us all at the hotel to meet up with the others, because we all needed to catch a couple of hours of sleep while we could. "The local police have gotten cold feet about you again, Anita. They seem to think if they let you see all their evidence, you'll use it to go off and start killing vampires."

  "Why are they more afraid of my level of violence than yours?" I asked.

  "You have a higher kill count."

  I leaned in and whispered, "Only legal kills."

  He smiled and then chuckled. He'd always be ahead of me if we counted illegal kills, but that wasn't something to share with the Irish cops.

  "Are you saying they may not let me help tonight?"

  "Get some sleep, Anita."

  "Damn it . . . Ted."

  "By the time you've had a nap, your fiance may be awake for a phone call."

  "Yeah, I'll be talking to Jean-Claude."

  He watched Nathaniel and Dev walk past with some of the luggage. The other guard who had checked us in had just dumped the luggage in one room to be sorted later. "And, Anita, actually sleep."

  "I'm finally exhausted from the time change. Trust me, I'll sleep."

  Nicky went past with more luggage. "Dev is making noises about wanting to bunk with you and Nathaniel for today. I think you'll sleep better if I'm the one with you and Nathaniel."

  "I'll agree with that," Edward said, smiling.

  I frowned at both of them. "I plan on sleeping, nothing else for the next couple of hours."

  "Scout's honor?" Edward asked.

  "Yes!"

  "Can you give the Scout's honor if you've never been a Boy Scout?" Nicky asked.

  "Enough, let's go to bed and sleep."

  In the end it was Dev who bunked with us, because Nathaniel voted that way. We really did sleep, but we put Nathaniel in the middle of Dev and me; that wouldn't have worked if it had been Nicky. We got Damian out of his bag, and he fell into our arms with the limp, heavy roll of a dead body. The new technology could say that vampires' brain activity didn't go down to true dead like that of a corpse, but when you were holding them in your arms they felt dead. Maybe if I hadn't had a job where I saw so many people die, it wouldn't have haunted me so much when it was someone I cared for and it was only temporary for the day. We put Damian into the closet for extra sunlight safety. We had to balance him right and keep shoving in arms and legs to keep him from getting caught in the door. It didn't feel like we were tucking our lover in for the night or the day; it felt like we were hiding a body that we didn't want the maid to find.

  I cuddled down on the far side of the bed with Nathaniel tucked in at my back, one arm holding me tight to the front of his body like I was his favorite comfort object. His naked body touched as much of mine as possible like we always slept when we were next to each other. Dev's arm came across Nathaniel so that he cupped his bigger hand around my body, tracing Nathaniel's arm so that they both held me as we began to drift off to sleep.

  I dreamed about Riley the Roane, though I kept calling him a Selkie in the dream. It was the word I was more familiar with, but he kept correcting me as we walked down one of the streets of Dublin with the tight, neat brick sidewalks and the rougher stones of the road itself. We were walking in the middle of the road at one point; cars had to stop so they wouldn't hit us. I kept saying, "We need to get out of the street or we'll get hit."

  "It doesn't matter," he said, and held out his hand to me. I took his hand and the dream changed. We were someplace dark, and he was chained with manacles at his wrists. Even in the dream, I realized they were manacles, not cuffs, because there was no lock, just that metal piece that slipped in and twisted to the side. If you could reach it, you could free yourself, but Riley couldn't.

  There was a beam of sunlight coming from somewhere above us like a natural spotlight that showed his face and upper body. The light was bright enough that I could finally see a clear line between his pupils and the black irises of his eyes. He blinked those large, beautiful and strangely inhuman eyes at me. They were human eyes, but the color echoed his seal, and the dream changed again. I was standing beside the Irish Sea at the crime scene, except I had walked down between the narrow houses and was on the rocky shore. The sea was gray and whitecapped, the air cold and smelling of rain and storm. There were seals in the water, riding like surfers waiting for that perfect wave. They looked at me with huge black eyes. I'd always thought that seals were cute, but when one of them looked up at me through the water, it looked like a drowning victim, dead in the water but moving, still looking at me with huge dead eyes. I stared through the cold water into those dead eyes with the wind whipping my hair across my face as the rain started to fall in cold, wet drops. The wind pic
ked up the water, and suddenly I couldn't tell if it was rain or seawater that was drenching me.

  The sea was empty except for the storm. Where had the seals gone? And I was back looking down at Riley chained to the floor of that cave with its beam of sunlight that should have been cheerful but wasn't. There was a hand with a long, thin, slightly curved blade cutting through his clothes and baring the pale skin of his untouched stomach. I thought, That's not right. Where are the scars? Then it was like a video that kept jumping from one scene to another--scars, untouched skin, scars, untouched skin. The blade sliced that flawless skin, bright red blood following the line of the blade like a red-ink pen drawing lines across his skin, except it was the "paper" that held the ink, not the "pen." The crimson ink began to spill out of the lines that she carved in his skin, trickling and chasing down his skin while he told her that she was beautiful, that he wanted her, wanted her so much!

  She cut his clothes off him until his body lay pale and strangely beautiful against the dark rock with that splash of sunlight. The cuts on his stomach looked like lines leaking bright red ink to spill down the sides of his body and onto the floor. She caressed his body where he lay limp and small, too afraid and in too much pain to hide that he didn't want her, that he didn't want anyone like this. The video jumped again. His body was covered in old scars, but this time the knife moved down lower; this time she would not stop.

  I tried to scream, No, don't! But it was my hand holding the knife covered in his blood. Nathaniel's screams woke me.

  52

  I WASN'T THE only one who had heard Nathaniel's screams, because Nicky damn near took the door off, before Dev could open it. All the guards tried to be in the room at the same time, but it wasn't big enough. We finally had to decide who to kick out and who to keep. Nathaniel and I had had a version of the same dream, except that where my dream had switched between Riley scarred and Riley getting the wounds the first time, Nathaniel's had switched between Riley getting cut up and Nathaniel being the one chained and tortured. There was another knock, and it took us a second to realize the knock came from the closet door. Dev opened the closet door and Damian half fell out into his arms. I thought at first that Damian had shared our nightmare, but he hadn't dreamed anything. He'd been dead to the world until something about Nathaniel and me freaking out had woken him early.