Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "You said at first. What did you mean?"

  "I guess technically they're Irish, too, like the original Irish, but they were Flannery's friends."

  "You mean Fey?"

  He nodded and squeezed my hand a little tighter. "What's wrong?"

  "Some of them were too beautiful to be real, like they'd walked out of a wet dream," Dev said.

  "Others looked ordinary," Nathaniel said, "but there was always something about them that wasn't quite . . . human normal."

  "Auntie Nim came and offered her own blood," said Dev.

  "Really?" I said.

  "Her and her people," Nathaniel said.

  "They made you nervous," I said, shaking Nathaniel's hand.

  He nodded without looking at me.

  "What's wrong?"

  "They liked us, me because I had blond hair and him because his was dark red. When I said, 'Where are all the Irish redheads you see in movies?' they said, 'In fairyland, because we stole them away.'"

  "Nathaniel, are you worried they'll steal you away?"

  He shook his head. "I don't know, Anita. It's the first magic that's really . . . unnerved me, I guess."

  "They kept asking him if he was one of theirs, like his ancestors had gone to America or something," Dev said.

  "They said that only one of them would have flower-colored eyes."

  "You're wondering if they're right," I said.

  He looked at me with those lilac-colored eyes. "I don't know anything about my family really, Anita; for all I know, one of my ancestors could be from here."

  "Why does that bother you? Most people would love to have some fairy blood in them, or royalty."

  "I don't know, but it's like I can feel something inside me that isn't my leopard now. It's like something's awake that I didn't even know was asleep."

  "Flannery says that his magic only works really well here; if you have blood ties to Ireland maybe that's true for you, too," I said.

  He looked at me, startled. "You mean I could be a . . . what, a Fairy Doctor?"

  "Maybe," I said.

  "They liked Nathaniel," Dev said. "They kept touching his hair, his arm, the way people do when they're flirting."

  "You like flirting," I said.

  "Normally, but this felt more . . . It wasn't flirting, Anita, not the way we think of it, but we couldn't have saved nearly the vampires we did if they hadn't come to help."

  "One of them called it a debt of honor," Dev said.

  "What does that mean?" I asked.

  Damian moved up closer behind us, hugging us both lightly around the shoulders. "It means that something about what's happened makes them feel they owe the help to the city, or to Flannery, or to the victims themselves."

  "Why would they feel that?" I asked.

  "I don't know. The few that I met over the centuries were very mysterious and kept their secrets better than most vampires."

  "Why did She-Who-Made-You do this? What did it gain her?" Nathaniel asked, in a whisper. It was that kind of room; you just couldn't raise your voice.

  "She's a night hag; they feed on terror the way that Jean-Claude feeds on lust. She has feasted on the fear of her victims and the entire city's panic," Damian said.

  "I knew some master vamps could feed on fear, but let me just say, I'm happy to be on Jean-Claude's team. I'd rather be with a vampire that feeds on blood and lust than terror, or anger, or violence and death like some of the other bloodlines," Dev said. He was standing a little to one side, behind Nathaniel. Everyone else who wasn't either talking to the Irish about helping vampires, killing vampires, or our political future here, or healing themselves, was outside in the corridor waiting to come rushing in if we yelled for reinforcements.

  Nathaniel leaned back and offered a kiss, which Dev happily took, though he was careful not to touch Damian's hand where it curled around Nathaniel's shoulder. Honestly, I'd expected Damian to move out of the way; the fact that he didn't was interesting, but not as interesting as the problem in front of us, which was the Irish vampires.

  "What can we do to help them and stop her?" I said.

  "Let us go somewhere else for this discussion. They seem unconscious, but they're still her vampires," Damian said.

  "You think she could use them to eavesdrop," I said.

  "I do," he said, and turned for the door behind us, turning us because he still had his hands on our shoulders. We didn't argue with the movement. I think we were all ready to get out of this room, but as Damian herded us toward the door he stumbled. Dev caught his arm and we turned to help. It was hard to tell in the dim light with someone as pale as Damian, but he looked especially pale. My stomach cramped suddenly so hard it almost doubled me over. Nathaniel's breath was coming too fast as he said, "What was that?"

  "Shit, he hasn't fed."

  "How have you not fed and not tried to tear anyone up?" Dev asked.

  "Centuries of practice," our vampire said.

  "Could you teach them that kind of control?" Dev asked.

  "In time, some of them, but not everyone wants to control their lust for blood, or is capable of doing so. There was one of her other vampires that specialized in the most violent feedings I've ever seen. He literally tore his food apart, limb from limb. He didn't want to control the violence inside him. He wanted to let it out every night if she would allow it." He swayed in place. Dev tightened his grip on his arm. I tightened mine on the other. Nathaniel squeezed his hand tighter.

  "We need to get him somewhere and get him some food," Nathaniel said.

  None of us argued. We just moved toward the door, getting in each other's way as we tried to open the door and move ourselves through it. Dev finally let go so he could open the door and usher us through, which saved us from having a Three Stooges moment in the doorway. Damian leaned against the wall in the hallway and started to slide to the floor. Nathaniel and I caught him and other hands came to keep him upright, but we needed a room and privacy with our shared vampire--now.

  70

  NATHANIEL FELL TO his knees beside Damian and a wave of dizziness took my vision in a stomach-turning swirl. I caught myself on my one good arm and felt other hands on us. I had a moment of not being able to tell if I was watching Domino holding Nathaniel, or if I could feel him cradling me. Was I leaning against the wall with Kaazim holding me in place, or was I kneeling with Dev's hands on my shoulders? I forced myself back into my body and my mind, but it meant that I had to shield hard from everyone.

  Nathaniel gasped, "Anita, you can't take that much from us."

  Damian's eyes rolled back into his head and he went completely limp. Kaazim said, "My Queen, you must not cut them off, or one could die."

  I wasted breath cursing, but I lowered my shields. The wave of dizziness and nausea made me collapse, and only Dev's arm kept me from hitting the floor; unfortunately he was on the side of the injured arm. The pain of it being pressed between his body and mine brought me out of the faint but didn't do anything for my stomach. I fought to breathe and not throw up as I tried to even out the power between the three of us. Damian had hidden how much energy he'd been using up, but now he couldn't hide it any longer. He should not have been able to die from not eating. Vampires couldn't starve to death; they could rot, or go mad from it, but they couldn't fade like this, like a person who was slipping away for real.

  I was looking up into Dev's face, and his eyes looked almost entirely pale blue; the brown was lost in them from this angle, or in this light. Pride was standing over his shoulder, looking down at me with a worried expression on his face. I smelled heat, hot, as if temperature could have a scent. Heat and dirt, as if ground could be pounded by the sun until it changed the smell of it, the feel of it beneath our feet, and beneath the delicate paws . . . I smelled spices, exotic, unnameable, or unnameable by me. I saw a fox, a wolf, no, no, a jackal. She was delicate and dainty, a beautiful golden-eyed lover both in this form and the other. I had a glimpse of a dark-skinned woman with pale brown eyes, smiling
, welcoming . . . and then she was gone.

  "No," a voice said. "No, I will not remember things that have been lost for so long. It is torment and you are not queen enough to force that upon me yet. I pray to my old gods that you never grow to such power, or such evil."

  I realized it was Kaazim, and when I moved my head enough to look he was holding his wrist, putting pressure on it. Damian was sitting against the wall unaided and looking alive again, so to speak. He smiled and licked a minute drop of blood from the edge of his mouth, content as the cat that had eaten the delicious canary.

  "Kaazim, your blood is yummy," Nathaniel said, and it made me turn my head enough to see him cradled in Domino's arms more on his side than I was, because he didn't have an injured arm to work around. Ethan was standing over them both, uncertain who to help, or how. I couldn't blame him on that one; I wasn't sure what was happening either.

  "That should not have happened," Kaazim said, his voice shaking a little around the edges.

  "No," I managed to say, "it shouldn't. You're not one of my animals to call, or Jean-Claude's. Your memories shouldn't come across like that."

  He cradled his arm as if it were more hurt than just a simple wrist feeding. I wondered for a second if Damian had bitten him more than he needed to just to take blood, but discarded the idea. I'd have felt it if Damian were losing that kind of control. No, Kaazim wasn't cradling a physical wound, or not one that we'd given him. It was almost as if it were a remembered injury to match the memory we'd seen.

  "Only my master should be able to draw such things from me, and she would not need to, for she was there." His voice was grim, and matched the bleakness of the look in his dark brown eyes.

  "I am sorry, Kaazim. I did not mean to make you sad," Nathaniel said.

  The werejackal looked at him, but his eyes didn't soften. He looked at Nathaniel as if he hated him. "You did not, but the vampire did."

  Damian's voice came thick and slow like he'd been woken from a wonderful nap that might have included a sweet dream or two. "I did not mean to make you sad either, Kaazim."

  "I do not believe you."

  "I remember what it was like to lose everything to a vampire, Kaazim. I would not willingly draw such a memory from your mind to mine."

  "It did not seem to make you or Nathaniel sad."

  "The energy was amazing, like being drunk on strong spirits, but your downer was not lost in our high. I promise you that." Damian reached out and touched the other man's shoulder, but he jerked back and got to his feet in one smooth motion that ended in the slightest of sways.

  "Are you all right, Kaazim?" I asked.

  Nathaniel moved out of Domino's arms and motioned him toward the other man, but Ethan had gotten to him first. Kaazim stood very straight and firm, but he was leaning just a bit against the wall. Ethan reached out toward his arm, but stopped when Kaazim glared at him. "May I take your arm, just to steady you?"

  "I would like to tell you no, but it is as if the vampire took more than just the small amount of blood. I should not feel like this unless I have fed several vampires in a very short space of time."

  Ethan reached out slowly and took the other man's elbow; when he didn't protest he took a more solid grip. "I have you," he said.

  "It is not you having me that I fear," he said, and looked not at Damian, but at me.

  "Why do I get that look? I didn't do anything to you."

  "Damian is your creature, Anita. What he does is your doing."

  "You know that's not as true as what the council and Mommy Noir convinced people of, right?"

  "I know that Damian has never had this kind of power, but Jean-Claude does, and through him . . . you."

  The look he gave me was chilling, so much so that I struggled to my feet, and Dev helped me, moving me farther away from one of my own bodyguards. Pride moved in front of us, closer to the werejackal.

  "That small extra space will not save you if I deem it otherwise."

  "I know," I said, and fought not to just pull a gun while I had the chance. It shouldn't come to that, so I made the choice not to draw a weapon. If he crossed those few feet and killed me I was going to feel really stupid.

  "Then why move away from me, my queen?" His voice was icy with his anger, like the desert in the grip of winter's cold.

  "You know you'd have to get through all of us before you hurt Anita," Dev said; he'd already moved himself a little in front of me so that I was partially behind that big upper body of his. Pride said nothing, just took a fight stance. It telegraphed his move, but they all practiced together. They knew each other's moves; there would be no surprises during the fighting, only that there was a fight at all.

  Ethan said, "Kaazim, do not threaten to break your oath to Jean-Claude and Anita." He was standing nearest to him, but his voice was calmest, his energy gentle, even soothing. I began to see why he'd been able to establish a relationship with the volatile werebear Nilda.

  "Do you think that I will not hurt you because you have brought happiness to one of us?"

  Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was thinking of Nilda. "No, Kaazim, I think you could kill me, but not out of fear."

  "I am not afraid of you, boy."

  "No one is," he said with a smile.

  The comment made Kaazim think harder, because it was a puzzling comment, which was probably what Ethan was aiming for, because Kaazim would calm down if he could think long enough to not just lash out. I was 99.9 percent sure of that; the fraction of uncertainty was because I didn't know why getting those memories had scared him this badly.

  "I'm sorry for whatever just happened, Kaazim," I said.

  "I meant only to take blood from your wrist, Kaazim. I give you my oath that I intended nothing more." Damian had stayed sitting against the wall. I think he could have stood, but he didn't want to appear more threatening to the other man, and since he was so much taller, sitting was definitely less threatening.

  "You smell like you tell the truth, but I have never had a vampire siphon off my energy like that without centuries of practice at doing it on purpose."

  I tried to move around Dev and Pride and have more direct eye contact with him, but the two men were too in the way. "You told me yourself, Kaazim, that you wonder how much of the Mother's power went into me when I drank her down. This feels more like her than us."

  He looked at me, and it wasn't a good look. "Is that supposed to make me feel better, my queen?"

  I held the weight of his dark brown eyes with my own. "I was hoping, yeah."

  "So either you are lying to me, or you have power inside you that you can neither control nor know when it will surface. Which of these is a comfort?"

  "Put that way, it sounds sort of bad, but I meant it to be comforting."

  He shook his head and sighed. "I am well enough to stand now, weretiger."

  Ethan hesitated and then moved his hand slowly from the other man's arm. Kaazim stayed standing nice and steady. He even moved away from the wall so he wasn't leaning against anything.

  "Your naivete is one of your charms, Anita, but it is also a weakness, because it speaks to a lack of experience with the amount of power you now have inside you."

  "Then perhaps, old friend, it is time to realize that everyone here is a child, except us, and to give them the understanding and teaching that requires," Jake said. He and Fortune came around the corner and seemed to know everything that had just happened, which made me wonder how long they'd been listening just out of sight.

  "Nice of you to join the party," I said.

  "Do you not understand, Jake? These children were able to get through my defenses."

  "Were you shielding as hard as you could when you let Damian feed?" Fortune asked.

  Kaazim didn't look surprised, exactly, but he stiffened, flinched maybe.

  "You weren't, were you?" she said.

  "I did not think it was necessary."

  "You were arrogant," she said, smiling to take some of the sting out of her
words.

  "As Jake said, they are children compared to us."

  "Children grow up, my friend."

  "Jake, Jacob, you cannot tell me you would not be equally upset."

  "They drew forth what you loved and miss most; if it had been the Mother she would have brought it forward and forced you to live through the loss of that love. When they realized something was wrong, they did not hold you tight and force themselves on you further."

  "I did not plot behind her back for thousands of years to end up back where I started only with a new face to wear the same power."

  "You really are afraid that I'll turn into her, aren't you?"

  "No, Anita, I am afraid that she is already inside you, and will control all of us again while wearing your face, but it will still be her."

  "Maybe what keeps me from becoming the monster is the fact that I give a damn about the people around me, and I like someone who makes me smile."

  "That would explain you picking Dev over me," Pride said.

  "That would explain you picking him over all of our tigers," Kaazim said.

  "I know I'm not the king you would have chosen," Dev said.

  "You are not king, Mephistopheles. You were too busy chasing after Asher like a lovesick kitten to win either Anita or Jean-Claude to your cause."

  Dev's face darkened. "I am trying to make up for that now with Jean-Claude and Anita, and Nathaniel."

  "No one matters in this but Anita, Mephistopheles. Do you not understand that the Master or Mistress of Tigers must love one of our tigers, must wed them to keep us all safe? It is the last piece of magic that will keep Anita free of being possessed by the Mother's power, and the rest of us free of what will happen if this last stone is not firmly in place."

  "I'm working on picking a tiger for the commitment ceremony with Nathaniel and Micah," I said.

  "Yes, but you do not want to commit to them. Mephistopheles had a chance to win your heart, but he did not pursue it."

  "I'm pursuing it," Fortune said.

  Kaazim shook his head. "You are committed to Echo, as you must be to your master; your heart is not free to give."

  "We tried and failed," Domino said, motioning at Ethan.

  "Our fate hangs with two boys," Kaazim said.

  "What two boys?" I asked.

  "The blue tiger back in St. Louis that truly is a child, and this one who only behaves as one."