Crimson Death (20 page)

“Yes.”

“Kids are always hard.”

“You don't have kids of your own yet, Anita; once you do you'll understand.”

“I'm not planning to ever have kids, Edward.”

“Neither was I.”

“I think I can avoid dating people who already have a family,” I said.

“That's what I thought, too.”

“I'll talk to Damian when he wakes up for the night, but don't hold your breath.”

“I can send you the latest pictures, Anita. It might change his mind.”

“I doubt it.”

“It might change yours.”

“Me coming was always on the table.”

“I've been trying to find the older vamps, Anita. It's like they aren't here.”

“They're there, Edward. I promise you that.”

“Then help me find them.”

“Damian won't be awake for hours yet.”

“Let me know when he wakes up. Maybe I can help persuade him.”

“Have you and Damian ever had a conversation?”

“No.”

“Then what makes you think you can be more persuasive than I can?”

“Desperation.”

“You don't get desperate easily, Edward; what aren't you telling me?”

“I have that feeling, Anita. That feeling that says things are going to get worse.”

It wasn't like him to be this spooked. “Guard your ass.”

“Don't I always?”

“Yeah, you do, but I feel like you're leaving stuff out.”

“Don't I always?” he said.

“Yeah, you do.” I sighed.

“Call me with Damian's answer,” he said. He hung up.

“Fuck,” I said to the phone.

“What's wrong?” Nathaniel asked.

“More dead in Ireland. Apparently one of the vampires has a taste for kids.”

“I didn't think vampires attacked children that often,” Nathaniel said.

“We do not,” Jean-Claude said.

“Their throats are so tiny that a good bite can close down the blood supply, so why attack them?” I asked.

“Ask Edward to send you photos of the new victims. If their throats are intact and the bites dainty enough, then the new Irish vampires may be breaking one of our few strict taboos.”

“You mean they're making new child vampires,” I said.

Jean-Claude gave a small nod. He didn't try to hide the anger on his face. “I am only king of America, but if they are doing this, then they must be stopped. It is forbidden to bring children over for a reason.”

“As king of America you have no authority outside this country, right?”

“The only authority in Ireland was Damian's old master. If she cannot police her country's newest members better than this, then something has gone very wrong.”

“What could have damaged her power this badly in just a few years?” I asked.

“You have felt her power from a distance,
ma petite
, Nathaniel. I have felt her power in person. I can conceive of nothing that could leave her toothless and powerless before any foe, save for the Mother herself.”

“This feels like new monsters, not old ones,” I said.

“Agreed,
ma petite
, but powerful new ones.”

“It doesn't matter if it's old power or new,” Nathaniel said. “We need to stop whoever is doing this.”

“Yeah, we do,” I said.

“We are agreed,” Jean-Claude said.

We were all agreed, and that was great, but what we needed was a plan. Edward was asking for help. He almost never asked for help. One of the scariest vampires around seemed powerless in the face of whatever was happening in her country, or maybe she just didn't care.

I asked Jean-Claude, “Could She-Who-Made-Damian just not give a damn?”

“What do you mean,
ma petite
?”

“Could she just not care enough to police the new vampires?”

“Do you mean, has she given up?”

“I mean, is she old enough that she just isn't moving with the times? Some of them do that, right? They just refuse to accept change and sort of hide from it all.”

“It has happened, but in the past the council did not allow it to disrupt business as usual.”

“You mean that the Mother of All Darkness would send the Harlequin out to see what was wrong and fix it.”

“
Oui
, that is what I mean.”

“We killed the Mother of All Darkness, and most of the Harlequin work for us now.”

“That is true,
ma petite
.”

Nathaniel looked from one to the other of us. “Were they doing something that we aren't doing now?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Jean-Claude is in charge of the new power structure, but it's not like the old one. It's mostly just us here in America. The old council ran things differently, right?” Nathaniel said.

“They were concerned with more of the world than we are,” Jean-Claude said.

“Have we dropped a ball here, Jean-Claude? Were the Mother and the Harlequin or the old council doing things to keep Ireland moving safely along, and now that we've destroyed their power did we cause this somehow?” I said.

He went very still. I knew it meant he was either thinking, or hiding what he was thinking. “I do not believe so, but if we wish to know what the council was doing to maintain the status quo in Ireland, we have people here to ask.”

“The Harlequin,” I said.

“Our guards now,” he said.

“Wouldn't the Harlequin have told you if there was something important that needed to keep being done?” Nathaniel asked.

“All the Harlequin are older than I am, and there is something about being a certain age that gives you a longer view of things.”

“Which means what?” I asked.

“They might not see it as important enough to share until it became a problem.”

“Even if it cost lives?” I asked.

“The vampires of the Harlequin are thousands of years old,
ma petite
. They may not consider human life as valuable as we do.”

“Then their attitude needs to change,” I said.

“I would settle for their sharing any important secrets before they become an issue.”

“We don't know that they hid anything about Ireland,” I said.

“No, that is true, but the old council is disbanded. Their power is destroyed and incorporated into our power base, and suddenly a country that has run seamlessly for thousands of years is in turmoil. At the very least, we should question the coincidence.”

“If it is a coincidence,” I said.

“Do not borrow trouble,
ma petite
. Not everything that goes wrong in the world is our doing.”

“True, but if we're only in charge of American vampires, who's in charge of Europe now?”

“If I try to spread our power over the rest of the world, we will have more battles on our hands. One of the reasons it has gone so smoothly is that I have not fought to rule the world, as it were.”

“I don't want the equivalent of a vampire world war, but someone needs to be in charge of you guys.”

“We have been in charge of ourselves longer than humans have known there was a world to rule.”

“But all that time the Mother of All Darkness was in charge of all of you, right?”

“Oui.”

“Now she's not, because we killed her.”

“You are wondering what the vampiric mice are doing now that the cat is dead—is that it,
ma petite
?”

“Yeah, that,” I said.

“They're doing what the mice always do when the cat's gone,” Nathaniel said.

We looked at him.

“And that would be what, our pussycat?”

“Destroy everything they can before a new cat comes along.”

“And we're the new cat,” I said.

“Perhaps,
ma petite
,
mon minet
, or perhaps we need to find another cat to rule Europe.”

“Who?” I asked.

“I do not know, but I know that I do not wish to rule the world. America is enough for me.”

“Have we let the monsters loose in Ireland, Jean-Claude?”

“Let us ask the Harlequin that we trust most. If there is a secret to Ireland's vampire past, they will know it.”

“Who do we ask first?”

“Magda,” Nathaniel said.

We looked at him.

“She's one of our lovers and she's so blunt, it's painful. If there's something she knows, she'll share it. If we ask her without Giacomo at her side.”

“Are you saying she would obey her vampire master before her vampire king?” Jean-Claude asked.

“Let's not make her choose,” Nathaniel said. “Let's just ask her now while she's awake and her master is still dead to the world.”

“You are growing craftier,
mon minet
.”

“I had to get smarter sometime,” he said.

“No, sadly, some people live for centuries and never become wiser.”

I was pretty sure we were all thinking about the same person, but none of us said his name. Asher had been Jean-Claude's on-again, off-again love of his afterlife for centuries. They'd loved and lost the same woman, Asher's human servant Julianna, and neither of them had stopped mourning her. They say love heals all wounds, but if Jean-Claude and Asher were any judge, maybe not. Asher's jealousy issues had led him to make some seriously bad political choices that had almost started a war here in St. Louis between us and the local werehyenas. That final stupidity had been enough even for Jean-Claude and all of us to dump him. Asher, our golden-haired and sadistic beauty, was now trying to be monogamous with the one lover he had left, Kane. None of us liked Kane, and he returned the sentiment. We all missed parts of Asher when he was behaving himself, but none of us missed those parts enough to forgive this last near-disastrous choice. A war among the preternatural set here in St. Louis just as Jean-Claude was being the very public face
for vampires as good citizens could have lost the vampires so much, like the new voting rights that grandfathered in all vampires regardless of how long they'd been dead. Less than fifteen years ago a vampire could be killed on sight just for being a vampire, no questions asked. There were still laws in some Western states that allowed lycanthropes to be killed like varmint coyotes, or rats. You could kill someone and as long as their blood tests came back positive for lycanthropy you were justified. One of the things that the Coalition was trying to get changed was laws like that. We were so not free and clear in this country, or anywhere in the world. Asher had risked so much more than just us when he'd made his last bad decisions. In the end, that level of carelessness was what we couldn't forgive.

Nathaniel sighed. “I'll admit it, if neither of you will.”

“Admit what?” I asked.

“I miss Asher topping me in the dungeon. I even miss sex with him.”

“If I did not miss sex with
mon chardonneret
, my goldfinch, I would have been done with him centuries sooner.”

“Fine, fine. I miss him in the bedroom and the dungeon.”

“What we miss is that we can't find anyone else who tops us like he does,” Nathaniel said.

Since I was still working through my issues about the whole bondage and submission being an ongoing part of my sexuality, I wasn't sure what to say to that.

“The only one I have ever known as talented with such things as Asher is Belle Morte,” Jean-Claude said.

“I know she tried to contact you and come here after the vampire council fell and she had to flee France,” I said.

“She seemed most confused that I would not allow her sanctuary in my lands.”

“She thought you'd take her back,” Nathaniel said.

“She offered that the three of us could be together as of old.”

“You, Asher, and her?” Nathaniel asked.

“Yes.” He looked out into the room, but I was pretty sure he wasn't seeing anything in front of him.

I moved to make sure I blocked his line of sight. He looked up at me; his blue eyes looked as black as his hair and the robe he was
wearing in the dim light, so that only the paleness of his face and that triangle of chest relieved the darkness of him.

I held my hand down and he took it lightly with just his long, slender fingers. “I never asked you at the time: were you tempted?”

His lips moved, and it wasn't quite a smile, more like he thought about smiling. “What she offered was a lie,
ma petite
, as it was always a lie.”

“You and Asher were her main boys for centuries.”

“We were her favorite pawns, or perhaps tools. Yes, we were her favorite tools, or weapons to be aimed at whoever she wished us to seduce, or embarrass, or help her manipulate for her schemes. Belle almost ruled all of Europe once, the true power behind many thrones. The two of us helped her seduce a great deal of the nobility, church officials, anyone in a position of power that she wished to control.”

“I've been inside your head when you have memories of those days, Jean-Claude; you loved her. You were in love with her.”

“I was, but she was never in love with me, or Asher. If she was ever able to love anyone, it was not us.”

“So you weren't tempted?”

“For a moment, perhaps, but it is like being tempted by a dream. It is not real.”

“But while you're dreaming it, it can feel real,” I said.

“She kept us all like addicts,
ma petite
. We were addicted to her charms. We competed for her love, but as you have said before of others in our lives, it is a rigged game. There is only one winner in any game involving Belle Morte, and that is Belle Morte.”

Nathaniel unfolded from beside the fire and walked on two legs, but there was something about the way he moved that was very catlike, as if his human body were remembering a lighter grace and it was all there as he came to take my other hand and look down at Jean-Claude.