Crimson Death (31 page)

“So if not a lover or a friend, who did you leave behind?” I asked.

“You can't actually keep people from being friends, Anita. There are people that I would rescue from her slavery if I could without risking falling back into it myself. I hate myself for saying it that way, but it's the truth. One of the things I had to understand about myself was that I wasn't that brave. In battle, sure, that's easy, but everyday torture and torment . . . I'm not that kind of brave.”

“Everyone breaks, Damian,” I said.

He looked at me. “No, Anita, not everyone.”

“Edward told me that everyone breaks eventually. Maybe the people you're thinking of just haven't hit their
eventually
yet.”

Damian looked down at his hands where he was still holding the towel across his lap. “How many centuries does someone have to stand up to torment before you call them unbreakable?”

“I don't know what to say to that, Damian.”

“How many centuries are we talking about?” Nathaniel asked.

“Eight hundred years.”

“That's a very long time,” Nathaniel said, raising his eyebrows to go with the comment.

“Eight hundred years, okay; how about we call him hard to break?” I said.

Damian looked at me. “You believe that everyone has their
eventually
, don't you?”

“I do.”

“But you still want me to go back to Ireland and give her another chance at me.”

“No, I want you to go back to Ireland and help us stop a bunch of murdering vampires from killing people. Police and our own guards will be with you.”

“Will I have to talk to her?”

“I doubt it, but even if you do, you'll be guarded by our people and the police.”

“And Anita and I will both be there,” Nathaniel said.

I shook my head. “No.”

“You just said it yourself: We'll have our own guards and the police.
I'm not going out hunting vampires with you. I'll just be there to make sure Damian has all the power our triad can give him.”

“We're not taking him back to challenge his old mistress to a duel, Nathaniel.”

“I know that, but we have more power together than apart.”

“More power would be good,” Damian said.

“Jean-Claude does just fine without Richard at our side all the time,” I said.

“Let's ask him,” Nathaniel said.

“And if he says what you want him to say, then what?”

“Then we all go to Ireland.”

“And if I keep saying no?”

“You wouldn't tell Micah no, or Jean-Claude.”

“That's different.”

“How?”

“It just is.” And yes, I heard that it sounded lame.

“Yes, neither of them would help me have more power, because they aren't part of my triumvirate,” Damian said.

“You both keep saying that we raised more power than ever before with Nathaniel leading the way, but how do we know we raised any power? All we really know for certain is that the three of us had sex without you and me angsting about it and getting in each other's way. The two of us don't even remember much of it.”

The two men looked around me at each other. “I feel more energized,” Nathaniel said.

“So do I, but maybe that's just the rush after sex,” Damian said.

“I can't afford to have Nathaniel roll me while I'm working the case. I mean, how would the Irish police react if their two vampire experts got mind-fucked by their leopard and lost hours while they were supposed to be crime busting?”

“I didn't mean to make us lose hours,” Nathaniel said.

“I know, but when the metaphysics first come online like this, there's always a learning curve. I don't want that curve to be when the police or Edward needs me most, needs us most.”

“I thought I knew exactly what had happened and what needed to
happen. I felt so certain that I should stay with you and Damian, that you'd need me there. He'd need me there. Am I wrong? Am I just wanting our triumvirate to work that way?”

“What way?” I asked.

“So that I'm essential, and that the three of us being together does raise power and strength for all of us.”

“You're essential to me,” I said, smiling, and rubbing my hand up and down his thigh.

He smiled and patted my hand where I touched him, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. They stayed serious and unhappy.

“Let's talk to Jean-Claude,” Damian said.

“Why?” I asked.

“He knows more about controlling a triumvirate than we do. If anyone will know the answer to our questions, it's him.”

I couldn't think of a better idea. I thought Damian would insist on getting clothes, but he didn't. He seemed just fine with tightening the towel around his waist and padding barefoot up the hallway to Jean-Claude's room. Nathaniel would have been fine with it, but it wasn't like Damian at all. Nathaniel gave me a sad look and mouthed,
I'm sorry
.

I shrugged, because maybe it was temporary.

Damian looked back at us; his longer legs had taken him effortlessly ahead of us down the hallway. He flashed a grin so big it showed off the dainty points of his fangs. I could count on one hand the number of times that he had done that when he was in his right mind. Crap. Then he waited for us to catch up with him, and he took Nathaniel's hand in his and we went hand in hand down the corridor. He started humming under his breath. I wasn't sure I'd ever seen him so relaxed and happy before. Nathaniel and I exchanged a look.

“Don't be gloomy,” Damian said to us both. “I remember now what else I was thinking: that I wanted to be happy.” He swung Nathaniel's hand in his as if he were about to start skipping down the hallway. “I am happy. I feel happy, just happy with no guilt, no fear. We'll go to Ireland and it will be all right. Now that the human police know about her and the rest of us, doesn't she fall under human law just like the little people who deal with the human authorities?”

“Yes, it should work that way,” I said.

“Then she's holding people against their will, and that's illegal, right?”

“Yes,” I said, studying his happy face.

“Then the police will help us free the people I left behind.”

“Theoretically,” I said.

He shook his head, and his hair was still so wet it clung to his neck and shoulders rather than moving with the gesture. “Or maybe just telling the Roane that She-Who-Made-Us has lost control of the city and can't stop an invasion of foreign vampires will be enough.”

“Enough for what?” Nathaniel asked.

“Only fear of her power and obedience to their ruler keep the seal folk from fighting against their enslavement.”

“You think once you tell them she's losing power, that will change,” I said.

The happiness in his eyes changed to something closer to rage. It flashed in green fire for a moment deep in his eyes, and then he was smiling again. “Yes, yes, they will rise up if they think they can win.”

“You seem very certain,” I said.

He swung Nathaniel's hand again. “I feel very certain of a lot of things today. I didn't when I first woke up for the night. I didn't when you came to talk to me, but somewhere in all the talking I just started feeling better and better. I think it's seeing the two of you.” He actually raised Nathaniel's hand as if he meant to kiss it, then stopped himself with a bemused smile on his face. “This isn't like me at all, is it?”

“Nope,” I said.

“No,” Nathaniel said.

He looked lost for a moment and then laid his lips gently to the back of the other man's hand. He rose back up and started walking down the hallway with us, still hand in hand. “I don't care. I feel . . . hopeful for the first time in centuries. We can do this.”

“Do what?” I asked.

“Stop the vampires in Dublin and rescue everyone that I left behind.” He sounded so certain. Nathaniel looked at me and I gave a small head shake. We'd let Damian have his moment. Who were we to rain on someone's moment of unadulterated happiness, hope, and
certainty of victory? Moments like that were too rare to spoil. Usually they came with good antidepressants, or alcohol, that rush after great sex, or the first blush of being in love when all things seem possible, and apparently, vampire mind tricks. Who knew?

D
AMIAN LOUNGED IN
the second big chair by the electric fire in Jean-Claude's room. He was still smiling, happy, and relaxed. He sat in the chair wearing nothing but the towel and even his mannerisms were more like Nathaniel's, or maybe Jason's, or even Jean-Claude's if he was trying for nonchalant. Either this was a part of Damian that I'd never seen, or he was being seriously impacted by whatever Nathaniel had done to him.

Jean-Claude sat in the other big chair across from him and asked, “Is this a problem, or a desired result,
ma petite
,
mon minou
?”

Nathaniel and I exchanged a look. He gave a small shrug. I answered, “Sort of both.”

“Explain, please,” he said.

“Damian was wishing that Anita and I would desire him the way we desire Micah.”

“Not as you desire me?” Jean-Claude asked.

I don't know what Nathaniel would have said, because Damian said, “I could never be you, Jean-Claude. No one is you.”

Jean-Claude gave a small bow that seemed to involve just his neck and barely his shoulders. He made it look utterly graceful. I'd have looked like I was having a spasm in my neck. “A pretty compliment from a pretty man.”

I waited for Damian to get stiff and vaguely offended, but he laughed, damn near giggled, and did a bow from his waist while sitting down, and damn me if it wasn't graceful and very sexy. That might have been
helped along by the fact that he let go of his towel to sweep his hand out and down as if he were holding a hat to touch to his chest, so the towel slid into his lap, leaving the tops of his hips bare. The towel covered the tops of his thighs and the critical area of his lap, but not much else as he settled back into the chair.

“You have never taken a compliment of that nature from me with such grace, Damian,” Jean-Claude said.

The other vampire smiled. “I am sorry for that, Jean-Claude, truly.”

“You are comfortable with me saying you are pretty, attractive even?”

“You are one of the most beautiful people I have ever seen. Why would it not be a compliment coming from you? Most people live their whole lives waiting for someone like you to want them.”

Jean-Claude narrowed his eyes and took in a long breath, and let it out even slower. “I do see your problem, my pretties.”

“I did not mean to do this,” Nathaniel said.

“It's like he's drunk,” I said.

“Not drunk,
ma petite
, but freed of his usual doubts and personal issues. You have had our werewolf, Richard, almost this relaxed through my powers.”

I thought about it, and finally nodded. “I have, but it didn't last like this, or get . . . stronger.”

“Is he getting more at ease as time goes on?”

Nathaniel and I both nodded.

“That is interesting. I offered the ability to be at ease to Richard and he agreed, but he could not let himself sink into it completely. He fought against it, because so much of what vexes him are lines that he does not wish to cross.”

“Richard would so do you, if he could get out of his own way,” Damian said, and he laughed again.

“Bluntly put, but I believe he would have done so at least once by now if his issues were not entrenched so deeply in his psyche.”

“What man doesn't like dishing it out?” Damian said.

“He does seem intoxicated,” Jean-Claude said, looking at us.

“Why is it just Damian and not all three of us?” I asked.

“Nathaniel was in control. In effect he played master so he would not be . . . intoxicated.”

“Okay, why isn't it hitting me?”

“For the same reason that my powers do not intoxicate you.”

“And that reason would be?” I asked.

“You are a master in your own right, as is Richard.”

“So we're powerful enough to fight off the effects?” I asked.

“And I believe that neither of you wishes the effects to be permanent.”

“You are too far away,” Damian said, holding his hands out to the room.

“Whom are you addressing?” Jean-Claude asked.

Damian blinked and seemed to have to think harder than the question warranted. “No offense, Jean-Claude, but I was addressing Anita or Nathaniel.”

“Do you have a preference for which of them comes to hold your hand?”

Again it seemed to require more thinking than it should have, but finally Damian said, “I don't . . . I don't think so, but I very much want to touch one of them.”

“He was himself when we first got to the room after he woke up,” I said.

“Go hold his hand,
ma petite
. Let us see what happens.”

I wasn't sure how much I liked being an experiment, but I went because Damian's face was losing that happy glow. It was almost as if sadness were seeping in as the happiness faded. Surely there had to be more than two choices for him. What had Nathaniel's mind-fuck done to Damian?

I took his outstretched hand in mine; there was a hum of power as our fingers touched, and as more of our hands touched, the power rose until when we settled our palms against each other's, it was like a jolt of electricity, except it didn't feel bad; it felt good. It sped my pulse until I had to fight not to pant as if I'd been kissing someone too long and too hard, and forgotten to take a deep enough breath.

“Wow,” I said, “that's new.”

“That was amazing,” Damian said; his face was flushed as if he'd taken more blood from somewhere.

“What were you thinking when you touched him,
ma petite
?”

“Nothing. I mean that I didn't like being the experiment and that I didn't want him sad. I preferred him happy to sad, or something like that.”

“And you, Damian, what were you thinking?”

“That I wanted the power to rise between us. I want what Nathaniel did to raise our power level.”

“Why?” Jean-Claude asked.

“To have more power, of course.” He started rubbing his thumb along my knuckles as he said it.

“Most vampires would mean that, but you do not. You said the expected. We want the truth.”

“I . . .” He looked up at me, then at Nathaniel, who was still standing in front of the fireplace halfway between the two chairs. He held his hand out mutely for the other man.

Nathaniel moved toward us, but Jean-Claude said, “Let him answer the question first,
mon minou
.”

I squeezed Damian's hand and said, “The truth, Damian, just tell us.”

He swallowed hard enough that I could watch his throat work and see the pulse in the side of his neck. He was a vampire; they didn't always have a pulse, and they certainly didn't have such a rich, throbbing beat in the side of their necks.

“If we truly raise power for each other, if Nathaniel has finally figured out how to get our triumvirate to work, then he will have to come with us to Ireland.”

“Why do you wish him to come?” Jean-Claude asked.

Damian looked at the floor; as his happiness receded, so did the easy confidence. He kept one hand in mine, but the other pulled at the towel, trying to raise it higher up his body. The bold vampire who hadn't seemed to care if the towel stayed, or fell, was gone. This was the Damian I knew: not shy, but not comfortable with being nude in front of other men, or certain people in general. He saw nudity the way I saw it, as a type of vulnerability.

“I don't know,” he said at last, but he stared at the floor as he said it. I don't think any of us believed him.

Jean-Claude motioned to Nathaniel, and he came to us, laying his
hand on Damian's bare shoulder. It wasn't a lover's touch, just a friend's hand on your shoulder when you are feeling sad. Damian flinched and started to pull away from that friendly touch, and then he stopped. He didn't just stop moving away; he stopped moving in that way that the older vampires could. His energy, the flow and hum of him, was almost not there at all. His hand wasn't warm and alive in mine anymore; it was like trying to hold hands with a mannequin, or some kind of lifelike doll, but it wasn't alive. Whatever I was touching wasn't alive. I'd always hated it when Jean-Claude did it. I didn't like it any better now.

Nathaniel shook him by the shoulder. “Don't do this to us, Damian. Don't go away like this.”

Damian looked up then, his eyes almost flat without the shine of living eyes. He'd said that She-Who-Made-Him had killed him in battle that night so long ago. In that moment I understood what he meant.

I tried to pull my hand out of his, but his fingers just stayed around mine; it was like holding a corpse's hand. “Either feel alive or let me go, Damian. I mean it.”

“I still have to do whatever you order me to do,” he said. It was like magic—his hand just felt alive again.

“Fine. Then why do you want Nathaniel to come with us to Ireland?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Say his name,
ma petite
. You must be specific or he has room to wiggle.”

“Damian, tell me why you want Nathaniel to come with us to Ireland. Tell me the true reason you want him to come with us.”

He shook his head. “I don't . . .”

“Damian,” Nathaniel said, “why do you want me to come with you to Ireland?”

The vampire sighed and again I was taken by the thick, beating pulse in the side of his neck. I wanted to lick the side of his neck and feel the beat of his life against my tongue.

“Now, I have to obey both of you.” He looked up at me and his green eyes were so alive and so angry. He turned the intensity of his
gaze to Nathaniel. “I feel braver when you're with me. It takes everything for me to fight off the feeling of euphoria. I don't remember feeling this good, maybe ever.” He put his hand up to cover Nathaniel's where he was still touching the vampire's shoulder. The towel began to slide back down to pool in his lap.

“I wanted someone to desire me the way you and Anita seem to want Micah, and you made that wish come true. You wanted me to want you the way I want Anita, and I can't seem to stop you from getting your wish either.” He turned and looked at me. “What did you wish for, Anita? What did you want from us? What did you want the three of us to be?”

I thought about it for a minute. “I've thought life would be easier for a while if you were a little more bisexual.”

Damian laughed then, and it was part amusement and part something that wasn't light or funny at all. It wasn't exactly bitterness, but if irony had a sound, that was it. “I don't think I'm bisexual, but I may be Nathaniel-sexual.” He looked up at Nathaniel.

“You wanted to be desired. I wanted you happy and not sad about Cardinale. Did I do a bad thing to us?”

“I do not know, but I know that with you and Anita beside me I am brave enough to go back and face her.”

“We are not going to face her, Damian. We don't have to face her.”

“Maybe not to save the humans that are being killed, but once we have stopped the plague of vampires in Dublin, I want the human authorities to help us free the rest of the people she is holding captive, Anita.” He turned back to give me the full weight of that emerald gaze of his, but there was a purpose in it that I hadn't seen before.

“Can we do that without messing things up for you with the European vampires?” I asked, looking at Jean-Claude.

“One of the Harlequin told us that what's happening in Ireland may be because we killed Marmee Noir, and we aren't sending them back out to spy on all the other vampires, so we don't know what's happening,” Nathaniel said.

I asked Jean-Claude, “They said that some lesser vamps didn't wake up the night after we killed the Mother of All Darkness. Since no one
here in St. Louis died, or for that matter no one I know of in this country, I didn't think about Europe. Did you know?”

“That some lesser vampires would die and not reawaken at dusk if we killed her? That was possible.”

“You didn't tell me it was possible,” I said, and felt that first flush of anger.

“
Ma petite
, you know that when masters are injured, they reach out to their servants and the vampires that are blood-oathed to them for power to heal themselves and stay alive.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“What did you think the Mother of All Vampires would do when she felt herself fading, dying? Did you not think that she would reach out to her children and use them in an attempt to save herself?”

“I . . . No, I didn't,” I said.

“I kept nothing from you,
ma petite
. You simply failed to want to understand what might happen. You had the same knowledge of her and vampires as I did. If you did not know that slaying her would kill some of her lesser children, it is because you did not wish to know.”

“That's harsher than you usually talk to her,” Nathaniel said.

“Perhaps I am angry with myself tonight? Perhaps seeing Damian holding your hand shows me yet again the mistakes I made with Richard in my attempt not to force myself on him.”

Damian picked up Nathaniel's hand in his and brought our hands together in front of him so that he could lay a soft kiss on first my hand and then Nathaniel's. “No, Jean-Claude. Richard was brave when you met him. He knew who he was and what he wanted out of life. What bravery I had was used up centuries ago by her. I knew only I wished to be free of her, but beyond that I had lost everything I was, or wanted to be. I was directionless. Richard was never that, from what I know of him. Nathaniel has given me back my bearings. He has given me back a star to hang in the sky, a fixed mark that will guide me home.” He kissed the back of Nathaniel's hand again. “He is my star.”

“And what is Anita to you, Damian?” Jean-Claude asked.

“She is my master. She is wolf-kissed, beloved by the eagles.”

“Very poetic,” he said.