Crimson Death (34 page)

“I'll call Sin that, but not Nicky.”

“Nicky is only a lion, so he doesn't help us over the whole tiger issue anyway,” I said.

“I know that the tiger clan leaders won't rest until you're married off to one of the clan tigers.”

“Legend says that if I don't marry a tiger, the Mother of All Darkness will return from the dead and destroy the world.”

“Nice to know they backed off on the tiger being your legal spouse and are content with a commitment ceremony,” he said.

“Yeah, it was big of them.”

“You're being sarcastic, but it really was a compromise for them.”

“So we need a tiger as part of the commitment ceremony that we're all willing to live with, and the group of us can't agree on one.”

“Welcome to one of the serious downsides of polyamory when everyone has veto power over everyone else's lovers,” Micah said.

“Lovers, schmovers, it's the living-with part that's making the choice impossible.”

“Agreed. I'm being signaled that it's time to talk some more here. Have a safe flight. I wish I were able to go with you and help keep Nathaniel's and your minds off Damian.”

“Me, too.”

“I love you, Anita Blake.”

“I love you more, Micah Callahan.”

“I love you most.”

“I love you mostest.”

“I've got to go make sure they don't start trying to kill each other.”

“And I've got to go to Ireland and stop them from killing each other.”

I heard a voice on his end, someone talking low to him. He had to go, and so did I. Both of our jobs saved lives, and both of us would take a life if we thought it would save more lives down the road. Most of the time I did it with the legal blessing of my country. When Micah killed someone in a duel it was never legal, because duels were illegal no matter if you were human or more than human.

I
FOUND
N
ATHANIEL
and Damian back in Damian's bedroom. I almost didn't recognize the room. There was a large mirror that covered the half wall that held the bathroom door. The mirror had a heavy antique-looking frame and the glass would reflect anything happening on the bed. Nathaniel was both a serious voyeur and exhibitionist; mirrors seemed to satisfy both needs for him. He'd been asking Micah and me to put one in our shared bedroom, but we'd been resisting. I didn't want to sit up in bed and see my reflection every morning, or in the middle of the night when I was half asleep. There'd been an incident on an out-of-town business trip where I'd damn near shot the full-length mirror in the hotel room, because I thought it was an intruder. That had been years ago when I was new to hunting killers and carrying a gun, but the moment had stayed with me. Micah didn't really want the mirror either, but obviously Nathaniel did, and Damian had let him do something that his two fiancées had refused him for years.

The bed was now covered in a very dark green bedspread with pillows in browns, dark purples, and a shade of orange that had brown undertones so it all matched. If you'd set me loose in a store with this as a color scheme, it would have looked like it had been put together by a partially color-blind lover of autumn, but this was magazine perfect. The brown and orange were a new addition, but they echoed the purple and green of our own room, though our shades were brighter, shinier, more vibrant, and this was muted, more autumn leaves than summer flowers. It still had Nathaniel's touch everywhere.

It had taken months of negotiations for Nathaniel to do our room; this had to have happened in less than two hours. Either Damian was more bespelled than I was, or he was always this easy a touch for a
lover to control the decorating. Maybe it hadn't been all Cardinale's fault that the room had reflected mostly her, which said something important about Damian. I just didn't know exactly what.

They were sitting on the bed, their heads together over Nathaniel's iPad. He looked up, smiling. “We're looking online for new towels for the bathroom, so we can get rid of all the pink ones.”

“Nothing wrong with pink if you like the color,” I said.

“I don't,” Damian said, looking up.

Their faces were very close together, the bright green eyes and the lavender ones, milk pale skin and the darker pale that let you know Nathaniel might tan if he ever tried. His face was wider through the cheekbones, Damian's longer and narrower. Was Nathaniel more beautiful? Yes, but it was like saying a rose is more beautiful than a lily. They were both beautiful flowers. It just depended on whether you wanted something rounder, fuller, more lush, or if you wanted something leaner, taller, more careless summer garden instead of formal rose garden. I preferred roses to lilies, but they grew well next to each other if you were willing to have your rose garden a little less formal and a little more cottage.

Nathaniel put the iPad down on the bedspread and met my eyes with his; he knew how distracted I suddenly was, because he'd watched himself affect me like that for years. It was closer to the way I got distracted with Jean-Claude and Asher, back when he was in our bed. Did Micah and Nathaniel together make me this stupid-faced? Maybe. It was like I couldn't remember, which let me know that I needed to walk out of the room and find Jean-Claude, or find a phone and talk to Micah—again. But I didn't. I stood there and drank in the beauty of them, the possibility of them.

I couldn't seem to leave the room, but I found my voice. “You couldn't have ordered the bedspread and pillows online. There hasn't been time for them to ship.” My voice sounded a little hoarse, so I cleared my throat, trying to sound and feel more like myself.

“No, we ran out and picked up a few things,” Nathaniel said.

“We? You and Damian went out during the day just to shop?” I asked.

“Sunlight doesn't burn me anymore,” Damian said, studying me with those pure green eyes of his.

“I know, but you still don't like going out in it.”

“Nathaniel was with me,” he said.

“And that made you feel safer,” I said.

He put an arm around the other man's shoulders. Nathaniel put his head a little to the side so his auburn hair and Damian's red intermingled like two streams of some blood-colored sea where the tides meet. It was like Damian's eyes were the color of leaves to complement Nathaniel's flower-colored ones.

I shook my head forcefully and looked at the floor. The carpet was new, too. It was dark brown with a pattern of green leaves and autumn-colored flowers on it. I wondered if Damian realized he'd just given up one color of flower for another.

I heard the bed move before Nathaniel crawled into sight, gazing up at me from the ground so I couldn't hide behind the thick fall of my hair. He gazed up at me with those large lilac-colored eyes. He was improbable, too beautiful, but it was his eyes that tipped the scale from beautiful to something exotic and unreal, like an orchid grown in some hothouse. I could almost feel the heat and humidity of it. I closed my eyes so I couldn't see him, and it was better. The air was less close. I should have started backing out of the room and run for it, but I just closed my eyes, as if that would save me. That hadn't been a good strategy since I was five and I believed that if I couldn't see the monster under the bed he couldn't get me. If there'd really been something under my bed it wouldn't have worked then, either.

Nathaniel traced his fingers along my arm, the lightest of touches, but it was enough to make me open my eyes and drown in that violet gaze. I was better than this, damn it! I knew how to escape vampire gaze, but then he wasn't really a vampire and I'd never met a wereleopard who could capture me with his eyes.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight and shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. He caressed my arm again, but I was able to keep my eyes closed this time. I'd played this game with Jean-Claude for years. Of course, that had been back when he wasn't sure I wouldn't tell him
to go to hell and mean it. It had limited what he would risk, how far he would push. Nathaniel didn't have those kinds of doubts. Nothing gives you courage like believing someone loves you absolutely.

He ran his fingers along my arm again, and another hand echoed him on the other side of me. It made me open my eyes. Nathaniel was still kneeling in front of me, but Damian was kneeling beside him now. It was his hand caressing my right arm, while Nathaniel stroked the left. I opened my mouth to protest, but I wasn't sure what I was protesting. We were all lovers already, and the pilot had informed Jean-Claude, who had informed me, that we had a couple of hours more before we could take off.

As if he'd read my thoughts, Nathaniel said, “We have at least two more hours before we need to be at the plane. We had sex, but you didn't feed the
ardeur
, because I didn't know how.”

I had to cough to clear my voice before I could say, “Jean-Claude wishes Rafael were here so I could feed on all the rats through him before we leave.”

“Rafael won't get back in time to feed you,” he said, rising higher on his knees so he could bring his face closer to mine.

I straightened up so that I wasn't half-bending over toward him.

Damian leaned in to lay the brush of his lips against my arm, too delicate to even be called a kiss. It made me shiver and wrap both my arms around myself as if I were cold, but it wasn't cold that had made me shiver. I should walk out, leave . . . now.

“Let us be your food,” Damian said, and I was suddenly staring into the green of his eyes as if I'd never seen them before, never realized how fair of face, how . . .

I shook my head a little more forcefully and took two steps back so I wasn't between the two of them. “I'm going to . . . go somewhere . . . else.”

“Why?” Nathaniel asked.

“I . . . You're trying to bespell me again.”

“We're engaged. We'd marry if you could legally take more than one spouse. I'm not trying to force you to do anything we haven't already done. You have to feed the
ardeur
before we get on the plane. You can't risk feeding hundreds of miles in the air.”

“I'd be too nervous,” I said.

“That means it's more likely to get out of control, not less.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I tried to call up some anger to protect me from his so-reasonable voice and the two of them kneeling so close to me.

“What if you lost control on the plane and it spread to everyone?”

“I've only lost control like that once, and that was because the old vampire council was fucking with us.”

“Emergencies happen, Anita; let's not make the
ardeur
one of them.”

“This doesn't even sound like you, Nathaniel.”

“Maybe it sounds like me,” Damian said. “I'm afraid to go back to Ireland, but I'll do it for you.”

“You're not doing it for me. You're doing it to help the police save lives.”

“You can believe what you want, but if it had just been Edward asking me, I wouldn't be going. I'm going because my master wants me to go and my leopard is going with me to hold my hand. I want to help save lives and make up for some of the things I've done in my existence, but I am going for you, Anita.”

I wanted to say,
Don't go for me. Go for yourself
, but I was afraid he'd change his mind, and we needed him. “I don't know what to say to that, Damian.”

“Say you'll make love to us. Say you'll let us be your food.”

They were right about one thing—I did need to feed before I got on the plane, but I was forgetting something. It was something important. Nathaniel's fingers played with the edge of his T-shirt, and began to slowly lift the cloth to bare the flatness of his abs an inch at a time.

I backed up a step. If I was going, it was time to leave, but why did I want to go? I loved Nathaniel. We had sex on a regular basis. There was no reason to run away, so why was I wanting to run? It was like I was forgetting something that I really needed to remember. Whatever I had forgotten was the reason why this wasn't a good idea, but for the life of me I couldn't think of it, just this nagging feeling that there was something.

I closed my eyes and turned around so I couldn't watch them slowly
taking their shirts off. “There's something we're forgetting,” I managed to say, “something important.”

“You're missing the show that we're putting on just for you,” Nathaniel said, in a voice that had more honey in it than I ever remembered, as if his words could drip down my skin in thick, sweet lines.

“This is wrong. It's the power talking. It's making us forget something important. A reason that we shouldn't feed now,” I said.

Nathaniel said, “Turn around, Anita, please.”

I started to do it, and had to catch myself, clenching my hands into fists.

“No, Nathaniel, she's right. We're both drunk on the new power. It's like when you're first in love. It makes you forget things.”

“What sort of things?” Nathaniel asked, his voice sounding more normal.

“All sorts of things,” I said.

“Important things,” Damian said.

I opened my eyes and turned cautiously to them. They were both shirtless, which wasn't helpful, so I closed my eyes again. All I wanted to do was go to them and start touching all that bare skin.

“Everyone take a deep breath and ground and center,” I said with my eyes still closed. I tried to follow my own advice, and found it much harder than it should have been. I knew how to control my breathing, and once you controlled that your pulse and heart had to follow. Either everything sped up, or nothing did. I knew all that, but I could still feel my pulse in my throat.

“We're going with you to Ireland,” Damian said.

“That's the plan,” I said in a voice that was still slightly breathless.

“Then you'll need to keep us for food there. If you feed on us now, we won't be any good to you for at least twenty-four hours, maybe forty-eight. Two days where you'll have to find other food.”

“We're taking Nicky,” Nathaniel said.

“He can't feed her for two days by himself without compromising his ability to fight.”

“We're taking Domino.”

“He's emergency food only. He's not one of my lovers anymore, remember?” I said.

“Fortune, Echo, and Magda are going,” Nathaniel said.

“Well, that's true,” Damian said, and sounded less certain.

“I'm thinking of taking Dev, too,” I said.

“See? She'll have plenty of food,” Nathaniel said.

“But you weren't thinking that when you started us taking off our shirts.”

The energy in the room was calmer now; I could think again. Whatever Nathaniel was doing had stopped. Damian had made him think too much about other things. It was hard to keep your concentration pure enough to do magic when you were having to think about relationship issues. Maybe that's why so many major witches and wizards throughout history never married?

“I'm sorry, Anita. Damian. You're right. If we'd been the only two lovers going to Ireland, I'd have still wanted the three of us to make love and feed the
ardeur
together. We've never done that before, and I know it's a rush when Anita and I do it with another person.”

“I look forward to it,” Damian said, “but not tonight. She should feed off someone who isn't traveling with us.”

I looked at them and they were still yummy to see all shirtless and well, just handsome as hell, or maybe handsome as heaven—yeah, that sounded better—but they weren't so overwhelmingly beautiful that I had to have them now, right now. The compulsion was gone, replaced by my usual desire for Nathaniel, which was a near-constant like breathing, and there was a new spark when I looked at Damian that wasn't as strong, but it was most definitely there.