Crimson Death (45 page)

They looked at me, even Pride.

“Yeah, he's good in bed, but he's not better than Jean-Claude, or Nathaniel, and you're getting to sleep with both of them,” I said.

“You're getting to fuck women again, and that's worth getting rid of Asher right there,” Nicky said.

“I love women, but I was willing to give them up for him,” Dev said.

“I don't see how you agreed to give up women,” Pride said.

“You don't like men at all, cousin. Of course you wouldn't understand it. I saw it as the same as being monogamous for marriage.”

“But most monogamous people are just into the sex of the person they married, so they give up everyone else, but if they like men they still have a man to sleep with, and same if they love women. You agreed to give up half the human race that you loved having sex with, and Asher was still getting to sleep with Anita, so only you gave up women. It was totally shitty of him to ask you to do that,” Pride said.

“I didn't realize you disliked him that much,” Dev said.

“He treated my cousin like shit. He's hurt my friends. He's injured people I'm supposed to be protecting as my job. Why wouldn't I dislike him?”

“Why wouldn't you hate him?” Nicky asked.

“He's not worth that much emotion,” Pride said.

“If you liked men, you'd understand.”

“No, Dev, I wouldn't. I don't have any crazy exes. I don't do the bad girl or boy. I like nice, kind, and the sex can be just as hot.”

“How do you know that nice sex is as hot as bad-girl sex if you've never had bad-girl sex?” Nicky asked.

Pride opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, looked puzzled, and finally laughed. “Okay, okay, I guess I don't, but I have great sex and she's not crazy.”

“Who are you having sex with?” Dev asked.

Pride shook his head. “None of your business.”

“Hey, you brought it up.”

“I did not bring it up. In fact, I'm sorry I said anything.”

“Are you dating someone and I didn't know about it?” Dev asked.

“We're not eight anymore, Dev. We all have grown-up secrets.”

“If Pride is dating someone, then no one knows about it,” Nicky said.

I shook my head. “News to me.”

“Who is it?” Nicky asked.

“Why do you care?” he asked.

Nicky grinned. “Because you want to keep it a secret.”

“That's Dev's kind of reasoning,” Pride said.

“I'm actually with Nicky on this one, because I'm reviewing every interaction with any woman I've seen you with, trying to figure out who it is,” I said.

“And why you'd want to keep it a secret,” Dev said.

“Married?” Nicky asked.

“No, I would never help anyone cheat on their vows.”

“So if she's not married, then why the deep, dark secret?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, I'm done, because if I keep answering questions you may figure it out and she would be pissed at me. I'm not screwing this up.”

I narrowed my eyes at him as if I were trying to bring him into better focus. It would bug me, but more because most shapeshifters are incredibly open about sex and relationships to other people they consider part of their community. There just wasn't the taboo among them that some normal humans had.

“Is she human, like mundane human?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, I am done talking about this. She's too important to me for me to mess up because I'm trapped on a plane and we have nothing better to do than talk.”

The plane swayed in the air, as if it had heard him talk about it. I clutched the armrest and Nathaniel's hand. “Talking about something would be good,” I said, my voice a little strained.

“I'm sorry, Anita, but even to distract you while you're being all brave about your fears, I'm not blowing this relationship. It's too important.”

Dev looked at his cousin. “You're serious about whoever it is.”

Pride nodded.

He stared at the other man and finally clasped his shoulder, so that Pride looked at him. “Would you marry her?”

Pride shook his head, then said, “I mean, yes, if she'd have me, but right now she doesn't want to marry anyone.”

“How long are you willing to wait?” I asked, because getting all up in Pride's personal business was better than worrying about how aerodynamics worked.

“As long as it takes,” he said.

“Depending on who or what she is, that could be a really long time,” I said.

“She's worth it.”

“Wow,” Dev said, “I haven't heard you this serious since we were thirteen and you wanted to marry the little girl next door.”

“I was thirteen, and you and your sister both broke my heart with the little girl next door.”

“We played ‘show me yours and I'll show you mine' with her. You could have come and played with us.”

“I was as serious as a thirteen-year-old boy could be about her. I didn't want to play with her. I wanted to profess my first true love.” Pride laughed at himself, I think.

“She grew up way too kinky for you, Pride.”

Pride looked at the other man. “How do you know?”

Dev grinned. “Angel went to the same college.”

“Do I want to know?”

Dev grinned wider. “Probably not.”

Pride shook his head and rolled his eyes. “I'll keep my illusions about my first serious crush, thank you.”

“If Angel decides to bring her home to visit, I'll warn you first.”

“Wait. What?” Pride asked.

“Could we really get to meet the little girl you guys first played house with?” I asked.

Dev grinned at me. “Angel and she kept in touch after college. They're both bi, so they got a place together with some other recent graduates trying to make it in the big city.”

“We don't bring roommates home,” Pride said.

“When Angel came home this last time, she said they were dating and have been for most of the time she's been out on her own. She's pretty pissed that she got called to the bosom of her family after establishing a successful life outside the clan.”

“Is that why she's so cranky all the time?” I asked.

“Partly, but she's always been the less friendly of the two of us. She blames being named
Good Angel
. Names like that just make you want to rebel against them.”

“So, Mephistopheles, why didn't you rebel and become the perfect little angel?” I asked.

He grinned again, and then his eyes filled with a heat that changed the grin to something more primal that made me shiver a little as he stared at me. “I went the other way,” he said, in a voice that almost purred. “I decided to be my name.”

“Mephistopheles,” I said.

“Devil,” he said.

The plane lurched again, and I fought not to dig my nails into Nathaniel's hand but just the chair arm. “I try to be on the side of the angels, but I play like I'm for the other team,” I said, my voice a little strained.

“You make us all play for the angels, but you recruit from the other side,” Nicky said.

“You're not a devil,” I said, looking up at him.

“I'm not an angel, either.”

“You like reformed sinners, Anita,” Fortune said, leaning on the side of Pride's chair.

“You make me sound like the Salvation Army.”

“I'm not reformed,” Nicky said.

“Me either,” Dev said.

“I guess to be reformed you have to be repentant, and neither of you are that,” I said.

Fortune laughed. “They are so not that.”

“We'll be getting food soon.”

“I don't know if I can eat,” I said.

“You have to eat, Anita. It helps quiet all the other hungers.”

“You have to eat real food, Anita,” Nicky said.

“If you don't eat actual food, you'll have to feed the
ardeur
before we land,” Nathaniel said.

“Which could spread to the pilot. Yeah, Jean-Claude explained that,” I said. I looked up at Fortune. “So what's for dinner?”

I
WAS FINE
until we started to land, and then having the windows closed became a problem again. Landing scared me anyway, but apparently being able to see out while it was happening made it less scary for me, because being trapped in a narrow metal tube with the sensation of it hurtling toward the ground, but not being able to see the ground, so I couldn't tell if we were actually landing, or crashing . . . I started to have a panic attack, fought through it, and held on to Nathaniel and Nicky for dear life. Dev reached across and put a hand on the one thigh that didn't have a hand on it already, and said, “It's okay, Anita.”

I wanted to say,
You can't promise that
, but I was afraid if I said anything I'd either start screaming or throw up, so it was better to keep my mouth shut. I felt the bump as the plane landed. I closed my eyes and tried to be relieved, and I was, but I was also almost faint with the desire to get off this fucking metal tube of death!

The door was open and fresh air actually came into the plane. Something tight and unhappy in my chest and stomach loosened. I could breathe again without fighting the urge to scream.

The pilot said, “Everyone needs to show their medical alert cards, and allow customs on board to compare the vampires' faces to their
passports, since it is daylight and we cannot bring the vampires to them.”

The medical alert cards were the same kind of thing you'd carry if you had severe allergies or other medical conditions that if you happened to be unconscious doctors would need to know about, except that these cards said we had, or carried, lycanthropy. Ireland and most of the rest of the European Union demanded that lycanthropes carry medical alerts. It could be a bracelet, a necklace, a card, an insert in your clothing, but you had to have something. If a lycanthrope tried to simply enter Ireland, England, or much of the EU as a normal human and then got found out, it was cause for automatic deportation with the possibility of jail time. The people who traveled with Micah already had theirs, and he was able to help us rush the paperwork for the rest of us. Apparently, there's a lot of controversy about it, so the powers that be had made it easier and quicker to get the cards, so that they didn't get sued again for civil rights violations and other similar things. England had originally wanted to force lycanthropes to be tattooed, but not all tattoos remained on all shapeshifters' skin. They then suggested forced branding, and lawyers, the press, and people in general began to make comparisons to the Nazis and how the Jews were permanently marked. So we just needed the cards, but if a government official, like a police officer, asked to see our cards and we failed to produce them, it could be grounds for deportation. You were encouraged to have more than one type of card on you at any given time. I felt a little funny with my card, because technically I wasn't a lycanthrope, but my official paperwork said that I carried lycanthropy, so for government work I needed a card.

I wanted to leave the plane desperately, but I didn't want to leave Damian behind. I'd never had to travel with a vampire that I was responsible for, and during the daylight dead-as-a-doornail time, Nathaniel and I were his only protection.

Magda spoke from the other side of the curtain where she was standing between the two “sleeping” vampires. “Go. I will wait with our masters, and Damian.”

That seemed to be good enough for Fortune, because she exited
the plane with the others. Nicky, Nathaniel, and Dev were still with me. “I thought you'd be the first one out the door,” Dev said with a smile.

“I think I just needed a minute to get myself ready to meet the Irish authorities,” I said.

Socrates poked his head through the open door. “We need you and your passports and cards out here.”

I tried to stand up, and I say
tried
, because my seat belt was still fastened, and I damn near bisected myself trying to stand. It was the little things that kept me humble.

I
STEPPED OFF
the plane onto the tarmac, or asphalt, or whatever you call the artificial covering of every major airport in the world, and fought off an urge to go down on my knees and hug that rocklike surface. I often felt this way when I got off a plane and back to terra firma, but the urge wasn't usually this strong. Nathaniel took my hand as I got off the little folding steps from the plane. He looked around us and said, “It doesn't look very Irish.”

The building and surrounding area were just an airport like almost every other private area of every other airport that I'd ever been to, so it wasn't that it wasn't Irish; it wasn't anything. If you traveled and only saw airports and hotels, then every place was the same. Even internationally, if you stayed in a chain hotel and people spoke English around you, it was like you never left home, except you were away from your actual house, your stuff, and the people you loved. Of course, this time that last part wasn't true.

I looked at Nathaniel with his auburn hair looking surprisingly red in the watery sunlight. The sky was gray with clouds and there was the feel of rain in the air. We had packed rain gear for all of us who
already had some. We'd have to buy some for Nathaniel and Damian, but most of the rest of us had some. Mine had the U.S. Marshal logo all over it, so if the local police wanted me to wear something more neutral I'd go shopping, but until they made me I'd wear what I had. At that moment I was wearing a light leather jacket that probably wouldn't like being rained on any more than the one that Nathaniel was wearing. Most everyone else either was wearing leather or already had their raincoats on. Most of the coats were lined, so they were probably better for the temperature than the leather jackets and would definitely be winners when the rain started. Though they wouldn't be nearly as fun to cuddle. I ran my hand down Nathaniel's back and the leather was soft and pettable. Of course, I could feel the firm line of his shoulders and back under the leather, so that might have made me lean toward leather as opposed to raincoats. I looked around at everyone as they unloaded the luggage from the belly of the plane and thought I'd have to touch Nicky and see if I had the same reaction. Maybe it was just the person and not the coat, or maybe it was both?

A uniformed official came out of the building with Socrates, who said, “Which of you has Damian's passport?”

“I do,” Nathaniel said, and he went back to the airplane with them so the uniform could look at the “sleeping” vampire and make sure we weren't trying to pull a switch. Since people look different awake and alive, I wondered how hard it was to be sure the pictures matched the vampires. I could do it, because I looked at people alive and dead a lot, but I let it go and moved into the building with the others. I had my own passport and the card that matched the necklace tucked under my shirt against my skin that said I carried lycanthropy. The last time I'd traveled out of the country I hadn't needed anything but my passport. I wasn't really wild about the change.

It wasn't until the uniformed officials inside the building spoke in an Irish accent that it suddenly seemed like we might be in Ireland. It was perfectly understandable, but it gave me the feeling I'd stepped into a movie, because that was the only place I'd ever heard the real accent up until that moment. Damian and others could sort of do one on command, but it wasn't the same. I don't know if the other felt like
an act, or if the lilt and rhythm of the customs people were a slightly different accent. Either way, standing there while they inspected everyone's passports and the medical alert cards was less real somehow. I don't think I ever thought I'd see Ireland in person. I sure as hell never thought I'd see it with over a dozen people who included three vampires and ten lycanthropes. Once I'd thought I was the scourge of bad little vampires and rogue shapeshifters everywhere, and now here I was, one of them. Or that's what my own medical alert card said.
Lycanthrope carrier
, like I was something hauling dangerous freight across the world.

A uniformed woman said, “Congratulations, it's a beautiful ring.”

I looked down at my left hand and the platinum ring with its channel-set white diamonds and big sapphire: my work ring. It was all I could do not to say,
You should see the other ring
. That one lived in a safe at the Circus of the Damned while we waited for yet another compromise engagement ring to be finished that would be the one that went with the wedding ring that was also still being handcrafted. The one in the safe was the ring Jean-Claude had given to me for the video proposal. It was all white diamonds, really big white diamonds. The center stone was so many carats that rabbits should have followed me everywhere I went. I always felt like I had a sign over my head when I wore it:
Please mug me.
If I ever forgot myself and punched someone in the face while wearing it, I'd scar them for life. It was a very big ring, very flashy, incredibly expensive, and theatrical. It had looked great in the video and pictures that the engagement coordinator had had taken for us. Yes, there really are engagement coordinators, because asking someone to marry you has to be almost as big a production as the wedding now, or it does when you're the King. The video had gone viral on YouTube and outed me in a major way as Jean-Claude's fiancée. At least the woman hadn't seen the video and didn't ask me where that ring had gone, or if I had broken up with that beautiful vampire, and who this ring was from—I'd had all those reactions to the work ring.

“Thank you,” I said, smiling like I meant it.

The gentleman working with her leaned over from looking at Dev's
medical alert card and double-checking that it matched his bracelet to say, “Which of them is the lucky man?”

My smile widened. “He's at home.”

The woman looked up at the men with me, hesitating here and there in a more lingering way than she had before. I guess I couldn't blame her; after all, if you don't meet people at work, where do you meet them?

“Very sad he couldn't come with us. It would have been so much more romantic,” Dev said.

I wasn't sure exactly where we were going, but I played along. “It would have been.”

“Now, Marshal Blake, you know the romance has to wait until the work is done,” said a man's voice with a thick American Western drawl.

I turned to find Edward in full U.S. Marshal Ted Forrester guise walking toward us. He tipped his white cowboy hat back on his head and grinned at me. I probably looked surprised. I would never get used to how completely Edward could vanish into Ted Forrester. I'd only learned recently that Theodore Forrester was his legal birth name. He'd always just been Edward to me. Ted was a good ol' boy. Edward was not. They were the same person, so they were both five-eight, though he always seemed taller, yellow-blond hair cut short, mostly hidden under the hat, pale blue eyes, a lean, in-shape body that didn't look as strong as he actually was; I could never decide if it was genetic and he couldn't bulk up, or if he thought lifting was too boring and didn't bother. He pushed away from the wall and walked toward us in his jeans, which fit tight over the cowboy boots. He was wearing a white button-up shirt over a black T-shirt. The smile on his face was Ted's smile, so it was all for the customs officials. He knew he didn't have to waste his good-ol'-boy act on me and my people; we knew his true identity, and Ted wasn't it.

“Hey, Ted, I was beginning to wonder when you'd show up,” I said, smiling my real smile, because I really was happy to see him.

“If you'd come in on a commercial flight I'd have been able to check a timetable, but the fancy private jets are harder to time.” He tipped his hat at the lady customs official, and she was flustered by it.
Edward was so solidly in the “best friend” box for me that I had trouble seeing him as this handsome, flirtatious man, but other women seemed to see it just fine.

He looked at some of the people with me. “This isn't who we discussed,” he said, and the real Edward had eased into his Ted voice, just a little.

“Long story,” I said.

He let it go, because he knew that meant I couldn't tell him in front of strangers. He eyed them all, and it wasn't Ted looking out of his face now. Even Ted's slightly rounded shoulders were gone, replaced by Edward's upright, shoulders-back, I-was-in-the-military stance. The customs official who had been flattered was looking at him warily now. She'd been on the job long enough to know trouble when she saw it; good on her.

Edward looked at me when he got to Dev and Domino, because he'd been there to see Dev have his moment under fire, when he'd broken down completely. In his defense, the zombie fight in the basement of the hospital had been one of the worst things I'd ever done, even by my standards. It had been a really harsh introduction to my job for Dev. He flat-out told me he didn't want to go zombie fighting with me again. Domino hadn't liked a homegrown zombie of mine that we'd had to burn in a cemetery, and I'd told Edward about it, so he knew neither of them were my top choices. He'd tell me which of the others he didn't like later.

“Later,” I said.

“Can't wait,” he said with a smile as he crawled back into his Ted skin and just folded back into the charming cowboy act. To her credit the customs official didn't buy it now; she knew something odd was happening and she wanted no part of the blond man with his identity crisis.

We were joined by another man; he was taller than Edward, though not as tall as Dev. It was nice when I had a variety of heights that I actually knew to compare new people to, so the new guy was five-eleven, or six feet tops. I was never good at subtracting the inch or more that even work boots could give a person, and he was wearing the kind of boots that SWAT wore in the field. The kind that I had in my luggage. His uniform was black, from the tac pants to the
long-sleeved button-up shirt. It bulked out from the body armor underneath it, but I didn't need that hint; the sidearm worn out where we could all see it was clue enough.

His dark brown eyes scanned the room and us. His hair was a rich brown that was almost a dark auburn, and might be under the right light. Nathaniel's hair was solidly on the red side of auburn, but most people with the hair color leaned more to brown. He had a good face, but the level of energy and edge of threat he brought into the room took away all my interest in him as a man. He raised my hackles, and the energy in the room from the real wereanimals told me that it wasn't just me.

He stared back and didn't try to hide his own hostility, and in fact . . . he added his own energy to the room. Edward went up to him, and I knew before he introduced Captain Nolan that this would be his work acquaintance, Brian. I also knew that he wasn't plain-vanilla human before Edward called me up to introduce us.

“So you're Anita Blake,” he said, his Irish accent softening the near-hostility in his voice.

“And you must be Brian,” I said, smiling sweetly. I even worked to push it up into my own brown eyes. If I could do it for clients at Animators Inc., I could do it to piss off the cranky Irishman.

He raised his eyebrows at me, then glanced back at Ted/Edward. “Well, Forrester, are we all going to be on a first-name basis?”

“I call Anita by her first name and she calls me Ted.”

“And the rest of . . . her crew?”

“First-name basis,” I said.

Captain Brian Nolan shook his head. “I can use your call sign if you prefer, Forrester, but I just can't call you Ted.”

“Theodore,” I suggested, doing my best innocent face.

Nolan frowned at me. “No.”

Edward smiled at both of us. I think he was genuinely enjoying introducing us. His eyes were bluer than normal, and his breathing had sped up a little. I think he liked the energy rising in the room, and the sense of potential carnage.

“Have it your way,” Edward said, and turned to me. “Anita Blake, this is Brian Nolan. Nolan, Blake.”

“Captain Nolan,” he said, narrowing his brown eyes.

“Fine, then it's Marshal Blake,” I said, but I was smiling.

“Am I amusing the two of you?” Nolan asked.

“A little bit,” I said.

“You always amused me,” Edward said, smiling his Ted smile.

Nolan scowled at us. “I don't think I like your attitude, Blake.”

“I'm not thrilled with yours either, Nolan, but we don't have to like each other to work together.”

He frowned harder, putting deep lines in his forehead and between his eyebrows. It made me add a few more years onto his age, which I'd have called at early thirties; now maybe forty wasn't out of the question. Once people got to a certain age I just sucked at guessing.

“It would make things easier, though, if we liked each other, at least a little bit,” Dev said, coming up smiling and just giving off this vibe of being happy to be there, happy to meet Nolan, and just doing his best to turn the energy in a friendlier direction.

He held out his hand and said, “I'm Mephistopheles.”

Nolan didn't shake his hand. “What the fuck did you do to earn that as a nickname?”

Dev made a sad face and said, “Sadly, it's not a nickname.” He held up his passport so the other man could see it clearly. It read, “Mephistopheles Devlin Devereux.”

Nolan actually stopped being angry; his face folded into something human and much more attractive. “That's a hell of a name, Devereux.”

“I go by Dev.”

“I don't blame you,” he said with the Irish thicker in his voice. He almost smiled at the thought of going through life with such a name.

The first and last name were his parents' fault, but I knew that he'd chosen Devlin as his middle name himself. When the gold tigers reached age ten, they got to choose that part of their name. Most chose very simple names, or normal-sounding ones, but little Mephistopheles had chosen the name that sounded most like the nickname he'd already earned, Devil.