Crimson Death (58 page)

“You listened to me talk for weeks about the vampires and how there are none here, but you said nothing.”

“With that level of condemnation, you are lucky that you truly are my nephew, for if you were not, such criticism of our ways might leave you defenseless when you need your magic most.”

“Is that a threat, Auntie Nim?”

“It is the truth, nephew.”

“Does Nolan know that you're actually part Fey?” I asked.

“He does,” Flannery said.

“But the rest of the team doesn't, do they?”

“Do the other marshals you work with know all your secrets, Blake?”

Flannery and I looked at each other for a long moment and then I shook my head.

“I would ask that you keep mine,” Flannery said.

“I'm honored that you trusted us with it.”

“Auntie said that you needed to know. She's like most of the Fey. They'll keep a secret until they want to share it, but if she says that something needs doing, then it's usually important.”

“I needed to see you, Anita, you and all your . . . men,” Auntie Nim said.

I wasn't sure I liked that she'd hesitated before the last word, but I let it go. I wasn't going to push, because I wasn't sure what word she'd almost said, and I still had some secrets from Flannery and all the
police that I worked with, except maybe Edward. I wasn't sure I had any secrets left from him, or anything important.

“Why was it important to see us?” I asked.

“You felt the anger when you entered our pub.”

“Yeah.”

“Look around you now and feel.”

I thought it was an odd set of directions, but I looked around the pub and tried to sense the hostility, but it wasn't there. The people at the tables were more relaxed; a couple of them even smiled at me. I nodded and smiled back, because we were here to get information. People were more likely to do that if they liked you, or at least if they didn't dislike you. A smile could go a long way toward that.

Auntie Nim called out to one of the smiling men. He came over to our table with his hat in his hands, literally. He had dark, almost black hair, brown eyes, and skin that would tan if it was given a chance. He looked a lot like Flannery and Mort, though his hair was shoulder length, much longer than either of their hair.

“This is Slane. He may come to you with messages, or aid from me.”

The man smiled again and gave a little bob of his head. His hair swung forward with it and I glimpsed something underneath all that hair. I blinked and didn't say anything, because one, I wasn't sure, and two, it wasn't any of my business to remark on someone's ears. We all had our physical imperfections. Besides, my father didn't raise me to point and say,
You have ears like a hound's
.

“It's all right,” he said in a voice that was the thickest accent we'd heard yet. “Auntie Nim says trusting you we are.” Or I was pretty certain that was what he said. I'd double-check with Flannery later.

Slane swept back his hair on one side and showed that his ears really were like long, silky dog ears. They were colored like a beagle's ears, brown and white, but they were longer and looked more like a coonhound's, or a shorter-eared basset hound's maybe.

“Nifty,” I said.

“I don't know that word,” he said.

“Cool, or nice, or interesting. They look silky,” I said finally, because I was suddenly having a socially awkward moment. Slang travels
badly from one country or language to another. I'd have to remember that nifty wasn't that common here; hell, it wasn't that common back home.

He smiled wider, pleased at the compliment. “They're why I wear my hat inside most times. Helps keep my hair down over them, because most women don't think they're . . . nifty.”

“Their loss,” I said, and seeing the puzzlement on his face, I added, “If they can't see that different is interesting and not bad, then it's their loss for letting differences keep them from getting to know you.” Again I got that I was verbally digging out of the hole I'd just dug my way into with my feelings, but at least I was digging out and not in deeper.

“A lovely thought,” Nim said, “but you are no more human than some of my descendants, so I would expect you to be more open-minded than most.”

“Thank . . .”

“Don't finish that,” Flannery said. “Don't say that phrase to my auntie, or to any of the older Fey. It's an insult.”

“Okay, I'll try to remember that.”

Nim put back her shawl enough to show off her dark auburn hair. It was almost the same color as Nathaniel's. “You look like you could be one of my get, Nathaniel Graison.”

“Get? You mean descendant?” he asked.

“I do.”

“I don't know much about my family. I don't know if any of them were Irish or not.”

“Are you an orphan?”

“Something like that,” he said. He squeezed my hand as he said it. Dev petted his face and the side of his neck more, picking up on his need for more touch. I hadn't thought that it might bother Nathaniel that he didn't know his ancestry.

“A lot of us don't know much about our families,” Domino said.

“You and Mr. Flynn could pass for Fey here, with your hair and eyes, for most of us bear something that sets us apart, but your energy is not ours.” Nim pointed a black gloved finger at Nathaniel. “But that one, that one feels more like home.”

“I honestly don't know if I'm Irish in any way,” he said.

“Those eyes could be our mark upon you.”

“You get eyes like that and I get dog ears,” Slane said, smiling so that I couldn't tell if he was actually complaining or just remarking.

“I do want to find out more about my family,” Nathaniel said, “but we came to find out what you know about the vampires and the magic being damaged here in Dublin.”

“You don't know what's doing it, do you?” I asked.

“I hate to admit it, but I do not.”

“This meeting was mostly so they could see you and feel your magic, Blake, and all of you,” Flannery said.

“It's been interesting, but if you knew they couldn't help us solve the case, then wasn't this a waste of daylight?” I asked.

“Many of my people did not believe that a necromancer, especially one about to be wed to a vampire, would be someone we wanted here in Ireland,” Nim said. “They did not believe you would help us. We all feared you would make things worse, but my nephew here said he would bring you to meet us if he thought your power was positive magic and not negative.”

“Cousin said you were life energy, fertility, not death,” Slane said.

“Well, I do my best, but I do raise the dead. I won't hide that I am a necromancer.”

“I saw some of the stuff on YouTube from Colorado last year,” Slane said. “You are the stuff of legends, Ms. Blake.”

“I never know what to say when people use words like legend,” I said.

“It is just the truth,” Nim said. “Accept it and stop being embarrassed by it.”

“I'll try,” I said.

She smiled. “Since we can be of so little help, we will let you go so that you do not waste all your daylight, for I fear for our city once night falls again.”

I nodded. “Me, too.”

She got to her feet and both Slane and Flannery moved to help her up. I wasn't sure if it was a sign of respect, or if she really needed the
help, but Nicky stood up as if he'd help, too, and we all stood up then, though I put Dev's hand in mine, along with Nathaniel's on the other side. My gun wasn't going to help me as much in here as whatever Dev was able to do. I'd be asking him in private exactly what he had done and how he'd known to do it, but not yet.

Auntie Nim leaned more heavily on her cane than she had before, and I realized that part of what her glamour had done was to give her that smooth gait. Now I saw how much she needed the cane. Her skirt had caught on itself, and I had a glimpse of her feet. One old-fashioned black shoe and one black hoof, split like the hoof of a goat. No wonder she needed the cane.

I watched her walk back to the table with Slane at her side. Flannery went ahead of us, leading us toward the outside door. I couldn't help looking at him harder than I had before. He looked like a normal human, but there was always something to mark us, Nim had said. For the first time I was wondering what a man was hiding under his clothes and it had absolutely nothing to do with sex.

F
LANNERY GOT CALLED
back into the pub for one more private word with his aunt, so he sent us ahead to the car. Fine with me, because that meant we could talk in private, too.

“What did you do in there, Devereux?” Nicky asked from behind us. I was holding Nathaniel's hand and Dev was holding his other one. The three of us abreast were taking up all the sidewalk and then some. The world really wasn't made for walking in threes; hell, twos were hard on some streets. We were getting some glances, which we could have avoided if I'd been in the middle of our hand-holding, but the two men were lovers, so screw it.

“What did you do that made her call you a witch?” Domino asked.

Dev laughed. “I added power and clarity to Anita and Nathaniel, that's all.”

“But how did you do it?” Ethan asked.

Dev looked across at the other man. “I've been trained since birth like all of us in our clan.”

“But trained to do what? I mean, what did you do today, just now, that was part of your training?” Ethan asked.

“To be whatever my master needed me to be.”

“We know that,” I said, “but what did you do in there?”

He looked at me, his face serious. “I was trained as if I was going to be one of the Harlequin in a lot of ways. They couldn't be the spies and executioners of all vampirekind if they couldn't keep clean of other people's psychic abilities.”

“The Harlequin are either master vampires themselves or their animals to call are protected by their own masters against crap like this, but I'm your master and I was caught. How did you help break us free of the illusions?”

“Did you see through her illusions from the beginning?” Nicky asked.

“Yes,” Dev said.

“How?” he asked.

Dev seemed to think about that as we walked. A light pole came up and we had to decide who was letting go of whom so we didn't walk into it. Dev let go and walked wide, dipping down into the brick-lined street, before rejoining us on the sidewalk. “Would it make sense if I said we were all raised to be a sort of living talisman?”

“I heard the sentence and all the words are English, but I still don't understand,” I said.

“Jake will probably explain it better, but they used magic on us from the time we were babies. They sort of forged us into . . . talismans. All of us see through illusion and magic better than anyone but a true adept of the mystical arts. We can act as a sort of familiar to add to our masters when they perform or fight magical energies.”

“All of us can act as power boosts and familiars for Anita,” Nicky said.

“We can?” Ethan said.

“News to me,” Domino said.

“She's done it with me, Micah, and Nathaniel, and I think with one of the vampires that's out of town now.”

“Requiem,” I said. “I may be able to use any undead for a power boost, or it may need to be one that's bloodbound to Jean-Claude and me.”

“I didn't know that,” Dev said. “That does give you more options.”

“So you're almost proof against certain kinds of magic?” I said.

“Yeah. If you want details on how it was done and how it works, ask Jake and Kaazim.”

“Could any of us do it with training?” Domino asked.

“I think you have to be gold tiger.”

“Could I do it, then?” Ethan asked.

“You're part gold tiger, so maybe. Ask Jake, though you may need to have started from a baby. That's what they did with us.”

“What if someone evil and crazy had won, like the Lover of Death we defeated last year in Colorado? Would you have served him, too, just like you serve me?”

Dev wasted a very nice smile on me. “I don't think I was his type.”

“It's a serious question,” I said.

The smile slipped away until he was almost as solemn as I ever saw him. “We were raised to serve whoever killed the Mother of All Darkness and became the new King of Tigers. They trained us to serve all the vampire bloodlines, so I guess in the end, I'm supposed to say yes.”

Nathaniel stopped and turned to look up into Dev's eyes. “The Lover of Death drew power from causing death by violence or disease. The only way for him to grow strong enough to rule would have been to constantly slaughter people. Would you really have helped him do that?”

“I don't think I could have done that, but I have cousins who could have and maybe would have. Literally, Jake went through us like a litter of kittens, or puppies, and periodically made us into smaller groups that concentrated on one set of skills over another. Pride, Envy, and I were in the group that was more schooled in Belle Morte's bloodline, which is one of the reasons that we were offered to Jean-Claude and you.”

“Who was in the Lover of Death's box?” I asked.

“It doesn't matter, Anita. He's dead. No one has to serve him now.”

“You don't want to tell me, because you're afraid I'll hold it against the ones who would have gone to him.”

“I know you'll hold it against them. I can feel it just standing here with Nathaniel between us.”

I sighed and let my breath out slowly. “Is it really the jet lag that's making me so emotional?”

“You need real food and a couple of hours of sleep in the hotel, and then we need to do something outside in the sunlight,” Nicky said.

“Will that help me stop losing control like this?”

“Sleep will help everybody feel better.”

“Why the sunlight?” Nathaniel asked.

“Because the more daylight you get in the time zone you're in, the faster you adjust to it.”

“Fine. Let's get to the car and either get food or a nap,” I said. “I need to feel more like myself.”

“Necromancy doesn't work here the way it does anywhere else in the world, so they keep saying. Could that be affecting you?” Nathaniel asked.

I looked at him. “I don't know, maybe.”

“That's an excellent point, though,” Ethan said.

“We still don't know if my necromancy will work at all here.”

“We can't find out until full dark,” Nicky said.

“And by then we'll be ass deep in newly risen vampires,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“You should try to raise a zombie while you're here in Dublin, just in case,” Nathaniel said.

“In case of what?” I asked.

“To see if you can raise the other kind of undead to help us.”

“You mean use zombies to help us fight the new vampires?” I asked.

“Why not?”

“If Ireland doesn't know what to do with vampires, they sure as hell aren't going to know what to do with zombies.”

“They go back in their graves,” he said.

“If I can raise them at all.”

“I just think it would be a good idea to find out just how much necromancy works in Ireland.”

“We are not going to have a zombie-versus-vampire war through the streets of Dublin, Nathaniel.”

“I'm not saying it's a good idea. I'm just saying that it's good to know what our resources are, that's all.”

“You mean like extra weapons,” Nicky said.

“Yes.”

“I like it,” Nicky said.

“Well, I don't,” I said. “I don't raise zombies without a good reason, and just seeing if I can do it isn't good enough.”

“Nap, food, and sunshine, and then we'll see how you're feeling,” Nicky said.

“I am not going to raise a zombie in Ireland just to see if I can do it.”

“It's hours until dark, Anita. We'll revisit the topic later.”

“No, we won't,” I said very firmly.

Nicky leaned in and whispered, “You want to know if you can raise the dead here. You want to know if you can be the first necromancer to ever raise the dead in Ireland. I can feel what you want, Anita.”

What could I say to that? I didn't want to raise the dead there, and I tried to never raise zombies without a reason. I'd raised them to answer historical questions, to tell which will was the real one, or to finish giving court testimony, but to just raise one to see if I could didn't seem to qualify as a good reason, but . . . Nicky was right: There was a part of me that wanted to know if I could do what I'd been told was impossible there. Was it ego to want to see if I was really legendary enough to raise zombies in Ireland? Yes. Was I going to give in to that much ego? No. No, really, I wasn't. No raising zombies in Ireland. I'd gone there to help with the vampire problem. I wasn't going to make a second undead problem for them. Nope, not going to do it, but part of me was really wondering if I could.