Crimson Death (63 page)

I didn't know what to say, because he was right, but it wasn't a guarantee. “It would hurt her power base, but maybe not enough to free all your people.”

“If she is no longer my master, then she can no longer draw on all the other Roane through me. She will have to wait for my people to elect a new king, and that will take enough time for Damian to lead you to her stronghold and help you kill her.”

Jake said, “If someone is killed inside a church, it ceases to be consecrated ground until the rituals are performed again.”

“But I will already be dead, and she will be weakened.”

“I did free Rafael and his wererats. I freed them by killing the old
master of the city that could call rats. Once she was dead, they were free.”

“All I want is for my people to be free of the monster that I let into our peaceable kingdom,” Roarke said.

“Are there other Roane waiting outside to attack us?” Jake asked.

“There are, but they are waiting for me to signal them.”

“I thought you said the signal was you leaving the church,” I said.

“That is for attacking you. She wants to capture you, too. Didn't I mention that?”

“No, you left that part out.” I wanted Nathaniel in the church with me, but if he came inside, that might alert the waiting bad guys.

“Why does she want Anita?” Nicky asked.

“She wants to kill you as you killed the Mother of All Darkness, so she can drink the power inside you, as you drank the Mother.”

“So she needs me alive to kill me in person,” I said.

“Yes, but she wants Damian back to be her slave again, and she wants to use those you love to make you afraid. She will feast on your fear, Marshal.”

“How many people are hiding out there, waiting to attack us?” I asked.

“Enough that you should call more Gardai now while you can,” he said, and he was so calm. He shouldn't have been this calm.

I didn't argue with him. Edward answered on the second ring. “Anita, I still haven't convinced everyone here to include you completely.”

“It doesn't matter,” I said, and I told him what was happening.

“We'll be there in fifteen minutes, maybe less.” He didn't even ask any questions before he hung up.

“Kill me, Anita. Kill me and maybe you will kill her, too.”

“Maybe no one has to die today,” Kaazim said.

“I'm afraid that someone will die today, and I've decided it will be me,” Roarke said in that strangely peaceful voice.

“Anita has inherited the Mother's ability to cut servants and animals to call free of their masters.”

“That is not possible. You are lying to trick me.”

Nicky said, “Can the seal people smell a lie like a wereanimal can?”

“We can tell if someone is afraid or nervous, but that does not make them liars.”

“I give you my word of honor that Anita has broken the bonds of animals to call from their vampire masters without killing either of them,” Kaazim said.

“Your word of honor?” Roarke made it a question.

“Yes,” Kaazim said.

Jake said, “Anita could try to break you free of your mistress. No one need die here today.”

“It is too late, for once I fail her today, she will torture those I love, because to torture me harms her.”

“Is her human servant like you? Does he want her dead?” I asked.

“No, he loves her. He enjoys what they do together and what they do to others.”

“Then maybe you can help us trap him, too. If we kill both of you together, then her chances of survival are much lower than if we just kill you today,” I said.

“She will know what I have done. I cannot keep her out of my memories.”

“If you're trying to shield from her, can you?”

“For a time, but only from a distance. If she is before me, then I am weak. If she touches me with her pale hands, then I cannot keep any secrets from her.”

“What if we arrest you?” I asked.

“What are you thinking, Anita?” Jake asked.

“What if we arrest him on assault or attempted murder, something, and put him in a cell? What if we keep him away from her and it's not his fault?”

“You are only delaying the inevitable, Marshal.”

“Who would she send to break you out of jail?” Jake asked.

“You think she would send her servant, that she would send Keegan.”

“Would she?” Jake asked.

“She might. She just might.”

“Let us take you into custody, Roarke,” I said. “Let's try to keep everyone alive for a little bit longer.”

“If I agree to this, I need your word, all your words of honor.”

“What do you need us to swear to?” Jake asked.

“That if Keegan and I are in one place at one time, you will kill us both to kill her.”

“Can I try breaking you free of her power before we put a bullet in your brain?” I asked.

“I am not eager to die, Marshal, so if you wish to try such magic on me, I give you permission. I pray that it works, but if it does not work, then I want your word that you will kill me before you let me go back to her.”

Kaazim and Jake gave their words without hesitation. I think Nicky only hesitated because he could feel how conflicted I was about it, but in the end, he gave his. And in the very end, as we heard sirens in the distance coming closer, I promised Roarke that if we couldn't figure out another way, I'd kill him.

T
HE
I
RISH POLICE
were happy to put Roarke in a cell. They were thrilled that I hadn't shot him. There was one drawback to not shooting him or not trying to break him free of the Wicked Bitch while he was still inside the church: Once he was outside of consecrated ground, she could contact him again, just like I'd been able to contact Jean-Claude and Richard all the way in St. Louis. So as the police escorted him to the truck that would take him to jail, he started to struggle. I don't know if he was struggling because she controlled him or if it was to make sure any Roane in the area reported that he had tried to escape, but one of the officers escorting him went flying into one of the police cars. The other police dog-piled him, or tried to, but he kept his feet and kept moving forward, as if he just planned on walking down the street and away.

Donnie, Brennan, Edward, and Nolan jumped on the pile, and
their weight made Roarke stagger, but he didn't go down. Edward did something with his right hand, and Roarke's right leg collapsed, but he got back up. Tough motherfucker. “May I aid them?” Kaazim asked.

“Yes,” Jake said. “I will stay with our principals, but we must have the Roane in a cell before full dark.” I realized that he meant me and Nathaniel, and maybe Damian, and he was right about the timing. The sky was growing dim; it was dusk.

Kaazim joined the crowd trying to control Roarke, and it was enough to swing the difference. Edward and Nolan would have gotten it eventually, but with Kaazim helping them and the police, they managed to get the prisoner in the transport. The officer who had been flung into the car was sitting beside it with another officer giving him first aid. I could hear an ambulance in the distance, which meant he was hurt even worse than I'd thought. Roarke wasn't as strong as Magda, so the cells at Nolan's headquarters might actually hold him. The truck went screeching off down the road with the prisoner in it.

Edward came back up the steps with Kaazim a little behind him. Nolan was talking to one of the cops he seemed to know personally. “What did you tell them to get them to drive like that?” Ethan asked.

“That he'd get even stronger once night fell.”

“That may be true,” I said.

“Either way we want him in a cell before the vampires are up for the night,” Edward said. He looked at Damian, who was standing beside me. “Can She-Who-Made-You walk around during the day?”

“Yes.”

“Lucky she's not here in Dublin, then,” he said.

“You have no idea how lucky,” Damian said.

Nolan came up the steps scowling so hard, the lines in his forehead looked like they'd been cut in with fresh knives.

“What's wrong?” Edward asked.

“They won't let us have Roarke. They're taking him to regular lockup.”

“You don't have an extra cell anyway,” I said.

“I guess we don't, thanks to your werelion.”

“Magda did exactly what you asked her to do. It's not her fault that your cell couldn't hold up.”

Nolan nodded, gave a small laugh, and said, “Fair. My people aren't even as strong as the Roane, but neither of us is as strong as your lioness. The combination of strength and her training made a joke out of all our preparations.”

Dev patted his shoulder. “There, there, it wasn't a joke. It just wasn't as useful as you'd hoped.”

Night fell, and it was like something inside me that had been closed tight all day opened. I took in a deep breath of the rain-damp air. My phone rang, and it was Magda.

“The new vampires have risen here,” she said. “They were completely out of their minds until they took blood, but then they seemed very calm and much more sensible than most new vampires that I've seen over the centuries.”

“That's good, right?”

“It is, though Nolan's people did not like having to donate blood. Giacomo and I were there to hold them and make sure the first feeding was controlled. Otherwise they would have torn open their victims in search of blood.”

“Are they coherent enough to answer questions?” I asked.

“I believe so. Giacomo is talking to them now with some of Nolan's people helping guard the little vampires. The daughter and mother are asking about the rest of the family. Did they rise as vampires, too?”

“Oh, shit,” I said softly, but with real feeling. “I'll call you back.” I yelled for Nolan. “Who's watching the vampire victims from earlier today?”

“They're at the hospital,” he said.

“What hospital?”

“What's wrong?” Edward asked.

“The others woke savage until they'd fed. Where are the rest of their families?”

Nolan cursed under his breath and was already on his cell phone and moving toward the cars. We all divided up between the two cars, but I kept Nathaniel and Damian with me, though maybe putting all three of us in one car wasn't my best idea, not if the Wicked Bitch wanted to take all of us, but the thought of being separated from them, especially Nathaniel, made my throat tight. I still remembered all the
panic I hadn't let myself feel when Roarke told us that the plan was to kidnap him, because the Bitch wanted all my pretty men, but especially Nathaniel. Good idea, bad idea, I kept him with me, and Damian stayed with both of us. We weren't alone, by any means, but it was still like triple baiting one car. I tried not to think of it that way as Donnie kicked the van into high gear and screeched out after Nolan's car.

I prayed that we'd get there before any of them injured, or killed, someone at the hospital. Magda had said that once they fed, the Irish vampires were lucid. How terrible would it be to wake up to yourself covered in someone else's blood, maybe sitting beside the body? I prayed not just to get there in time to save the victims, but to save the new vampires from truly becoming monsters.

B
Y THE TIME
we got to the hospital, it was all over but the crying. I'd executed more vampires than anyone else, and killed more than I could actually keep track of some days, but I'd never had to sit across a table from one who was crying hysterically because she was covered in her victim's blood. If I hadn't seen the delicate fangs as the grandmother wailed her distress, I wouldn't have known she wasn't human. The newly dead either looked almost alive and became less human as time went on or they were more inhuman at the beginning of their existence and learned how to be more human as time went on; it all depended on the bloodline they descended from. Whatever vampire was creating these was unlike any bloodline I'd ever seen.

Except for the hospital gown covered in fresh blood and the fact that her hands were restrained behind her, Mrs. Edna Brady looked like what she had been: a seventy-something grandmother who had been a regular churchgoer and the matriarch of a loving family. She'd managed to wipe most of the blood off her face before she'd been
restrained. There was one smear in her short white hair that nothing but a shower was going to get rid of. I knew that from experience. Once you got blood in your hair . . . I looked at her and didn't know where to start. I hunted vampires. I didn't hold their hands and explain to them how to be the best bloodsucker they could be.

Lucky for both of us, Damian and Jake were with me. “Edna,” Damian said in a soothing voice. “Edna, can you hear me?”

She continued to wail, and I mean wail; terms like crying and hysterics didn't cover it. Edward and Nolan were dealing with Edna's son, who had also risen as a vampire. Kaazim was helping them out. The father had been utterly calm. In fact, he didn't remember how he got so much blood on him or why he was in the hospital. Amnesia for the first few nights is a blessing apparently, because we were staring at the impact of remembering everything.

Nathaniel was in the hallway outside the room they'd given us. Dev and Nicky were permanently attached to him by my orders. Ethan and Domino along with Donnie had gone to the hotel to pick up Fortune and Echo. Echo would go in and try to talk vampire to vampire with the male vamp Edward and Nolan were trying to question.

I was so ready to trade vampires with Edward. I was sympathetic, but I just simply didn't know what to do with Edna Brady. I don't know if she couldn't hear us or if she just didn't care. Damian had been gentle, patient, and charming, and nothing had stopped the awful screaming or taken one shade of panic out of her eyes. I was starting to get a headache just from the noise.

I finally screamed her name at her. At first I didn't think she heard me, but her eyes started to focus as if she finally saw us and the room we were in rather than being trapped in that moment when she'd come to herself, cradling the unconscious body of her first victim.

“Edna! Edna! Edddnaaaa!” I screamed at her, and the wailing slowed. She blinked and looked at us again. She was in there; behind all the noise and terror, she was still in there. That was good, I thought.

“Edna, can you hear me?”

She blinked at me. She looked scared and confused, but at least she stopped wailing.

Damian tried. “Edna, can you hear us?”

“Nod if you can hear us?” I asked, and she nodded. Yay, progress! “Do you know where you are, Edna?”

“Hospital,” she said in a voice that sounded raw from screaming.

“That's good, Edna,” Damian said. “Do you remember why you're in the hospital?”

She seemed to think really seriously and finally said, “My granddaughter disappeared. . . . She came home. She wasn't dead.”

I let the whole definition of life and death go for now. “Something like that, yes.”

“Voices, shining eyes, they promised me something. They promised me . . . I looked in the mirror and I looked the same. I thought I'd be young again, but I looked just the same. It didn't work the way they said it would.”

“What was supposed to happen, Edna?” Damian asked.

“Vampires are young and beautiful. I thought I would be twenty again, or thirty, but there was a mirror in my room, and I looked as old as ever. I hadn't changed, and then a doctor came in happy that I was awake, and . . .” Horror filled her eyes up one memory at a time. “Oh, my God, I tore open her arm. I drank her blood!” She started to retch as if she was going to throw up.

“It's okay, Edna. It's okay,” I said, though that was a lie, such a lie.

“Is the doctor all right?”

“She's in surgery,” I said.

“Did I tear her arm almost off? I wouldn't do that. I would never hurt someone like that, but I remember the blood and . . . and voices promising me . . . I'd be young again.”

“I'm sorry, Edna,” Damian said.

She stared at him. “You're young and beautiful. You both are. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's why you give up everything, to be young forever.”

I started to explain to her that vampires are the age they die at forever. That they don't grow older, but they don't become younger either. But Damian stopped me from explaining it to her. He whispered, “Later. Give her some time.”

“Where's Frankie?”

“Your son?”

“My husband. Where's Frankie?”

I looked at Damian, because Frankie hadn't made it. He'd had a bad heart for years, and the doctors theorized that the shock of being drained of blood, or maybe seeing his granddaughter as a vampire, had been too much for him. Who the hell knew? If you had a bad ticker, how the hell would you ever survive the horrorfest that had befallen this family?

The youngest daughter hadn't made it either. Her throat had been so small that the fangs had pierced too much and collapsed her windpipe. She'd suffocated before she could bleed out, so no vampirism for her.

“Who did this to you, Edna?” I asked, and my voice was gentler than it had been. It was all just so awful.

“Who did the voices belong to,” Damian asked, “the ones that promised you eternal youth? Who told you that?”

“He did.”

“Who is he?” I asked.

“He came with Katie. She brought him home. He found her when she was lost and he brought her back to us.”

“What was his name, this Good Samaritan?” I asked.

She smiled at me. “Yes, he was a Good Samaritan. He found Katie and brought her back to us. He told us that we could all be together forever and never grow old, never die. I remember his eyes . . .” She frowned. “Or I don't remember his eyes. I don't know if I remember what color his eyes were, but they were like stars.”

We questioned her for a while longer, but all we learned was that the man had short, dark hair, maybe black, maybe brown. He was Caucasian. He was young, but since she was in her early seventies, that could have meant anything from teens to fifties. His eyes had glowed like stars, which could have meant they were paler colored, gray, or pale blue, or it could just have meant that she remembered them glowing, but not the color.

Edna's son, Katie's father, remembered even less. His memory seemed to stop with Katie at the door. She'd come home. She wasn't dead. That's where he stopped. It was more merciful than what Edna remembered.

In the hallway Nolan asked, “Will they remember more as time passes?”

“Yes,” Damian said.

“Yes,” Echo said.

“Why do neither of you sound happy about that?” I asked.

“Would you want to remember any of this?” Echo asked.

I looked into her lovely blue eyes, and said, “Hell, no.”

“Some people don't ever remember their first night,” Fortune said. “Maybe they won't either.”

“Edna Brady already remembers most of it.”

“The man doesn't.”

“The best chance we have of finding the vampire that is doing this is to start with the teenage girls. One of them was the first victim. She'll remember the most about the one that created her,” Echo said.

“They found Sinead Royce's family,” Superintendent Pearson said. He'd come in late and mostly just monitored us. He didn't want to see either of the victims in person. He was having a lot of trouble coping with them as vampires when he'd seen them alive and looking for their daughter just days ago.

“Your face says it's not good news,” I said.

He shook his head. “The whole family was so brutally attacked that none of them rose as vampires.”

“How can you be sure?” Echo asked.

“They're starting to rot.”

“Sinead had two younger brothers, as well as the parents,” Pearson said.

“Where were the bodies found?” Edward asked.

“In a shed three houses over. The smell alerted the neighbors.”

“Where were the owners of the house?” I asked.

“In the shed,” he said.

“I take it that they won't be rising as vamps either.”

“No.”

“Is this the most victims that were torn up too badly to rise as the undead?” Echo asked.

“That we've found, yes.”

“Maybe it's a clue,” I said.

“A clue to what?” Edward asked.

“I have no fucking idea, but it's something different in the pattern and different is something.”

“Do you want to go look at the shed?” he asked.

“No.”

He smiled. “Want to go look for clues in a shed that was full of decomposing bodies?”

“When you put it that way, how can I resist?”