Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you've trapped the covers, and I can't reach across you and touch Anita without getting my arm out of the covers. I like under the covers when I sleep."

Damian sighed but turned onto his stomach, with one arm tucked up under his body and the other reaching over my side, but that had him touching Jean-Claude's bare side, and Damian pulled back.

"I gave you my word of honor when you first came here that I would never force myself on you. I have never given you a reason to doubt my word."

"You have been a man of your word, Jean-Claude."

"Then put your arm over ma petite and touch me, or not, but do not flinch every time you touch me accidentally or none of us will sleep tonight."

"I'm not comfortable yet," Nathaniel said.

"Then get comfortable, our pussycat."

Nathaniel slid an arm across Damian's back until he could touch me, and lightly Jean-Claude if he stretched.

"Damian, scoot closer to Anita, so we can all cuddle."

Damian drew a breath, as if to argue, then seemed to finally give in to the whole idea. He didn't say anything, but his arm went over me and across Jean-Claude, and then Damian snuggled in against me, pinning Jean-Claude's arm between us. Nathaniel snuggled in tighter on Damian's other side, throwing a leg across the other man's legs, which pressed his body tight against Jean-Claude's arm and Damian's side. Nathaniel stretched out his arm across Damian's back and finally must have put part of his shoulder on the other man's back, because he could reach not only me but enough of Jean-Claude so he was able to wrap his hand over the other vampire's side and hold him, too. Jean-Claude raised his arm and put it across Damian's back and Nathaniel's side. Now Damian could press himself closer against me. He turned a little bit on his side so that his arm and a bit of hip were propped up on me, which meant that Nathaniel pretty much rolled partially on top of him, but he didn't protest this time. It wasn't perfect with him on his stomach and me on my side, but as I let my hand and then my arm slide over his back, some tension in me eased. I was able to stroke Damian's back at the same time that I could caress Nathaniel's side, we were all so intertwined. It was always good to have Jean-Claude pressed in at my back, but there was a goodness to Damian's and Nathaniel's skin touching mine that wasn't about love, but almost about need, as if I'd been needing to touch both of them together for a very long time.

Was this how Jean-Claude felt about sleeping with me and Richard? If so, he'd been missing it lately. I'd ask Jean-Claude later, but right now I suddenly just wanted to sleep.

I heard Damian's breath go out with a long, almost contented sigh. I buried my face against his red hair and found it still damp near his scalp from the shower and smelling like clean herbs. I kept petting his back and playing along Nathaniel's side with the same gesture. Jean-Claude held us all, and somewhere in the warmth of skin, silk sheets, and clean, damp hair, we all fell asleep. We weren't thinking of nightmares, but that was okay, because the nightmares were thinking of us.

6

I WAS STANDING on a narrow cobblestone street. I'd have called it an alley, except cars were parked on it. It was after dark, but the streetlights kept it from being truly dark, so the light was electric-kissed and softened in a fine, misting rain that made halos around the lights as if angels had been beheaded and put up on poles as a warning.

Even in the dream I thought, That's a weird thought, and thinking it made me realize it was a dream. There was something lying in the shadows against the far wall, lost in a pool of blackness that all the light seemed to miss, as if the light were afraid of it or didn't want anyone to see it. I went forward, because I had to somehow, and as I reached out toward that darker shadow my hand was too big, too pale, a man's hand. Then it was mine, and then it wasn't, like a television channel that isn't steady so that it wavers between one show and another, until the dual images pile on top of each other and you can't tell what you're watching anymore. I/he got close enough to the shadowed heap, because it was a pile of something against the wall. There was a pool of dark water near it, was the first thought, but as the liquid crept around our shoes--my jogging shoes and his dress boots--we knew it wasn't water. We stood in a growing pool of blood, and the shadow lifted like a magician taking away a cloth, and . . .

The body lay crumpled on its side, one hand drawn up tight against its side as if it had tried to hold in some of what was spilling out of its stomach. Something had ripped it open--her, ripped her open, because the staring face was female. She looked young, maybe even pretty, but it was hard to tell now. The rain beaded on her skin like someone was sprinkling her. The head began to slide as if she were going to shake her head, but it was just her dead muscles giving up on holding her head in place. Her throat had been torn open like her stomach, so that the soft light glistened on her spine among all that red meat. I thought I saw teeth marks in her flesh, but I couldn't be sure because there were sirens in the night, but they didn't sound right. The man in my head turned to run and the corpse grabbed his/my ankle.

I woke sitting upright in the dark, my breathing ragged and panicked. Except it was as if I woke up twice--no, three times--and was sitting beside myself as we all fought not to scream. I managed to whisper, "Damian, Nathaniel, it's Anita."

Damian said, "Oh God, you saw, right? You saw the body."

"Yes." The bed felt soaked with sweat as if we'd been trapped in nightmares for too long.

"That didn't feel like any dream I've ever had," Nathaniel said, and he had reached through the dark so that we were holding hands across Damian.

Jean-Claude turned on the bedside light from where he was standing beside the bed, and the moment he did, I gasped, because it wasn't sweat that had soaked the bed; it was blood. Damian and Nathaniel were covered in it. Damian cried out, holding his hands in front of him. Guards came through the door without knocking, guns naked in their hands. They were both tall, in good shape, like most of the guards. They aimed at Damian, because you can't shoot your king, or his queen, or one of their main lovers.

"No, don't hurt him!" I called out.

Jean-Claude said, "It is Damian who is hurt, I think."

My blue nightie was purple with blood; half of Nathaniel's face and upper body were stained red, and his shorts were black with it, but Damian's pale skin was dotted and splotched with blood like castoff from some terrible crime. His red pajama bottoms were black from waist to ankle, the cloth wrapped tight to his legs with so much blood.

"What have I done?" he asked, hands held out toward us.

"Nothing, mon ami, it is you who have bled, not ma petite, or Nathaniel."

"Who hurt him?" I asked.

"No one. I believe it is sweat."

The guards, one brunette and the other with paler brown hair, aimed their guns at the floor but weren't leaving. I couldn't even blame them. The bed looked like a serial killer crime scene except everyone was alive. Damian began to check himself for wounds. Nathaniel and I helped, touching his back and places he couldn't reach, but once we wiped the blood away his skin seemed whole.

"I woke to ma petite struggling in the dark with a dream, but when I went to wake her, I realized all of you were dreaming. Damian began to sweat, and though we have some light color to our sweat, this was . . ." He gestured at the ruined bed. "I have never seen this before."

"What's happening to me?" Damian asked, and it was almost a yell, but the look on his blood-spattered face was a plea.

"I do not know," Jean-Claude said, and I got a quick flash of how worried he was, before he shut it down and pushed me further from his emotions, but that was okay because I was feeling enough from Damian. Nathaniel and I were both fighting to separate his terror from our unease. I wasn't afraid, not yet. I'd save being afraid for when there was something real in front of me to fight. Or that was what I told myself as I calmed the pulse that was trying to gallop out of my neck, as if I were choking on my own heart. God, Damian was so afraid.