Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

Bobby Lee took point leading the way. Kaazim took rear guard. Damian, Nathaniel, and I stayed in the middle, where we belonged. I had my gun in my hand, but in that moment it didn't matter. Armed or unarmed, I was their protectee

, and that was that; with Bobby Lee this high-strung, my best move was to let him do his job. Besides, I only had one gun; he had several.

I could feel tension starting in Damian again. It telegraphed through his hand into mine.

"You okay?"

"If Cardinale is dead to the world in our bed, then we still have a chance, but if she's not in there, then it's over. I can't live like this anymore."

Nathaniel touched his head against the other man's shoulder lightly as they moved. "I'm sorry, Damian."

We were still holding hands, but somehow I felt like I needed to touch him more, so I put my arm around his waist. It took a second for all of us to adjust our walking together, but we managed. "I'm sorry, too, Damian."

"So am I," he said, and we followed Bobby Lee's overly armored and armed back down the hallway. Bodyguards are great at saving your life, but they can't help at all when someone is trying to break your heart.

9

DAMIAN HAD WANTED to know if he was a suddenly single vampire or if he still had a relationship. He felt like he needed to know, so we went to his room first. If Cardinale was in the bed we'd go back to Nathaniel's and my room for showers. The five of us stood in Damian's room. A bedside lamp shone beside a perfectly made-up bed. It had a flowered coverlet, and lace draped from the bed frame. There was a large rug on the floor that was covered in huge daisylike flowers. There were pictures on the walls of flowers in vases, flower-filled meadows, a small girl holding flowers. In all that flower-filled, overly feminine room, there was no sign of Cardinale. I knew her coffin was in one of the coffin rooms, so there was no hidden place for her here. She was either in the bed, under the bed, or sleeping in the bathtub. No vampire I knew willingly slept in a tub, so . . . "I'm sorry, Damian." It seemed so inadequate, but it was all I could think to say.

Nathaniel hugged him and Damian hugged him back as if he wasn't really seeing him.

Bobby Lee and Kaazim just stood there, taking up positions in the room so they could watch the door. They were as empty as they could make themselves, taking themselves away from the emotion of the moment. Normally, Bobby Lee was more helpful, but I think he was full up on his own emotional shit, no energy left for anyone else.

I expected Damian to break down, or scream, or go looking for her, but he didn't do any of that. Instead he said, "I hate what she did to my room. I hate the bedspread." He stalked into the room and dragged it off the bed and threw it on the floor. "I hate these paintings!" He grabbed the one that looked like a bad imitation of Van Gogh's Sunflowers and threw it across the room like a Frisbee. "I hate these rugs!" He picked the biggest one up and pulled it behind him like the train on some impossible formal gown. He opened the door, shoved it through, and brought the bedspread out to join it. The sheets underneath were pink, but I refrained from saying anything that might add to the emotion of the moment.

He slammed the door behind him and ranted, "I hated the colors she chose, the mess she made of my closet, and how her clothes were more important than mine." He went for the closet in the far wall and slid the door open. I think he was going to throw her clothes out beside the rug and bedding, but when he got the door open, he froze in front of it.

"Oh God," he said.

I came to his side, wondering if he'd found Cardinale "asleep" in the closet. Maybe she'd just hidden to see what he'd do; I'd known humans who did stuff like that, so why not vampires? But when I could look into the closet, there was no body in it, but there weren't many clothes either. I realized her clothes were missing.

"She's really gone," he said, and the anger was replaced by sorrow, loss, remorse maybe, all those emotions that hit you after a breakup, especially right after a breakup. Though I guess this was in the middle of it.

"I'm sorry, Damian."

Nathaniel echoed me. "We're both sorry, Damian."

"So am I, but I really do hate what she's done to my room, my space. It's like it's all about her, and I didn't matter."

"You mattered to her, Damian."

"Would either of you have let anyone turn your bedroom into some flowered nightmare?" He looked at me when he asked, and his expression let me know that lying wasn't an option.

"No, I wouldn't have."

"When I was younger, I would have, but not now," Nathaniel said.

"So why did I let Cardinale do it?"

"I don't know."

"I don't either," he said, still staring into the nearly empty closet.

"Where are the rest of your clothes?" I asked.

"In a room further into the underground. I had to get dressed for work in a storage area, because she needed room for her things." He touched the empty hangers.

"We'll go wash up in our room. Give you some privacy."

"Don't, Anita."

"Don't what?"

"Don't go. Please don't go. It's daylight and I'm awake and I'm afraid to sleep again. I'm covered in my own blood, and . . . I'm afraid of what's happening to me. Even if Cardinale were here, she couldn't help me. That's why I went to you and Jean-Claude, because something is wrong with me, and if we don't figure out what it is soon, I'm afraid of what will happen."

Nathaniel hugged him first, but I came and added my arms to his. "I know you're afraid you'll lose control like you did before, but that time was my fault. I'll never cut you off from me metaphysically again, I promise."

"We're both here," Nathaniel said.

He grabbed our arms a little more forcibly than I'd touched him. "Last time I slaughtered innocent people. I don't remember doing it, but I remember being covered in blood like this, and I remember trying to kill people who were my friends. And now I'm covered in blood again, and I don't know why!"

"It will be all right, Damian," I said.

"You can't know that. Whatever this is, it's getting worse, Anita. I sweated enough blood to soak the bed. I've never heard of a vampire doing that." He shook me a little with his hands gripping us too tight.

I put my hands on his arms, partially just to touch him, and partially to try for some control. "We have a lot of old vampires with us now, Damian. One of them may know something."

Bobby Lee said, "Kaazim's not a vamp, but he's been with the vampires for centuries."

We both looked from Bobby Lee to Kaazim where he stood quietly near the door. Damian let go of us enough for me to turn toward the other man. "How about it, Kaazim? Have you ever heard of a vampire sweating this much blood?"

"From a nightmare, no."

"But from something else, yes?" I asked.

I think he smiled again, but it was hard to tell with him in the shadows. He'd picked the perfect place to stand to be as invisible as possible; he'd had centuries of practice. "Yes."

"Tell us," Damian said.

"I do not answer to the servant of my queen."

Damian frowned, and I felt his anger run through us both, and then he went cold, still, the emotion not so much shoved down but gone. I was never sure how he did that, but I knew why he did it. She-Who-Made-Him had used all emotions against people, so to survive he had learned to hide them under an icy calm that he'd shared with me. Sometimes I thought it was his calm that had helped me, as much as therapy.

"How about your queen's pet? Will you answer it for me?" Nathaniel said.

Kaazim smiled, just a little. "If that were all you were, then no, I would not answer you."

"Then answer to your queen," I said, but my voice showed some of my displeasure that he'd slighted the others. I wasn't as good at hiding my emotions.

He gave a small bow and said, "As my queen commands," but that was all he said.

"You're going to make me drag it out of you, aren't you?"

"I will answer any direct question you ask, my queen."

"I can't say it's Anita when we're working out in the gym and you just answer as a friend?"

I couldn't quite read his expression from the shadows. I just knew it was one I hadn't seen before. "You would call me friend?"

"I know we don

't go drinking together, or see the same movies, but yes."

"We are not friends, Anita, not in that way."

I nodded. "Okay, then we're work friends."

He seemed to think about that for a minute, then said, "I know this term. It implies we are friends at work, but how can we be friends if I am your bodyguard?"

"I'm friends with a lot of my guards," I said.

He smiled wide enough that I saw the flash of it even in the shadows. "I do not think we will ever be that friendly."

I laughed with him. "I don't mean that kind of friendly. I mean more like I am with Claudia, or Bobby Lee, or Fredo, or Lisandro, or Pepita, Pepe."

He nodded again. "Work friends." He said it softly.

"Yeah."

"As a queen I would have made you hunt and ask the right questions. It is what my master told me to do if you asked certain things."

"Why would Billie tell you to withhold things from me?" Billie was short for Bilquees, though she'd informed me that sometimes she went by Queenie. I liked Billie better.

"My master's reasons are her own."

Which probably meant he couldn't, or wouldn't, tell me her reasons. Fine. I moved on. "But if we are friends, then will you just help me help Damian?"

He nodded. "It is a long time since someone has asked me something in the name of friendship, Anita, a very long time."

"I'm sorry for that."

"Why are you sorry?"

"Because everyone should have friends."

He smiled again, but I couldn't see his eyes at all, so I didn't know if it was a happy smile or a hiding smile. "The Harlequin do not have friends, Anita. The animals of the Harlequin have even less than that."

"I've done my best to eradicate the double standard that the old vamps feel toward their animals to call."

"You and Jean-Claude have done much to help us."

Damian kept my hand in his, but he took a step toward the other man. "Help me, Kaazim. Help me because Anita is your friend, or your queen."

"You are a servant. I do not answer to servants."

"Kaazim, what is it with you and so many of the Harlequin? All of you seem to dislike Damian. Why?"

"I can answer that one," Bobby Lee said.