Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

"I vote sex," Nathaniel said. I waited for Damian to protest that sex would include all three of us, but he just kept looking at me.

"Anita," Bobby Lee said, "why are you being weird about this?"

"I don't think avoiding adding another name to my list of regular lovers is weird. I think I'm over my limit for giving enough attention to the ones I have."

"If that's all that's worrying you, Anita, I'm a big, grown-up vampire. I'm not expecting hearts and flowers." Damian looked around the room at the decor and added, "I think I've actually had enough flowers for a while."

"I don't believe you."

He held out his hand. "Touch me, lower your shields and I'll prove it."

"Anita, just touch him and then we'll know how he really feels. No commitments, no promises, just touch him," Nathaniel said, hugging me close and saying the last almost against my cheek.

I sighed, then reached for Damian. His hand was strangely warm for his having lost so much blood and not having fed yet. We wrapped our hands together, looked into each other's eyes, and lowered our shields. Nathaniel held on to me but made no move to touch the vampire.

I was very carefully feeling nothing much, but Damian was feeling a lot of things. Sad, tired, angry, confused, but mostly tired. Cardinale had done what a lot of intensely jealous people do; she'd worn him down, worn him out emotionally. I tried to feel that love that I'd gotten a glimpse of just a few hours earlier in his office, but I couldn't find it. What did that even mean? That it hadn't been real, or that Cardinale had used up the last of it, as if love could be a cup that you both filled up with love, kindness, joy, sex, all the things that made you a couple, but if you could fill the cup up, you could also drain it dry with cruelty, sorrow, pain, jealousy, and anger.

"I'm so sorry, Damian," I said, finally.

"We're so sorry," Nathaniel said.

"I just feel used up. I can't do this anymore," he said.

"Do what?" I asked.

"Cardinale and me."

"You feel done."

He nodded. "I think I am."

"Okay then, let's get cleaned up."

We were still hooked up emotionally so I felt the flash of hope, and then the desire right behind it. His need for sex with me was so intense that it made me catch my breath for a second. I slammed my shields back in place, and we were suddenly just holding hands. It was nice, but it wasn't the intimacy of a second before.

Nathaniel's body jerked against me as if my slamming the shields had actually hurt him. "Are you all right?" I asked.

"Warn me next time we're all hooked up before you do that, Anita; that fucking hurt."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt anyone."

"I'm sorry that you felt my need, and it's made you uncomfortable," Damian said, and tried to take his hand from mine.

I held on and said, "The emotion was a little intense, but that's okay--you're entitled to feel what you feel."

"It didn't scare you away?"

"Everyone likes being wanted, and our metaphysics means that we are sort of bound to want each other; like Kaazim said, lust is the coin of my bloodline."

"I know it makes you uncomfortable, but I'm glad it's not terror, or rage, or so many other horrible things, Anita."

"I don't blame you, and honestly, sex isn't a fate worse than death, and I know that the Lover of Death could feed on each death he caused, which would be a pretty terrible bloodline to descend from. Jean-Claude's line is not the worst thing out there."

"No, it isn't."

"You have no idea how true that is," Kaazim said. The slightest of tremors ran down his body, and I realized that he had shivered. The Harlequin were mostly impervious to that much overt display of fear, so whatever he was remembering must have been truly awful. I didn't ask him what he'd remembered. I had enough of my own bad memories; I didn't need more.

"We'll shower, get this mess off us," I said, and started leading Damian toward the bathroom.

"Harris said his orders were not to leave the three of you unsupervised," Bobby Lee said.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Then leave the door open."

"I'd like a little more privacy than that," I said.

"I know you would, darlin', and I'd love to give it to you, but if you close the door and something bad happens, I don't want to explain to Jean-Claude, or Micah, or any of your beaus how we let you get hurt because we were too delicate to make you keep the door open."

I sighed, but I guess I couldn't blame him. If positions were reversed I wouldn't have wanted to explain it either. "Fine, but stay back from the door; give me some illusion of privacy."

"Anything you say, darlin'."

"Bullshit on that, Bobby Lee."

He grinned. "Sorry about that."

"We were planning to have sex in the shower, once we're clean, and you being able to see is going to make Anita very uncomfortable," Nathaniel said.

"I don't remember agreeing to having sex in the shower," I said.

Nathaniel gave me his patient look. "Anita, we tried just sleeping with Damian and the nightmares and bloody sweats didn't get any better."

"They got worse," I said.

"The blood, yes, but not much more than last time. The nightmare was not as bad," Damian said.

"See?" Nathaniel said.

"I don't see why every problem is solved with sex."

"Not every problem. Sometimes we have to kill people. Would you prefer that as a solution?" Nathaniel asked.

"No," I said, sounding grumpy, even to myself.

"We'll avert our eyes if you start having sex in the shower," Bobby Lee said.

"I will not, for fear that I will look away at the wrong moment and Damian will harm them," Kaazim said.

"It was a polite fiction, Kaazim, to make Anita feel better."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I spoil it?"

"Never mind," I said.

Nathaniel started leading us both toward the bathroom again.

"Are you really planning on us having sex in the shower?" Damian asked, his voice low, though he knew that both shapeshifters would hear him; sometimes the illusion is all we have.

"Yes," Nathaniel said.

"No," I said.

"Good to know we've made a decision," he said, managing to sound sarcastic and a little bit like he was laughing at himself.

"And if not the shower, I was thinking we clean up and then use the bed, but now we have way more audience and Anita won't do it in front of Bobby Lee and Kaazim."

Damian glanced back at the two guards. "I'm not that fond of being watched either."

"I am, but I don't think either of them are voyeurs, and the two of you won't do it with them watching, so shower it is," he said.

Damian touched the drying blood on his face. "Whatever we do, I want this off me first."

"Don't worry," Nathaniel said. "Sex isn't happening until we get cleaned up."

"I haven't agreed to sex happening at all," I said.

"Clean first. Then we'll see," Nathaniel said, but he seemed way more cheerful about it than I was, or than Damian was for that matter. The vampire had gone strangely quiet once Nathaniel took his side of things. I wondered if Damian was worried that Nathaniel was after his virtue. He didn't have to worry about that; I knew that Nathaniel would have popped his cherry ages ago if he'd thought Damian wanted it. I didn't say that part out loud, but I might if Nathaniel kept pushing the whole sex thing.

10

DAMIAN STARTED TO turn on the shower, but I did the math in my head and said, "This is a regular-size shower. The three of us will never fit in here."

Damian looked at me, and he looked more woebegone than he might have with the blood drying on his face. "I can clean up here and the two of you can use your shower."

Nathaniel said, "Why don't the three of us go down to our shower since it's bigger?"

I nodded. "That was what I was trying to suggest."

"Was it really?" he asked.

"Yes, really; we've all

three just had a horrible nightmare and some not unhorrible side effects," I said, looking down at the blood that was beginning to stick more and more to the once very nice lingerie and to my skin. "I think none of us would want to be alone right now."

"I do not," Damian said.

"I almost never want to be alone," Nathaniel said, and grabbed Damian's hand and led him toward me. He pushed me ahead of them through the door to find Bobby Lee and Kaazim standing near the bed, where they could see into the bathroom and maybe sit down on the bed.

"Is something wrong?" Kaazim asked.

"The shower is too small," Nathaniel said, and continued to herd the two of us toward the door. Bobby Lee had to hurry to open it before we got there.

I started to laugh. "What's the rush?"

"Don't you want to clean the blood off you?" he asked.

"Yeah."

"Then no time like the present."