Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

"I should go with you," Nathaniel said.

Damian smiled. "I'd like that."

I looked from one to the other of them as they sat beside me on the bed and said, "No."

They both looked at me and said in unison, "Why not?" Since I was sitting in the middle it was like stereo.

"There's no reason for Nathaniel to go with us," I said.

"I'm part of your triumvirate," he said.

"Which doesn't work well enough to gain us anything on this trip," I said.

"Nathaniel made it work yesterday," Damian said.

"And you're okay with the way he made it work?" I asked.

"Anita, are you trying to make Damian upset with me?"

I looked at Nathaniel and wanted to say no, but I tried for honest instead. "Not in the front of my head."

Nathaniel gave me the look the comment deserved.

"I'm sorry, but I really don't want you to come to Ireland with us."

"Why not?"

"It's a murder investigation for one thing, and that's not the part of my life that you help with."

"I helped in Colorado," he said.

"You did, but the initial trip was to see Micah's family. It didn't turn into a police case until after we got there."

"Funny how many of your out-of-town trips turn into cases," Damian said.

It made me look at him. "What do I say, that it's not my fault?"

"Just an observation," he said, putting his hands out in a show of innocence.

"I helped you find some of the people that the vampires kidnapped," Nathaniel said.

"You changed into your leopard form and tracked them for me, and it was helpful, but Micah's family was well-known in the area. I'm not sure we'll have that kind of connection in Ireland, so you shapeshifting will probably not be a great idea there."

"You're concentrating on the details and ignoring the fact that I have helped, which is more than Damian has done."

"You've had more opportunities because you live and travel with her," Damian said, smoothing back a strand of still-wet hair.

"That's true," Nathaniel said.

"I keep waiting for you to argue, but you don't if it's true."

"Why should I argue if it's true?"

"Cardinale argued about everything, almost."

"We're not her," Nathaniel said.

I didn't like the way he said it, as if we were taking the place in Damian's life that Cardinale had. I didn't have room in my life for another romantic triangle. Wisely, I kept my mouth shut. He'd just broken up with Cardinale yesterday and had his first sex with both of us since we formed our triad by accident years ago. I'd had enough therapy to know not to push, especially since I wanted him to travel with me to the place he probably feared most on the planet. Then I thought about being trapped in Ireland with Damian freshly broken up from Cardinale without Nathaniel to help me balance things. Crap.

"You know how people in romances say, but no one is me, or no one is you?" Damian asked.

"Yeah," Nathaniel said.

"That can be a positive and a negative. No one will ever be the good things that Cardinale was to me, but the bad things were pretty bad and I never want those again."

"I hear that," I said.

"Me, too," Nathaniel said.

I patted Damian on the back and Nathaniel reached around me and patted his leg. We all had our bad relationships.

Nathaniel sat back on his side of the bed and said, "You're going in as a consultant, not a Marshal, and they want Damian to come and help them. Just tell them he wouldn't come without me."

"And how do I do that without explaining that I'm a sort of living vampire and he's my vampire servant and you're my animal to call?"

"The police in Ireland have less experience with vampires than the ones here," Damian said. "It won't occur to them to ask those kinds of questions, Anita."

Nathaniel said, "If they ask, just tell them that I'm Damian's animal to call."

"Damian's not a master vampire."

"The police won't know that."

"I can't do my job if I'm worried about your safety."

"But it's okay to endanger me?" Damian asked.

"I didn't mean it like that."

"I know you're not in love with me, Anita, but seriously, if it's too dangerous for Nathaniel to go, then why isn't it too dangerous for me to go?"

The first answer that came to mind wasn't something to say out loud, because it was basically that I needed Damian to help us with the vampires in Ireland. I didn't need Nathaniel. I was willing to endanger Damian to help save lives and solve the case. Nathaniel didn't need to come to help solve the case, or that was how I saw it, so any risk to him had no payoff. Police work was often about risk assessment and gain versus loss. Probably M'Lady was now scrambling to shore up her own power base, so she wouldn't be a threat to any of us, and I wouldn't be taking Damian with me when we finally hunted the rogues, so he wasn't going to be in the line of fire either way. If I'd thought otherwise I wouldn't have taken him, so why was it different adding Nathaniel? The only truthful answer was that I valued him over Damian, and that was something better not shared.

"If I really thought you would be in serious danger, I wouldn't take you either, Damian, but you have information about the local vampires that might help us figure out what is happening. You could help us save lives, and that's worth a little risk for both of us. Nathaniel hasn't even been to Ireland, so he can't help us. There's no cost benefit to him possibly risking himself by coming with us to Ireland."

"I'm coming with you, Anita," Nathaniel said.

"No."

"I'm not asking your permission, Anita."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm not asking permission. I'm telling you I'm coming."

"It's my case. If I say no, then it's no."

"I was able to take control of the power between us and make it work, which is something that neither one of you has managed to do. Don't you think that it might be useful to have a working triumvirate of power in Ireland when you're up against rogue vampires?"

"I'm already part of a working triumvirate."

&

nbsp; "Richard's doubts cripple Jean-Claude and you, too."

"Jean-Claude and I work just fine, and it's helped make Richard Ulfric here in St. Louis."

"I'm not sure it's been your trio so much as the fact that you ended up being so fucking powerful, and that fed into Jean-Claude and Richard. I think if you'd just been a normal animator and not a true necromancer, or if you hadn't gotten contaminated with one of the rarest types of lycanthropy on the planet, that having your first triumvirate crippled could have gotten all three of you killed by some ambitious master vampire years ago."

I stared at Nathaniel. It was like he was somebody else suddenly. Someone more serious and more . . . Was it wiser? I didn't want it to be true, because I didn't like what he'd said, but he was right in one thing. Richard's reluctance to fully be with Jean-Claude and me had damaged the power the three of us could have had, but luckily for Jean-Claude I had become a metaphysical miracle.

"I think he's right."

I glared at Damian. "Don't help."

"I thought you wanted me to help by going back to the one country I most want to avoid. She let me go once, Anita, but part of me worries that if I get this close to her again physically, she'll find enough power to steal me from you forever."

"You're my vampire servant and in a triumvirate with Nathaniel and me. Your metaphysical dance card is all filled up."

"She won't know that."

"She will if she tries to break you free of me."

"She almost killed me once from a distance, remember?"

I did remember.

Nathaniel said, "We remember."

"I always wondered why she didn't try to take you again. Maybe this is why," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe something about the Mother of All Darkness waking up and then getting killed damaged She-Who-Made-You's power."

"If she's allowing lesser vampires to invade Dublin, then she's lost power. She would never have allowed that many new vampires to just happen that close to her."

"The Harlequin think that the magic that kept her, or any vampire, from creating too many vampires in Ireland is fading."

"What do you mean, the magic that kept the vampires from being created? She-Who-Made-Me kept our numbers low to help us hide."

"According to the Harlequin, the Fey magic of Ireland itself makes the land so alive that the dead don't rise easily."

"Are you saying that She-Who-Made-Me didn't keep our numbers low because she wanted to, but because she had no choice?"

"If Pierette and Pierrot are correct, yeah."

"If that is true, then she lied so we wouldn't realize her power had limits."