Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

Edward looked at me when he got to Dev and Domino, because he'd been there to see Dev have his moment under fire, when he'd broken down completely. In his defense, the zombie fight in the basement of the hospital had been one of the worst things I'd ever done, even by my standards. It had been a really harsh introduction to my job for Dev. He flat-out told me he didn't want to go zombie fighting with me again. Domino hadn't liked a homegrown zombie of mine that we'd had to burn in a cemetery, and I'd told Edward about it, so he knew neither of them were my top choices. He'd tell me which of the others he didn't like later.

"Later," I said.

"Can't wait," he said with a smile as he crawled back into his Ted skin and just folded back into the charming cowboy act. To her credit the customs official didn't buy it now; she knew something odd was happening and she wanted no part of the blond man with his identity crisis.

We were joined by another man; he was taller than Edward, though not as tall as Dev. It was nice when I had a variety of heights that I actually knew to compare new people to, so the new guy was five-eleven, or six feet tops. I was never good at subtracting the inch or more that even work boots could give a person, and he was wearing the kind of boots that SWAT wore in the field. The kind that I had in my luggage. His uniform was black, from the tac pants to the long-sleeved button-up shirt. It bulked out from the body armor underneath it, but I didn't need that hint; the sidearm worn out where we could all see it was clue enough.

His dark brown eyes scanned the room and us. His hair was a rich brown that was almost a dark auburn, and might be under the right light. Nathaniel's hair was solidly on the red side of auburn, but most people with the hair color leaned more to brown. He had a good face, but the level of energy and edge of threat he brought into the room took away all my interest in him as a man. He raised my hackles, and the energy in the room from the real wereanimals told me that it wasn't just me.

He stared back and didn't try to hide his own hostility, and in fact . . . he added his own energy to the room. Edward went up to him, and I knew before he introduced Captain Nolan that this would be his work acquaintance, Brian. I also knew that he wasn't plain-vanilla human before Edward called me up to introduce us.

"So you're Anita Blake," he said, his Irish accent softening the near-hostility in his voice.

"And you must be Brian," I said, smiling sweetly. I even worked to push it up into my own brown eyes. If I could do it for clients at Animators Inc., I could do it to piss off the cranky Irishman.

He raised his eyebrows at me, then glanced back at Ted/Edward. "Well, Forrester, are we all going to be on a first-name basis?"

"I call Anita by her first name and she calls me Ted."

"And the rest of . . . her crew?"

"First-name basis," I said.

Captain Brian Nolan shook his head. "I can use your call sign if you prefer, Forrester, but I just can't call you Ted."

"Theodore," I suggested, doing my best innocent face.

Nolan frowned at me. "No."

Edward smiled at both of us. I think he was genuinely enjoying introducing us. His eyes were bluer than normal, and his breathing had sped up a little. I think he liked the energy rising in the room, and the sense of potential carnage.

"Have it your way," Edward said, and turned to me. "Anita Blake, this is Brian Nolan. Nolan, Blake."

"Captain Nolan," he said, narrowing his brown eyes.

"Fine, then it's Marshal Blake," I said, but I was smiling.

"Am I amusing the two of you?" Nolan asked.

"A little bit," I said.

"You always amused me," Edward said, smiling his Ted smile.

Nolan scowled at us. "I don't think I like your attitude, Blake."

"I'm not thrilled with yours either, Nolan, but we don't have to like each other to work together."

He frowned harder, putting deep lines in his forehead and between his eyebrows. It made me add a few more years onto his age, which I'd have called at early thirties; now maybe forty wasn't out of the question. Once people got to a certain age I just sucked at guessing.

"It would make things easier, though, if we liked each other, at least a little bit," Dev said, coming up smiling and just giving off this vibe of being happy to be there, happy to meet Nolan, and just doing his best to turn the energy in a friendlier direction.

He held out his hand and said, "I'm Mephistopheles."

Nolan didn't shake his hand. "What the fuck did you do to earn that as a nickname?"

Dev made a sad face and said, "Sadly, it's not a nickname." He held up his passport so the other man could see it clearly. It read, "Mephistopheles Devlin Devereux."

Nolan actually stopped being angry; his face folded into something human and much more attractive. "That's a hell of a name, Devereux."

"I go by Dev."

"I don't blame you," he said with the Irish thicker in his voice. He almost smiled at the thought of going through life with such a name.

The first and last name were his parents' fault, but I knew that he'd chosen Devlin as his middle name himself. When the gold tigers reached age ten, they got to choose that part of their name. Most chose very simple names, or normal-sounding ones, but little Mephistopheles had chosen the name that sounded most like the nickname he'd already earned, Devil.

"Devereux is French," Nolan said, and started speaking in fluent and very rapid French.

Dev shook his head, smiling. "Most Americans don't speak the language of their ancestral country; sorry."

Nolan turned to Pride, who had moved up beside his cousin. "And you are?"

"Pride Christensen."

"Is Pride a nickname?"

He just held his passport out for Nolan. It read, Pride Christensen. No middle name, because he had never chosen one.

"If you had the same last names, I'd ask if you were brothers."

"Cousins," Dev said, smiling and clapping Pride on the back.

Pride raised an eyebrow at him and frowned. "Will you ever grow up?"

"Will you ever get the stick out of your ass and learn to have fun?" Dev countered.

Pride rolled his eyes and moved away from his smiling cousin.

Nolan actually did smile, so there was a human being in there somewhere. Good to know. He turned to Fortune, who was next closest. "And you are?"

"Sofie Fortunada," she said, smiling.

Edward interrupted, "Captain Nolan wants to see everyone's passports and get names, which he'll run through every database he can find." We'd already been warned this was not just likely, but a given, which was why everyone had chosen identities that had nothing questionable attached to them. It would so have ruined the trip if someone's name came up on an Interpol list for something. But there would be no issue with Magda Sanderson, Jacob Pennyfeather, Ethan Flynn, Domino Santana, Kaazim Fath, Russell Jones, or Nicky Murdoch.

Everyone just lined up and sh

owed him their passports, much as they had for the nicer and more polite customs officials. In fact, the woman said, "We've already checked their passports and their cards."

"I don't need to see their cards to know they're shifters," Nolan said, and he made the last word sound like it was something nasty. He was rapidly losing all his brownie points with me.

He looked at the passports as if he expected some of them to be fake. The customs officials were all getting a little insulted, because he made it obvious that he didn't trust them to have checked the documents sufficiently. That extra energy that rode around him was beginning to prickle along my skin like insects marching. It was almost like some lycanthrope energy I'd felt before I carried my own flavor of it, but if he'd been a shapeshifter himself, why would he need us to bring our own to play with his team?

"I guess you'll do. Grab your other gear off the plane and let's go," he said at last.

The female customs official said, "If there's more luggage coming off that plane, we have to inspect it."

Nolan turned back to her, took an ID out of one of the Velcro pockets on his pants, and showed it to her.

She scowled at him, very unhappy. "You can't keep doing this."