Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

"This says I can," he said, and put the ID back in his pocket. He smoothed his hand over the closure as if to make doubly sure it was secure. I wondered what kind of ID it was, and thought it was very interesting that the woman had said, You can't keep doing this, which implied we weren't the first special guests of Captain Brian Nolan.

"Get your bags and follow me," he said.

"To someplace where we can change into something less comfortable?" I said.

Nolan frowned at me, and again the lines in his forehead looked almost painful, like scars instead of frown lines. How many years had he been this unhappy to mark his own face up like that?

"Just grab your gear, darlin'; you can suit up later." He turned and started walking toward the plane as if it were all settled.

"I thought I left Bobby Lee at home. He's the only one who gets away with calling me that."

Nolan turned around and stared at me. That more-than-normal energy that I'd felt when he hit the room spiked and danced along my skin. I had to fight not to shiver like someone had walked across my grave. It didn't mean that his psychic gift was death related, or even scary per se; it just meant he was really powerful.

"Grab your gear, and we'll talk in private," he said, his voice proving that any accent, no matter how lyrical and movielike, could thin down to serious and threatening.

"Will do," I said. Edward, Pride, Dev, and I followed in Nolan's wake. When we got outside I went for the steps leading up into the plane to check on Nathaniel and Damian. I got there in time to see them zip the bag up over Damian's face. He was so still, so . . . dead that it was like watching them put him in a body bag. I think I stopped breathing for a second, my heart just sitting in my chest waiting for the rest of me to tell it to catch up, so that when I breathed again it was a gasp.

Magda glanced at me, but Nathaniel stayed focused on getting Damian safely zipped up. "Are you all right, Anita?" Magda asked. Her eyes looked very gray in the dimness of the plane, as if all the blue had been sucked away.

I nodded, not trusting that my voice wouldn't shake. What the fuck? I'd seen so much worse; why had that small moment bothered me? Or why this much?

Nicky spoke from behind me. "Come outside for a minute."

I shook my head. "I'm fine."

"Don't give me fine. I feel what you're feeling no matter how much you shield from the others." He held his hand out to me, and after a second I took it. He led me a little away from everyone else and looked at me, still holding my hand. "What made you feel that way?" he asked.

I told him.

"You think it's a preview of what could happen?"

"Yes," I said.

"Don't borrow trouble, Anita."

"We're hunting monsters. People die doing that."

"You knew all that when you let them get on the plane."

"You know, you're not always that comforting," I said.

He smiled. "But you're less scared now and more irritated. My job is to make you feel better; sometimes that's just choosing which emotion you like better. You'd way rather be irritated with me than scared and worried."

I frowned at him harder, but I couldn't argue with him. In the end I squeezed his hand tight and we went to get the rest of our bags. Normally I'd have kissed him for that, but Nolan was watching me and he was going to have enough issues with me bringing so many "boyfriends" and "girlfriends"; I didn't need to add fuel to the fire.

We grabbed our bags, full of all sorts of things that would never have made it through normal inspection. Echo and Giacomo went in large lightproof duffel bags just like Damian had. Fortune and Magda strapped their masters across their bodies and helped Nathaniel get his own balance with Damian. Watching them balance the full literally dead body weight of their masters along with both sets of weapons in other bags made me realize why most vampires chose bigger people for human servants. You needed the size just to carry everything. I wasn't sure I could have toted Damian and the rest of my gear. Once Nathaniel got the bag balanced he moved easily. Of course, he wasn't carrying and wearing as many weapons as I was.

Jake and Kaazim offered to carry some of the weapons bags for Magda and Fortune, and the women let them take some of them. Neither man offered to carry the vampires, though Giacomo was a big guy even for someone Magda's size. She was strong enough, but it was more height and breadth for toting someone else who was as tall, but wider, and heavier. I was beginning to see why Magda hit the weights heavier than Fortune did; it wasn't just personal preference--she needed the bulk to lift Giacomo.

Socrates said, "I'd offer to carry him for you, but I think you do a better job of it."

"Thank you for the compliment," she said, and checked the huge duffel on her back one more time, to make sure the smaller bags were tucked up tight so that they helped hold Giacomo's body in place. It's not always how much you're carrying, but how it moves, how it sits on your body, or how it moves with you.

Nolan didn't offer to carry anything, just waited with those frown lines furrowing deeper into his forehead. If he had a single smile line on his face I hadn't seen it yet. I mean, he smiled, but it was as if his face did it so seldom that there was no mark around his mouth of it. There were plenty of frown lines, though. I'd never seen anyone mark themselves up so badly, as if facial lines could be scars.

Nolan led us off across the tarmac with Edward beside him; they were talking in low, serious voices. The rest of us fanned out behind them. Nathaniel fell into step at my side. It actually seemed odd to walk beside him and not hold hands, but I was carrying too much and I needed to focus on work. Nicky was on one side of us, Dev on the other. Domino walked in front of us and Ethan was behind us. They'd put us in the bodyguard box, as I'd started calling it. I realized that Jake, Pride, Socrates, and Kaazim were carrying a little bit more than the other four men. They'd divided it up without a word, so that the four guards directly around us would have more hands free to go for weapons, if needed. Magda and Fortune's main allegiance was to the safety of their unconscious masters, so they weren't part of the bodyguard equation in that moment. I understood that; if I'd had Jean-Claude in a duffel bag in full daylight, I'd have been worried as hell that some ray of sunlight would get through. I was worried enough with Damian on Nathaniel's back, and I knew that sunlight didn't burn him.

Though, as I glanced up at the overcast sky, thick and gray with the promise of rain, maybe the famous Irish weather would be more vampire friendly than other places. You could get sunburned on a cloudy day if you were pale enough, so did cloud cover really matter to a vampire? In all the years I'd been intimate with vampires, first hunting them and then sleeping with them, I'd never asked about cloud cover. I mean, if your skin fried in the sunlight, was a cloudy day worth the risk?

There were three black vehicles waiting for us that I'd just started thinking of as the police version of the military Humvee, though not all of them were Humvees, and I knew that, but whether it was one of SWAT's BearCats or an armored military transport, they all looked vaguely the same, like a Jeep, an SUV, and a small tank had gotten together and had one hell of a night, and this was the result. Military would be painted in the camouflage of the area, or the current military fashion. The police were very fond of basic black for them.

There were three soldiers standing in a little cluster by the three black vehicles, dressed in the same all-black that Nolan was; between the outfits and the "SUVs," it reminded me a lot of working with SWAT, except I'd earned my place with our local cops, and here the hostility and doubt poured off all of them in waves. It wasn't aimed just at me; we were all unknowns. The three soldiers had no way of knowing how well we were trained, or how our training would complement or conflict with theirs. When you're about to trust your life to someone, you want to know that they're worthy of that trust.

Brennan was tall, dark, and handsome except for the hair being buzzed so close to his head it made me want to pet it to see if it was soft like baby duck feathers or bristly like beard stubble. Th

e face was nice enough to carry the lack of hair, but it still made him seem unfinished to me. Griffin was also tall, not so dark, with a few curls escaping the beretlike hat he had on his short hair, which meant his hair might be as curly as mine if he didn't keep it so short. His eyes dominated his face, huge blue-green orbs with thick, dark lashes. He'd probably spent his whole life having women tell him he had beautiful eyes, and since he'd gone military, he'd probably gotten tired of the compliment before he hit high school. No matter how much he lifted in the gym, or how good he was on the range or on the field, the eyes would make the other men give him grief and the women pester him. Donahue was shorter, but still about five-eight, which made her taller than me by five inches. She was built leaner than me; even under the body armor you could tell the hips and chest were more boyish than my curves. Her hair was brown, straight, and cut short enough that it tried to undercut the whole girl thing, but her face was too feminine to pass for male. She was pretty without a drop of makeup on, which meant she'd have to work even harder to prove that she was really just one of the boys. Her handshake was firm, though her hands weren't much bigger than mine. She smiled when she was introduced to the rest of the gang.

"More women than you've ever worked with on any of the special-operations stuff, isn't it?" I said.

"It is," she said, and like everything she'd said, it was lyrical, and just sounded better than a straight American accent.

Nolan said, "Forrester didn't tell me we'd have this many women in your group." He made no pretense that he was happy about it, and implied in his tone that he would be asking Ted to explain once he had him in private. Nolan was starting not to sound charming even with the Irish accent.

"Is this private enough to talk about the name Anita mentioned earlier?" Edward asked in his Ted voice.

"If the rest of her people step away, yes."

"They all know the person in question," I said.

Nolan looked at me and then at the people around me. "All of them know him, including Mr. Long Hair here?"

"Yes, Mr. Graison knows him," I said, hoping that if I kept repeating everyone's names he'd remember them. I did nicknames when I met a lot of people all at once, too. Mr. Long Hair sounded like something I'd use on a stranger, so it really shouldn't have bugged me, but it still did.

"We all know him," Edward said.

Nolan turned to him. "She said my darlin' reminded her of Bobby Lee."

Brennan's dark brown eyes went a little wide, then looked at me. He looked me up and down, but not like a man looks at a woman he thinks is attractive, more like he would have looked at me if I'd been a man about my height and size. Shorter men have to work harder to earn their stripes in this kind of fraternity, too.

"How do you know Bobby Lee?" he asked.

"I'll answer you in the car once we get moving," I said.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" Brennan asked.

I looked at Edward, who gave a tiny nod. It was his go-ahead nod. "Because we are wasting daylight and one thing you learn quick about hunting vampires is you want to use every bit of daylight you can."