Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

"What are you doing, Devereux?" Flannery asked.

Dev leaned in and whispered to us both, "Remember, you have magic, too."

With him touching me, I could remember that, and I could feel more of Nathaniel through our entwined hands. It was as if something about her magic had dampened our own. Why would it work like that? I didn't know how to ask Flannery without giving away that it had, and if it was accidental, I didn't want to give his aunt any ideas.

I looked at Domino and Ethan on the other side of the table, trying to judge how much they were being affected by Auntie Nim without Dev to protect them with his touch. I could have just asked, but that seemed like giving away too much, so I dropped just a tiny bit of my shields, which kept them from invading too far inside me. With Dev touching me, I could feel that I kept the walls between myself and the two men across the table higher and thicker than with Nathaniel or even Dev. I wasn't sure what it was about being hooked up to our Devil that made me suddenly aware of how differently I shielded with them, but it was there like a thought, or maybe knowledge, that I hadn't wanted to really understand before. I filed it away for later, because right now we had other problems. Yeah, I was aware that was how I ran a lot of my life, one emergency to another, so I didn't have to dig too deep at other issues. My therapist and I were working on it.

Domino and Ethan both startled as if I'd touched them for real and they hadn't known I was behind them. Domino shook his head as if he was trying to clear his ears after a loud noise. Ethan shivered from the top of his head down the rest of his body that I could see above the table. They glanced at me in turns, and then went back to paying attention to the possible threat in front of us all.

Auntie Nim narrowed her eyes at us. I didn't feel like a flower with the sun overhead now, not unless the flower was trapped in an ice field and the weak winter sun was too far away. She didn't like that we'd seen through her illusions.

"You missed this one, nephew," she said in a voice that was as cold as her attitude and didn't hold a single note of birdsong in it.

"I told you what he was, what they all were."

"You said he was a tiger in man form, and golden, but you did not tell me he was a witch."

"I've been called a lot of things, but never a witch," Dev said, trying for light and cheery in the face of her disapproval.

"Dev . . . Devereux isn't a witch," I said.

"If you believe that, then you do not know his worth, Anita."

"Maybe we're defining the term witch differently," I said.

"What do you see when you look at me, Devereux?" Nim said.

"What there is to see," Dev said with a smile, but his hands stroked against our faces. It was a reassuring gesture; I just wasn't sure if he was reassuring himself, us, or both.

I raised my hand up to touch his hand where he cupped my cheek. It looked loving and gentle, and it was, but what I said next was neither of those things. "What does it matter what he sees or doesn't see? I thought we were here to discuss your vampire problem and why the metaphysics in Dublin have changed after a thousand years."

She sat up a little straighter, using her cane to push herself forward. She was wearing black lace gloves on her hands, so I couldn't see if her hands matched her face. I'd never seen anyone wear gloves like those outside of a historical drama. "What do you mean, my vampire problem, Anita?"

"I meant Dublin's vampire problem. Since you live here, it's sort of your problem, too, right?"

Was it my imagination or did she relax when I said it that way? What was it about what I'd said first that had bothered her so much? I made a mental note to ask the men later if they could figure it out, because it had bothered her. I just had no idea why.

"I was a part of this place before the humans named it Black Pool."

Flannery added, "That's basically what Dublin means, Black Pool."

"Then do you know why vampires are suddenly rising in such numbers here?"

She put both hands on the head of her cane, flexing them around the well-worn wood of it. Her gray eyes darkened to a dark charcoal gray like the sky before a rainstorm. "Death magic."

"It was one reason that we didn't want another necromancer here," Flannery said.

"So you think that a necromancer is behind your vampires?" I asked.

Auntie Nim turned those storm-colored eyes to me. It made me sit back a little and involuntarily clutch Nathaniel's hand harder and press Dev's hand tighter against my face. He responded by rubbing along the line of my jaw, which felt great, but also felt a little too touchy-feely for a meeting that had anything remotely police oriented about it. I still didn't make him stop touching me; there was something about it that helped keep my head clear.

"If it is not true necromancy, then it is a type of vampire we have never seen. It is as if whoever is behind all our troubles is drinking far more than mere blood. It is drinking the life, the magic, from the very earth of Dublin." Auntie Nim's face was grim, her eyes full of a fierceness that would probably have been hidden behind sunshine and birdsong if Dev hadn't been touching us. She didn't look like your favorite grandma now. She looked predatory, like something that would hurt you. The charcoal gray of her eyes was almost black with anger, or fear, or some emotion I couldn't understand.

"I'm a necromancer and I'm pretty up close and personal with the vampires, but I don't know any of them that could do what you're describing," I said.

"The vampire that was mistress of Ireland before she lost control can feed upon fear," Nim said.

I nodded. "Yeah, I've met other vampires that could do it, but no one as good as she was once."

"Do you know for certain that she lost power? Why couldn't she be the one behind all these new vampires?" Nathaniel asked.

It was a little odd for him to be asking the crime-busting questions, but they were good questions, so I just waited for some good answers to match them.

"Moroven was never a necromancer. It is not her magic."

"Did you know her before she became a vampire?" I asked.

"I did, and she was never a necromancer, a fearful thing in her way, but she never possessed power over the dead."

"What made her fearful in her way?"

"You know she is a night hag who can feed upon fear."

"Yes, but that's a power she gained after she became a vampire."

"No, she was always able to feed on nightmares and terror."

"Really?" I said. "I've never met a person who could do that unless it was a talent they acquired after they became a master vampire."

"Is night hag what you call those once human who can feed on fear in vampire form?"

"Yes."

"Then she is more than that and we must add new words to her power. She can cause terror in others so that she may feed upon it."

"Damian has memories of her doing terrible things," Nathaniel said. "Anyone would be afraid after that."

The old woman shook her head. "No, Graison, I do not mean she frightened people with torture and then fed upon their emotion. I mean she could cause fear in someone with a touch, or less, and feed upon that."

"You're saying that the fear she was able to cause in Damian wasn't just from his memories of her?"

"I am saying that she was a mara, a nightmare, able to create fear so she could feast upon it."

"Wait. You mean she could feed on people in their dreams, not just when they were awake?"

"She began as something that fed on bad dreams, took them away from the sleepers, helped take away their night terrors, but over the long years, she turned her gift into something less gentle. If there were not enough nightmares to feed upon, she would enter people's sleep and give them bad dreams so she could feed."

"Are you saying she was supposed to be a sort of dream keeper and help people have fewer nightmares?" I asked.

"In the beginning."

Flannery added, "The authorities here have seen a few night hags over the years: people who fed on bad dreams, but the more th

ey fed, the worse the dreams got and they drained the person's life away through the nightmares."

"You have people in Ireland that are that good at feeding through dreams?" I asked.

"It's common enough here to be classed as a psychic ability."

"Not magic," I said.

"No, because the ability can be stopped with modern drugs. When Auntie Nim told me that the master vampire of Ireland was a type of night hag, I went back through the files of other cases. In most of them, the people exhibiting the behavior say they aren't doing it on purpose. It's like they sleepwalk, except that they're sleepwalking through other people's dreams."

"Are you saying, that if modern antipsychotics or antidepressants can stop a person's abilities, then it gets classified as psychic, but if drugs don't work, then it's classified as magic here in Ireland?" I asked.

Flannery said, "That's one of the ways we differentiate between the two, yes. You don't do it that way in America?"

"No, we don't give meds like that to people unless they're really depressed or psychotic."

"How do you stop people who are using their abilities for evil purposes?"

"If we can prove someone has deliberately harmed another person via magic, it's an automatic prison term or death sentence."

The look on Flannery's face showed clearly what he thought of our idea of justice. "That's barbaric," he said.

"Can your night hags drain a person to death?"

"Yes, but we spot them before it gets that far."

"If they've already drained someone to death, what do you do with them? How do you keep the rest of your law-abiding citizens safe?"

"Appropriate drugs and treatment until they're no longer a danger to others."

"How many drugs do you have to give them to make them safe?" Nathaniel asked.

Flannery looked down and then back up, but he had trouble meeting Nathaniel's eyes. Maybe it was the weight of my gaze right next to his, or maybe it was just the weight of innocence in his. I'd found that Nathaniel had that almost childlike belief in what the right thing should be; it didn't mean he believed people would always do the right thing, but he had a way of making you want to live up to his better ideals.

"Go on, nephew, answer him."

Flannery looked at her, but not like he was happy with her either. "The dosage is appropriate to render them harmless to others."

"That's a way of not answering the question," I said.

"Do you honestly think that killing them is better?"

"Than drugging them into a coma, or frying a brain that works just fine until it stops working? Yeah, I think death might be preferable to that."

"Once we were not afraid to kill when it was needed," Nim said.

Flannery frowned at his aunt. "There has been too much bloodshed over the years here. We don't need more of it."