Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

"Are you offering to feed the ardeur for me?" Jean-Claude asked.

"I'd like to know for myself if it's as amazing a fuck as the stories claim," she said.

He laughed, an abrupt, pleased sound. She'd do fine.

She looked past Jean-Claude to Richard and said, "You are both very different people. If we were one-on-one, I'd approach you both very differently, so I will want a little guidance as to how to be with you both."

He looked at her for a long, serious moment and then said, "We can do that."

"Ma petite, I will close the links down low between us, if you will do the same on your end?" Jean-Claude asked.

"We will." And we did. I left them to their blood and sex, and they left us to ours.

55

THERE WAS A knock on the van door. I called, "Who is it?"

"It's Domino. Auntie Nim's friend Slane is here with the information we wanted."

Dev said, "You go. I'll feed Damian, if he's okay with that."

I could feel that Damian wanted to sink his fangs into Nathaniel and me more, but a lot of the heat had dissipated. I was pretty sure it was in St. Louis with Richard, Jean-Claude, and Angel. I was careful not to think too hard about that, just in case it reopened the marks too wide between us. I did not want to suddenly be in their heads in the middle of sex, or worse yet in the middle of Jean-Claude feeding the ardeur for both of us.

"If you let me capture you with my gaze, it won't hurt. It will just feel good," Damian said.

"I'm all for feeling good, but now that you've come to the Dark Side, I'm sure you could make it feel even better."

"Dev," I said.

He grinned at me.

"I'll stay and make sure that he behaves," Nicky said.

"I plan on being the perfect gentleman," Damian said.

"I wasn't talking about you," Nicky said.

Nathaniel and I left them to it, and got out of the van into a fresh bout of drizzling rain. Slane had his hat pulled down low against the wet; with the long hair, his puppy dog ears were completely hidden. "My mistress is impressed with the effort that you have put into searching for the missing Roane and his lady."

"I'm glad to hear that, but do you know where they are?"

"Nay, but if there comes a time when we could lend a hand to you and yours, we will."

I looked at him for a second. "That's great, but I'm a little confused. I thought you had information that would help us find the Roane and his girlfriend."

"No, but there is a Roane who has come forward. He would meet with you."

"After what happened to Riley, I'm not sure that's a good idea," I said.

"He understands the danger, but he wishes to talk to you and especially the red-haired vampire you have brought back with you."

"Why does he want to talk especially to Damian?"

"He knew the vampire before he left Ireland."

"Okay. Where do we meet him and how do we keep him from being disappeared on us like the last Roane?"

"We will use our magic to keep him hidden. Young Riley should not have tried to sneak behind his master's back without magic to hide him from her eyes."

"I understood that Nim and all of you wouldn't have anything to do with the Roane, because you didn't want to be on the Wicked Bitch's shit list."

"I'm not sure I understand what that means."

Nathaniel said, "Being on someone's shit list means they're mad at you and hold a grudge."

"Then yes, we did not want to be on the shit list."

"What changed your mind?" I asked.

"You have shamed us, and not much will do that," he said with a smile, but his eyes didn't look happy.

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to apologize for making them feel bad or celebrate that they were going to help the Selkies now. We seemed to be ahead, so I just said, "Where and when is the meeting?"

"Now and not far."

"How did you know that Damian was awake for the day? Most vampires wouldn't be."

"Our magic is fading here in Dublin, but we still have our ways."

"Is that a polite way of telling me you won't answer the question?"

He looked surprised. "I gave you an answer."

I had a moment of wanting Flannery here to do cultural translation, but just let it go. I might ask him later. Right now I'd make sure our vampire had finished his snack, and then we'd go meet the new Roane. I hoped this one had better luck afterward than Riley had.

56

THE FIRST MEETING had seemed pretty secret to me, and yet Riley and his girlfriend were both missing. This time we met in a churchyard at the edge of an ancient-looking cemetery. Compared to last time, it was out in the damn open, and that had gotten two people kidnapped. I didn't understand why we were meeting here until Damian hesitated at the edge of the stone wall. He had the hood on his coat up, his hands plunged into the pockets, sunglasses back in place. Honestly, with the hood up, there was almost none of him in the sunlight.

"I can't step on holy ground," Damian said.

I had a "duh" moment. "Crap, of course you can't. Some vampire expert I am."

He smiled. "Trust me, I won't forget that stepping on holy ground could make me burst into flames."

"Wait. I've had vampires with me in graveyards before, and they didn't burst into flame."

"This is a graveyard inside a church wall. It's potentially part of the church itself, and I can't enter a church."

Nathaniel said, "You're not sure if you can step on the grass inside the wall or not, are you?"

"No, but it's not worth the risk to me."

I hugged him and said, "Totally not worth it. You stay here, and I'll go find our mystery guest."

Slane watched us waiting on the other side of the little metal gate, and I asked him, "Why did you choose this location when you knew we had a vampire with us?"

"I did not choose it," he said, which answered and didn't answer the question all at the same time. Nathaniel stayed with Damian, along with Donnie and Brennan, at Slane's request: "Humans make some of us nervous."

It was interesting that none of the rest of us counted as human. Not bad or good, just interesting. Dev was happy to stay with Nathaniel and Damian. Nicky went where I went, but after that, everyone let Jake be senior guard and send himself and Kaazim with me, while everyone else waited outside the wall with our nervous vampire.

Slane left us waiting among the weathered tombstones, while he checked that there was no one inside the church that we'd want to avoid. I was right there waiting on the edge of the graves, and I just couldn't help myself. I lowered my shields just a little, and there was nothing. It was like standing in the middle of a meadow or a garden. There was no sense of the dead under the ground. It was just living ground. Had the bodies been moved but the grave markers left in place? That happened in the States sometimes. Hell, in St. Louis, if a company had permission to build on an old graveyard, they only had to move a spadeful of dirt from each grave and the tombstones, but weren't forced to move the actual bodies. Was that what had happened here?

Nicky leaned in and whispered, "What's wrong?"

"I can't feel the dead. I can't feel anything except the ground, which is fertile and alive."

Slane came back out of the church. "Is this the first Irish graveyard you've visited, Ms. Blake?"

"Yes."

"Does it feel any different from the ones back in America?"

I frowned at him. "Is this a trick question?"

"It's not meant to be."

"Have the bodies been moved?"

He looked out over the graves. "To my knowledge what was buried here is still here."

"If this Roane wants to meet with a vampire, why meet inside a church? He knows that the vampires can't go in there."

"Once he feels reassured, then he will come out to Damian."

"What will reassure him?" I asked.

"Come inside the church and ask him yourself."

I stared back over the graveyard and i

ts strangely alive ground. As a teenager, I'd have given anything to be able to walk through a cemetery and feel nothing, but now . . . I wasn't afraid of graveyards, but I was a little afraid of this one. Why couldn't I sense anything?

"You are unsettled, Ms. Blake. I thought it was tradition that necromancy doesn't work in daylight."

"You can't raise the dead in daylight, but I can sense the dead."

"What of ghosts? Do you sense them, as well?"

"I try not to see ghosts."

"How can you not see them?" he asked.

"The same way I don't go around raising the dead willy-nilly: by controlling my natural gifts."

"So, without control, you can cause the dead to rise spontaneously?"

"No, not exactly. Let's meet this mystery man, Slane. I have to meet up with the local police later."

He led the way into the church without another word. The church smelled old, like mildew and water and . . . weariness. I'd never thought a church could have a feel to it like a person who had seen too much and needed to rest. How did you let a church rest? I genuflected and crossed myself automatically and then I went up the church aisle.

Slane led us to a man sitting in one of the pews. He had long black hair shot through with silver and white, not gray, so that the contrast in colors didn't look so much like age as just the way his hair was colored. I knew plenty of people who would have loved to have the color combo as a dye job, but nothing was going to look quite like the real thing. Slane moved past the man so that I could sit next to him. Nicky sat on the other side of me; Kaazim and Jake sat in the pew behind us.

The stranger looked at me with huge black eyes, so like Riley's that it startled me for a second, like looking into the eyes of the dead. Was it a premonition or just a family likeness?

"I was told you wanted to meet with me," I said.

"And Damian," the man said, and his voice was a deep bass. You didn't meet many men with voices that low.

"He can't come inside a church," I said.

"I wasn't certain that you would be able to walk inside a church," the man said.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm a necromancer, all evil and ungodly. That's me."

He blinked those huge liquid eyes at me. I didn't think he'd gotten the sarcasm. Apparently neither had Nicky, because he added, "Anita's joking. She gets tired of people assuming that she's evil just because she can raise the dead."

"My apologies then, miss, but I had to be certain you weren't in league with her."

"How does the fact that I can enter a church prove that I'm not?"

"Do you believe in God, miss?"

"Yes."