Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

Whoever had picked the dress had left my hair loose, curling thick and utterly black around the whiteness of my skin. My eyes were dark. Some trick of the light in the room made them look black, but I had Rodrigo's eyes carved into my brain and I knew my eyes were brown, because his were truly black. A natural blond with black eyes, you didn't see that much.

"The Welsh come colored like that from time to time," a woman's voice said.

There was a woman in the mirror now, and it wasn't me. She was taller than me, slender, model thin, but not starved, just built that way. She had long, straight blond hair that fell well past her waist to swirl in the white dress she wore. It was from a much earlier century than mine, loose with long belled sleeves that almost hid her hands. Gold ribbon laced her tight through the bodice so that it showed her small, high breasts to good effect. Her eyes were a clear pale blue, the shade that coloring books tell you is what water looks like, but it almost never does in real life. She was almost everything that I'd ever wanted to be when I was about twelve to sixteen, when I realized I would never be any of it.

"Wishes," she said.

"When I was a child, before I knew my own worth, yes," I said.

She walked closer to her side of the mirror; the room looked identical, as if we were both standing in the same place. She was shining in the sunlight in a way that hair and skin didn't if you were human. She was almost unearthly in her beauty, like a shimmering white goddess.

"Yes, I was a goddess once."

"They worshipped you as one," I said.

"You don't believe I'm a goddess?"

I started walking toward the mirror as I said, "No."

"Could anyone but a goddess build a dream for us to speak in?"

"I've met other people who could create dreams, and they weren't gods."

The shining light of her flickered for a second like a bad connection on a video, and then it steadied to shine and be lovely again. I stood in front of the mirror now. It was a very old mirror, the glass full of imperfections, dark marks in the glass itself, a bubble here and there.

"It was a marvel of craftsmanship in its day," she said.

"I bet it was," I said, and looked at her like a tall, thin, blond reflection in the mirror. I could see that there were flowers and leaves embroidered on the gold ribbon of her dress now. Why had she put me in a dress that was closer to Belle Morte's taste than hers? Or did she want to wear bright colors, but they washed her out?

"I wear what I wish to wear," she said.

"Pastels look terrible on me, but I bet they look wonderful on you," I said.

The image of her flickered again, the shining white light gone for an eyeblink, replaced with darkness, rough stone, like a cave, or a tomb. Then the white figure was back, shining harder, as if trying to make up for that last glimpse. Take no notice of that man behind the curtain.

I could see that her high cheekbones were paired with a chin that was a little too pointed for my taste, a nose a little sharp; witchy, I'd have said once, but I knew too many witches now and none of them looked like that.

I got another glimpse of the dark cave, and her face bare of the light for a moment, and anger in those pale blue eyes. Too pale, not as rich a color as she was pretending to have here in her dream . . . our dream.

"It is not your dream. It is mine!"

"Have it your way," I said. "Why did you bring me to your dream?"

"I thought this would be more pleasant."

"It's not a bad dream, so what do you want in this pleasant dream?"

"You have something I want," the image in the mirror said.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Power."

"Yeah, you and everybody else."

"What?" she asked, as if I'd confused her. If she could read my mind it shouldn't have confused her, which meant she could only read part of my thoughts.

"I am in your mind," she said.

"But you still don't understand everything I'm thinking, or everything I'm feeling, do you?"

"I understand all!" But there was that flicker again, and I saw her standing in the dark place, her thin face closer to mine than it was in the dream.

"I don't remember the early deities claiming omniscience," I said.

The flicker again, because I'd confused her again. She came back to the mirror in her white dress with its gold and embroidery, but she wasn't shining anymore. She was lovely, but not otherworldly so. Her eyes were blue, but I knew people with bluer ones.

"When I am done with you, I will find your blue-eyed lovers and carve their faces down to ruin!"

That scared me and I couldn't hide it with her inside my head, and she understood the fear. She smiled a thin smile. "I wanted to make this pleasant between us, Anita, but if you are determined to be unpleasant, I know how to do that, too."

Dev lay on the floor beside me. His eyes were gone, just blood and thick bits as he screamed and reached out for me. I grabbed for his hand before I could think, and it felt real enough, but . . . it wasn't. It wasn't and I knew that it wasn't. I'd given her an awful idea to use against me, and she had, but it wasn't real. If she'd wanted to hurt me this wasn't the man to choose. Dev vanished and it was Nicky with both eyes bleeding and gone, but that wasn't right. He only had one eye, and she didn't know that. She wasn't perfect; even this far into my subconscious she couldn't see that clearly.

"I see more clearly than your man will after I take his last eye."

I carefully, very carefully didn't think of anyone else, just put a blank wall between me and my thoughts. It was like shielding for metaphysics; just think walls. I put up a wall between us and it appeared in the middle of the room, dividing it in half with the mirror on the other side.

She screamed then, and the scream shattered the wall, so that I put up my arms to shield my face, and thought it was like the vampire exploding. I wasn't surprised to find a piece of stone embedded in my arm. I'd given her the image. I had to stop that.

I pictured the wall again, but this time it was smoother, metal, and mine. Her power hit it, but the metal only bent with her efforts; it did not break. Her power beat against my wall, my metaphysical shielding, and she couldn't get through.

"But you are still trapped in my dream, Anita Blake!"

Was I? I wasn't sure how to break the dream without dropping the wall, and I wanted the wall to stay. I'd learned to do lucid dreaming where I could change dreams as I had them, or even break free of bad ones, but holding the wall while she battered it and trying to figure out a way to break the dream was a few more balls to juggle than I could keep in the air.

I started with the dress, and I was suddenly wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, black boots, and my favorite holster with my favorite gun. I felt more me as I looked up at the metal wall dimpling as she beat on it. It bent here and there, but she couldn't break through. I could hold the wall. I could stand in the dream and be okay. Interesting, and I did my best to stop the thought there, no other memories, nothing. I would give nothing to be used against me here. Nothing but the wall, cool metal, smooth without any handholds for her mind.

She screamed again, the metal of the wall bending as if a giant had hit it, but it held. She couldn't get to me anymore. She couldn't play with me in dreams, and she couldn't make the dream into a nightmare. I could wait her out. She must have realized that, because she decided to let me wake up, or maybe I just woke on my own.

78

I WOKE IN the dark place I'd seen in the moments when the dream wavered. It wasn't completely dark, though; there was natural light coming from somewhere in the wall or ceiling. I was in a thin beam of pale sunlight. I was also almost on my knees, but not quite, because chains at my wrists kept me from my knees, or the stone floor. I'd been hanging there for a while, because my shoulders were aching. I got to my feet slowly, carefully, because I knew it would hurt even more as full circulation came back to my shoulders, arms, and hands. I was wearing a red satin nightie that I'd never owned. For a s

econd I wondered if I'd fallen into another dream, but my arms hurt too much for that. I'd tried to be chained up like this for sexy bondage one time back home and found that I could only have my arms up like this for so long before I started to hurt. I'd done one scene where my legs had gone out from under me, and Asher had let me hang like that for a while. I hadn't said my safeword; if I had he'd have unchained me and taken care of whatever hurt, but once he had unchained me my arms had hurt more and for longer than ever before. If I couldn't hold myself upright when I was bound in some way, then I asked for a new position, or just to be held and loved. Unfortunately, there wasn't a safeword in the world that would get me out of this dungeon.

I stood there and waited for the pain in my shoulders to die down enough for me to feel how many pins and needles were burning through my hands. I flexed them, trying to rush the process, because I'd woken up alone. No one was actually hurting me yet, or even guarding me. Good. First, I needed to be able to feel my hands, because it's hard to fight if you can't. As far as I could see there was no electricity in the room; in fact, there were unlit torches in wall sconces, which meant there were no cameras, no way for them to watch me until they came into the room. Better.

I kept flexing my hands and trying to rotate my shoulders to see if anything was damaged from hanging however long I'd been there. The daylight meant that either it was only a little later the same day, or it was the next day. If the first, then I'd only been out for a couple of hours tops. If the second, then I was lucky I could move my arms, or feel my hands at all. It would also mean that whatever had happened in Dublin that night was over and I'd missed it all. That scared me, tightening my stomach, making me wonder if everyone I cared about was all right. Then I realized I was being stupid. I didn't need a phone to call home.

I reached out to Nathaniel first and there was nothing, just a blankness, which scared me even more. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, got myself calmer and reached out for Dev . . . and nothing. I tried Jean-Claude, and again, nothing. It wasn't that everyone here in Ireland had died in some horrible vampire debacle; something was preventing me from contacting anyone psychically. I'd had a human witch that was able to do that once, so the fact that the Wicked Bitch of Ireland would have someone powerful enough to do it shouldn't have surprised me.