Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

Keegan went just behind the opening to the stairs, but on the opposite side that people seemed to walk down. I saw his arms move, as if he pressed or pulled something in the walls, and a thick chain snaked down from the ceiling. It wasn't a pair of them like the ones on my wrists, but just a single thick line of chain with a large hook on the end of it.

"No!" Damian said. He started to push past Roarke, and then I saw the Roane's eyes glow like black diamonds. Damian's eyes unfocused and he stopped moving forward.

I looked into Nathaniel's eyes just feet in front of me. He was starting to struggle as much as the chains would allow, which wasn't much. Whatever the men were going to do, they didn't want him moving around. My heart was in my throat. I pulled on the chains at my wrists and knew doing so was useless.

"Damian, wake up!"

He startled awake, shoved Roarke, and then hit him solid in the face. Roarke fell to the ground. Rodina and Hamish moved in a blur of speed to catch Damian's arms. Rodina put a blade to his throat.

"This is why we had to gag your Mr. Graison. If you call out to him again, Anita, I will gag you, and I'll cut out your lover's tongue." Rodina's eyes blazed blue as if spring skies could burn. I believed she meant everything she said.

The chain was directly in front of me so that I'd have a good view of whatever the men were planning to do to Nathaniel. Or hell, maybe he'd have a good view for what they were going to do to me. Whichever way the pain went, they meant for us to watch each other endure it. Sadist much?

Keegan hooked the end of the single chain through the chains at Nathaniel's ankles. He tugged the connection, and when he was happy with it, he nodded. The two men holding Nathaniel began to lower him to the floor as Keegan went back to the wall and reached around an outcrop. I could see just the edge of the silver handle as he began to rotate it and the chain started going back up into the ceiling. The two Roane held Nathaniel gently until they were told to let him go. I'd have expected them to use it as an excuse to hurt him, but they didn't.

Keegan moved the chain up until Nathaniel's face was almost perfectly in front of mine so we could look into each other's eyes. He was hanging only about four feet in front of me, out of reach, but not by much. I looked into those lavender eyes, my flower-eyed boy, and my stomach was clenched so tight, I didn't know if I was going to throw up or hyperventilate. There had to be a way to stop this from happening. The thick braid of his hair trailed down from his body like an auburn rope to pool on the floor.

"M'Lady," Damian said, "please do not do this."

"Have pleas for mercy ever moved me, Damian?"

"No," he said, and he tensed in Hamish's and Rodina's grips.

Rodina asked, "Can I slit his throat if he keeps struggling?"

"No, that might kill Anita too soon. I need her terror to open her to me for feeding, and then I will feed on all her power. If she dies before I crack this so-tough nut, then the Mother's power may seek yet another vessel, and that stops here with me."

"If we can't cut him up, how do you want us to subdue him from rescuing his boy toy?" Rodina asked.

"You are the Harlequin. Are you so inadequate that you cannot even control one vampire for a few minutes?" Moroven yelled at them.

"Can we injure him?" Rodina asked.

"No! Now do your job!" Moroven turned back to us, and I didn't want that, because whatever was about to happen was going to be bad, like, nightmare bad.

"You're the motherfucking Harlequin. Are you going to let her talk to you that way?" I asked.

"She's the boss," Rodina said.

"Only because you follow her."

"We follow the Mother's power," Hamish said, "whatever vessel it chooses."

"Enough!" Moroven screamed. She walked around the edge of the wall just like Keegan had, except she didn't make any more chains appear. She came back with a big knife in her hand. It gleamed silver, and just the way the edge caught the sunlight let me know it was sharp. I didn't know for certain it was a silver blade except in color, but I was betting it was, even as I prayed that it wasn't.

"I want you to look into those big, pretty eyes, at that lovely hair and that fit and strong chest, and think upon this, Anita Blake. I am going to make a nightmare of his beauty, and then I will fuck him in front of you, and when you are filled with terror at what I will do next to your two men, I will drink you down!"

Moroven strode to Nathaniel in a swirl of white skirts. Damian and I both screamed, "No!"

She grabbed the thick braid of Nathaniel's hair like a handle to hold him steady. She moved to the side so we could watch each other. She put the blade against his hair and sawed through it. She could have done so many worse things--I knew that--but watching that long, thick braid of auburn hair fall to the floor took my breath. I sagged in the chains, because my knees didn't hold me in that moment.

We stared into each other's eyes, and I watched one lone tear trail down Nathaniel's face. I screamed, not a scream of terror or sorrow but of rage. I lost my shit and cursed her, threatened her, and finally told her, "Kill me now. Because every minute you leave me alive gives me more chances to kill you first, you evil bitch!"

Moroven laughed in my face, then threw the blade down on the floor between us. "Anger, I cannot eat anger, Anita. But I give you my word, when I come back, I will pick up that blade again and I will carve up that beautiful body, or maybe I will take an eye. I want him to have at least one good eye so he can see the ruin of his beauty and your horror at it, but he doesn't need two for that."

I fed my anger as if it were a real fire. I fed it so that it would blaze higher, because she couldn't feed on me, couldn't kill us if she couldn't find my fear. I touched that boiling pool of anger that had been inside me since my mother's death and been fed by every horror I'd seen since, and I let her see it in my face.

"If my using the blade upon Nathaniel does not frighten you, then I will use it on you, but I will find what frightens you, Anita, and then you are mine." Moroven walked to Damian, who was still held between the two Harlequin. "You believe me, don't you, Damian? You believe that I will do everything I have promised."

"Yes," he whispered, his eyes wide, showing too much white around the edges, like those of a horse about to bolt. She touched his face and his personality just slid away so that his eyes were like empt

y windows.

Moroven turned to me with a smile. "He's afraid for you both. It opened him to me, and now he is mine again." She led Damian up the stairs as if he were a zombie with no will of his own. "Enjoy your last view of Nathaniel's beauty, Anita. I give you my word that the hour I give you now will be the last time you see him whole."

81

WE WERE ALONE except for the two Roane, who stood to either side of the doorway like good guards. They were both armed with handguns, peeking out from underneath their shirts, which seemed almost un-Irish by this time. In a country where most of the police--excuse me: Gardai--aren't armed, it seemed wrong for anyone else but us.

Nathaniel and I looked at each other. I concentrated on those big beautiful eyes of his and did my best not to look at his hair. It would grow back. It would. But if I paid attention to it at all, I was either going to start crying or screaming, and neither was going to help us. We needed to help ourselves, not hurt ourselves. Moroven was going to do that for us in an hour. I pushed her threats away, shoved the hatred in her eyes out of my head, or as much as I could. None of it helped me. I stared into Nathaniel's eyes and thought how much I loved him. I looked down at the braid of his hair lying underneath him like a promise of things to come, which was exactly what it was. Fuck. I prayed for an idea of how to get us out of here, along with Damian.

Nathaniel rubbed the side of his face against the chain that was across his shoulder; he scraped the gag out of his mouth. He worked his jaws and said softly, "Gag was fastened over my braid."

"Once she cut it, you had slack," I said.

He smiled. "It will grow back."

I nodded and managed to smile back at him.

The guard with the paler brown hair came toward us. "How did you get the gag out?"

Nathaniel answered, "It was tied around my hair, so now the gag is loose."

The answer seemed to make the man uncomfortable. "You should do whatever she wants you to do," he said.