Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

Nathaniel reached up one hand and undid my right wrist. He still had the completely blood-soaked knife in his other hand. It felt good to have one wrist free, but the magic was still there, still blocking me. I reached over and undid the other wrist myself. The moment that I wasn't touching the chains I could suddenly hear all my people; every metaphysical link was there again. Nathaniel was there again, bright and like another beating heart. I swayed with the fear from Dev, and Damian came back to life inside my head like a piece of myself that I hadn't known was missing.

Nathaniel reached out to me and then dropped his bloody hand before he touched me. "I can feel you again."

"Wipe your hands on his sweater," I said, motioning to the dried husk that was lying at our feet beside the bloody mess that was our other victim.

Nathaniel squatted down and wiped his hands, and the knife on the sweater, and then stood back up. "He's still screaming."

"I can't hear him."

"I can."

"Hand me the knife." He gave it to me without comment. I knelt down, and now I could hear a high-pitched noise. He would stay alive in there, maybe indefinitely. Obsidian Butterfly had used it as punishment for her people, placing them in stone coffins until she wanted to get them back out and forgive them. I plunged the blade through the dry paper skin of the lower chest, turned the blade sharply up and in, until I felt the thicker meat of the heart. Most of the rest of the insides had dried out like the skin, but the heart was still there, almost as thick and alive as normal. I drove the blade up into that beating source of life until the screaming stopped.

I stood up and offered Nathaniel the blade again. He shook his head. "No, you keep it. It took me a lot to kill the other one. You did it in one strike. I'm not good enough with a knife yet."

"It comes with practice," I said.

He nodded. I knelt down and was getting Tommy's gun out of its holster to give to Nathaniel when Rodina came down the stairs so quietly we didn't hear her at all. She had a Glock in her hand pointed nice and steady. Some days you just can't win for losing. Fuck.

82

SHE LOOKED AT us, smiling, and finally laughed, "Here I come to rescue you, and I'm not sure you need it."

"Why would you help us?" Nathaniel asked.

"Because the Lady Bitch is not our Evil Queen."

"And you think I am?"

She looked at us and then to the floor at the bodies. "Maybe I don't know much about being good, but I don't think that's it."

I couldn't argue, so I didn't try. I just stripped the gun off of the body that I had killed, and handed it to Nathaniel along with an extra magazine. If you're going to loot the bodies, take the extra ammo. The gun was a Glock, never my favorite. It just didn't fit my hand right. Nathaniel checked to make sure it was loaded, automatically. It was good to see he'd been paying attention.

"Thank you for letting me see you feed on her, Anita. I have had my fill of that pale bitch."

I gazed into those black eyes so like her brother's and realized, "Somehow, I rolled you when I rolled your brother."

"Yes, the only other one that could ever do that was the Queen of All Darkness herself. I knew we had been following the wrong heir."

I didn't argue with her; I'd been arguing with people for months that I wasn't the heir to the Mother of All Darkness. It was getting silly to keep protesting, so I'd stop. I didn't like it, but I could stop playing the lady who protesteth too much. I got the gun off of the other body, though the grip was slippery with blood. Nathaniel might not have killed the guard with the first blow, but he'd hurt him enough that he didn't go for his gun; that was a serious win in my book.

We needed to move. Rodina had a backpack with tactical boots that fit me if I stuffed them with the thick socks and a black hooded sweatshirt to go over the lingerie. I had done my best to ignore how cold I was until I got the clothes on, and then I could finally shiver. She even had an extra hooded sweatshirt for Nathaniel.

She led us up the stairs with a short sword bare in her hand. She'd holstered her gun. She told us silence was essential and we followed her, but I said, "We need Damian."

"We'll be lucky to get the two of you out of here. He's still with the pale bitch and both her servants."

"We can't leave him," Nathaniel said. He must have thought at Damian, because suddenly the vampire was loud in our heads. Go, he thought at us, I'll join you in Wicklow.

"He says to leave. He'll catch up with us in Wicklow," Nathaniel said.

Rodina smiled. "Agreed."

I'd managed not to think about Domino until I saw Rodrigo waiting for us in the hallway just off the stairs. Then my careful compartmentalizing fell apart. Rodina stepped between us. "This is Ru, the other third of our triplet."

He looked identical to Rodrigo until I got to his eyes. They didn't look like dark caves or even the teasing hardness of Rodina's. There was something softer about this one. He dropped to one knee. "My Queen."

"Where's Rodrigo?" I asked.

"He is my brother and your man now, as Ru and I are," Rodina said.

"Anita, we have to escape first," Nathaniel said.

I looked at him, and if I hadn't had a bloodied knife in one hand and a gun in the other, I'd have touched his hair. He was right. Domino was dead; we weren't. "Get us out of here. Rodrigo gets a pass until we're safe."

"Your word of honor?" she asked.

"Yes."

He came around the corner like a mirror image of his brother. "I see my death in your eyes."

"You forced my lover's blood down my throat after you killed him."

She looked at her brother. "Rodrigo, really?"

He looked strangely embarrassed and shrugged. "It seemed fun at the time."

"Fun!" I said, and took a step toward him.

Nathaniel grabbed my arm, "Anita, we need out first." He looked at Rodrigo and said, "And you, stop saying stupid things like that."

Rodrigo looked at me; his cave-dark eyes held more thought than cruelty in that moment. "If I had not done that one stupid, cruel thing, we would not be standing here now, Anita Blake."

"Out first, Roddy," Rodina said. She led the way and we followed, because what else could we do for now? I had to put the gun in the pocket of the sweatshirt to take the flashlight they gave me. The knife stayed out, because I had nowhere to put it. Rodina led the way down a tunnel that opened in the rock. I

t was narrow and hit my claustrophobia so that I swear I could feel the rock beginning to close around me. I put the blade against one wall and the flashlight against the other so that my hands would let me know that the walls weren't really narrowing around me. It was just my phobia. It wasn't real. I could smell fresh air. I could smell the sea. There was gray light ahead. Rodrigo vanished out of the opening, and when I got to the end of the tunnel, it was a black rock overlooking a sheer drop to the sea below.

Rodrigo was standing to the left on the rock, offering me his hand. I so did not want to take it, but the light was dying and I couldn't see what he was even standing on or why he wasn't tumbling down onto the rocks below us, so I took his hand. He helped me up shallow stairs that were literally carved into the rock face. I'd have never even seen them, let alone been able to navigate them. Rodina was guiding Nathaniel up the steps behind us. Ru brought up the rear.

Rodrigo hunkered down behind a rise of thick grass and flowers at the top of the cliff. He motioned for me to stay low, so I did. There was the wind blowing the grass, making the flowers nod, and there was a ruin of black stones toward the end of the highest point of the cliff. "The Black Castle," he said. "Everyone thinks the only thing left is the ruin, but the fortress is inside the cliff. Her hiding place has always been here, as the castles above her have risen and burned, but always she has been the puppet master to the men above."

When he was sure the coast was clear, he led us through the grass and wind. There was a couple taking pictures of themselves straddling a rusted cannon that looked out over a harbor. There were more tourists or maybe locals picnicking or taking pictures of the sea as the light began to fade to twilight.

"And no one knows she's here?" I asked.

"No," Rodrigo said.

"One of her great strengths is that she hides in plain sight," Rodina said. She opened her backpack and said, "You can't walk around with a bloody knife in daylight, Anita."

I didn't like it, but I gave up one weapon, because she was right. We'd been fighting for our lives, but everyone up here was having a great day by the sea.

Rodina pulled up her hood to hide her hair and said, "We're tourists. We're going to blend in." She took Nathaniel's hand in hers and hung on his arm as if she'd always been there. Rodrigo apologized but said, "It is for safety's sake."