Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

The white-and-black storm rose into the air. Edward, Nolan and his people, Dev, Magda, Socrates, all of my people except for Domino and Ethan, one dead, one injured--so many warriors on our side, but there was nothing to fight on the ground. The battle was in the air, and the only one of us who could fly was holding my hand, mingling his blood with mine.

The window in the side of the cafe exploded into the street. It was Bachman with the triplets chasing him away from the people inside just like I'd told them to do. They climbed out after him, but the big vampire charged us, grabbing Donnie before she could bring her gun up, and then Giacomo was there as big as Bachman, and the fight was on. Donnie fell free of it, and Dev pulled her to safety. More of the vampires were on the ground and I saw Hamish. The rest of the Harlequin had joined the fight. I saw Nicky wade into him and marveled again at the blur of speed that was my Bride.

"You will not kill us!" Keegan yelled, and he was just there with a shotgun aimed at the three of us. No one was close enough to help us. They were all fighting, as Nathaniel and I tried to get our guns up in time, but I'd been too deep in the magic and neglected the rest. Edward was moving, but he wasn't going to be in time, and suddenly the triplets were there. Rodrigo stepped in front of Keegan and they fired at the same time.

It sounded like thunder as Keegan fell backward and Rodrigo dropped to his knees. Nolan, Donnie, and Brennan surrounded Keegan, but he didn't get back up. Rodrigo had finished him. Moroven screamed out and fell to earth in a shining white light of ghosts, because now with both her servants dead, she didn't have the power to fight the vengeful spirits. I didn't know that ghosts, even ones full of magical blood, could drain the life from a vampire. Maybe I'd shared Obsidian Butterfly's gift with them. Rodina and Ru were still guarding me, so I was the one that knelt beside Rodrigo, along with Nathaniel and Damian.

The shotgun had opened Rodrigo's chest up. His heart was trying to beat in an open wound. "I have been what a Bride is meant to be for their Groom, Anita Blake: cannon fodder." He laughed and spat blood.

"Don't try and talk," I said.

He choked, spat more blood, and said, "The oldest translations of the prophecy talk about joining life forces, mingling souls. They didn't mean marriage." He coughed so much blood, I wanted to tell him to stop talking, but I wasn't sure he could hear me anymore. "It says for life . . . part . . . why some tiger clans are so serious about their monogamy."

There were sirens in the distance; they'd try to save him. Rodina and Ru were kneeling beside their brother now. The fighting was mostly over. Moroven's death had literally killed some of her supporters as she tried to reach out and save herself by stealing from them.

"I killed her clan tiger in front of her. She watched the light go from his eyes and then she drank his blood. Don't you see?" Rodrigo said.

"The King of Tigers wasn't supposed to marry a tiger. He was supposed to sacrifice it and drink its blood," Rodina said.

"Yes," her brother said.

Ru asked, "Would you ever have agreed to a human sacrifice where you drank blood?"

"Never!" I said.

"You certainly wouldn't have agreed to one of your own lovers and moitie betes being sacrificed so you could watch them die and drink their blood," Ru said, staring down at his brother, whose face looked like a mirror image of his own.

"No," I said, but with less force.

Rodrigo said in a voice that was too thick with wet things that should never have been in a living throat, "I felt the power shift as soon as you swallowed the blood, and then you said, 'All the Harlequin belong to me,' and I knew it was true." He coughed up dark blood in a wave down his face and upper chest. The ambulance came, but there was no one to save.

Epilogue

THE IRISH GOVERNMENT wasn't very happy with Nolan and his crew starting a firefight in the town of Wicklow. The whole paramilitary paranormal squad might be over before they ever got started. If that made the mysterious Van Cleef unhappy, maybe he'd fix it, if he could. Edward went home to visit with Nolan's family. They wouldn't let me come along and pry into the past. I pouted, but I was just glad that they were mending the friendship.

When Moroven died, I didn't feel any energy boost. Either calling the ghosts made me blind to it, or the power that was in She-Who-Made-Him has found another vessel to inhabit. I hope not. Apparently all the Harlequin really do belong to me now, or to Jean-Claude. Or at least they want me to be their Evil Queen. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I know that we can't keep the Harlequin in St. Louis. They are starting to travel the world and police the preternatural world again. The European vampires are making noises about fighting us; after what just happened in Ireland and some rumors elsewhere, they can go fuck themselves. The vampires are not grown-up enough to be without more adult supervision. I guess that's us for now.

Riley and his girlfriend were imprisoned in the Black Castle, but Moroven had been so busy trying to capture me that she hadn't had time to do much harm to them. It turns out that Riley was Roarke's great-great-great-grandson, and he's now King of the Roane, who are a free people once again. The black-on-black eyes are a sign of kingship for them.

The new vampires in Dublin aren't like any anywhere else in the world. Part of it is the land itself and the magic of it, but part of it is that Moroven was never human. She was one of the Tuatha Du Dannon, the high courts of fairy, who one dark night fell into darkness. She was Fey and that was why her type of vampirism could survive here. It would have been nice if Flannery's auntie Nim had shared that. She said, "What difference would it have made?" I didn't have an answer to that. Maybe she's right, but it seems wrong.

Ireland is treating the vampire outbreak as the largest national health crisis ever, but they are incorporating the newly undead into mainstream life more smoothly than we did in the States. But the vampires here really do seem more like people with fangs, with a few exceptions.

We took Domino's body home. I am the true heir to the Father of the Dawn and the Mother of All Darkness, because I "married" one of my tigers. It means the commitment ceremony is suddenly way less complicated, because we only have to include people we genuinely love, but I'd willingly go back to complicated if it would bring Domino back. Nicky says I'm lying to myself on that one. I told him to keep his sociopathic logic to himself, that even I need some illusions.

Asher cried when he saw Nathaniel's hair. He also apologized to Devereux enough that they're lovers again, though I think it's mostly to torment Kane on Dev's part. We'll see.

Micah said yes to Nathaniel's proposal. So we may have yet another wedding to plan; it seems to be a theme for the year. The first night we were home together the three of us, I agreed to talk seriously about maybe getting pregnant. Petting Nathaniel's new short hairstyle makes me remember what could have happened. Damian has joined us in the bed a lot. Micah is letting him have a spot on the other side of Nathaniel with me in the middle. Jean-Claude isn't sure where to put him yet. We're working on it.

Ru and Rodina joined us at home, but feel totally cheated that Nicky got sex to become my Bride, but they just got a bit of magic. They miss their brother, Rodrigo, and he died well, which is just as well, since otherwise I would have had to kill him. After what he did to Domino, there was no other option. Nicky agrees. Everyone agrees. So why does it feel weird to owe Rodrigo my life, Nathaniel's life, and Damian's life, and still know that I would have killed him if he had survived? Sociopath much? Maybe. Not sure that's a good attitude for a would-be mommy, but it's a great attitude for an Evil Queen.