Crimson Death (24 page)

“She'll stay like that until you tell her to rise,” Jake said.

“That sort of works for me right now,” I said.

Jake made a little movement with his mouth like I'd surprised him but pleased him at the same time. “You are the queen.”

“That's right, I am, and the next time one of you forgets that, it won't be my knee that I use to bloody you. Is that clear, Scaramouche?”

“Are you saying you will kill us yourself?”

“No, that is not what she is saying,” Jake said, quickly.

“I don't want to kill you, damn it. It's a waste of centuries of talent and power, but if you force me to make the decision, I will.”

“I believe you,” Scaramouche said.

Pierette's voice was muffled against the floor as she said, “Yes, my queen.”

“Get up, Pierette.”

She raised her head slowly, cautiously. “Do you wish me to stand, my queen?”

“Stay with Scaramouche, or stand. I don't care; just don't do anything stupid.”

“Yes, my queen.”

“You have tamed another leopard, Anita,” Scaramouche said.

“How about you, Hortensio? Are you still going to be a pain in my ass, or have I made myself clear?”

He had his hands pressed gingerly over his nose. It made his voice sound odd, but it was understandable as he said, “Very clear, my queen.”

I looked down. “And you, Scaramouche? Are you tamed?”

“I will never be tamed by anyone save my master.”

“Then are we clear?”

He wasted a serious hate-filled look at Nicky, then looked back at me. “You and your Bride have been most clear.”

“Great, then we won't have any more problems between us.”

“We will not disrespect you, but we have a problem, our queen.”

“And what would that be?” I asked.

“That the people you are having sex with have acquired our old
speed and skills, or regained them in the case of Magda and other Harlequin in your bed, while those of us not in your graces continue to lose both skills and power.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, and looked at Jake. “Is he right?”

Jake sighed, shrugged, and then said, “It is not a hundred percent certain, but as a hypothesis it has unfortunate merit.”

“Well, fuck,” I said.

“Not enough,” Scaramouche said.

“We can't fuck everyone.”

“If I cannot regain my former glory with a plan worthy of a warrior and a king, then I would agree to whatever arrangement Jean-Claude wishes.”

I stared at the wererat. “Do you understand what you're saying?”

“Or is the pain speaking for you?” Jake added.

“I know what I am saying, and for the return of my power, I would be whatever Jean-Claude needed me to be,” Scaramouche said.

Pierette just shook her head and looked scared. She wasn't willing to be whatever was needed, and I didn't blame her. That was too much carte blanche to give anyone.

“I will not be Jean-Claude's catamite,” Hortensio said; his voice sounded worse as his nose continued to swell. He coughed and started to choke, having to struggle to sit up enough to throw up blood on the mat, which made his face hurt so that he moaned with the pain.

“We need to get them to medical,” Jake said.

“Yeah,” Nicky said, “they're bleeding all over the mat.”

I looked to see if he was making a joke. His mouth was still bleeding enough that he was having to dab at it with the back of his hand. He'd taken off his gloves sometime during all of this. If he was being sarcastic his face didn't show it. The marks on his cheek weren't nearly as bad as his mouth.

“Or everybody could shapeshift and heal themselves,” I said.

“They'll get goopy stuff all over the mats,” Sin said. “Claudia has told us we aren't allowed to shift in the gymnasium.”

“Fine. The hallway will work.”

“I dare not, my queen,” Scaramouche said.

“It's a dislocated knee. Shifting should heal it.”

“Yes, but in my beast form I would need food to regain the energy I expended in the rapid healing.”

“Yeah, so you walk down to the area where the live food is kept.”

“No, my queen. If I shifted form, I could not guarantee that I would not see you and others as food for my beast.”

“Are you saying that you wouldn't have enough control of your animal form to keep from attacking us?” I asked.

“I am ashamed to admit it, but it is true.”

“You are the Harlequin, the ultimate spies and assassins. That means you have ultimate control over yourself, or that's what I thought it meant.”

“Once that was exactly what it meant, but when our powers began to fade, so did our control of our inner demons.”

I looked from him to the other two troublemakers. Pierette bowed her head and wouldn't meet my gaze. Hortensio was rolling around in fresh pain; apparently he'd squeezed his nose too hard.

“Are you saying that none of you can control your beast half?”

“When we first turn, we must eat flesh. Once we have eaten, we come back to ourselves and can control the beast, but until that first feeding we are mindless and will attack as if we are new lycanthropes who have not gained control of ourselves yet.”

I looked at Jake and Magda. “Is this true of all of you?”

“I have not diminished in my abilities,” she said.

“Because you are sleeping with them,” Pierette said, her voice bitter. She stared down at the floor as soon as she said it, as if afraid of her own reaction.

Jake's face was as blank and unreadable as he could make it. “I have retained my abilities as well, and I am not sleeping with our new leaders. Kaazim is also fine and not their lover.”

“Wait, Jake, Magda. Are you saying that neither of you knew about this either?” I asked.

“I did not know,” he said.

Magda just shook her head.

“You guys are supposed to report to Jake,” I said, looking down at the others.

“He is one of the ones who betrayed our Dark Mother,” Scaramouche said.

Hortensio found his voice again, though it was thick and harder to understand as his nose continued to swell. “He helped hide the golden tigers from us. If they had been killed as the Mother of All Darkness commanded, then you would never have been able to rise to power. You had to possess the power of the Father of Tigers and become the new Father of Dawn, and for that you needed the gold cats.”

Scaramouche said, “Jake and Kaazim were both part of the traitors who knew the gold tigers had not been slaughtered, and now that they have won they still have their powers, while those of us who were ignorant of their plot do not.”

“So maybe it's more than just sex with Jean-Claude and the rest of us,” I said.

“Perhaps,” he said, but not like he believed it, or maybe he didn't want to believe it, because if sex wouldn't fix the problem, then they were screwed in more ways than one.

“Does Micah know about this?”

Scaramouche and Pierette shook their heads. “We have told no one of our shame,” he said.

“If we had decided to send you out on a mission like Kaazim just came back from, would you have told anyone then?” Nicky asked.

“We don't owe you an answer, Bride,” Hortensio said.

“Then pretend I asked it, because it's a good question and I want the answer.”

“None of the leaders here trust us enough to send us out,” he said.

“We are trapped here in this small city when we had the world to travel for centuries,” Pierette said, and she looked—
grief-stricken
was the only word. I had for the sudden haggard look on her eternally youthful face.

“I guess it is a change,” I said.

“If they cannot shapeshift safely, then we need to get them to the infirmary,” Magda said. If she felt pity for her fellow warriors' plight, it didn't show.

“I would request a stretcher, for I cannot walk,” Scaramouche said.

“What have you done to deserve a stretcher?” Nicky asked.

“Nothing, but I would humbly ask of my queen and her princes that they be magnanimous and show mercy.”

“I'm not big on mercy,” Nicky said.

“Nor I, especially for warriors who keep forgetting about me,” Magda said.

Scaramouche swallowed hard enough that I heard it, and he said, “My queen, her princes, and her princess, I beg for mercy and to be allowed a stretcher.”

I wasn't sure Magda was my princess, but I let it go. We were winning; never quibble when you're winning. We let him have a stretcher. What the hell? We'd made our point.

T
HE MEDICS INSISTED
on Nicky going to the hospital in the underground along with the rest of the wounded. He insisted he was fine. “My mouth has stopped bleeding.”

“You could have a concussion,” the doctor said.

“Can we get concussions?” Sin asked.

The doctor assured us it was possible, though unlikely, which meant Nicky got to go to the hospital, too.

“I can shift to animal form and heal myself without endangering anyone else,” Nicky said.

“But if the concussion is severe enough, the shift won't heal everything. Let's do some tests before you change form and confuse the issue,” the doctor said.

Reluctantly Nicky agreed. The four of us were going with him, but my phone rang and it was Edward's ringtone. He was the reason that I'd had my phone with me in the gym in the first place.

“Hey, Edward.”

“Pack your bags for Ireland.”

“You got them to agree to bring me in on the case?”

“You and some of your preternatural friends,” he said, and sounded pleased with himself.

“Take the call,” Nicky said, and started to walk away.

“Hang on a second, Edward.” I caught up with Nicky, touching his arm so he turned toward me. I'd wanted to kiss him good-bye, but his chin and lower lip were still smeared with blood; the blood combined with the pirate eye patch made him look even more like a Bond villain, but he was my villain, or maybe my henchman.

He smiled down at me and leaned down to offer his cheek for a kiss, which I gave him. “I take it your mouth is hurting too much for a kiss right now.”

“I like dishing out pain, not taking it,” he said with a grin.

“Don't I know it,” I said.

“We can go with Nicky to the hospital so you can talk business,” Sin said. I wasn't sure who the “we” included, and apparently neither were Nathaniel and Magda, because they looked at each other.

Nathaniel said, “I know some of the details of the case already, and it may have something to do with what's happening with Damian.”

“He's part of your triumvirate, I understand,” Magda said. “Stay. I'll go with Sin and Nicky.”

“Thank you,” Nathaniel said.

“It is not often that you ask for something like this. I am glad to see the three of you working things out,” she said, and moved off to go with Nicky.

It was Nathaniel who remembered to ask, “Magda, did you go to Ireland on Harlequin business?”

“No, they were very isolationist for most of their history, and my master, Giacomo, could not pass for one of them.”

I felt stupid once she said it, because Giacomo was the exception to the rule about the Harlequin. He went by the name he'd used as an assassin, but he wasn't a pain in the ass. He had been a Mongol, from what would now be considered Mongolia. He lived there when being in a Mongol horde meant that you rode the steppes, conquering or killing everything you met. If you didn't know his ethnic background you'd still never mistake him for Irish; Chinese maybe, or Korean, or
maybe even from some island in the Pacific, but he definitely looked Asian and not European. He was also almost as broad through the shoulders as Nicky, and it wasn't from weight lifting. Giacomo's basic framework was just that big.

“That makes sense,” Nathaniel said.

“Do you know if any of the Harlequin traveled to Ireland regularly, or at all?” I asked.

“Pierette and her master traveled there more than anyone else that I am aware of.” And Magda said it like that because they were spies, which meant that they didn't all know what the rest of them were doing. Spies mean secrets, and the fewer people who know a secret, the easier it is to keep. Only the Queen of All Darkness had been given all the reports, and when she fell into her centuries of sleep, or hibernation, or Sleeping Beauty curse, or whatever it had been, then they reported to the vampire council. They had given reports to different council members depending on what they were reporting on, which made sense but didn't help us. Pierette hadn't liked us before today's “lesson”; I doubted that watching her friends get beaten up had made her like us better.

“Of course it would be Pierette who knows Ireland better than anyone else; perfect,” I said.

“Do you have another vampire who knows Ireland?” Edward asked on the phone.

“Wereleopard, but who knows if she'll talk to us after we just beat the hell out of her friends?”

“Why did you beat up her friends?” he asked.

“Long story.”

“Order her to tell you, Anita, and she is oath bound to do so,” Magda said.

“You're the queen, Anita; act like it. Demand the information,” Edward said.

It was a little unnerving that I was getting stereo advice from Edward and Magda, but I guess not surprising. They were both very practical most of the time.

I shook my head. “She's part of the world's oldest and maybe best spy ring ever; if she wants to lie to me, she can.”

“You can all control your breathing and heart rate,” Sin said, “but I swear that some of you can control your scent, so it doesn't change when you lie.”

“Some of us can.”

“If we get Pierette alone we can scare her into telling us about Ireland,” Nicky said.

“We must do it before her master wakes for the night, because once Pierrot is with his Pierette she will no longer scare so easily,” Magda said.

“She's probably still in the hospital area holding Scaramouche's hand,” Sin said.

“And the doctor did say I needed to go to the hospital,” Nicky said.

Sin smiled. “Can I help?”

“Can you be scary?” Nicky asked.

Sin seemed to think about it. “Yes, but scary enough to intimidate one of the Harlequin? Probably not. Can I watch the two of you intimidate Pierette?”

Magda clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to stagger him a little. “Come watch; maybe we can teach you how to be scarier.”

“I'm not sure he needs that kind of skill set,” I said.

Nicky gave me a look I couldn't quite read. “It's always good to be scary, Anita; you know that.”

“I don't think that's true in the real world for most people,” I said.

“We don't live in that world and we aren't most people,” he said. I'd have liked to argue with him, but I couldn't.

“If they can learn anything that will help us solve the vampire problem here in Ireland,” Edward said, “let them scare the fuck out of her, Anita.”

“Do you want me to talk to you, or go help them be scary?”

“I heard Nicky's voice, right?”

“Yep.”

“He doesn't need help being scary, and you and I need to start planning your trip to the Emerald Isle.”

Sin came back while the others started toward the far tunnel entrance. “My mouth isn't too sore for a kiss,” he said.

I frowned at him.

“Stop being a hard-ass and just kiss me.”

The comment made me smile, and just like that all my grumpy street cred went out the window. “Hold on for just another minute, Edward.”

“Who's asking for a kiss? I don't recognize the voice.”

“Cynric,” I said.

“My, my, he sounds all grown up.”

“I'm putting you on hold, just so you know.”

“I wasn't going to critique the kiss over the phone, Anita.”

“Putting you on hold now, Edward.” I turned back to Sin, standing so tall, and older just like the deeper voice that had made Edward not recognize him over the phone.

Magda called to him from the hallway. “Nicky says if you're late we start the intimidation without you.”

“I'm coming,” Sin called back. He turned to me and leaned down for his kiss. I went up on tiptoe to meet all that six-foot-plus height halfway. His lips were soft, gentle, but his hands where he gripped my arms weren't. He squeezed just enough for me to feel the strength in his hands, which could throw a football far enough and well enough for colleges to scout him. Some combination of his hands and the kiss made me a little breathless as he pulled away. He grinned at the look on my face, and he knew he'd made my pulse speed up. He was a weretiger; he could taste my heartbeat on his tongue.

He jogged off after the others. He didn't want to miss learning to be scarier.