Crimson Death (60 page)

“Evil bitch,” Nicky said low and with feeling. It had to hit some of the issues from his own abuse.

“She is that,” Riley said.

“You're proof, Riley,” Flannery said. “Come to the police station. I'll help you fill out a complaint.”

“My mother and sister are still back there with the evil bitch. I can't go to the police unless I can free my family first.”

“We can't arrest her without a charge.”

“And you can't rescue my family before you arrest her, I know. Don't you think we've thought about going to the human police before?”

“If your family is being held against their will, then that's kidnapping or something, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” Flannery said; his whole attitude had changed once he saw the scars.

“She is inside a fortress that has stood for centuries. You cannot rescue all her hostages before you enter her den, and she will kill them.”

“I'll find out what we can do,” Flannery said.

“No, you must give me your word of honor that you will not tell the other officers.”

“You've reported a crime to me, to all of us, and we all have badges.”

“I did not come to you as U.S. Marshals and Irish Garda. I came to you as a Fairy Doctor, a vampire queen, and Death, because that is what the vampires call you, Marshal Forrester. If I wanted to sign the death warrant for my mother and sister, I would have walked into a Dublin police station years ago.”

Riley finally got Flannery's word of honor that he wouldn't tell any other officers or Gardai but only other Fey. If they could help the Roane, then the Roane would take the help. “I have been too long. I must go,” he said, and he left with our cell phone numbers memorized, but he wouldn't give us a number at which to contact him. He was too afraid that his phone could be taken and my name would be found in the contacts list.

The waitress shooed the men out and finally me, and started mopping the floor, because that was the story she'd told her boss: Someone had made such a mess, she had to mop the floor. She didn't want to talk to us anymore, so we went back to the table. The food was waiting for us. The stew was amazing, served with dark, sweet bread. I had
three glasses of water, along with two Cokes, so I was hydrated and caffeinated. Life was good.

Edward dropped us all at the hotel to meet up with the others, because we all needed to catch a couple of hours of sleep while we could. “The local police have gotten cold feet about you again, Anita. They seem to think if they let you see all their evidence, you'll use it to go off and start killing vampires.”

“Why are they more afraid of my level of violence than yours?” I asked.

“You have a higher kill count.”

I leaned in and whispered, “Only legal kills.”

He smiled and then chuckled. He'd always be ahead of me if we counted illegal kills, but that wasn't something to share with the Irish cops.

“Are you saying they may not let me help tonight?”

“Get some sleep, Anita.”

“Damn it . . . Ted.”

“By the time you've had a nap, your fiancé may be awake for a phone call.”

“Yeah, I'll be talking to Jean-Claude.”

He watched Nathaniel and Dev walk past with some of the luggage. The other guard who had checked us in had just dumped the luggage in one room to be sorted later. “And, Anita, actually sleep.”

“I'm finally exhausted from the time change. Trust me, I'll sleep.”

Nicky went past with more luggage. “Dev is making noises about wanting to bunk with you and Nathaniel for today. I think you'll sleep better if I'm the one with you and Nathaniel.”

“I'll agree with that,” Edward said, smiling.

I frowned at both of them. “I plan on sleeping, nothing else for the next couple of hours.”

“Scout's honor?” Edward asked.

“Yes!”

“Can you give the Scout's honor if you've never been a Boy Scout?” Nicky asked.

“Enough, let's go to bed and sleep.”

In the end it was Dev who bunked with us, because Nathaniel voted that way. We really did sleep, but we put Nathaniel in the middle of Dev and me; that wouldn't have worked if it had been Nicky. We got Damian out of his bag, and he fell into our arms with the limp, heavy roll of a dead body. The new technology could say that vampires' brain activity didn't go down to true dead like that of a corpse, but when you were holding them in your arms they felt dead. Maybe if I hadn't had a job where I saw so many people die, it wouldn't have haunted me so much when it was someone I cared for and it was only temporary for the day. We put Damian into the closet for extra sunlight safety. We had to balance him right and keep shoving in arms and legs to keep him from getting caught in the door. It didn't feel like we were tucking our lover in for the night or the day; it felt like we were hiding a body that we didn't want the maid to find.

I cuddled down on the far side of the bed with Nathaniel tucked in at my back, one arm holding me tight to the front of his body like I was his favorite comfort object. His naked body touched as much of mine as possible like we always slept when we were next to each other. Dev's arm came across Nathaniel so that he cupped his bigger hand around my body, tracing Nathaniel's arm so that they both held me as we began to drift off to sleep.

I dreamed about Riley the Roane, though I kept calling him a Selkie in the dream. It was the word I was more familiar with, but he kept correcting me as we walked down one of the streets of Dublin with the tight, neat brick sidewalks and the rougher stones of the road itself. We were walking in the middle of the road at one point; cars had to stop so they wouldn't hit us. I kept saying, “We need to get out of the street or we'll get hit.”

“It doesn't matter,” he said, and held out his hand to me. I took his hand and the dream changed. We were someplace dark, and he was chained with manacles at his wrists. Even in the dream, I realized they were manacles, not cuffs, because there was no lock, just that metal piece that slipped in and twisted to the side. If you could reach it, you could free yourself, but Riley couldn't.

There was a beam of sunlight coming from somewhere above us
like a natural spotlight that showed his face and upper body. The light was bright enough that I could finally see a clear line between his pupils and the black irises of his eyes. He blinked those large, beautiful and strangely inhuman eyes at me. They were human eyes, but the color echoed his seal, and the dream changed again. I was standing beside the Irish Sea at the crime scene, except I had walked down between the narrow houses and was on the rocky shore. The sea was gray and whitecapped, the air cold and smelling of rain and storm. There were seals in the water, riding like surfers waiting for that perfect wave. They looked at me with huge black eyes. I'd always thought that seals were cute, but when one of them looked up at me through the water, it looked like a drowning victim, dead in the water but moving, still looking at me with huge dead eyes. I stared through the cold water into those dead eyes with the wind whipping my hair across my face as the rain started to fall in cold, wet drops. The wind picked up the water, and suddenly I couldn't tell if it was rain or seawater that was drenching me.

The sea was empty except for the storm. Where had the seals gone? And I was back looking down at Riley chained to the floor of that cave with its beam of sunlight that should have been cheerful but wasn't. There was a hand with a long, thin, slightly curved blade cutting through his clothes and baring the pale skin of his untouched stomach. I thought,
That's not right. Where are the scars?
Then it was like a video that kept jumping from one scene to another—scars, untouched skin, scars, untouched skin. The blade sliced that flawless skin, bright red blood following the line of the blade like a red-ink pen drawing lines across his skin, except it was the “paper” that held the ink, not the “pen.” The crimson ink began to spill out of the lines that she carved in his skin, trickling and chasing down his skin while he told her that she was beautiful, that he wanted her, wanted her so much!

She cut his clothes off him until his body lay pale and strangely beautiful against the dark rock with that splash of sunlight. The cuts on his stomach looked like lines leaking bright red ink to spill down the sides of his body and onto the floor. She caressed his body where he lay limp and small, too afraid and in too much pain to hide that he didn't want her, that he didn't want anyone like this. The video jumped
again. His body was covered in old scars, but this time the knife moved down lower; this time she would not stop.

I tried to scream,
No, don't!
But it was my hand holding the knife covered in his blood. Nathaniel's screams woke me.

I
WASN'T THE
only one who had heard Nathaniel's screams, because Nicky damn near took the door off, before Dev could open it. All the guards tried to be in the room at the same time, but it wasn't big enough. We finally had to decide who to kick out and who to keep. Nathaniel and I had had a version of the same dream, except that where my dream had switched between Riley scarred and Riley getting the wounds the first time, Nathaniel's had switched between Riley getting cut up and Nathaniel being the one chained and tortured. There was another knock, and it took us a second to realize the knock came from the closet door. Dev opened the closet door and Damian half fell out into his arms. I thought at first that Damian had shared our nightmare, but he hadn't dreamed anything. He'd been dead to the world until something about Nathaniel and me freaking out had woken him early.

“I woke in the dark and I didn't know where I was, but I could feel Nathaniel's fear and yours, and . . .” He reached out to us through the crowd of too many bodies in too small a space. Nathaniel went to that outstretched hand, and the moment they touched, I couldn't taste my pulse on my tongue anymore. Even letting Nicky hold me with all that strength hadn't calmed me this much, so I pushed away from him and went for them. I took Damian's other hand and was calmer yet, but when Nathaniel's other hand was in mine so I was touching both of them at the same time, I was almost eerily calm. It was like on the plane flying to Ireland, calm beyond all reason.

“How do they do that for you?” Dev asked.

Nathaniel turned to him. “I can help Damian do this, but I couldn't help us with Flannery's aunt and her mind games.”

“We all have our talents,” I said, my voice calm, because with the two men holding me, I was about as calm as I got outside of special circumstances.

“But mine never seem to be exactly what you need,” Dev said.

“Your talents were exactly what I needed in the first pub with the Fey.”

He smiled for me, but not like he believed it. Normally I'd have tried to figure out how to make him feel better, but confusing relationship issues would have to wait. “Riley said that she would kill his sister and mother if she found out what he'd done.”

Nathaniel shook his head. “No, she's going to cut him again and this time she won't stop.” Even with the three of us held in that unnatural calm, the fear of that shared nightmare thrilled through us and into Damian. He'd been dead to the world while we dreamed, but now he saw what we'd seen and felt, and it was pretty awful even secondhand.

“She'd never touched Riley when I left, but it's been five years. I guess he's old enough for her now,” Damian said, his hands clutching ours so tight, it almost hurt.

“Do you know him personally?” I asked.

“I know most of the Roane around her, at least by sight.”

“Do you have a phone number for Riley? We need to warn him.”

“It was just a nightmare,” Dev said.

“No,” Damian said, “I never had a number for him. He was a teenager, eighteen or nineteen at most. His mother helps take care of the fortress, so Riley was just Isabel's son.”

“Neither of you does dream magic,” Kaazim said. “Could you both be panicking over a shared nightmare?”

We both shook our heads. “I wish, but no, somehow she was in our dreams, or we were in hers,” I said.

Nathaniel looked at me, his eyes as pale as I'd ever seen them, lavender gray. “She knows that we saw his scars, Anita.”

“Yeah, because when she showed us the nightmare, I wondered where his scars were.”

“I wondered the same thing, Anita. It was like we were remembering him from today, but it was mixed up with her memory of hurting him.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“We have to warn him,” Nathaniel said.

“How? He has our phone numbers, but we don't have his.”

“Flannery's aunt might know how to contact him,” Dev said.

“Do you have a number for his mother?” I asked Damian.

“No, there's no phone at the castle, and She-Who-Made-Me doesn't like cell phones. She doesn't like most of the new technology.”

I realized that I was still nude, so were Nathaniel and Dev, but their nudity didn't bother me. I squeezed Damian's and Nathaniel's hands once more for luck and let go so I could start getting dressed. The calmness that had been keeping my emotions in check faded when I stopped touching them. I'd known it would, but it was still a shock to taste my pulse in my throat again. It was as if the calmness had stopped the panic but not helped me process it. Just one minute calm, and the next I was back to having woken from a gruesome nightmare. The calm that the three of us shared didn't allow us to skip the bad stuff; it merely delayed us having to deal with it.

Nathaniel clutched at Damian and reached for me again. “I love you, but we have to get dressed and find him before she does.”

“Riley said that he was in Dublin for work, but that the Wicked Bitch isn't here. We'll find him,” Nicky said.

“If she sends one of the other Roane into the town to call Riley home, he will have to go to her,” Damian said.

“Why does he have to go?” Dev asked.

“Because his mother and his sister are both still at the castle with She-Who-Made-Me.”

“She uses family members as hostages to make sure the Selkie who travel outside for work obey her,” I said.

“Riley's sister can't be more than sixteen now. She was just a little girl when I left.”

“This is not your fault, Damian,” I said. I had underwear and a bra on, but I was struggling with the jeans. I'd picked out a pair of date jeans, not work jeans. Skinny date jeans weren't good for wearing weapons. I stripped the jeans off and started pulling clothes out of my open suitcase.

“Anita, Anita, let me help,” Nathaniel said, and knelt beside me to reach into the part that was still packed and magically got out a pair of black tactical pants and a fresh T-shirt. He'd packed the suitcase, so he knew where everything was; even if I had packed it, I still wouldn't have remembered it all.

He got his own clothes out before he stood back up. I had the pants on by the time he'd chosen his outfit.

Nicky turned to Dev. “If you're coming with us, get dressed fast.”

“Do I have time to just change into fresh clothes?” Damian asked.

“I don't know. Do you?” Nicky asked.

Damian stripped off his shirt in one smooth motion and went for his own suitcase.

“Why doesn't someone call Flannery and ask if his aunt Nim knows how to contact Riley?” Dev asked.

I stopped in my frantic scramble for clothes. “That was smart, but I don't have a number for him either.”

“I'll call Edward,” Nicky said.

“Since when do you have his cell phone?” I asked.

Nicky just smiled at me and started to punch in buttons on his phone.

Dev started getting dressed. I had everything on but my boots and weapons. He'd never be dressed in time to go with us.

Dev's voice was muffled as he pulled his shirt on over his head and asked, “Where are we going if we don't know where Riley is now?”

“Girlfriend's work,” I said as I got my first gun settled on my belt.

Nicky got off the phone. “Edward is calling Nolan to contact Flannery.”

“Great,” I said.

Damian was dressed in fresh clothes, including a coat that I'd never seen before and a pair of nice but utilitarian-looking boots. His jeans were tucked into the boots. His crimson hair fell loose around the
shoulders of the warm, weather-resistant coat so that he looked like a male model in an outdoorsy-clothes commercial. The clothes were right, but he was too pretty to actually hike in them.

Nicky waved his hand in front of my face. It startled me. “Do you have all the weapons you need?”

“Sorry. It's not like me to get that distracted in an emergency.” I checked the two wrist-sheath knives with their high silver content and the big blade down my spine in its custom-made holster, which attached to the shoulder rig. It held mostly extra ammo now, and it attached to the gun belt where my main handgun sat in an inner pants holster. If I could have figured out a different way to carry the big knife, I'd have gotten rid of the custom-made shoulder holster, but it was great for extra ammo and a smaller backup gun. I put the AR-15 on its tactical sling across my body over the T-shirt and sweatshirt I was going to wear under my coat. I'd have to leave the coat unfastened to be able to get to the AR, but I couldn't open-carry, not in Ireland. Hell, back home in the States, it would have freaked people out, even with the words
U.S. Marshal
emblazoned on the back of my Windbreaker.

I was already missing my Bantam shotgun, which was back in the armory at Nolan's compound along with a few other things, but there was just no way to keep all our dangerous stuff at the hotel. They'd offer you a safe if you had expensive jewelry, but I'd never seen a hotel, no matter how nice, that offered you a secure weapon locker. It was always a problem when traveling for business.

My phone rang and it was Edward's ringtone, so I picked up. “Wait for Nolan's people to get there before you go out, Anita.”

“We're big boys and girls. I don't think we need to wait for a babysitter.”

“You don't have Irish credentials, and neither do I. We need someone with us who has credentials. That's part of the deal I made for all of you when you came into the country, remember?”

“I remember something vague about Nolan's people being with us when we were out in the city.”

“I won't make you wait for me, but don't leave the hotel without at least one of Nolan's people with you. Promise me, Anita.”

“Damn it, Edward, did Flannery have a way of contacting Riley?”

“Flannery is trying to get hold of his aunt now.”

“Then we need to get to the restaurant before his girlfriend is off shift for the day.”

“I know that, Anita.”

“What's the worst that could happen if we get caught in Dublin without proper ID?” I asked.

“You could be deported or even jailed if you get the wrong Garda and the wrong judge.”

Oh. “Okay, good point. How long until Nolan's people arrive, and where the hell are you that someone else will get to the hotel first?”

“I'm trying to convince the police that you won't start slaughtering people in the streets and you really will be useful to the investigation.”

“I thought we'd settled all that before I got on the plane.”

“So did I,” he said, and he sounded tired and frustrated, and underneath that was anger. Eventually, if they kept pushing him, they'd get to his anger and stay there.

Nicky's phone rang. He listened and then hung up. “Donahue and Brennan are downstairs to escort us where we need to go.”

“How did they get your number?”

“I told Edward to give it to whoever needed it.”

“Good thinking.” I looked around the room. Everyone looked dressed and ready to go. Jake, Kaazim, Ethan, and Domino were waiting out in the hallway for us. Fortune stuck her head out of her room long enough to kiss Nathaniel and me good-bye, and then she went back to sleep. She had Echo in her room still waiting for nightfall. She couldn't leave Echo unprotected, and we didn't need the whole crew for this. Magda and Socrates were still at Nolan's compound trying to make friends with the rest of his people. After what she'd done to one of their new superstrong cells, I really hoped Nolan had a plan B.

Donnie met us in the lobby, smiling. Brennan, a lot less happy, was behind her. Honestly, I was surprised to see him, but I did my best to just take it in stride. Apparently, medical had cleared him, and Nolan thought he could handle the assignment. “Forrester says you need an escort,” he said.

“Actually, he said
babysitter
,” Donnie said, grinning.

“I appreciate you keeping us legal,” I said, and kept walking toward the door. They fell in behind and to the side of me.

“What's the emergency?” she asked.

“We may have inadvertently let the bad guy know we were contacted by a local today.” Jake and Kaazim did the bodyguard thing at the door, checking for safety and holding the door for me.

“Unless you know something we don't, we don't know who the villain of the piece is yet,” Brennan said.

“Let me rephrase, then: the suspected bad guy.”

“Who do you suspect?” he asked.

“Where are you parked, and will it hold all of us?” I asked.

“Not far and yes,” Donnie said.

“Lead us to the car.”

“You do know that you don't outrank us, right?” Brennan said.

Donnie went to the left and kept walking. We followed her with Brennan keeping up, but not happy about it. “Are you deliberately ignoring my questions?” he asked.

“I'll answer them in the car on the way, Brennan, but I'd really like to find our local informant before he ends up tortured and killed.”

“Tortured and killed? What are you talking about, Blake? You're here to help us with our vampire problem, not to get involved in another crime.”

“I'm hoping to stop another crime from happening—if that's okay with you?” I walked past him with Nicky at my back. Brennan stopped asking questions and just caught up with Donnie. I fought the urge to start jogging down the sidewalk. We didn't need to attract that much attention yet. It was still daylight. Riley would probably be safe until nightfall. Of course, Damian was awake already, and about the time I had decided to jog, Donnie had stopped at a van. I could save the running for later.