Crimson Death (79 page)

S
HE 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. It 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.”

“Fine.” I took his arm with one hand and put the other hand inside my pocket, where the gun was weighing it down. The gun made me feel better, though I admit it was tempting with him on my arm to just turn and kill him where he stood. If Nathaniel hadn't been with me, I might have, but he was, and we were outside. We were escaping. I'd kill him later.

The triplets led us down the grassy headland, across a parking lot that still had plenty of cars in it, and toward the town that lay spread out before us. It was still daylight and the only daywalking vampires behind us were Moroven and Damian. The Roane were the greatest danger as long as the sun was up. I felt like I had a target between my shoulder blades, and it took everything I had not to look back, but with my hood up, I actually did blend in. There were even a couple of other women with skirts as short as mine, though they were wearing tights under theirs. My legs were still so cold that I could barely feel them. It was like I'd been able to ignore the cold until I got outside in the wind. Nathaniel's new haircut helped us blend in, but every time I saw him without all his hair it was like a little punch in the gut. He'd wiped most of the blood that was visible off on a cloth that Rodina had given him, and the sweatshirt hid the rest. He was much better at playacting
than I was, so they looked much more like a couple than Rodrigo and I did. Rodrigo was probably better at pretending to be a couple, but he was worried what I'd do if he did. Ru had separated from us to walk ahead through the tourists. I'd catch a glimpse of him here and there, which probably meant he wasn't hiding that hard from us.

We were crossing a stone bridge over a river that flowed into the sea. It was all really pretty, but it was moments from full dark. We needed cover before that happened. “We need to not be out in the open,” I said.

Rodina leaned in against Nathaniel, smiling as if I'd said the best thing. “We'll head for one of the churches that will keep the vampires out.”

“What about the Roanes?” I asked.

“You and your men have killed four of them already today.”

“How many more are there here?” I asked.

“Dozens,” she said, still smiling.

“We need a plan,” I said.

“Where're Dev and Edward?” Nathaniel asked.

He was right. I wasn't thinking clearly. I didn't know what was wrong with me, and then I did. Damian was fighting to stay with us, and not let her take him again, but he had all three of them touching his skin: Moroven, Keegan, and Roarke. He could fight off one of them, even two, but three . . . It was like they were trying to steal a piece of us. I stumbled and had to clutch at Rodrigo. “What's wrong?” he asked.

Nathaniel answered, “Damian.” He'd thrown his arms around Rodina as if he were hugging her, which looked less suspicious than me clutching at just Rodrigo's arm. Then Damian was gone, vanished from my mind, my heart. Moroven had captured him again. Damn it!

Rodrigo said, “Are you all right?” He was holding me around the waist; apparently I was closer to falling down than I'd realized. My skirt was not long enough for around-the-waist holding. He helped me stand up and pull everything back into place.

“She's got Damian again,” I said.

Ru suddenly appeared beside us. “We need to keep moving.”

He was right. Nathaniel asked, “Did she take Damian over again because she knows what we've done or just because?”

I shook my head. “I don't know.”

“There's no general alarm yet,” Rodina said.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“We aren't running,” she said.

“Good point,” I said.

We were walking like two ordinary couples with Ru as our third wheel on yet another quiet, picturesque street. There was a line of boats bobbing in the water along the quay with a blue building on the other side of the road that was apparently a seafood restaurant and a shop called the Lighthouse and the Fishman, respectively. There was fresh Irish seafood, or so the signs said. We walked without running. Rodina managed to giggle at something Nathaniel said.

Rodrigo said, “Do you want me to do the girlish laughter, while you pretend to be clever?”

I fought not to glare at him, which would have ruined the whole “touristy couple” camouflage. The best I could do was lean in and say, “Fuck you.”

He smiled as if I'd said something wonderful. I actually saw an older couple across the street smile at him. I lowered my face against his shoulder to hide the fact that my expression didn't match. It made it look like I was cuddling against him. Great.

Ru had stopped walking and was staring down into the dark water. There was a seal in the dark water; you could just see it. It stared up at us with huge black eyes that reminded me of Roarke's, except under the water like this it looked like a drowning victim. I whispered against Rodrigo's neck, “Is it just a seal?”

“When they're in seal form, you can't always tell them apart,” he whispered back.

Ru knelt by the water and made soft sounds somewhere between growls, grunts, and purrs. The seal ducked underwater and vanished. Ru got to his feet fast. “That wasn't a seal.” He was backing away from the water.

“Fuck,” Rodina said. She let go of Nathaniel's hand and faced the water.

“What do we do?” Nathaniel asked.

The water, which had been quietly sloshing between the boats, began to boil with whitecaps, but there was nothing visible agitating the water. “Run!” Rodina said, and grabbed Nathaniel by the arm and started down the street. The rest of us followed. We got stared at by the few people still on the quiet street, but it didn't matter anymore. It was too late to pretend. The seals threw themselves out of the water onto the street behind us. I saw one shiver, and it stood up a man, fully clothed and pointing at us. Fuck!

Rodrigo dragged me around the side of a building. In the distance, I saw a church. It would keep out the vampires when it got dark, but it wouldn't keep out the Selkies now.

We had to scramble over a wall to get into the churchyard, and suddenly we were surrounded by tombstones. It was a graveyard. Nathaniel grabbed my arm. “Raise the dead. Raise zombies, Anita.”

“I'm not sure zombies will rise here.”

“Try,” he said.

“I'd rather not die with our new queen, not just yet,” Rodina said. “Try.”

“If they find us, we'll hold them off,” Rodrigo said.

“We are your Brides now, Anita Blake. We must keep you safe and happy,” Ru said, and he moved into the darkness, vanishing into the shadows as if by magic.

Rodina moved the two of us into the shadows on the edge of the gravestones. “Do what only you can do, Anita. We'll do what we are good at and protect our queen.”

“We need a knife,” Nathaniel said.

I'd thought she'd dig out the blade we'd used to kill the Roane in the Black Castle, but she handed me a clean blade from a sheath at her side. “And the one we used in the castle,” I said.