Crimson Death

“After you fled to the New World, Belle had less use for me. She could not use me to torment you anymore.”

“We have been through this,” Jean-Claude said, his voice very serious and very unhappy, but his arms tightened around us, so that we both curled an arm around his waist to let us be as close as he seemed to want. He could look and sound calm, justified, but he didn’t feel it.

“I am not saying you were to blame. I am merely explaining that she was less careful of me after she could not use me against you.”

“You know I am sorry for everything that happened between us back then.”

“I know, and I am sorry that I blamed you for so many years, but that is beside the point tonight, Jean-Claude. I was not traded for Damian for a few hours a night as you and I were, but given to her for months. Damian was there while I was her prisoner.”

“Neither of you has ever spoken of this to me.”

“We vowed we would not speak of it even to each other. Do you remember how frightening she was when we were with her for only a few hours at a time in Belle’s court?”

Jean-Claude lowered his face against Nathaniel’s hair, as if he were smelling the vanilla of his hair to comfort himself. I did it sometimes, too. “That I remember those terrible hours is why I bargained for Damian’s freedom from her and brought him here.” He almost managed to keep his voice even—almost.

“Then imagine being with her for months.”

Jean-Claude just shook his head. “I cannot. I do not wish to dwell on the horrors that did not happen to me, for there are enough that did.”

“Three months was my sentence to serve as part of her entourage in Ireland. I was warned that I might die at my first dawn there and not wake again. That frightened me until I had been there a few weeks, and then I began to half-hope I would not wake again.”

“We’ve shared some of Damian’s memories, and they’re pretty terrible, but wait. . . . Why wouldn’t you wake at dusk? Did they tell you that just to scare you?” I asked.

“Not every vampire that traveled to Ireland woke the first night they slept there. No one knows why, but it’s as if the land itself is not friendly to our kind.”

“People keep telling me that my necromancy may not work in Ireland, or it’s not supposed to, and that vampirism isn’t as contagious there.”

“I do not know about zombies. If anyone could call them from the grave there, it would be you, but they are right about vampires. Even if you give the three bites over the three different nights and drain them dry on the third, it does not guarantee they will rise as one of us. I saw half a dozen humans who should have risen as vampires there that did not.”

“Did their bodies start to rot?” I asked.

He had to think about that for a minute. “I know that she kept two of the bodies for quite some time and they did rot. The others were discarded sooner.”

“Why did she keep the bodies until they rotted?” I asked.

The look on his face was all for Jean-Claude, as if the look should be enough without words. It wasn’t for me. “What are you trying to tell each other?”

“Did she hope that the bodies would rise as something?” Jean-Claude asked.

“One of the reasons she wanted me, other than the obvious one, was to have a vampire that wasn’t of her making. She had hoped that I would be able to make more vampires for her, but it worked no better for me than it did for her own vampires.”

“Did you ever see her try to bring over a vampire herself?” I asked.

“I did. She was able to create one of us, but the second one did not rise for her any more than the others.”

“You know, you being in Ireland might have been good information for Damian to share with me.”

“He and I were never friends, but we vowed that each of us would tell our halves of the story but not mention the other if we ever spoke of it at all.”

Nathaniel said, “I think Damian’s fighting his own fears so hard that he’s not thinking clearly about what information might be helpful to you and the police.”

I glanced at him and felt the beginnings of my irritation fall away. If Asher was this scared of the Wicked Bitch of Ireland, then Damian must have been petrified. “He’s hiding it really well then, even metaphysically,” I said.

“He’s being very brave,” Nathaniel said.

“Yeah, he is,” I said. I added, Damn it, to myself.

“So are we risking Echo and Giacomo by taking them to Ireland?” Nathaniel asked.

“Shit,” I said.

“I do not believe so,” Jean-Claude said.

“How do we know they’ll be okay?”

“The reason I was at risk was that I was not a master vampire,” Asher said, “but the Harlequin are all masters who gave up their rights to territories of their own to become permanently part of the royal guard.”

“Of course they are,” I said. “They all have animals to call, and you only get that as a master.” I wanted to slap my forehead in a “coulda had a V8” moment.

“Except for Damian, you are taking only masters,” Jean-Claude said.

“Okay, good to know I’m not risking anyone else like that.”

“But if I understand what is happening, there is a plague of vampires in Ireland.”

“There’s a bunch of them in Dublin, and more people coming up missing every night.”