Crimson Death

Flannery nodded, solemn, almost sad. “Here in the countryside the land is still alive in the way it’s always been, but something is wrong in Dublin. Parts of the city are losing their . . . for lack of a better word, magic.”

“Do your friends know what’s happening?” I asked.

“No, only that unnatural death is spreading through the city. Corpses become part of the earth here, Marshal. They do not rise and walk as the undead.”

“They do now,” I said.

He nodded.

“That’s why you didn’t want Anita to come over, because you didn’t want to bring more death magic here,” Edward said.

“Yes, and if she had felt like the other one that we killed elsewhere, I’d have done everything in my power to send her back on the next plane. We don’t need more death here, Marshal Forrester.”

“What if the only way to stop the vampires from spreading is to kill them?” I asked.

Flannery looked solemn, but said, “Whatever is happening in the city, I don’t want it to spread further. If it’s not stopped, then Ireland will cease to be Ireland.”

“Let’s start with Anita looking over the crime scene photos and forensics,” Edward said.

“You really think I’m going to see something you missed?”

“You’re the only one I trust to know more about the undead than I do.”

“That’s high praise,” I said.

“I’m not a necromancer, and I’m not about to marry the head vampire of America. I also don’t have another vampire at my feet in a bag who will wake up and answer questions for the police.”

“Your intimate knowledge of the vampires was a point in your favor for being involved in this investigation, Marshal Blake,” Flannery said.

“And a point against you,” Nolan said.

“I know, I know. How can I keep being the scourge of vampirekind if I’m sleeping with the enemy?”

“Something like that,” Flannery said, trying to take the sting out of it with a smile.

“Funny how so many people hate the fact that I’m . . . intimate with the monsters, but they’re all willing to have me use that intimate knowledge to help their asses out of trouble.” It came out a little more bitter than I’d planned, but I really was tired of it.

“I’m sorry for the hypocrisy,” Flannery said.

“Me, too.”

“I think my friends will like your magic, Blake. They don’t share the same prejudices as humans.”

“No, they have their own,” Nolan said.

I expected Flannery to argue the point, but he didn’t. He just let it go. Truth is truth, I guess, and the truth is everyone everywhere is prejudiced about something. Why should the Fey be any different?

48

WHERE DO YOU go to meet Fey in Dublin, Ireland? A pub, of course. Somewhere in the back of my head I was wanting to see Irish countryside, maybe a moor, or a bog, or something that didn’t look like a street in most older cities. Yeah, Dublin is centuries older than our entire country, but that just meant the streets were narrower and they reminded me of parts of New York and Boston, except different. Dublin was different and not like any city I’d been in before, but it wasn’t different enough to conquer all my movie, book, anthropology, and folklore dreams of Ireland. So when Flannery walked us up to a small, narrow-fronted pub, I had to fight off my disappointment. I wanted some greenery, damn it.

Nathaniel was with me, Damian still strapped to his back. Flannery had been very particular about who was invited to this little shindig. He had picked out all the people that I was metaphysically connected to, as in all my animals to call. I didn’t like that he had been able to pick them out of the group so easily, but it boded well for his magic. If he hadn’t been able to pick them out, I’d have thought less of his mystical abilities; sometimes there was just no satisfying me.

Edward had liked it a lot less than I had, because he and Nolan had to stay with the car. Jake and Kaazim stayed with the car, too. The rest of my people went on to the hotel to check us in, but they, like Edward, wanted to be nearby just in case. I didn’t argue; they were supposed to be my bodyguards, which meant I needed to let them do their jobs until we stepped inside the police station. Once inside there, we’d renegotiate, but that was later. Right now we were inside a pub.

It was like a lot of older bars with the entryway a little raised so that you stood exposed in the dark atmosphere, waiting for your eyes to adjust, while everyone else in the bar could see you perfectly. I’d seen it in so many older bars that I suspected it had a purpose other than making me feel insanely exposed. Maybe it gave anyone in the bar who wanted to duck out the back time to run and hide? It always made me feel like a target, but maybe that was just me.

Flannery walked down the few shallow steps as if he owned the place. He didn’t feel like a target. He led us to the long, curving sweep of the bar, which was made of dark, well-varnished wood that gleamed in the low light. He didn’t make us sit at the bar, thank goodness. Sitting with my back to an entire room of strangers just didn’t work for me. Flannery got the attention of the bartender and motioned to some empty tables farther into the room. The bartender nodded an acknowledgment and went back to serving the men at the bar. I couldn’t remember what time it was there, but they seemed busy, even though it felt early in the day to me. Hello, jet lag.

My eyes had adjusted, so I could see the people at the tables look at us as we followed Flannery through the big open room. Most of the tables were full, but there was a lot more room between tables than I was used to seeing in bars back home. They weren’t trying to pack in as many customers as possible, which seemed like bad business, but it wasn’t my pub or my area of expertise. I actually liked the more open seating plan, but it seemed odd all the same. The looks as we passed between the tables were a little odd, too. It wasn’t the normal way people look at a girl or even at strangers; it was almost hostile. I tried to see our group from an outsider’s perspective. Seven tall, athletic-looking men and me. Even Flannery moved like someone who’d had training. It’s hard to explain, but if you know what you’re looking for, you can usually spot a police officer, soldier, or just someone who is comfortable with organized violence. Hell, sometimes you can spot people comfortable with disorganized violence. Either way, if you know what you’re looking at, having this many of us in your local pub might make you unhappy. Of course, most civilians wouldn’t see the potential in all of us, but the looks we were getting from the tables said that most of these men did. And it was mostly men; the waitress running food out to the tables and I seemed to be the only women in the place. In St. Louis, that would have been unusual, but it was my first trip to Dublin, so I didn’t know if maybe the Irishwomen didn’t like this pub. Or maybe there was something else going on and the male customers didn’t want women in the way.