Crimson Death

“Mention it to Jean-Claude tonight. He’d probably know which of our people might be good at it.”

“You know all our vampires, too, Anita.”

“I can tell you which of them would be the best for security, or law enforcement backup, but I can’t tell you who could dance some of the old routines you perform here at Danse every night.”

“Nathaniel might know, too,” Damian said.

“Yeah, or Jason,” I said.

“I’ll ask them, and could I find you after I shower and change to talk about everything?”

“Text me when you’re done showering and changed. If we’re at a stopping point, I’ll text you back, but if I don’t reply, then we’ll talk an hour before dawn like we planned.”

“Fair enough,” he said, but he still stood there shirtless and looking lost. If I hadn’t been afraid of touching him again, I’d have given him a hug. Since I couldn’t do that, I went for the door. I had a rare night off and a date. There’d been a time when I would have allowed Damian’s issues to derail the whole night, but there was always a fresh emergency, and there always would be. Police work had taught me that, and it had taught me something else: that if I wanted to have a life outside of the blood, death, and scary stuff, I had to fight for it. I had to protect my free time as fiercely as I did anything else in my life, because if I didn’t, then my “life” would be another casualty as surely as any other crime victim.

I kept my metaphysical shields as tight as I could between me and the vampire behind me, because otherwise I’d have felt all the emotions that were making him look lost and I might not have been able to go for the door. I reached for the door, and it crashed open toward me. I jumped backward, pulling my gun as I moved, just automatic when a door opened with that much angry force. If it was someone who’d done it by accident, I’d apologize for scaring them, but I didn’t have to apologize, because it was Cardinale and she hadn’t come to be scared—she’d come to be scary.

In her stilettos she was over six feet tall, all thin bones and angles, the makeup that carved her face into model-perfect beauty floating on the white glow of her skin like water lilies on a pool. The cross inside my blouse was warm. I kept one hand very steady on the gun and used the other to drag the chain up and put the glowing cross on the outside of the silk. It wasn’t glowing bright enough to burn flesh yet, but it could. Holy fire wasn’t always careful what it burned when evil was in the room.

I could see the bones in Cardinale’s skull as she turned to look at me, like shapes half seen under the glow of her flesh. I should have sensed her that deep in her power, so close, which meant I’d been shielding from Damian too hard to sense any other vampire.

“Don’t shoot her, Anita!”

“I’d rather you shoot me than fuck him behind my back.” She yelled it at me, her teeth and fangs moving almost like one of those X-ray short films they used to show in biology class, except this image glowed like light carved into a pretty monster. Her long red hair fanned around her glowing skull like airborne blood frozen in a cloud that would not fall to the floor, her eyes were like blue fire.

“I haven’t touched Damian since you told me you were monogamous.” I was having to squint against the growing glow of my own cross, like having a white star hanging around my neck; soon I’d be blind except for the light. I had to shoot her before that happened, or I wouldn’t be able to see to aim. I hated to kill Cardinale over a jealous misunderstanding, but I’d hate her tearing my throat out even more.

“Tone the power down, Cardinale, or I will shoot you!”

“We were just talking about my illness, Cardinale.”

“You stand there half naked with her bloody nail marks down your back and you were just talking!” She screamed it at him and moved toward him, which was better than her moving toward me.

“I started sweating blood again. I could not reach my back to clean it off.”

The cross around my neck was filling the room with bright white light; it wasn’t actually hot, like flame, and wouldn’t be unless it touched vampiric flesh, or demon, or someone who had given their soul to evil, or . . . hell, it burned if evil with a capital E touched it. The glow of the cross was mingling with the glow of the vampire, so it seemed to be swallowing her to my sight, though I knew that wasn’t it. She’d have to touch the cross to burn. The fact that she wasn’t hiding her eyes from the glow was a bad sign. It meant she was more powerful than I’d given her credit for, or she was so pissed she didn’t care yet.

I couldn’t risk glancing at Damian to see if he was hiding his eyes from the glow; the room was too small, and Cardinale was too close to me. If I was going to have to shoot it would be in the blink of an eye, and glancing anywhere but at the vampire that was menacing me would cost me that blink.

“I give you my word of honor, my heart, that I started to sweat blood again. I took the jacket off so it would not be ruined. My back is covered in the blood I could not reach.”

The cross’s glow was almost complete. I aimed at the glow of her blue eyes, set in the swimming blood of her hair, because that was all I could see past the white light. Take out the brain and all the monsters die.

“Cardinale!” I screamed her name, and my finger started to squeeze the trigger.

3

THE WHITE LIGHT died abruptly like someone had turned a switch. I took my finger off the trigger and pointed the gun in as neutral a direction as I could find. Cardinale stood there with her orange-red hair in careless curls around her shoulders, her blue eyes blinking at me in the careful makeup that made them look like a bright blue sky to match Damian’s perfect summer green. My pulse was in my throat still; I hadn’t even gone to the quiet place in my head where I normally went when I was going to shoot someone. Maybe I’d known she didn’t mean it? Maybe I hadn’t wanted to shoot her? My body felt so full of blood and heartbeat that I was shaking with it, which meant I’d have probably missed the shot anyway. Fuck.