Crimson Death

“Let your fear of what happened paint everyone involved with the same issues. It would break my heart if you treated me that way.”

I stared into that handsome face and didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t think I’d deal as well with it as they do.”

“What does that mean?” And my voice was still strident with the first stirrings of anger, because it would help chase away the fear.

“It means don’t blame me, or Damian, when we got rolled, too.”

“But you remember. If you’d been rolled, you wouldn’t remember.”

“I don’t know why I remember, but you and Damian said yes to everything we did. I hate the idea that you don’t remember saying yes, and hope like hell that Damian remembers later.”

I glanced at the vampire lying broken-looking in the bed. “Can you change his position? He looks . . . broken.”

“Can it really hurt him to lie like that?” he asked.

“No, but it just looks uncomfortable.”

Nathaniel didn’t argue, just climbed back onto the bed and moved the vampire until he was lying in a more normal sleeping position. His body moved as only the dead can, boneless and hard to keep where you put it, so that the head kept lolling to one side at that broken-neck angle. Nathaniel finally had to use the pillows to prop the vampire’s head at an angle that made me happier.

“Let’s go find Jean-Claude; he should be awake by now,” I said.

“You’ll want to at least finger-comb your hair,” he said, smiling.

I frowned at him. “Do you really think I care how my hair looks right now?”

“No, but you might if you look in the mirror.”

I half-smiled and shook my head. “For you to keep insisting, it must be bad.”

“Pretty bad. I think we all forgot to put hair-care products and conditioner on after we finished the shower part.”

“You never forget hair-care products,” I said.

He frowned. “True.”

“Are you sure you remember everything that happened?” I asked.

“I thought I did, but now I’m not sure.”

I reached up and touched my hair, but just feeling it didn’t seem so bad. I started to walk to the bathroom, but Nathaniel followed me, and I had to stop him. “I don’t want to be in the bathroom with anyone but me right now, Nathaniel.”

He looked so sad.

“I’m sorry, Nathaniel, but until we figure out what just happened I need a little space.”

“Don’t pull away, Anita.”

“I want some privacy in the bathroom. I don’t think that’s asking too much,” I said.

He nodded and let me walk away alone, but his shoulders slumped forward, every line of him sadder than a few seconds ago. I wanted to run and hug him close, erase all the sadness from him, but I had a right to go to the bathroom alone, damn it. I had a right to a little privacy, a little space, even with him.

I closed the door, but standing there in the room where I’d lost time wasn’t good. I suddenly wanted out of the room as much as I’d wanted out of the bed. I opened the door and came to stand outside, breathing hard.

“Anita, are you okay? Did something happen in the room just now?”

I shook my head. “Going to leave the door open, okay?”

“Okay, I won’t try to come in while you’re in there.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I don’t know what’s wrong, but I don’t want to make it worse,” he said.

“I know you don’t.” I moved back into the bathroom to look in the mirror and instantly understood why Nathaniel had said something. My curls didn’t always look great after I slept on them wet, but this was spectacularly bad, even for me. It looked like I had lopsided horns, along with other odd protuberances in between. Just sleeping on my hair wet wouldn’t do this; it was like we’d put in shampoo and just left it in, or gotten crazed with hair-care products but never smoothed the hair into place. Once I saw my hair, I knew that Nathaniel didn’t remember everything either. He’d never have let me sleep with this much stuff in my hair without helping me neaten it. Nathaniel thought he remembered the entire thing, but he didn’t.

I did my best to splash water on it and try to help matters, but I finally let Nathaniel in to try to help me. He finally ended by braiding it close to my head with a promise to help me wash it out later. He had to braid his own hair, too. We’d both have to start over with our hair later, but there was no way I was getting back into the shower until I’d spoken with Jean-Claude. I needed to know who had rolled us, and why. Some older vampires will fuck with you just to fuck with you, but most of them have a purpose if they torment you; call it sadism with a reason. I needed to know that reason, and Jean-Claude needed to know there was still someone big and bad enough to roll me that thoroughly, because if they could do that without alerting him to it, then they were serious bad-asses. Every time we destroyed the great evil, another one seemed to rise up in its place like an evil version of “Nature abhors a vacuum.” It was almost like the Mother of All Darkness had kept the other bad vampires in line, and now that she was gone, they were trying their supervillain wings out. I was getting real tired of being the target du jour for them.

15

“MA PETITE, I do not believe that it is an outside force that has cost you time.”

“Then what was it?” I demanded, as I paced the room. We were back in his bedroom but had to sit in the chairs around the faux fireplace, because the bed where he usually liked to lounge had been reduced to nothing but the bed frame. The custom-made mattress and bed frame were ruined by the blood that Damian had shed. The cleanup crew that was made up of our own people wouldn’t guarantee that they could fix it. It would take weeks or even months to get a custom replacement.