"Are you offering to feed the ardeur for me?" Jean-Claude asked.
"I'd like to know for myself if it's as amazing a fuck as the stories claim," she said.
He laughed, an abrupt, pleased sound. She'd do fine.
She looked past Jean-Claude to Richard and said, "You are both very different people. If we were one-on-one, I'd approach you both very differently, so I will want a little guidance as to how to be with you both."
He looked at her for a long, serious moment and then said, "We can do that."
"Ma petite, I will close the links down low between us, if you will do the same on your end?" Jean-Claude asked.
"We will." And we did. I left them to their blood and sex, and they left us to ours.
55
THERE WAS A knock on the van door. I called, "Who is it?"
"It's Domino. Auntie Nim's friend Slane is here with the information we wanted."
Dev said, "You go. I'll feed Damian, if he's okay with that."
I could feel that Damian wanted to sink his fangs into Nathaniel and me more, but a lot of the heat had dissipated. I was pretty sure it was in St. Louis with Richard, Jean-Claude, and Angel. I was careful not to think too hard about that, just in case it reopened the marks too wide between us. I did not want to suddenly be in their heads in the middle of sex, or worse yet in the middle of Jean-Claude feeding the ardeur for both of us.
"If you let me capture you with my gaze, it won't hurt. It will just feel good," Damian said.
"I'm all for feeling good, but now that you've come to the Dark Side, I'm sure you could make it feel even better."
"Dev," I said.
He grinned at me.
"I'll stay and make sure that he behaves," Nicky said.
"I plan on being the perfect gentleman," Damian said.
"I wasn't talking about you," Nicky said.
Nathaniel and I left them to it, and got out of the van into a fresh bout of drizzling rain. Slane had his hat pulled down low against the wet; with the long hair, his puppy dog ears were completely hidden. "My mistress is impressed with the effort that you have put into searching for the missing Roane and his lady."
"I'm glad to hear that, but do you know where they are?"
"Nay, but if there comes a time when we could lend a hand to you and yours, we will."
I looked at him for a second. "That's great, but I'm a little confused. I thought you had information that would help us find the Roane and his girlfriend."
"No, but there is a Roane who has come forward. He would meet with you."
"After what happened to Riley, I'm not sure that's a good idea," I said.
"He understands the danger, but he wishes to talk to you and especially the red-haired vampire you have brought back with you."
"Why does he want to talk especially to Damian?"
"He knew the vampire before he left Ireland."
"Okay. Where do we meet him and how do we keep him from being disappeared on us like the last Roane?"
"We will use our magic to keep him hidden. Young Riley should not have tried to sneak behind his master's back without magic to hide him from her eyes."
"I understood that Nim and all of you wouldn't have anything to do with the Roane, because you didn't want to be on the Wicked Bitch's shit list."
"I'm not sure I understand what that means."
Nathaniel said, "Being on someone's shit list means they're mad at you and hold a grudge."
"Then yes, we did not want to be on the shit list."
"What changed your mind?" I asked.
"You have shamed us, and not much will do that," he said with a smile, but his eyes didn't look happy.
I wasn't sure if I was supposed to apologize for making them feel bad or celebrate that they were going to help the Selkies now. We seemed to be ahead, so I just said, "Where and when is the meeting?"
"Now and not far."
"How did you know that Damian was awake for the day? Most vampires wouldn't be."
"Our magic is fading here in Dublin, but we still have our ways."
"Is that a polite way of telling me you won't answer the question?"
He looked surprised. "I gave you an answer."
I had a moment of wanting Flannery here to do cultural translation, but just let it go. I might ask him later. Right now I'd make sure our vampire had finished his snack, and then we'd go meet the new Roane. I hoped this one had better luck afterward than Riley had.
56
THE FIRST MEETING had seemed pretty secret to me, and yet Riley and his girlfriend were both missing. This time we met in a churchyard at the edge of an ancient-looking cemetery. Compared to last time, it was out in the damn open, and that had gotten two people kidnapped. I didn't understand why we were meeting here until Damian hesitated at the edge of the stone wall. He had the hood on his coat up, his hands plunged into the pockets, sunglasses back in place. Honestly, with the hood up, there was almost none of him in the sunlight.
"I can't step on holy ground," Damian said.
I had a "duh" moment. "Crap, of course you can't. Some vampire expert I am."
He smiled. "Trust me, I won't forget that stepping on holy ground could make me burst into flames."
"Wait. I've had vampires with me in graveyards before, and they didn't burst into flame."
"This is a graveyard inside a church wall. It's potentially part of the church itself, and I can't enter a church."
Nathaniel said, "You're not sure if you can step on the grass inside the wall or not, are you?"
"No, but it's not worth the risk to me."
I hugged him and said, "Totally not worth it. You stay here, and I'll go find our mystery guest."
Slane watched us waiting on the other side of the little metal gate, and I asked him, "Why did you choose this location when you knew we had a vampire with us?"
"I did not choose it," he said, which answered and didn't answer the question all at the same time. Nathaniel stayed with Damian, along with Donnie and Brennan, at Slane's request: "Humans make some of us nervous."
It was interesting that none of the rest of us counted as human. Not bad or good, just interesting. Dev was happy to stay with Nathaniel and Damian. Nicky went where I went, but after that, everyone let Jake be senior guard and send himself and Kaazim with me, while everyone else waited outside the wall with our nervous vampire.
Slane left us waiting among the weathered tombstones, while he checked that there was no one inside the church that we'd want to avoid. I was right there waiting on the edge of the graves, and I just couldn't help myself. I lowered my shields just a little, and there was nothing. It was like standing in the middle of a meadow or a garden. There was no sense of the dead under the ground. It was just living ground. Had the bodies been moved but the grave markers left in place? That happened in the States sometimes. Hell, in St. Louis, if a company had permission to build on an old graveyard, they only had to move a spadeful of dirt from each grave and the tombstones, but weren't forced to move the actual bodies. Was that what had happened here?
Nicky leaned in and whispered, "What's wrong?"
"I can't feel the dead. I can't feel anything except the ground, which is fertile and alive."
Slane came back out of the church. "Is this the first Irish graveyard you've visited, Ms. Blake?"
"Yes."
"Does it feel any different from the ones back in America?"
I frowned at him. "Is this a trick question?"
"It's not meant to be."
"Have the bodies been moved?"
He looked out over the graves. "To my knowledge what was buried here is still here."
"If this Roane wants to meet with a vampire, why meet inside a church? He knows that the vampires can't go in there."
"Once he feels reassured, then he will come out to Damian."
"What will reassure him?" I asked.
"Come inside the church and ask him yourself."
I stared back over the graveyard and i
ts strangely alive ground. As a teenager, I'd have given anything to be able to walk through a cemetery and feel nothing, but now . . . I wasn't afraid of graveyards, but I was a little afraid of this one. Why couldn't I sense anything?
"You are unsettled, Ms. Blake. I thought it was tradition that necromancy doesn't work in daylight."
"You can't raise the dead in daylight, but I can sense the dead."
"What of ghosts? Do you sense them, as well?"
"I try not to see ghosts."
"How can you not see them?" he asked.
"The same way I don't go around raising the dead willy-nilly: by controlling my natural gifts."
"So, without control, you can cause the dead to rise spontaneously?"
"No, not exactly. Let's meet this mystery man, Slane. I have to meet up with the local police later."
He led the way into the church without another word. The church smelled old, like mildew and water and . . . weariness. I'd never thought a church could have a feel to it like a person who had seen too much and needed to rest. How did you let a church rest? I genuflected and crossed myself automatically and then I went up the church aisle.
Slane led us to a man sitting in one of the pews. He had long black hair shot through with silver and white, not gray, so that the contrast in colors didn't look so much like age as just the way his hair was colored. I knew plenty of people who would have loved to have the color combo as a dye job, but nothing was going to look quite like the real thing. Slane moved past the man so that I could sit next to him. Nicky sat on the other side of me; Kaazim and Jake sat in the pew behind us.
The stranger looked at me with huge black eyes, so like Riley's that it startled me for a second, like looking into the eyes of the dead. Was it a premonition or just a family likeness?
"I was told you wanted to meet with me," I said.
"And Damian," the man said, and his voice was a deep bass. You didn't meet many men with voices that low.
"He can't come inside a church," I said.
"I wasn't certain that you would be able to walk inside a church," the man said.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm a necromancer, all evil and ungodly. That's me."
He blinked those huge liquid eyes at me. I didn't think he'd gotten the sarcasm. Apparently neither had Nicky, because he added, "Anita's joking. She gets tired of people assuming that she's evil just because she can raise the dead."
"My apologies then, miss, but I had to be certain you weren't in league with her."
"How does the fact that I can enter a church prove that I'm not?"
"Do you believe in God, miss?"
"Yes."
He smiled. "I have prayed for God to send us someone to help destroy the mad creature that rules us. I believe that person may be you, miss."
I shook my head. "I'm no one's savior. That job belongs to the man hanging on the cross over there."
"Don't you believe that we can all be instruments of God's will?" he said.
"I believe that God calls us to do His will, but free will means we can say no."
"Saying no did not work out so well for Jonah," he said, smiling that gentle smile of his.
"I don't think there's a lot of whales in Dublin," I said.
He smiled wider. "We are a seaport, miss. You would be surprised what swims in the waters here."
I smiled, realizing that I'd treated him as if he didn't turn into a seal part of the time. "I'm Anita Blake. What's your name?"
"Moran."
"Well, Moran, are you ready to go outside and talk to Damian?"
"Not yet. I need to know if it is true that you freed Rafael and his wererats from the Master of St. Louis, who had enslaved them."
I licked my lips and thought about what to say, because I had freed the wererats by killing the old Master of St. Louis. I hadn't had a warrant of execution for her, but I'd killed her to keep her from enslaving me like the wererats. I didn't regret killing her, but I didn't want to confess to murder to a stranger either.
"I don't know you well enough to answer certain questions."
"Can you free us, Anita Blake, like you did the wererats?"
"I might be able to free individual Roane, but to free all of you would mean your mistress would have to be dead."
He nodded very solemnly. "Yes, that would be the only way."
We sat there and stared at each other. "Why does everyone in Ireland think that I'll just kill people here?"
"Perhaps your reputation precedes you," Slane said, peering around Moran. I frowned at him. He shrugged and leaned back so I couldn't see him around the other man.
"Would you be willing to tell the police what she's done to you and your people? Would you be able to help me prove her crimes to the police?" I asked.
"There is no death penalty in Ireland," Moran said.
"So I keep being told," I said.
We looked at each other for another long moment.
"I'm not an assassin," I said.
"Of course not," he said, but he looked at me with Riley's eyes, and there was a silent demand in them: Help us, save us, kill the monster for us. "Will you help us, Miss Blake?"
"It's Marshal Blake. I have a badge. I'm a police officer. I cannot assassinate someone for you."
"She is evil, Marshal Blake."
"I understand that, but it doesn't change the fact that Ireland doesn't have a death penalty, and if it did, you'd need a trial to get to it."
"We cannot afford the time a trial would take, Marshal Blake. You know that for something like M'Lady you either kill it or you leave it alone. You do not try and put it on trial."
"I'm not arguing with your reasoning."
"But you will not help us?"
"I can't agree to assassinate her for you. I'm sorry, truly sorry, but I can't tell you, 'Yes, I'll do it,' because if I said that, you might count on it. You might make plans based on her being dead."
"We would."
"And if she didn't get dead, then those plans would get you killed. I won't be responsible for that."
"I am told that if you slay the animal to call of a master vampire their death can drag the vampire down to true death at last. Is that true, Marshal?"
"It can be," I said, and I didn't like where this conversation was going.
"I thought that the death of their animal or their human servant was a guarantee of their destruction."
"Most of the time the death of one causes the death of the other, but I've known vampires powerful enough that it didn't work that way."
"You give me no hope, Marshal Blake."
"I thought you were going to give us some hope about Riley and his girlfriend," I said.
"If someone told you that, then I truly am sorry, for I have no hope to offer for Riley and his lady. He was young and foolish, but a good boy."
"He seemed like a nice person," I said.
"He was."
I didn't like that he used the past tense. "Do you know where Riley and his lady friend are?"
"I do not."
"Do you know what happened to them?"
"Not precisely, but he will be tortured to death. It is the penalty for disloyalty, or sometimes it is the penalty for catching her attention. She has always been unstable, but the last two years, she has become much worse."
The timing was after we'd killed the Mother of All Darkness. Was this our fault, my fault? "I'm sorry, Moran, truly."
"I believe you, Marshal Blake. If you had not been able to enter the church, then I would not have helped you. I did one deal with the devil centuries ago. I thought it would keep my people safe, but I was wrong."
Kaazim leaned into us from the pew behind. "Is Moran your real name?"
"One of them."
"What is the name that most know you by?" Kaazim said.
"Roarke," he said.
Kaazim's gun was suddenly pointed at Roarke's head. "If you move, I will kill you," he said in a low, careful voice.
Nicky had grabbed me and was moving me backwa
rd, away from the man.
Slane said, "I was told he was just one of Roarke's seals. I did not know he was Roarke himself."
"We will discuss your potential treachery later," Kaazim said.
"Who is this guy?" I asked.
"He's her moitie bete, and the king of the Roanes," Jake said, as he moved into the pew we'd just left.
"Fuck," I said.
"Do not curse in the church, Marshal," Roarke said.
"Why did you want this meeting?" Jake asked.
"Inside the church, she cannot see into my heart and mind. I had to arrange the meeting as she ordered, but I have carefully kept my mind blank of the details. I told her I was going to church to pray here so she would not be alarmed when I vanished from her mind. I also knew it would prevent Damian from recognizing me too soon."
"What do you want, Roarke?" Kaazim asked.
"I want M'Lady to die and my people to be free."
"What are you supposed to be setting us up for? What does the Wicked Bitch want to happen here today?" I asked.
"She wants Damian back, and she would like your moitie bete at her mercy. God forgive me, she would like all your pretty men at her mercy."
I just dropped the shields that were keeping out Damian and Nathaniel, and Dev, and Domino and Ethan. I just let them know what I knew. If Damian hadn't been with them they could have come into the church to use it as a sanctuary, but the vampire couldn't enter it and we couldn't leave him alone. Damn it!
"If anyone attacks our people outside this church, I will kill you," Kaazim said.
"But don't you understand? That is exactly what I want you to do," Roarke said.
"What are you saying?" I said.
"I believe in God, Marshal Blake. I cannot take my own life, but if I am killed, then it may drag her down to death with me."
"Your death might just kill her human servant and not her. She might sacrifice the servant to save herself," I said.
"But if she is bereft of both her animal and her servant, then she will be far less powerful, true?"
I didn't know what to say, because he was right, but it wasn't a guarantee. "It would hurt her power base, but maybe not enough to free all your people."
"If she is no longer my master, then she can no longer draw on all the other Roane through me. She will have to wait for my people to elect a new king, and that will take enough time for Damian to lead you to her stronghold and help you kill her."
Jake said, "If someone is killed inside a church, it ceases to be consecrated ground until the rituals are performed again."
"But I will already be dead, and she will be weakened."