Crimson Death
Page 116

   “We don’t bring roommates home,” Pride said.
   “When Angel came home this last time, she said they were dating and have been for most of the time she’s been out on her own. She’s pretty pissed that she got called to the bosom of her family after establishing a successful life outside the clan.”
   “Is that why she’s so cranky all the time?” I asked.
   “Partly, but she’s always been the less friendly of the two of us. She blames being named Good Angel. Names like that just make you want to rebel against them.”
   “So, Mephistopheles, why didn’t you rebel and become the perfect little angel?” I asked.
   He grinned again, and then his eyes filled with a heat that changed the grin to something more primal that made me shiver a little as he stared at me. “I went the other way,” he said, in a voice that almost purred. “I decided to be my name.”
   “Mephistopheles,” I said.
   “Devil,” he said.
   The plane lurched again, and I fought not to dig my nails into Nathaniel’s hand but just the chair arm. “I try to be on the side of the angels, but I play like I’m for the other team,” I said, my voice a little strained.
   “You make us all play for the angels, but you recruit from the other side,” Nicky said.
   “You’re not a devil,” I said, looking up at him.
   “I’m not an angel, either.”
   “You like reformed sinners, Anita,” Fortune said, leaning on the side of Pride’s chair.
   “You make me sound like the Salvation Army.”
   “I’m not reformed,” Nicky said.
   “Me either,” Dev said.
   “I guess to be reformed you have to be repentant, and neither of you are that,” I said.
   Fortune laughed. “They are so not that.”
   “We’ll be getting food soon.”
   “I don’t know if I can eat,” I said.
   “You have to eat, Anita. It helps quiet all the other hungers.”
   “You have to eat real food, Anita,” Nicky said.
   “If you don’t eat actual food, you’ll have to feed the ardeur before we land,” Nathaniel said.
   “Which could spread to the pilot. Yeah, Jean-Claude explained that,” I said. I looked up at Fortune. “So what’s for dinner?”
 
 
34

   I WAS FINE until we started to land, and then having the windows closed became a problem again. Landing scared me anyway, but apparently being able to see out while it was happening made it less scary for me, because being trapped in a narrow metal tube with the sensation of it hurtling toward the ground, but not being able to see the ground, so I couldn’t tell if we were actually landing, or crashing . . . I started to have a panic attack, fought through it, and held on to Nathaniel and Nicky for dear life. Dev reached across and put a hand on the one thigh that didn’t have a hand on it already, and said, “It’s okay, Anita.”    I wanted to say, You can’t promise that, but I was afraid if I said anything I’d either start screaming or throw up, so it was better to keep my mouth shut. I felt the bump as the plane landed. I closed my eyes and tried to be relieved, and I was, but I was also almost faint with the desire to get off this fucking metal tube of death!
   The door was open and fresh air actually came into the plane. Something tight and unhappy in my chest and stomach loosened. I could breathe again without fighting the urge to scream.
   The pilot said, “Everyone needs to show their medical alert cards, and allow customs on board to compare the vampires’ faces to their passports, since it is daylight and we cannot bring the vampires to them.”
   The medical alert cards were the same kind of thing you’d carry if you had severe allergies or other medical conditions that if you happened to be unconscious doctors would need to know about, except that these cards said we had, or carried, lycanthropy. Ireland and most of the rest of the European Union demanded that lycanthropes carry medical alerts. It could be a bracelet, a necklace, a card, an insert in your clothing, but you had to have something. If a lycanthrope tried to simply enter Ireland, England, or much of the EU as a normal human and then got found out, it was cause for automatic deportation with the possibility of jail time. The people who traveled with Micah already had theirs, and he was able to help us rush the paperwork for the rest of us. Apparently, there’s a lot of controversy about it, so the powers that be had made it easier and quicker to get the cards, so that they didn’t get sued again for civil rights violations and other similar things. England had originally wanted to force lycanthropes to be tattooed, but not all tattoos remained on all shapeshifters’ skin. They then suggested forced branding, and lawyers, the press, and people in general began to make comparisons to the Nazis and how the Jews were permanently marked. So we just needed the cards, but if a government official, like a police officer, asked to see our cards and we failed to produce them, it could be grounds for deportation. You were encouraged to have more than one type of card on you at any given time. I felt a little funny with my card, because technically I wasn’t a lycanthrope, but my official paperwork said that I carried lycanthropy, so for government work I needed a card.
   I wanted to leave the plane desperately, but I didn’t want to leave Damian behind. I’d never had to travel with a vampire that I was responsible for, and during the daylight dead-as-a-doornail time, Nathaniel and I were his only protection.
   Magda spoke from the other side of the curtain where she was standing between the two “sleeping” vampires. “Go. I will wait with our masters, and Damian.”
   That seemed to be good enough for Fortune, because she exited the plane with the others. Nicky, Nathaniel, and Dev were still with me. “I thought you’d be the first one out the door,” Dev said with a smile.
   “I think I just needed a minute to get myself ready to meet the Irish authorities,” I said.
   Socrates poked his head through the open door. “We need you and your passports and cards out here.”
   I tried to stand up, and I say tried, because my seat belt was still fastened, and I damn near bisected myself trying to stand. It was the little things that kept me humble.
 
 
35

   I STEPPED OFF the plane onto the tarmac, or asphalt, or whatever you call the artificial covering of every major airport in the world, and fought off an urge to go down on my knees and hug that rocklike surface. I often felt this way when I got off a plane and back to terra firma, but the urge wasn’t usually this strong. Nathaniel took my hand as I got off the little folding steps from the plane. He looked around us and said, “It doesn’t look very Irish.”