Crimson Death
Page 164

   “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 its 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.”