Crimson Death
Page 171

   Dev said, “We have breakfast.”
   “And coffee,” Domino said.
   “Hell, why didn’t you say so?” I tried for light, but it wasn’t real. I was still scared as if we’d had another nightmare, but I didn’t remember dreaming anything last night. I stepped back and let them into the room, using the door for my modesty, at least until the men had trooped inside. Then I had to close the door, and modesty wasn’t actually possible.
   Ethan managed not to stare at me at all, but he was the only one of the four men who managed it. Domino stared but managed not to ogle me. He was carrying the coffee, so I was all right with being stared at. Dev was cheerfully lecherous about it; his hands were full of trays of food. Nicky had more food in his hands, but he wasn’t cheerful about it. He gave me a look that was so intense, it stripped his feelings as naked as my body. It made me go to him and try for a good morning kiss, but his hands were too full and I was too short.
   Nathaniel got out of bed to help set up the food. Dev leered as cheerfully at Nathaniel as he had at me. They grinned at each other. I shook my head and rolled my eyes at them both.
   I grabbed the hotel robe that was on the back of the bathroom door for our use, while the men set up breakfast on any flat surface they could find. “Boo on the robe,” Dev said. “I wanted to leer at you both while we ate breakfast.”
   “Nothing personal to Nathaniel, but he can get dressed as far as I’m concerned,” Domino said, smiling.
   Nathaniel stuck his tongue out at him as he walked past them all for the bathroom. We had just woken up, but there were some things that I still didn’t like to do as a couple, and one of them was bathroom stuff. I still preferred that to be private. I was pretty sure I always would.
   “Where is everybody else?” I asked.
   “Eating in the other rooms. There wasn’t room for all of us to eat room service in any one room,” Domino said.
   “Did you have more bad dreams?” Ethan asked.
   “You felt me be all scaredy-cat, too?”
   “I don’t pick up your emotions as strongly as Nicky does, or some of the other men, but I felt it this morning.”
   “No bad dreams. All of us sleeping together took care of it, but I just can’t wake up beside one of my lovers feeling that much like a real corpse.” I looked at Damian, who had collapsed into a still heap of paper white skin and crimson hair.
   “You flash back on waking up in the coffin with the one vampire?” Nicky asked.
   I nodded, shivering even in the thick white robe. Domino held out coffee to me. It made me smile. “Thanks.”
   He took his own coffee and let the others get their own. They’d wait on me, but not on one another, at least not outside of helping Nathaniel in the kitchen, but that was more family chores, not small romantic gestures. Bringing me coffee in the morning definitely got you a brownie point in my book.
   My phone sounded with Edward’s ringtone. I hurried, glad the coffee had a lid, as I went for my phone, which was still plugged into the wall. “Hey, Edward, what’s up?”
   “Roarke broke out of jail last night.”
   “How?”
   “No one knows. He was just gone this morning.”
   “So he didn’t break out. He walked out,” I said.
   “Security footage showed him mind-fucking one of the guards. Nothing in the research says that Selkies can do that.”
   “They can’t, but I know that some animals to call and some human servants of a powerful enough vampire can capture someone with their gaze just like a vampire,” I said.
   He lowered his voice. “Speaking from experience?”
   “Yeah.”
   “I’ll tell the local guards and the Gardai,” he said.
   “I didn’t know that Roarke could use his gaze like that, or I’d have warned someone. It’s a really rare ability in an animal to call.”
   “I’ll make sure that they know that,” he said.
   “Is there anything we can do to help? Do you need us at the jail?”
   “Do you know how to track a Selkie? I guess Roane here.”
   “I don’t have any seal lycanthropy in me or in anyone with me. It’s not even lycanthropy. It’s just what they are.”
   “They’ve got a BOLO out on Roarke with his picture to every Gardai in the area. If he’s still in Dublin, maybe someone will see him and report it.”
   “You don’t sound too optimistic.”
   “He mind-fucked personnel here at the jail like a master vampire, Anita. The Wicked Bitch didn’t make him do all that without a plan to keep him hidden from us. She’ll keep him close to her now.”
   “That’s what you would do,” I said, “but you’re not crazy. She might do things differently.”
   “She might, but crazy doesn’t always mean stupid or even careless.”
   “No arguments,” I said, and sipped my coffee. It was just like I preferred it, which meant Nicky had ordered it, no matter who had carried it in the door. “So what do you want us to do today?”
   “Come to the station, ASAP. You were helpful enough last night that they’re willing to let you see more of the evidence finally.”
   “Yay!” I didn’t sound truly enthusiastic.
   “Are you okay?”
   “I woke spooked. Something about dealing with the family members last night tanked my mood, and I just can’t seem to let it go.”
   “It was bad, Anita. You and I don’t usually have to deal with the victims, except to avenge them.”
   “I hate thinking of the vampires who kill people as victims,” I said.
   “Me, too. It makes our job back in the States harder.”
   “Yeah,” I said, and again there was that melancholy.
   “You need more sunlight if you can get it today. It’ll help with the jet lag and time-change adjustment. How soon can you get here? I want us to have a strategy by the time the vampires rise for the night.”
   “Were there more deaths last night?”
   “Yes.”
   I sighed. “I can be there in twenty minutes.”
   “No,” Nicky said, “you need to eat first.”
   I frowned at him. “I’ve been informed that I have to eat breakfast. Jean-Claude made me promise that I’d eat solid food and not just coffee before I went vampire hunting today.”
   “Sounds like Donna.”