Crimson Death
Page 213

   “Yes, the only other one that could ever do that was the Queen of All Darkness herself. I knew we had been following the wrong heir.”
   I didn’t argue with her; I’d been arguing with people for months that I wasn’t the heir to the Mother of All Darkness. It was getting silly to keep protesting, so I’d stop. I didn’t like it, but I could stop playing the lady who protesteth too much. I got the gun off of the other body, though the grip was slippery with blood. Nathaniel might not have killed the guard with the first blow, but he’d hurt him enough that he didn’t go for his gun; that was a serious win in my book.
   We needed to move. Rodina had a backpack with tactical boots that fit me if I stuffed them with the thick socks and a black hooded sweatshirt to go over the lingerie. I had done my best to ignore how cold I was until I got the clothes on, and then I could finally shiver. She even had an extra hooded sweatshirt for Nathaniel.
   She led us up the stairs with a short sword bare in her hand. She’d holstered her gun. She told us silence was essential and we followed her, but I said, “We need Damian.”
   “We’ll be lucky to get the two of you out of here. He’s still with the pale bitch and both her servants.”
   “We can’t leave him,” Nathaniel said. He must have thought at Damian, because suddenly the vampire was loud in our heads. Go, he thought at us, I’ll join you in Wicklow.
   “He says to leave. He’ll catch up with us in Wicklow,” Nathaniel said.
   Rodina smiled. “Agreed.”
   I’d managed not to think about Domino until I saw Rodrigo waiting for us in the hallway just off the stairs. Then my careful compartmentalizing fell apart. Rodina stepped between us. “This is Ru, the other third of our triplet.”
   He looked identical to Rodrigo until I got to his eyes. They didn’t look like dark caves or even the teasing hardness of Rodina’s. There was something softer about this one. He dropped to one knee. “My Queen.”
   “Where’s Rodrigo?” I asked.
   “He is my brother and your man now, as Ru and I are,” Rodina said.
   “Anita, we have to escape first,” Nathaniel said.
   I looked at him, and if I hadn’t had a bloodied knife in one hand and a gun in the other, I’d have touched his hair. He was right. Domino was dead; we weren’t. “Get us out of here. Rodrigo gets a pass until we’re safe.”
   “Your word of honor?” she asked.
   “Yes.”
   He came around the corner like a mirror image of his brother. “I see my death in your eyes.”
   “You forced my lover’s blood down my throat after you killed him.”
   She looked at her brother. “Rodrigo, really?”
   He looked strangely embarrassed and shrugged. “It seemed fun at the time.”
   “Fun!” I said, and took a step toward him.
   Nathaniel grabbed my arm, “Anita, we need out first.” He looked at Rodrigo and said, “And you, stop saying stupid things like that.”
   Rodrigo looked at me; his cave-dark eyes held more thought than cruelty in that moment. “If I had not done that one stupid, cruel thing, we would not be standing here now, Anita Blake.”
   “Out first, Roddy,” Rodina said. She led the way and we followed, because what else could we do for now? I had to put the gun in the pocket of the sweatshirt to take the flashlight they gave me. The knife stayed out, because I had nowhere to put it. Rodina led the way down a tunnel that opened in the rock. It was narrow and hit my claustrophobia so that I swear I could feel the rock beginning to close around me. I put the blade against one wall and the flashlight against the other so that my hands would let me know that the walls weren’t really narrowing around me. It was just my phobia. It wasn’t real. I could smell fresh air. I could smell the sea. There was gray light ahead. Rodrigo vanished out of the opening, and when I got to the end of the tunnel, it was a black rock overlooking a sheer drop to the sea below.
   Rodrigo was standing to the left on the rock, offering me his hand. I so did not want to take it, but the light was dying and I couldn’t see what he was even standing on or why he wasn’t tumbling down onto the rocks below us, so I took his hand. He helped me up shallow stairs that were literally carved into the rock face. I’d have never even seen them, let alone been able to navigate them. Rodina was guiding Nathaniel up the steps behind us. Ru brought up the rear.
   Rodrigo hunkered down behind a rise of thick grass and flowers at the top of the cliff. He motioned for me to stay low, so I did. There was the wind blowing the grass, making the flowers nod, and there was a ruin of black stones toward the end of the highest point of the cliff. “The Black Castle,” he said. “Everyone thinks the only thing left is the ruin, but the fortress is inside the cliff. Her hiding place has always been here, as the castles above her have risen and burned, but always she has been the puppet master to the men above.”
   When he was sure the coast was clear, he led us through the grass and wind. There was a couple taking pictures of themselves straddling a rusted cannon that looked out over a harbor. There were more tourists or maybe locals picnicking or taking pictures of the sea as the light began to fade to twilight.
   “And no one knows she’s here?” I asked.
   “No,” Rodrigo said.
   “One of her great strengths is that she hides in plain sight,” Rodina said. She opened her backpack and said, “You can’t walk around with a bloody knife in daylight, Anita.”
   I didn’t like it, but I gave up one weapon, because she was right. We’d been fighting for our lives, but everyone up here was having a great day by the sea.
   Rodina pulled up her hood to hide her hair and said, “We’re tourists. We’re going to blend in.” She took Nathaniel’s hand in hers and hung on his arm as if she’d always been there. Rodrigo apologized but said, “It is for safety’s sake.”
   “Fine.” I took his arm with one hand and put the other hand inside my pocket, where the gun was weighing it down. The gun made me feel better, though I admit it was tempting with him on my arm to just turn and kill him where he stood. If Nathaniel hadn’t been with me, I might have, but he was, and we were outside. We were escaping. I’d kill him later.
   The triplets led us down the grassy headland, across a parking lot that still had plenty of cars in it, and toward the town that lay spread out before us. It was still daylight and the only daywalking vampires behind us were Moroven and Damian. The Roane were the greatest danger as long as the sun was up. I felt like I had a target between my shoulder blades, and it took everything I had not to look back, but with my hood up, I actually did blend in. There were even a couple of other women with skirts as short as mine, though they were wearing tights under theirs. My legs were still so cold that I could barely feel them. It was like I’d been able to ignore the cold until I got outside in the wind. Nathaniel’s new haircut helped us blend in, but every time I saw him without all his hair it was like a little punch in the gut. He’d wiped most of the blood that was visible off on a cloth that Rodina had given him, and the sweatshirt hid the rest. He was much better at playacting than I was, so they looked much more like a couple than Rodrigo and I did. Rodrigo was probably better at pretending to be a couple, but he was worried what I’d do if he did. Ru had separated from us to walk ahead through the tourists. I’d catch a glimpse of him here and there, which probably meant he wasn’t hiding that hard from us.