Crimson Death
Page 34

   “I do not answer to the servant of my queen.”
   Damian frowned, and I felt his anger run through us both, and then he went cold, still, the emotion not so much shoved down but gone. I was never sure how he did that, but I knew why he did it. She-Who-Made-Him had used all emotions against people, so to survive he had learned to hide them under an icy calm that he’d shared with me. Sometimes I thought it was his calm that had helped me, as much as therapy.
   “How about your queen’s pet? Will you answer it for me?” Nathaniel said.
   Kaazim smiled, just a little. “If that were all you were, then no, I would not answer you.”
   “Then answer to your queen,” I said, but my voice showed some of my displeasure that he’d slighted the others. I wasn’t as good at hiding my emotions.
   He gave a small bow and said, “As my queen commands,” but that was all he said.
   “You’re going to make me drag it out of you, aren’t you?”
   “I will answer any direct question you ask, my queen.”
   “I can’t say it’s Anita when we’re working out in the gym and you just answer as a friend?”
   I couldn’t quite read his expression from the shadows. I just knew it was one I hadn’t seen before. “You would call me friend?”
   “I know we don’t go drinking together, or see the same movies, but yes.”
   “We are not friends, Anita, not in that way.”
   I nodded. “Okay, then we’re work friends.”
   He seemed to think about that for a minute, then said, “I know this term. It implies we are friends at work, but how can we be friends if I am your bodyguard?”
   “I’m friends with a lot of my guards,” I said.
   He smiled wide enough that I saw the flash of it even in the shadows. “I do not think we will ever be that friendly.”
   I laughed with him. “I don’t mean that kind of friendly. I mean more like I am with Claudia, or Bobby Lee, or Fredo, or Lisandro, or Pepita, Pepe.”
   He nodded again. “Work friends.” He said it softly.
   “Yeah.”
   “As a queen I would have made you hunt and ask the right questions. It is what my master told me to do if you asked certain things.”
   “Why would Billie tell you to withhold things from me?” Billie was short for Bilquees, though she’d informed me that sometimes she went by Queenie. I liked Billie better.
   “My master’s reasons are her own.”
   Which probably meant he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me her reasons. Fine. I moved on. “But if we are friends, then will you just help me help Damian?”
   He nodded. “It is a long time since someone has asked me something in the name of friendship, Anita, a very long time.”
   “I’m sorry for that.”
   “Why are you sorry?”
   “Because everyone should have friends.”
   He smiled again, but I couldn’t see his eyes at all, so I didn’t know if it was a happy smile or a hiding smile. “The Harlequin do not have friends, Anita. The animals of the Harlequin have even less than that.”
   “I’ve done my best to eradicate the double standard that the old vamps feel toward their animals to call.”
   “You and Jean-Claude have done much to help us.”
   Damian kept my hand in his, but he took a step toward the other man. “Help me, Kaazim. Help me because Anita is your friend, or your queen.”
   “You are a servant. I do not answer to servants.”
   “Kaazim, what is it with you and so many of the Harlequin? All of you seem to dislike Damian. Why?”
   “I can answer that one,” Bobby Lee said.
   “Then answer it,” I said.
   “All the Harlequin are old vampires. That means they think that human servants are lesser beings, but Damian is a reminder that to you, they are the servants. They don’t like that much.”
   “Okay, I get that, but why do Kaazim and the other shapeshifters have an issue?”
   “They all treat any Harlequin human servant as a lesser being, because very few of them were ever good enough to fight at the skill level that the vampires and shapeshifters of the Harlequin did.”
   “I’ve noticed that almost none of the Harlequin vamps have human servants.”
   “Humans are too fragile for our world,” Kaazim said.
   “The world of the Harlequin, you mean?” I asked.
   “Yes.”
   “Damian is a vampire servant, so the animals to call of the Harlequin have one vampire they can feel superior to,” Bobby Lee said.
   “That makes sense, I guess.”
   “Feel superior to me, then,” Damian said, “but if you know anything that can explain what is happening to me, please share it.”
   Kaazim stepped out of the shadows enough so I could see the puzzlement on his face. “Doesn’t it bother you that I think of you as less, because Anita has forced you to be her servant?”
   “No.”
   “Because you do not care about my opinion.” Kaazim sounded angry now. The first thread of his beast breathed through the room as if someone had opened a hot oven for a second.
   “You are Harlequin. That means that you are a better warrior than I will ever be. That alone gives you reason to feel superior to me, but the vampire who made me tortured any pride out of me centuries ago. She made of me an empty vessel to fill as she saw fit. Empty vessels do not have pride, so I have no pride to be injured.”
   “We know of your creator.”
   “I always hoped that She-Who-Made-Me would finally do something so awful that the vampire council would send the Harlequin to slay her.”
   “If we had been sent to kill your master, we would not have left any vampires so old as you alive.”
   “Either way, I would have been free of her.”
   “You would have embraced death to be free of your master?”
   “Oh, yes.”
   “Suicide would have freed you, too.”
   “But it might have denied me entrance to Valhalla. Death at the hands of the Harlequin would have been a glorious death.”
   “Do you still believe in your Valhalla after all these centuries?” Kaazim asked.
   “Yes, I do.”
   “Most of us lose our faith under the power of the vampires.”