Crimson Death
Page 71

   I finally said out loud, “If you really want to make your point, you need more clothes.”
   He stopped pacing and turned to face us, one hand clutching the side of the towel. “Are you saying you haven’t been paying attention to anything I said, because I’m wearing a towel?”
   “No, I’m saying I can’t concentrate on what you’re saying, because you’re mostly naked and wearing a towel that keeps slipping every few sentences.”
   “That’s great, just great. I finally speak up for myself and you ignore me.” He was almost yelling.
   “We’re not ignoring you, Damian. If anything, we’re paying too much attention to you.”
   “To my body, but not what I’m saying!”
   “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Nathaniel asked.
   “What, to have two more people ignore what I want and what I need so they can get what they need instead?” He stalked to the foot of the bed, where Nathaniel was sitting and I was standing.
   “You said that what you wanted was to be desired, wanted, the way that Anita and I desire each other and Micah.”
   Damian frowned as if he were trying to think and couldn’t. “I don’t remember that. I don’t remember much.” He pointed at me, very dramatically. “You rolled me! You mind-fucked me!”
   “Uh-uh, this isn’t my doing. When I first woke up and couldn’t remember anything I thought you’d rolled me.”
   That stopped him. He looked at me, frowning, trying to remember through the haze of his damaged memory. I hadn’t tried yet, because I’d been mind-fucked before. I knew that if the memories came back they’d come back slowly on their own, or not at all. Usually something would remind you of what had happened and you’d get a brief glimpse of what had happened, but it would come in its own time. You could do things to force it, but they all came with a price.
   “I thought Jean-Claude couldn’t mind-roll you, because you were his human servant and a necromancer.”
   “I didn’t say it was Jean-Claude. I said, I thought it was you when I first woke up and couldn’t remember anything.”
   “But I can’t remember anything either, so it wasn’t me.”
   “No, it wasn’t you.”
   “And it wasn’t you,” he said.
   “Nope.”
   “And it wasn’t Jean-Claude,” he said.
   “Nope.”
   He frowned harder, rubbing one hand against his temple while the other kept clutching at his misbehaving towel. “Then what happened to us?”
   “I’m sitting right here and you’ve totally ignored me,” Nathaniel said.
   Damian shook his head. “I’m not ignoring you.”
   “You haven’t even asked me if I remember anything.”
   “If Anita and I don’t remember anything, then you won’t remember either.”
   “Really?” Nathaniel was finally getting angry, and I guess I couldn’t blame him. In a way I’d done the same thing, assumed that it couldn’t be him. That he couldn’t have taken control of the power we raised and used it against us. I realized, watching Damian make the same mistake, that we both discounted Nathaniel. I was in love with him, but I didn’t see him as a threat. He was five-nine, a man, in really good shape, and a wereleopard. He could have been a physical threat if he’d wanted to be, but none of us saw him that way. He was the only man in my life who had picked up a dropped gun and used it to kill someone to save me. Until Nicky had started going monster hunting with me, Nathaniel had been the only man in my life who had killed to save me. Yet I still hadn’t thought he’d been the one who took charge between the three of us. Shame on me.
   “What if I told you I do remember?” Nathaniel asked, and his voice held a hint of warmth to it that prickled along my skin and not in a good, foreplay kind of way. It was more like a mix of standing too close to an open oven and a dance of electricity down the side of my body nearest him. His beast was beginning to answer to his anger.
   I took a small step away from him so my beasts didn’t start rising to his.
   “What do you remember?” Damian asked.
   “All of it.”
   Damian shook his head. “I don’t believe that.”
   “Why not?” Nathaniel stood up then, and I was suddenly very aware that he was only three inches shorter than the vampire. It didn’t seem like nearly the size difference it usually did.
   “What’s wrong with you?” Damian asked.
   “Maybe I’m tired of being discounted in this relationship.”
   “What relationship? I don’t even have a relationship with Anita.”
   “And if you don’t have a relationship with the girl, then you can’t have a relationship with the guy—is that it?” He had moved forward so that he was invading Damian’s personal space.
   Damian backed up from him; I wasn’t even sure he realized he’d done it. “What are you talking about, Nathaniel?”
   “This. I’m talking about this.” And he took his shirt off in one smooth motion, baring all that muscular and well-toned chest. It made Damian take another step back. He looked startled this time and knew he’d given ground, but he didn’t care and gave more as Nathaniel turned his back on him and swept his braid to one side.
   Damian didn’t seem to understand at first and neither did I, but then I saw the vampire’s face grow pale, which was a trick since his skin was paper white, pale even for a vampire. “What . . . what is that?”
   “You know what it is,” Nathaniel said, and his voice still held anger. He was glaring at me as if I were included in his anger with Damian.
   Damian stopped backing up and took a step toward the other man. He took another step forward and put his hand out toward Nathaniel’s bare back. His hand was shaking as he reached out, but didn’t quite touch, as if he couldn’t make himself close those last three inches.
   It was too much; I had to know what was spooking him so badly. I started walking to them with Nathaniel glaring at me; his eyes had gone from their usual lavender past lilac to almost a grape purple. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen his eyes that dark with anger.
   He bent forward so I could see better, rolling his right shoulder down and a little more out of reach of Damian’s hand, but the vampire wasn’t trying to finish the gesture. He seemed frozen in midmotion. What the hell was it?
   I put a hand on Nathaniel’s arm to steady myself as I went up on tiptoe to look at his back, and there it was, a neat vampire bite, not on his neck, but on his back. One higher up near the shoulder and the other lower down nearer the shoulder blade. There was no reason to bite there for blood; it wasn’t a good place to feed. There were only two reasons to bite there: for torture or for pleasure. I was pretty sure which Nathaniel had thought it was at the time. He was a happy little pain slut when sex was involved.