First Drop of Crimson

Her scent was splintered with pain, her voice choked with grief, guilt, and rage. Emotions Spade knew all too well.

“As I recall, Randy and Crispin were friends for six months before you even met him. Randy was already in this world before you knew him.”

She turned away, but not before Spade saw the shine of tears in her eyes.

“It’s my fault he died. I let him go upstairs alone, okay? I let him go by himself because I was a coward. If I’d gone with him, I could have watched his back. I could have warned him, given him a chance to run away—”

Spade grabbed her shoulders, holding them in a firm grip. “Seventeen vampires and ghouls died during that attack, some of them Masters. Those creatures were too strong, too fast. If you’d have gone up with Randy, you wouldn’t have saved him. You would have only died with him.”

Denise didn’t try to push him away. She just stood there, head down, breathing coming in ragged sniffs.

“Then that’s what I should have done. Randy died trying to save me. I should have done the same for him.”

“You stayed below because you were smart. He died because he was foolish,” Spade replied, ignoring her gasp at his pitiless analysis. Now he turned her around to face him. “He shouldn’t have left your side. That’s where he belonged. Not in the middle of a bloody zombie attack no human would have walked away from. Randy made the wrong decision and he died for it. That’s how it goes. It’s not fair, but life in either world isn’t fair, is it?”

“How could you understand? You’ve never lost the person you loved because you just stood there,” she said in a broken tone.

He laughed, long and bittersweet. No, he’d lost Giselda because he hadn’t been fast enough. If he’d left a few hours sooner that morning, he would have been able to save her. And if she’d listened to him, she would never have been on that dangerous road in the first place. So close to the fighting, the area had been rife with deserters from Napoleon’s army. He’d sent word to Giselda to wait so he could escort her to the chalet. She’d wanted to surprise him. Just one bad, well-intentioned decision, but it resulted in her rape and murder.

No, life wasn’t fair in any world, human or otherwise.

“You have no idea how much I do understand.”

She looked at him sharply, as if she were about to demand he elaborate. Spade waited. He never talked about Giselda, but he would to Denise, if she asked.

But she didn’t question him further. She lowered her head, silently braced against the chill. Withdrawing into her shame just as he’d done all the years of the past long, lonely century and a half.

Comfort wouldn’t help her. Neither would his pity. Only one thing had helped him pull back from the guilt and the grief.

“If you had that night to relive, would you still stay in the basement?”

Denise’s head snapped up. “No. Not in a million years.”

“Then you’re no longer the same person,” Spade said, his voice empty of emotion. “You’ve already proved that by taking more of the demon’s essence instead of sacrificing one of your relatives. The woman before me is not the same one from that New Year’s Eve. She might have failed, but you won’t fail, will you?”

Denise stared at him, something hard and resolute growing in her eyes. “You bet I won’t.”

His admiration for her increased. It had taken him over a decade to have that same strength of will after his loss. Denise managed it in just over a year. Fresh determination coursed through him. He had to make her his. The battle to win her might be long, but was too important to surrender just because it wouldn’t be easy.

“Are we going back to the hotel now?” Denise asked, her tears gone.

“We’re not going back to the hotel. In fact, we’ll be leaving Nevada shortly.”

She frowned. “But the fake ID you got me and all the rest of our stuff is back in the hotel.”

“I arranged to have our things packed up after we left, and I have both our identifications in my pocket.”

Denise gave him a cynical look. “You had this whole thing orchestrated down to the last detail, didn’t you?”

Not every detail, else you wouldn’t have discovered me killing Black Jack. “I try to anticipate,” was all Spade said.

She drew in a deep breath. “And now we go after Web?”

“Now we go after Web.”

My new aliases are really racking up the frequent flyer miles, Denise thought as they exited the gangway of yet another plane. She’d flown more in the past two weeks than she had in the previous five years. Web, Spade said, was rumored to live in Monaco, so they were back overseas again. She didn’t know what Spade intended to do once he found Web—ring the vampire’s doorbell and ask if he could take the source of his supernatural drug trade? Or just kill everyone he came across until the last person standing was her elusive relative Nathanial?

She hadn’t wanted to ask, to be truthful, because she already felt like a hypocrite. Here she’d judged Spade for killing Black Jack, but he’d only done it on her behalf. Anyone else he killed during this hunt for Nathanial would be on her behalf, too. By the time this was over, her hands would be just as bloody as his, no matter how she kept avowing her hatred of violence. That knowledge made Denise’s emotions range from guilt, to frustration, to fear. She was just as much of a killer as Spade was, and it would only get worse if they were lucky. What if they couldn’t find Web at all?

Or what if the next time Spade was in a fight to the death, he wasn’t the one who walked away from it?

That thought had been festering in Denise through the past two days of flights and hotel stays. The full breadth of how dangerous retrieving Nathanial would be, even if they could find him, had been underscored by Black Jack’s reaction to her blood. Spade initially hadn’t wanted to take on the responsibility of looking for Nathanial because he might be another vampire’s property. Now they knew it was so much worse than that. Nathanial wasn’t just property; he was the sole source of a highly lucrative drug trade, so whoever had him wouldn’t hesitate to kill to keep him. How could she ask Spade to keep trying to find Nathanial? Once he did, Spade’s chances were about as grim as Randy’s had been when he went up the stairs of that house on New Year’s Eve.

In many ways, she was right back where she had been that night: huddled away from the danger, while someone else faced the monsters. She was through with that. Spade was right; she wasn’t the same person she’d been before. If it was only her life on the line, she’d quit looking for Nathanial and just keep running from Raum, living—and dying—with the demon brands. But Raum wouldn’t stop looking for Nathanial, and he’d murder every last member of her family trying to find him. If she stayed on this course, she might get Spade killed. If she didn’t, she was condemning her entire family to death—all because an ancestor wanted supernatural power and sought it from a demon.

Whoever you are, Nathanial, Denise thought for the hundredth time, I hate your guts.

Spade collected their bags and they headed toward the airport exit. Once outside, Denise was surprised to see Alten and another person, presumably a vampire, leaning against a parked car.

“Spade,” Alten said, smiling as he came forward.

Spade gave him a brief hug, handing their bags to the other man. Definitely a vampire, Denise decided, seeing him take all of them with one hand as if they weren’t as heavy as she knew they were.

“Nice to see you again, Denise,” Alten said, turning to her next.

“You, too,” she replied, and meant it, having forgiven him for the whole bound-and-gagged thing the prior week when Raum came calling.

Spade opened the car door and Denise piled gratefully into the backseat. As long as wherever they were headed had a bed—hell, a floor—she’d be in heaven. It was never possible to get any real sleep on a plane. Their brief stints at hotels the past two days between flights had been more to shower and have Spade make his calls in private than to get any sleep. She was so tired; she’d be happy to fall asleep in the trunk, if she could fit around