Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(76)

“Are you saying you met Ares?” Nathaniel asked.

“No, but I met his son, Drakon, twin of the Ismenian dragon slain by Cadmus.”

“Dragons can’t be the twin of a human child, I don’t care how many ancient gods are involved,” I said.

“Humans and dragons are totally different species,” Richard said.

“The things that you call dragons now are animals, and could not produce offspring with humans, but once dragons were not just preternatural species to be studied, or cryptids to be found.”

“What were they, then?” Richard asked.

“They were a different race of beings just like the djinn, or the fairy folk, or so many people who have been lost over the eons, leaving not even their myths or folklore behind.”

“The fey are just another type of hominid, Homo arcanus to Homo sapiens.”

“We met them in Ireland,” Nathaniel said. “Most of them looked like us, but their energy was . . .

different.” His face lit up with remembering, like it was a good memory. I could never smile like that about Ireland, because of what happened at the end with Domino and Ru and Rodina’s brother

Rodrigo. Meeting the fairy folk, real live full-blooded fairies, had been just part of searching for clues to stop a gang of rogue vampires. They’d kidnapped us, chained us up, and cut Nathaniel’s nearly ankle-length hair, promising to come back and cut off things that wouldn’t grow back. When I thought of Ireland what I remembered first was death, and the terror of what had almost happened.

The conversation had been going on without me: Richard thinking that meeting real, old-world fey was fascinating, Nathaniel full of the delight of it, while I was stuck in the loop of Domino’s death, and then almost losing Nathaniel. Rodrigo had taken a shotgun blast to the chest to save him, to save Nathaniel and Damian, and me. Rodrigo had killed Domino in front of me, and then he’d been the one to make the big sacrifice to save us later. I’d magically rolled him, so he had to be on our side, but he’d done both—killed one lover, and then saved two more, one of them being Nathaniel.

“Anita,” Nathaniel said.

I blinked and looked at him. “Sorry, I was thinking too hard.”

He gave me that sad smile that he did a lot about Ireland. “I know what you were thinking, and I wish you could remember more of the happy parts of Ireland instead of just the terrible ones.”

I wanted to touch his face but couldn’t really reach with the seat belt on, and since I wouldn’t take it off in a moving car, I settled for his hand where he offered it.

“I feel like I’m missing something here,” Richard said.

“The trip to Ireland did not go as planned,” Jake said.

I looked at him. His face was sorrowful and compassionate. I had to look away from it to say,

“That’s one way of putting it.”

Richard touched my hand, meaning to comfort me, but I jerked away from him. “You weren’t there.

I’m sorry, you’ve been therapy-great tonight, but you weren’t in Ireland with us when it went to hell.

Domino died; Nathaniel almost died.”

“They cut my hair, Anita, that’s it. They didn’t hurt me.”

I stared at him, squeezing his hand in mine. “If my metaphysical Hail Mary hadn’t worked, they would have cut you to pieces in front of me.”

“But it did work, we got away. We lived, they died. We won, Anita, why can’t you take the win?”

“And I want to know how you can feel like it was a win? Domino died in front of me. Rodrigo killed him in front of me, and Rodrigo’s master would have done the same to you while they forced me to watch.”

He shook my hand, staring into my eyes like he was trying to will me to see things differently.

“Losing Domino, especially the way we did, is awful. I know what it’s like to watch someone you love die in front of you. I felt guilty for years about my brother’s death, but I was a little boy. There was nothing I could do to save him, and there was nothing you could do to save Domino.”

“But you were a little boy and I’m a U.S. Marshal. It’s my job to save people.”

“Domino was there as your bodyguard. It was his job to save you.”

“I put him in harm’s way. I took him to Ireland, and he died there protecting me, because I couldn’t protect him or myself.”

“Helplessness in the face of tragedy is hard for people like us,” Jake said.

I looked at him. “People like us?”

“People of action, warriors. Our weapons protect us and those we care for; when our skills fail us and we lose lives, it is hard. It erodes some of our sense of self.”

I looked into his world-weary brown eyes. He’d never age like normal thanks to his own ties to his vampire master, but suddenly I could glimpse the centuries of loss in his face, especially the eyes.

He let me see what the nearly immortal usually managed to hide, that even if the body endures, the spirit takes its damage.

“Yes,” I said at last, “that’s it, it erodes your sense of self, all the losses over the years.”

“We must do our best to make sure there are no more losses,” he said.

“We must,” Jean-Claude said.

It made me look at him and realize that he’d slipped away again into that profound silence that the old vamps had. His face was empty, showing nothing. Like a beautiful statue, too perfect to be real.