Read Online Crimson Death by Laurell K. Hamilton - Free Book Online

from his body. Blood was still beading on the skin between his shoulder blades. Shouldn’t it have soaked into the coat? He turned around and fresh blood was sweating onto his chest and forehead.
    â€œCardinale said she’d rather I keep having nightmares than have me sleep with someone else.” He wiped at the fresh blood with more Kleenex, until it was all a bloody mess. “I can feel it dripping down my back,” he said with distaste.
    â€œIt is, but I’m afraid to touch you again after the handshake,” I said.
    â€œNothing personal, but I don’t want to bleed more,” he said.
    â€œMaybe Jean-Claude can help us figure out why my touch made you do this,” I said.
    â€œThe next time we touch he should be in the room.”
    â€œAnd Nathaniel,” I said.
    â€œAnd maybe some security guards,” Damian said, as he threw more bloody tissues into the trash can.
    â€œWhy security?” I asked.
    â€œThe last time things went wrong with me, Anita, I killed innocent humans, just slaughtered them. I don’t remember doing it, but I believe that I did. I was worse than a freshly risen vampire, more like one of the revenants that never regains its mind.”
    â€œYou didn’t have any of these symptoms before last time, did you?”
    â€œNo, no nightmares, no bloody sweats, no power jumps, just out of my head with bloodlust.”
    â€œThat was different, then, Damian.”
    â€œWas it?”
    â€œYou said it yourself: The symptoms are different.”
    â€œI suppose.”
    â€œYou just went crazy that time, Damian.”
    â€œNo, I didn’t just go crazy, Anita. You had cut me off from my connection to you and instead of dying finally and completely, I was old enough, or powerful enough, to go crazy.”
    â€œDamian . . .”
    â€œI know you haven’t cut me off from your power as my master this time, Anita, but you’ve still distanced yourself from me.”
    â€œBecause you and Cardinale asked me to.”
    â€œWe did, but I didn’t understand how much I would miss interacting with you and Nathaniel.”
    â€œWe were never that close, the three of us.”
    â€œNo, but I feel the lack of you both, somehow.”
    Since Nathaniel had said almost the same thing about Damian a few months back, I wasn’t sure what to say; I didn’t seem to miss Damian as much as my other fiancé did. “I did what you asked, Damian.”
    â€œMaybe I’m unasking,” he said.
    â€œWhat does that mean?” I asked.
    â€œIt means that I’m lonely.”
    â€œYou live and work with Cardinale, and you’re in love with her.”
    â€œI know that.”
    I wanted to ask,
Then how can you be lonely?
But I wasn’t sure how to say it. He said it for me. “I thought being in love meant you’d never be lonely again, that it would be like coming home in every sense of the word.”
    â€œIt is like that,” I said, and couldn’t help but smile as I said it.
    He shook his head. “That smile on your face, that’s what I wanted to feel, but it’s not like that with Cardinale, not anymore.”
    I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said, “The bleeding has almost stopped.”
    â€œOh good, I’ve stopped sweating blood for the second time today.” He threw the last of the bloody Kleenex in the small trash can and turned to me with angry eyes. “Jean-Claude told me if I went mad again he might have to kill me.”
    â€œI remember,” I said.
    â€œYou can’t let me hurt innocent people again, Anita.”
    â€œI know,” I said.
    â€œI told Cardinale about the last time something went wrong with me, and I honestly think she’d prefer me dead than with someone else. How can that be love, Anita? How can she prefer me insane and having to be killed like an animal to me sleeping with other people?”
    Again, I had no