Crimson Death by Laurell K. Hamilton Page B

of the tricks that the Mother of All Darkness could do, and some of the old vampire council could do.”
    â€œHe tell you, or you experience it?”
    â€œShe’s visited us once. She caused fear in Damian and it spread to me and Nathaniel. It was pretty awful. I think that if Richard and Jean-Claude hadn’t been able to lend a metaphysical hand, she could literally have killed us with fear.”
    I heard the sheets move again. I was betting he was sitting up against the headboard. “You mean scared to death, literally?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI know you’ve met other vampires that could cause fear like that.”
    â€œNight hags, yeah, but they were amateurs compared to She-Who-Made-Him.”
    â€œYou really don’t want to say her name out loud.”
    â€œNo, I really don’t.”
    â€œShe spooked you.”
    â€œLet’s just say that I don’t want a revisit.”
    â€œYou don’t spook that easy,” he said.
    â€œNot normally, no.”
    â€œWhy didn’t the Irish know they had vampires?” he asked.
    â€œDamian said that they kept their numbers small, a dozen at the most and usually fewer. They took a little blood here and there, and when they did kill it was easy to blame it on war, wild animals, just the violence of the day. He said there was usually some battle or something to blame disappearances on.”
    â€œThat makes sense.”
    â€œHe also said that the jail nearby didn’t care if people died a little early as long as they weren’t the ones who paid the jailer for better treatment.”
    â€œA thousand years ago jails and hospitals would have been perfect for a vampire to feed from, and he’s right: no one would have given a second thought to a few more deaths.”
    â€œMost of the vampires I’ve known well wouldn’t feed in jail or hospitals. It wasn’t elegant enough victims, I guess. I know the vampire council didn’t feed like that.”
    â€œThey were aristocrats, Anita. They could prey on peasants and no one would question it, or no one that mattered. There were enough human nobles who used the common people like their personal hunting ground and no one questioned them either.”
    â€œThe only two nobles I know that were ever brought up on charges were Elizabeth Báthory and Gilles de Rais, but at least Báthory was caught because she had the bad taste to use a minor noble’s daughter as a victim. Only de Rais was actually put on trial without a noble victim.”
    â€œI always thought one of them must have had a vampire involved somewhere.”
    â€œThe vampire community actually thinks that Gilles de Rais sold his soul to the devil after his friend Joan of Arc was burned alive. It sort of damaged his faith in God’s goodness.”
    â€œI could see that,” Edward said.
    â€œYou and I both know that even if the devil wanted his soul, the urges that made him a murdering pedophile had to be there all along.”
    â€œYes, but he used his faith in God to not act on them. It was the theory that the Church used for centuries that you could pray yourself out of pedophilic urges, so become a priest.”
    â€œYeah, ask the victims of pedophile priests and nuns how that’s worked out.”
    â€œI didn’t say I agreed with it.”
    â€œSorry. Raised Catholic, so it’s a sore point with me.”
    â€œSometimes I forget that about you.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThat once you were a good little Catholic schoolgirl.”
    â€œI actually didn’t go to Catholic school.”
    â€œReally, so no little plaid skirt outfit?”
    â€œNo. Sorry to disappoint you.”
    â€œSchoolgirl really isn’t my thing.”
    â€œSomehow I didn’t think it would be.”
    I could almost hear the smile on the other end of the phone as he said, “I don’t think either of us spends a lot of time wondering what each