Obsidian Butterfly ab-9

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "If I thought that, I'd have packed the mini-Uzi and the sawed-off shotgun. This is just the normal stuff you carry."

  I drew the big blade that would have normally rode down my back. "When they cut off the shoulder holster, they cut through the rig for this, too."

  "Was it a specialty item?"

  I nodded.

  "I thought it must be because I asked around and no one had a sheath for concealment of something that large for the back, especially not when you throw in how damn narrow you are through the shoulders."

  "It was a custom job." I laid the big knife back in the bag, almost sadly. "There's no way to conceal this thing without a rig for it."

  "Did the best I could."

  I smiled at him. "No, it's great. I mean it."

  "Why are we taking the police in with us to Obsidian Butterfly?"

  I told him what Jean-Claude had told me, though not how the message had I gotten through. "With the police at our backs, she'll know it's not vampire politics and we'll probably be able to walk out without a fight."

  He was leaning against the wall arms crossed. The white shirt didn't quite lay smooth over the front of him. His gun was showing but only if you knew what you were looking for. A paddle holster or a clip holster because the gun was riding outside the pants. It explained why the white shirt wasn't tucked in, and the fact that he was wearing a T-shirt under the shirt probably meant that he had something on him that would chafe without cloth between it and his skin.

  "You still carrying that band of throwing darts?" I asked.

  "You can't see it, not with the shirt untucked." He didn't even try to deny it. Why should he?

  "Because you're wearing an undershirt, and because the shirt is untucked. I know, it's partially to hide the gun, but you never wear an undershirt, so you've got to be wearing something under the shirt that would chafe without the undershirt."

  He smiled, and it was a pleased smile, almost proud, as if I'd done something smart. "I'm carrying two more guns, a knife, and a garrote. Tell me where they are and I'll give you a prize."

  My eyes had gone wide. "A garrote. Even for you that's a little Psychos'R'Us."

  "Give up?"

  "No. Is there a time limit?"

  He shook his head. "We've got all night."

  "If I guess wrong, is there a penalty?"

  He shook his head.

  "What's the prize if I figure out where everything is?"

  He smiled that close, secretive smile that said he knew things that I didn't. "It's a surprise prize."

  "Get out so I can get dressed."

  He touched the belt where it lay on the bed. "This buckle didn't come black. Who painted it?"

  "I did."

  "Why?"

  He knew the answer. "So that if I'm out after dark, the buckle doesn't catch the light and give me away." I lifted the tail of his white shirt exposing the large ornate silver belt buckle. "This is like a freaking target after dark."

  He looked down at me, making no move to lower the shirt. "It just clips on over the real buckle."

  I let the shirt slide back. "The buckle underneath?"

  "It's blacked," he said.

  We smiled at each other. It went all the way to our eyes. We did like each other. We were friends. "Sometimes I think I don't want to be you when I grow up, Edward, sometimes I think it's too late, I'm already there."

  The smile faded, leaving his eyes the color of winter skies and just as pitiless.

  "Only you decide how far gone you are, Anita. Only you can decide how far you'll go."

  I looked at the weapons and the black clothing like funeral clothes, even down to the things that touched my skin. "Maybe it would be a start if I bought something pink."

  "Pink?" Edward said.

  "Yeah, you know, pink, like Easter Bunny grass."

  "Like cotton candy," he said. "Or almost everything women give each other at baby showers."

  "When were you at a baby shower?" I asked.

  "Donna's taken me to two of them. It's the new thing, couples baby showers."

  I looked at him, eyes wide. "You, at a couples baby shower, Edward."

  "You in something the color of children's candy and baby doll clothes." He shook his head. "Anita, you are one of the least pink women I've ever met."

  "When I was a little girl, I'd have given a small body part to have a pink canopy bed, and ballerina wallpaper would have been perfect."

  He gave me wide, surprised eyes. "You, in a pink canopy bed with ballerina wallpaper." He shook his head. "Just trying to imagine you in a room like that gives me a headache."

  I looked at the things spread on the bed. "I was pink once, Edward."

  "Most of us start off soft," he said, "but you can't stay that way, not and survive."

  "There's got to be someplace I won't go, something I won't do, some line I won't cross, Edward."

  "Why?" That one word held more curiosity than he usually allowed himself.

  "Because if I don't have any lines, limits, then what kind of person does that make me?" I asked.

  He shook his head, moving the cowboy hat low on his head. "You're having a crisis of conscience."

  I nodded. "Yeah, I guess I am."

  "Don't go soft, Anita, not on my dime. I need you to do what you do best, and what you do best isn't soft or gentle or kind. What you do best is what I do best."

  "And what is that? What is it that we do best?" I asked, and I knew the anger came through in my voice. I was getting angry with Edward.

  "We do what it takes, whatever it takes, to get the job done."

  "There's got to be more to life than the ultimate practicality, Edward."

  "If it makes you feel any better, we have different motives. I do what I do because I love it. It's not just what I do. It's who I am. You do the job to save lives, to keep the damage down." He looked at me with eyes gone as empty and bottomless as any vampire's. "But you love it, too, Anita. You love it, and that bothers you."

  "Violence is one of my top three responses now, Edward, maybe my number one."

  "And it's kept you alive."

  "At what price?'

  He shook his head, and now the blankness was replaced by anger. He was just suddenly moving forward. I caught his hand going under the shirt, and I was rolling off the bed, with the Browning in my hand. I had a round in the chamber and was falling back onto the floor with the gun pointed up, eyes searching for movement.

  He was gone.

  My heart was thudding so loudly that I could barely hear, and I was straining to hear. A movement, something. He had to be on the bed. It was the only place he could have gone. From my angle I couldn't see anything on top of the bed, just the corner of the mattress and the trail of sheet.

  Knowing Edward, the ammo in the Browning was probably his homemade brew, which meant that it would pierce the bottom of the bed and go up into whatever lay on top of the bed. I felt the last of the air in my body slide outward, and I sighted on the underneath of the bed. The first bullet would either hit him or make him move, then I'd have a better idea of where he was.

  "Don't shoot, Anita."

  His voice made me move the gun barrel just a touch more right. It would take him mid-body because he was crouched up there, not lying down. I knew that without seeing it.

  "It was a test, Anita. If I wanted to come against you, I'd warn you first, you know that."

  I did know that, but ... I heard the bed creak. "Don't move, Edward. I mean it."

  "You think you can just decide to turn all this off. You can't. The genie is out of the bottle for you, Anita, just like it is for me. You can't unmake yourself. Think of all the effort, all the pain, that went into making you who you are. Do you really want to throw all that away?"

  I was lying flat on my back, gun pointed two-handed. The floor was cold where the gown had gaped at my back. "No," I said, finally.

  "If your heart starts bleeding for all the bad things you do, it won't be the last thing that ble
eds."

  "You really did this to test me. You son of a bitch."

  "Can I move now?"

  I took my finger off the trigger and sat up on the floor. "Yeah, you can move."

  He eased back off the other side of the bed as I stood up on this one. "Did you see how fast you went for the gun? You knew where it was, you had the safety off and a round chambered, and you were looking for cover, and trying to target me." Again there was that pride, like a teacher with a favorite student.

  I looked across at him. "Don't ever do anything like that again, Edward."

  "A threat?" he asked.

  I shook my head. "No threat, just instinct. I came so close to putting a bullet through the bed and into you."

  "And while you were doing it, your conscience wasn't bothering you. You weren't thinking, 'It's Edward. I'm about to shoot my friend.' "

  "No," I said. "I wasn't thinking anything but how to get the best shot possible before you had time to shoot me." It didn't make me happy to say it. It felt like I'd been mourning dead pieces of myself, and Edward's little demonstration had confirmed the deaths. It made me sad, and a little depressed, and not happy with Edward.

  "I knew a man once who was as good as you are," Edward said. "He started second-guessing himself, worrying about whether he was a bad person. It got him killed. I don't want to see you dead because you hesitated. If I have to bury you, then I want it to be because someone was just that good or that lucky."

  "I want to be cremated," I said, "not buried."

  "Good little Christian, fallen Catholic, practicing Episcopalian, and you want to be cremated."

  "I don't want anyone trying to raise me from the dead or stealing body parts for spells. Just burn it all, thanks."

  "Cremated. I'll remember."

  "How about you, Edward? Where do you want the body shipped?"

  "It doesn't matter," he said. "I'll be dead, and I won't care."

  "No family?"

  "Just Donna and the kids."

  "They are not your family, Edward."

  "Maybe they will be."

  I put the safety on the Browning. "We don't have time to discuss your love life and my moral crisis. Get out so I can get dressed."

  He had his hand on the door when he turned. "Speaking of love life, Richard Zeeman called."

  That got my attention. "What do you mean Richard called?"

  "He seemed to know that something bad had happened to you. He was worried."

  "When did he call?"

  "Earlier tonight."

  "Did he say anything else?"

  "That he'd finally called Ronnie and had her track down Ted Forrester's unlisted number. He seemed to think that you leaving a forwarding number with him would be a good idea." His face was utterly blank, empty. Only his eyes held a faint hint of amusement.

  So both the boys had finally grown frustrated at my silence. Richard had turned to my good friend, Ronnie, who happened to be a private investigator. Jean-Claude had taken a more direct route. But they'd both finally gotten hold of me on the same night. Would they compare notes?

  "What did you tell Richard?" I laid the gun on the bed with the rest.

  "That you were all right." Edward was looking around the room. "Doctor Cunningham still not allowing you a phone in here?"

  "Nope," I said. I had managed to untie the back of the gown.

  "Then how did Jean-Claude contact you?"

  I stopped in mid-motion. The gown slid off one shoulder and I had to catch it with my hand. It caught me off guard and I'm never as good a liar on the spur of the moment. "I never said it was a phone call."

  "Then what was it?"

  I shook my head. "Just go, Edward. The night's not getting any younger."

  He just stood there, looking at me. His face had gone all cold and suspicious.

  I got the bra in one hand and turned my back on him. I let the gown slide to my waist, leaned back against the bed to hold it in place, and slipped the bra on. There was no sound from behind me. I got the panties and slipped them on underneath the gown. I had the jeans hallway up my legs under the cover of the gown when I heard the door hush open and close.

  I turned and found the doorway empty. I finished dressing. I had my toiletries in the bathroom already, so I threw them in the gym bag along with the big knife, and the boxes of ammo. The new shoulder holster felt odd. I was used to a leather one which fit tight and secure. I guess nylon was secure, but it was almost too comfortable, as if it seemed less substantial than my leather one had. But it beat the heck out of sticking it down my jeans.

  The knives went in the wrist sheaths. I checked to see what kind of ammo the Firestar had in it. Edward's homemade stuff. I checked the Browning, and it was his stuff, too. The backup clip for the Browning was the Hornady XTP Silver-Edge. I changed the clip. We were going into the Obsidian Butterfly as cops, which meant if I had to shoot someone, I'd have to explain it to the authorities later. Which meant I didn't want to go in there with some possibly illegal homemade shit in my gun. Besides I'd seen what the Hornady Silver-Edge could do to a vampire. It was enough.

  The Firestar went into an Uncle Mike's inner pants holster, though truthfully the jeans were too tight for an inner pants holster. Maybe I wasn't spending enough time in the gym. I had been on the road more than I'd been home. The Kenpo was neat stuff, but it wasn't the same thing as a full workout with weights and running. Another thing to pay more attention to when I got back to St. Louis. I'd been letting a lot of things slide.

  I finally transferred the Firestar to the small of my back and hated it, but it dug in something fierce in front. I have a slight sway to my back so there's always more room for a gun there, but it wasn't a quick place to draw from. Something about a woman's hip structure makes a gun at the small of the hack not the best idea. That I kept the gun at the small of my back tells you just how tight the jeans were. Definitely going to have to get back into a regular gym schedule. The first five pounds are easy to get rid of, the second five are harder, and it gets even harder from there. I'd been chunky in junior high, close to fat, so I knew what I was talking about. So that no teenager out there will get the wrong idea and go all anorexic on me, I was a size thirteen in jeans, and that was at five foot nothing. See, I really was chunky. I hate women who complain about being fat when they're like a size five. Anything under size five isn't a woman. It's a boy with breasts.

  I stared at the black jacket. Two days folded in a gym bag and it desperately needed to go to the dry cleaners. I decided to carry it folded over one arm, on the theory it would unwrinkle a little. I didn't really need to hide the weapons until we got to the club. The knives were illegal if I'd been a cop or acivvie, but I was a vampire executioner, and we got to carry knives. Gerald Mallory, the grandfather of our business, had testified before a senate subcommittee, or something like that, at how many times knives had saved his life. Mallory was well liked in Washington. It was his home base. So the law got changed to let us carry knives, even really big ones. If someone challenged me, all I had to do was whip out my executioner's license, and I was legal. Of course, that was predicated on them knowing the loophole in the law. Not every cop on the beat is going to know. But my heart is pure because I'm legal.

  Edward and Ramirez were waiting for me in the hallway. They both smiled and the smiles were so close to identical it was unnerving. Will the real good guys please stand up? But Edward's smile never faltered. Ramirez's did. His gaze hesitated on the wrist sheath. The jacket hid the other one. I walked up to them smiling, and my eyes were shiny, too. I put a hand around Edward's waist and brushed my arm along the gun I'd thought was there at the small of his back.

  "I've called for backup," Ramirez said.

  Edward had given me a quick Ted hug and let me go, though he knew I'd found the gun. "Great. It's been a long time since I visited a Master of the City with the police."

  "How do you usually do it?" Ramirez asked.

  "Carefully," I said.

  Edwar
d turned his head away and coughed. I think he was trying not to laugh, but you can never tell with Edward. Maybe he just had a tickle in his throat. I watched him walk and wondered where in the world he was hiding the third gun.

  51

  ONE OF THE THINGS I liked about working with the police was that when you went into a business and asked to speak with the manager or owner, no one argued. Ramirez flashed his badge and asked to speak with the owner, Itzpapalotl, also known as Obsidian Butterfly.

  The hostess, the same darkly elegant woman that had shown Edward and me to a table last time, took Ramirez's business card, showed us all to a table, and left us. The only difference was this time we didn't get any menus. The two uniforms stayed at the door, but kept us in sight. I'd put the wrinkled jacket on to cover the guns and knives, but I was glad the club was dark, because the jacket had seen better days.

  Ramirez leaned over and asked, "How long do you think she'll keep us waiting?"

  Funny how he didn't ask if she would keep us waiting. "Not sure, but a while. She's a goddess and you've just ordered her to appear before you. Her ego won't let her be quick."

  Edward was leaning in on the other side. "Half hour, at least."

  A waitress came. Ramirez and I ordered Cokes. Edward got water. The lights on the stage dimmed, then came up brighter. We settled back for the show. Cesar had probably healed by now, but not by much. So it would either be a different wereanimal or a different show altogether.

  There was what looked like a stone coffin propped up on the stage, sitting on its end with the carved lid staring out at the audience. Our table wasn't as good as last time. I spotted Professor Dallas at her usual table, alone this time. She didn't seem to mind.

  The stone lid was carved in a crouching jaguar with a necklace of human skulls. The high priest Pinotl came onto the stage. He was dressed only in that skirt thing, a maxtlatl, that left the legs and most of the hips bare. I'd asked Dallas what the skirt was. His face was painted black with a stripe of white across the eyesand nose. His long black hair had been formed into individual strands curling at the ends. He wore a white crown, and it took me a second to realize it was made of bones. The stage lights flickered over the white bones, making them shimmer, and almost bleed white color when he moved his head. Finger bones had been restrung and formed a fan above the main band, reminiscent of the feathers I'd seen him wearing the first time. His ear spools of gold had been replaced by bones. He looked totally different from the first time, and yet the moment he stepped out on stage I knew it was him. No one else had had that aura of command.