Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I gave him a quick frown before turning back to the road. I did not want to risk another near miss. I’d had my adrenaline rush for the day.

  “Come on, you know what I mean.”

  I sighed. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe it’s because you don’t do casual sex, but it means more to you than just fucking, even with the ardeur on.”

  If I’d been standing I would have shuffled my feet. I had to settle for concentrating really hard on my driving. “If you’ve got a point to make, Jason, make it.”

  “Don’t get all grumpy, Anita. My point is that even if we never touch each other again, I’m on your radar screen now. You see me. You really see me.” He looked deeply content.

  I was confused. When I’m confused I usually try and concentrate on work. “Do you think the lycanthrope that’s raping and killing these women is local?”

  “I know he’s not,” Jason said.

  I looked at him, because he sounded so positive. “How can you be that sure?”

  “It was a werewolf, it wasn’t one of our pack. There are no werewolves in the St. Louis area that are not part of the Thronnos Rokke Clan.”

  “How do you know it was a werewolf? It could have been any of a dozen types of half-men predators.”

  “It smelled like wolf.” He frowned at me. “Didn’t you smell it in the house?”

  “Mostly all I smelled was blood, Jason.”

  “Sometimes I forget you’re not one of us, yet.”

  “Is that a compliment or a complaint?”

  He grinned. “Neither.”

  “How can you be so sure it wasn’t one of our werewolves?”

  “It didn’t smell like pack.”

  “Forget that I am human, and my nose isn’t four hundred times more sensitive and scent discriminating, and explain it to me simply.”

  “My nose in human form isn’t as good as my nose in wolf form. The world is so alive. Scenting is almost like sight. If you’ve never experienced it, it’s hard to explain, but in human form touch is probably secondary to sight. In wolf form scent is secondary to sight, or in some cases, ahead of it.”

  “Okay, say that’s so, what does that mean for this investigation?”

  “It means that I know the killer is a werewolf, and I know he’s not one of ours.”

  “Your opinion won’t fly in court,” I said.

  “I didn’t think it would. Honest, I would have mentioned what I’d smelled in the house sooner if I hadn’t assumed you smelled it, too.” He looked worried now, and suddenly younger because of it, all schoolboy charm.

  What he’d said got me thinking.

  “Most breeds of scent hounds won’t track a werewolf, or any wereanimal for that matter. They go all shit-face, howling and whining and freaking out. They basically tell the hunters, you’re on your own,” I said.

  “I knew dogs didn’t like us, but I didn’t know they didn’t like us that much.”

  “Depends on the breed of dog, but most dogs don’t want to mess with you guys. I can’t say I blame them.”

  “So I guess going down to the pound and picking out a dog is out then.”

  “You’d set the place on its ear.”

  “Okay, did you have a point?” he asked, and grinned again.

  “Yes, could a werewolf in wolf form track this killer?”

  Jason thought about that, face all serious again. “Probably, but I don’t think the police will go for it. They don’t like us much, either.”

  “Probably they won’t, but I’ll float it by Zerbrowski when he calls.”

  “You’re sure he’s going to call?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ve got two dead women, and it’s probably all over the media.”

  “If you watched television, read a newspaper occasionally, or even listened to the radio, you might know these things,” Jason said.

  “Probably true, but there’s heat to solve this case, and more innocent lives at risk. Zerbrowski will call, because they’re grasping at straws or they wouldn’t have brought you in. If Dolph had a more promising lead, even out of his head like he is, he wouldn’t have been busting your chops, or mine.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “He’s a cop, above all else. If he had anything else to chase, he’d have been out chasing it, not wasting time with you.”

  “I don’t know, Anita, I didn’t see much of the cop left today. He seems like a man who’s let his personal problems eat everything else.”

  I would have argued if I could have, but I couldn’t. “I’ll mention the idea to Zerbrowski, if they get desperate enough they may go for it.”

  “How desperate would they have to be?”

  I turned the Jeep into the parking lot of the Circus. “Maybe two more bodies, maybe three. Using a werewolf to track a werewolf might appeal to Zerbrowski’s sense of humor, but getting the upper brass to agree would be the problem.”

  “Two more women, maybe three, Jesus, Anita, why not try the desperate measures before things get so damned bad?”

  “The police are like most people, Jason, they don’t like thinking outside the box. Using a werewolf in animal form as a sort of preternatural scent hound is way outside the freaking box.”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but I smelled what was upstairs, Anita. So much blood, so much meat. A human being shouldn’t be reduced to meat and blood.”

  “Aren’t we all just food on the hoof?” I tried to make a joke of it, but Jason looked offended.

  “You of all people should know better than that.”

  “Maybe,” I said, feeling my own smile slide away from my face. “Okay, I’m sorry, no offense meant, but I’ve had too many shape-shifters threaten me to have any illusions about where I am on the food chain. And there are an awful lot of shapeshifters that still believe they are at the top.”

  “I don’t buy that radical crap about us being the top of the evolutionary ladder,” Jason said, “if we were really the perfection of evolution, why have we been around for thousands of years, but yet, you poor humans outnumber us, and usually outkill us?”

  I parked near the back door and turned off the engine. Jason opened his door, but said, over his shoulder as he was getting out, “Don’t fool yourself, Anita, plain old humans kill more of us than we ever will of them.” He smiled, but not like it was funny, “They even kill more of each other than we kill of them.” Then he was striding across the parking lot. He never looked back.

  I had offended Jason. Until that moment I hadn’t been sure it was possible to offend him. Either he was growing up, or I was getting less diplomatic. Since I couldn’t possibly get less diplomatic than usual, Jason must have been growing up. For the first time in a while, I wondered if he would always be content to be Jean-Claude’s lap wolf and appetizer. And stripper, too. But you can’t strip and feed the vampires forever, can you?

  41

  BOBBY LEE MET me at the door. Tall, light-haired, and almost shiny compared to the dim storeroom behind him. But his mood was not shiny. “The police should have let me stay with you.”

  “I don’t think they believed my story about making you all deputies.”

  “You should have just said that we were your bodyguards.”

  “I’ll do that next time, Bobby Lee.” I filled him in on what I’d learned at the police department while we walked down the nearly endless steps that led from the storeroom to the lower parts of the Circus of the Damned. The stairs were wide enough for four people to walk abreast, but the steps themselves were oddly spaced, as if whatever they were originally carved for wasn’t very human. They definitely had not been made for bipeds.

  “I don’t know the name Heinrick,” he said.

  I looked at him, so suddenly, that I stumbled, and he caught my arm. I realized in that moment that I didn’t know that much about Bobby Lee, not really. “You work for Rafael, you can’t be a white supremacist.”

  He let go of my arm when he was su
re I was solidly on one of the odd wide steps. “Honey-child, I know white supremacists that specialize in hating people a little darker than Rafael.”

  “Real Southerners don’t say honey-child.”

  He grinned at me. “They do if you Northern bastards expect it.”

  “We’re in Missouri, that ain’t exactly north.”

  “It is from where I came from.”

  “And that was?”

  His smiled widened. “When we’re not in the middle of an emergency we can sit down and share personal time over a beer, or coffee. Right now, concentrate, honey-child, cause we are neck-deep and sinkin’.”

  “If you don’t know Heinrick, how do you know we’re sinking?”

  “I was a mercenary before Rafael’s people recruited me. I know people like Heinrick.”

  “What would somebody like that want with me?”

  “They were watching you for a reason, Anita, you probably know what that reason is, ya’ just got to think of it.”

  I shook my head. “You sound like a friend of mine. He’s always telling me that when the shit hits the fan that I should know why the bad guys are after me.”

  “He’s right.”

  “Not always, Bobby Lee, not always.” But the conversation did make me think of Edward. He’d started his professional life as a hit man, then killing humans became too easy, so he switched to monsters. Monsters covered a lot of ground for Edward. No, among the vampires and shape-shifters, he’d include serial killers, snuff film actors, anyone and anything that caught his fancy. Though the price had to be right. Edward didn’t work for free. Well, not often. Sometimes he’d work simply for the thrill of chasing something that scared the rest of us mere mortals to death.

  “Does anyone in Rafael’s operation have contacts in nongovernmental channels? I don’t want anyone owing anyone a favor for this. I don’t want anyone getting in trouble. I just want to know what the regular government channels either don’t know, or aren’t sharing with the St. Louis police department.”

  “We have some ex-military, special forces, things like that. I’ll ask around.”

  I nodded. “Good.” And I’d call Edward, see if he knew Heinrick. I started walking down the steps again. Bobby Lee fell in beside me, though since he was six feet and I so wasn’t, it was probably an awkward stride for him. He didn’t complain, and I didn’t offer to speed up. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing Jean-Claude or Asher again. I still didn’t know what to say.

  We were within sight of the big heavy door that led into the underground areas. It was partially ajar, waiting for us. “By the way, Jean-Claude and Asher request your presence in Jean-Claude’s room.”

  I sighed, and my unhappiness must have shown on my face, because he touched my arm. “Don’t look so glum, honey, they said something about owing you an apology.”

  My eyebrows went up at that. An apology, them owing me. I liked the sound of that. I liked the sound of that a lot.

  42

  IT WASN’T THE apology I was expecting, but under the circumstances, any apology was better than none. Especially if I wasn’t having to give it. Of course, it took them nearly five minutes to get me to hear the apology, because once I got a good look at the two of them in their banquet finery, I was rendered speechless, deaf, and damn near blind to anything else.

  I don’t think it was magic or vampire trickery. They just looked fine. Asher wore a jacket of pale gold with darker gold embroidery, and an edge of true metallic gold thread shot through the embroidery itself. There was a touch more gold at collar, lapels, wide cuffs. Just enough extra sparkle to mingle with the gold of his hair as it cascaded over his shoulders and add emphasis to the gestures of his hands. His shirt was a foam of white frills at chest and wrist, like a tamed cloud. I knew from rifling through Jean-Claude’s closet that the shirt wasn’t nearly as soft as it appeared. The pants were the same pale gold as the jacket with a line of embroidery down either side of his leg. Boots the color of oyster shells graced his legs, their tops folded down just above the knees, tied with pale brown leather belts and small gold buckles, which could be glimpsed as he moved.

  I noticed Asher first, maybe because of his powers, or maybe because he was all shiny and gold and eye-catching. It was like noticing the sun. You couldn’t help but see it, to turn to face the heat of it, to bask in the glory of it. But often when the sun is high in the sky, the moon is up there, too. A dim memory of what she will be in the night, but there, nonetheless, dim and misty, hard and white. At night, there is only the moon, the sun is nowhere to be seen. There are no distractions when the moon rules the night sky.

  Jean-Claude’s coat was a black velvet so soft and fine that it shown like fur. It was opera length, flowing down to his ankles. There was embroidery on the lapels and wide cuffs, a deep royal blue. The embroidery on the coat matched that on the black vest, but the shirt that showed in all that black and royal was the same shade of blue of the silk sheets on the bed. Cerulean blue, a color caught between the skies of day and night. It brought out the blue of his eyes so that they were like living jewels set amid the black of his hair, the near pure whiteness of his skin.

  The silk was mounded into soft ruffles at his chest, and tucked into the vest. A gold and sapphire stickpin pierced the ruffles at his chest. The stone was almost as large as one of his blue eyes. Cuff links winked as he gestured, gold, with sapphires almost as large as the one on his chest. The sapphires were that cornflower blue, like a drop of Caribbean Sea water made solid.

  His hair was a mass of black curls. It was almost as if he’d done less to it than normal, letting it tousle around his face and shoulders. The black of his hair blended into the black of his coat, so that the hair was like a living accessory.

  For a moment I thought he was wearing leather pants, until I realized the black boots ran up the entire length of his leg. He was wearing black pants but they were barely visible. I got just a flash of the back of the boots when he moved. The entire length of the boot from ankle to ass was tied with a blue cord that matched the startling blue of his shirt.

  I was caught between going yippy-skippy I get to play with them both, and running like hell. I managed to simply stand there in the middle of the room and not run, or fall at their feet like a groupie. Though that last part took more determination than I’d ever admit out loud.

  “Ma petite, have you heard a word that we have said?”

  I remembered that their mouths had been moving while I gazed at all that masculine splendor, but for the life of me I couldn’t repeat a word of it. I blushed as I admitted, “Not really.”

  He looked exasperated, hands on hips, spreading the coat backwards, flashing more of the blue cord as he paced towards me. “It is as I feared, Asher. She is besotted with you. If we cannot,” he made a waffling motion with his hands and I saw the sapphire ring for the first time, winking at me in the candlelight, “tone this effect down, she will be useless tonight.”

  “If I had dreamt that she could be so totally affected I would have held back.”

  Jean-Claude turned and faced Asher. I could see that there was blue embroidery on the back of the coat. It made a pattern or picture, but I couldn’t figure it out through the spill of hair. “Would you, mon ami, would you truly have withheld such pleasure? Could you have resisted?”

  “If I had known this, oui. I would not have weakened us with Musette and her people here, not for any pleasure.”

  I frowned and shook my head. “Hold it guys.” They turned and looked at me. They both looked surprised, I think because I sounded so normal. “This can’t be Asher’s powers, not unless his fascination extends to Jean-Claude, because you both seem equally nifty. I feel like jumping up and down and saying yippee, I get to play with them both.” I blinked and fought not to blush. “I’m sorry, did I just say that out loud?”

  The two men exchanged glances, then Jean-Claude turned back to me, and Asher directed that pale blue gaze on me. “What are you saying, ma petite?
I have never seen you stand so speechless and insensible before me.”

  I looked at the two of them and shook my head. “Fine, you need a reminder, I can do that.” I walked past them to the full-length mirror that sat on the opposite side of the room. I motioned them both over. “Come on, come on, we don’t have all night.”

  They finally drifted over to me, looking puzzled. I got a little distracted watching them glide towards me in all that silk and leather and sparkly stuff. But finally, I had them standing in front of the mirror, though they weren’t looking at the mirror, they were looking at me, still puzzled.

  I finally had to touch each of them lightly on the arm and maneuver them so that the golden cream of Asher’s coat spilled against the black velvet of Jean-Claude’s. So that black curls intermingled with golden waves. I pushed them together until the startling blue of Jean-Claude’s shirt and the sapphire pin brought out the blue of both of their eyes.

  “Look at yourselves, and tell me that any mere mortal isn’t going to stand there and say wow, for a few minutes.”

  They looked into the mirror, they looked at each other, and finally Jean-Claude smiled. Asher didn’t.

  “If it were merely Asher’s powers then, you are correct, ma petite, it would not extend to me.” He turned to face me, still smiling. “But I have never seen you this besotted.”

  “You just haven’t noticed.”

  He shook his head. “Non, ma petite, I would have noticed such a phenomenon before.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe I’ve never seen you both dressed to kill before. The double impact is a little overwhelming.”

  He moved away enough to turn in a graceful circle, arms out, showing off the outfit. “You think it is too much?”

  I smiled, almost laughed. “No, not even close, but I’m allowed to stand dumbfounded in the presence of such beauty.”

  “Très poetic, ma petite.”

  “Looking at the two of you, I only wish I was a poet, because I can’t do you justice. You look amazing, wondrous, specfuckingtacular.”