Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  The last gun shot echoed into the night. My ears were full of that ringing silence that happens when you’ve fired that many shots from that close a range without ear protection. I was standing over the body, one foot on its shoulder, pinning it to the ground. I must have kicked him over onto his back sometime during the chest shots. I didn’t remember doing it, but shooting into the ground was a hell of a lot safer than shooting out into the night. Not all the bullets would stop in his body, not when you were trying to punch a hole through the person.

  The first sound that came back was the sound of my blood in my ears, the pulse of my own body. Then some sound made me turn. Malcolm had brought his flock to watch, or maybe they had come on their own, and he couldn’t stop them, so he’d come with them. Whatever, they were there held back by the uniforms. The vampires and the few humans among them stood staring at me. There was a little girl in front, and for a second I thought, what the fuck are her parents thinking, then I realized she was a vamp. I had trouble concentrating, but she was old. Older than the woman holding her hand and pretending to be her mommy.

  I popped the clip in my gun and checked how much ammo I had left. I couldn’t remember how many shots I’d fired. I’d only brought two clips with me. Silly me. I needed to load up. I needed my Jeep, or home. I put the clip back in and slammed it home with my hand. Some of the vamps jumped at the small sound it made. Somehow with all of them standing there staring at me, I didn’t want to put the gun up. I didn’t think they’d really rush us, but it was definitely not a friendly crowd.

  Zerbrowski came up to me. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said, and either he whispered, or my hearing wasn’t all the way back. But I didn’t argue. I let him take me to his car, and I let Smith and Marconi watch our backs.

  I saw Avery in the crowd as we moved. He didn’t look happy to see me anymore. Guess the honeymoon was over. Zerbrowski got me into the passenger seat. Movement caught my eye. It was Wicked and Truth. They were by the entrance to the church. They didn’t look upset. Truth gave me a nod, and Wicked kissed the tip of one finger in my direction.

  I buckled my seat belt, raised a hand in their direction.

  “You made some new friends tonight,” Zerbrowski said, as he put the car in gear and drove us slowly forward. We had to ease close to the waiting group of vampires. They watched us with blank, empty faces.

  “Yeah, I make friends wherever I go.”

  He gave a small, dry laugh. “Jesus, Anita, did you have to blow a hole clean through his chest?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.” My voice wasn’t the least bit friendly.

  “I’d stay away from the church for awhile, if I were you. They’re going to remember what you did tonight.”

  I put my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. “Yeah, me, too.”

  “You alright with this?”

  “No. Did Parker call back yet?”

  “Yeah. I told him you were blowing a hole through a vampire’s chest. He said you could call him back.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Is that really what you told him?”

  He grinned at me. “Yeah.”

  I shook my head. “Give me your damn phone.”

  He handed it to me. “Just hit this button, it’ll ring him back.”

  I hit the button, and the phone started to ring. I was numb. I felt nothing, but a vague shockiness. Parker answered on the second ring, and I started to talk about business. About solving murders, and saving lives. I concentrated on the fact that we were trying to save lives, but my mind kept jumping around. It kept jumping over a vision of Jonah Cooper’s eyes, and his question, how do you stay sane? The answer, the real answer, was, you don’t.

  70

  AN HOUR LATER, I was home. I had a date with Mobile Reserve for just after dawn. Captain Parker had told me to get some sleep, as if I sounded like I needed it. He’d even agreed to letting me go in with them. I was to their vampire raids what Haz-Mat was to their meth lab raids. An expert who could help them stay alive and not accidentally blow themselves to hell. Vampires wouldn’t blow up like some of the chemicals used in metham-phetamine labs, but lack of knowledge could make you just as dead. I would be their Johnny-on-the-spot expert, and no you don’t want to know how much arguing I had to do to get both the invitation to go in with them and to keep the address until I met them at dawn.

  I sat at my kitchen table sipping coffee and staring off into space. The coffee was sloshing against the sides of my cup, like it was trying to escape. That shouldn’t be happening.

  Micah was suddenly at my side. He put his hand on my coffee mug. “You’re going to drop it.”

  I stared up at him and didn’t know what he meant. It must have shown on my face, because he explained, “Your hands are shaking. I’m afraid you’re going to drop the cup.” He eased it out of my hands and set it on the table.

  I stared at my hands, and he was right. They were shaking. Not a fine tremble, but a full-blown quaking, as if from the wrist down I was having a fit. I stared at my hands like they belonged to someone else.

  Micah knelt in front of me, he put his hands on mine, held them tight between his. “Anita, what happened?”

  It felt good for him to hold my hands. It helped the shaking to slow, but it didn’t go away. What happened? What had happened? What made this one different? Everything, nothing. It took me two tries to talk. “I had to talk to him.”

  “Him who?”

  “The vampire I killed tonight.” The trembling was quieting under the press of his hands. My voice didn’t show the trembling at all, it was empty.

  “Why did you have to talk to him?”

  “Interrogation, had to interrogate him.”

  Micah touched my face, and it startled me, but it made me look at him. His eyes were very green in the dimness of the kitchen, with that yellow around his pupils more like light gathering around a single point. “Did you learn what you needed to know?”

  I nodded, still staring at his eyes.

  “And why couldn’t you wait until dawn to kill him?”

  I shook my head. “He was one of our serial killers. Couldn’t risk him getting away and warning them.”

  “Then you had to kill him.” He put his hand on the side of my face, and that made me look at him more, not just fascinate on his eyes. I saw him now, all of him, saw Micah. I’d known he was there, but it was as if I was only getting pieces of things. I looked at that face that was at once so familiar to me that I knew every curve and line, and yet, I was still surprised sometimes to look at him and realize that he was mine. That this was my sweetie. It still caught me off-guard sometimes, like a really good surprise. As if he was too good to be real, and I kept expecting him not to be there. Why should he be different?

  He reached up to me, and I slid off the chair and into his arms. I wrapped myself around his waist, his chest, his shoulders. I hugged him as tight and close as I could with legs and arms, and he got to his feet with me still wrapped around him. We were the same height and weighed within fourteen pounds of each other. If he’d been human, he might not have been able to do it, but he wasn’t human, and he stood up and began to walk through the darkened house. I knew where we were going, and I couldn’t think of anything better than crawling under the covers and letting him hold me.

  The phone rang. Micah kept walking. The machine caught it, and Ronnie’s voice came on. “ ’Nita this is Ronnie. I need help.” Micah froze, because it didn’t sound like Ronnie.

  I hopped down to the floor and was running for the phone while she was still slurring her words. “Ronnie, Ronnie, it’s me. What’s happened?”

  “Anita, it’s you.”

  “Ronnie, what’s happened?” My pulse was thudding in my throat again. Adrenaline had chased the shock and the numbness away.

  “I’m drunk,” she said happily.

  “What?”

  “I’m at a club across the river. I am watching men take their clothes off.”

>   “What club?”

  “Something Dreams.”

  “Incubus Dreams,” I said.

  “That’s it,” and she slurred her S.

  “Why are you at a strip club getting drunk?” I asked. The adrenaline was easing away.

  “Louie won’t live with me. He says marriage or nothin’, and I said nuthin’.”

  “Oh, Ronnie.”

  “I am drunk, and the bartender says I need a ride. Can I have a ride?”

  Micah was standing close enough that he’d caught some of it. “I’ll go get her.”

  “Anita, why are men such bastards?”

  I wasn’t sure that men were such bastards, but I knew better than to argue. “I’ll come get you, just stay there, and don’t do anything you’ll regret when you wake up tomorrow.”

  She giggled; Ronnie never giggled. “Oh, I want to do something that Louie will regret tomorrow.”

  Shit. “Sit tight, don’t do anything stupid. We’ll be there as soon as we can.” She hung up, still laughing.

  I filled Micah in on the parts he’d missed. “You need to rest, Anita. I’ll go get her.”

  “First, she’s in the men-are-bastards mind-set, and she’s wanting to do something that Louie will regret tomorrow. I think you alone wouldn’t be a good idea, besides she’s my friend. But I’m letting you come with me.”

  He was frowning at me.

  I touched his arm. “Going to bed with you beside me is the best idea in the world right now, but going to bed without you is like the worst idea in the world. I think alone my head’s going to turn ugly. Maybe going out is exactly what I need.”

  He frowned harder. “You can just call her a taxi.”

  “Ronnie and I just made up from a fight that’s lasted for months. I don’t want to lose her again.”

  “I’m not going to talk you out of this, am I?”

  “No.”

  He smiled then, though his eyes still weren’t happy. “Then let’s go.”

  I smiled at him. “Thank you.”

  “What for, not arguing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But I’m driving.”

  I didn’t argue. I did get my vampire hunter kit and my equipment bag. The equipment bag was new, but it held more weapons. It carried lots of guns, lots of ammo, pointy weapons, and it all looked like a medium sized black duffel bag, luggage thing.

  Micah didn’t argue about the extra firepower. He just held the door for me, since I had a bag in each hand. We met Nathaniel coming up the sidewalk. He grinned at me, until he saw my face and the bags. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  I looked at Micah, and he looked at me. “She’s got a warrant, so she can carry her entire kit with her.”

  “You aren’t going to catch vampires with her, are you?”

  I sighed. “Right now, we’re going to go rescue Ronnie. She’s drunk as a skunk over the river at Incubus Dreams. The bartender took her keys.”

  Nathaniel’s eyebrows went up. “Why go to that dump?”

  I laughed and dropped a bag so I could hug him. He hugged me back. “Come with us, and we’ll discuss it in the car. I want to get there before she does something stupid.”

  “You mean like get drunk at a strip club where I know the dancers will do a lot more than just strip for money?”

  I looked at him, and my eyes were wide. “Tell me you don’t mean . . .”

  He shrugged. “That’s the rumor, and I believe the person who told me.”

  “Oh, shit.” I started to run for the Jeep, because having sex with a prostitute stripper would qualify nicely as something Louie would regret in the morning. The trouble with that kind of revenge is that you regret it so much more than whoever you’re trying to hurt. I threw the bags in the back. Micah drove, and Nathaniel got in the back. We were off to try to save Ronnie from a fate worse than death, or something like that.

  71

  INCUBUS DREAMS SITS by itself in the middle of an open field, a distant stand of trees, and a gravel parking area. It sits by itself, partly by accident and partly because it is the only all-male show on this side of the river. Bright multicolored neon surrounded the entrace. There was a large printed sign on the door that read, “All-Male Dancers.” It was a last chance for the drunks to make sure that this was what they wanted to see, and they weren’t about to stumble into the wrong club.

  The three of us stepped into the foyer, or whatever you call an open space with an empty display case and a little desklike area. There was no one behind it, no one to ask if we wanted to check our coats. I was actually the only one wearing a coat. It was mild for October, and lycanthropes tend to run warm. I had the short leather jacket on, mostly to hide the gun under my arm, more than to protect against the autumn chill. But whatever bouncer was supposed to check people out at the door wasn’t at the door. We entered the club unmolested and unchecked out. Bad security, no cookie.

  Of course, maybe they were counting on you being deafened and stunned for a moment by the music. It was so loud you could feel the bass in your bones, and not in a good way. You literally stood a moment on the raised area inside the doors, just trying to adjust your senses to the damn music. Who needs security when the music is like a blow against the side of your head? A headache started almost instantly, faint, but promising to be a real bitch. I went over how much money I had on me, and how much it would cost to get them to turn the music down. Twenty dollars, it’d be cheap at twenty dollars. Of course, the DJ in his raised booth would probably be offended. I tried to ignore the music and looked around the room, trying to spot Ronnie. How many tall, leggy blond women could there be here? More than you’d think. The room was packed. Shit.

  We must have hesitated too long, because the DJ leaned down over his booth wall, which happened to be above us and to the left. He yelled, “Pay at the bar.”

  “What?” I yelled back.

  He repeated himself, still yelling.

  I took the opportunity to ask if he could turn the music down. He smiled, shook his head, and vanished behind his wall. I started to reach for my pocket, and Nathaniel touched my arm. He leaned in so that his face was almost touching my ear. “Don’t offer money for him to turn it down, you might offend him.”

  I yelled back from an inch away, “Like I care.”

  Nathaniel smiled and yelled, “He could turn it louder.”

  I gave him wide eyes and let my hand fall back away from my jacket pocket. I didn’t really think the music could get any louder, but just in case, I wouldn’t tempt fate.

  There was a dance floor to the right, and several small raised stages with shiny poles in their centers. A pool table to the left and little tables scattered around hither and yon. Bathrooms were strangely prominent against the far left wall. There seemed to be no door to the men’s room, and no doors on any of the stalls, so even standing at the door you could see directly into it. That seemed weird. The bar was, of course, at the far side of the room.

  There seemed to be a large group of women clustered around the nearest stage, though the stage itself was empty at the moment. But other than that one group of women, the rest of the customers were men. There were three blondes who could have been Ronnie, but when they turned, I realized they were so not Ronnie. The last blond was a man, who either liked the way he looked, or nature had been cruel. He’d have made a lovely women, but junior high must have been hell for him.

  Micah got us both moving down the little steps and into the crowd, a hand on either of our arms. We threaded our way through the happy, mostly drunken crowd, and finally made it all the way across the room to the bar. We paid our cover charge, mostly by pantomime, because the bar was too wide to get close enough to yell in the guy’s ear.

  I tried to ask him where Ronnie was, but he just smiled, shook his head, and managed to hold an empty glass up, asking if we wanted a drink. Since I didn’t have a blonde to hold up to ask if he’d seen one of those, I just shook my head, and we moved far enough away from the bar so
that we weren’t blocking those that did want a drink.

  A man wearing only loose boxers and socks came out of a black-draped area to the side of the bar. That must be the dressing rooms.

  We huddled, and I yelled, “Bathroom. I’ll check the bathroom.”

  They both nodded, and we began to work our way around the bar toward the women’s bathroom, which had a large piece of cloth suspended from the ceiling, covering the door. Maybe it was to hide the fact that the women’s bathroom had a door, so the men wouldn’t feel cheated.

  There was a commode in the middle of the room across from the sink. It was just sitting there, in the middle of the floor, no stall, no nothing. It held water, and seemed to work, but it was just sitting there. There were two stalls against the wall, one had an “out of order” sign. There was also a line. None of the women in there was Ronnie. The walls must have been thicker than they seemed, because I could hear myself, say, “Ronnie, are you in here?”

  No answer. I finally turned to a tall brown-haired woman and said, “My friend called me for a ride home. Five feet eight, blond, gray eyes, attractive. Too drunk to talk right.”

  The woman shook her head. A woman’s voice from inside the stall yelled, “Hell, that could be almost every blonde we’ve seen tonight.”

  I explained that I’d seen the blondes in the bar, and they weren’t Ronnie and asked whether they’d seen her earlier. No one had. One of the women was using the commode in the middle of the floor as I left. Oh, well. I opened the door, and either the music had actually been turned down a notch, or I was getting used to it or going deaf.

  Micah and Nathaniel were where I’d left them, but they’d been joined by a man I didn’t know. He was taller than either of them, but so thin all over that he looked smaller somehow. He had short, curly brown hair and was wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and socks. No shoes. Interesting.

  Nathaniel took my hand as soon as I got close enough to be touched. The stranger touched Micah’s shoulder and let his hand linger there, just a second too long. He was smiling and asked, “Do the two of you like dick?”