Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “I will concede that Marshal Blake is an expert on raising the dead.”

  Laban, the head attorney for the other side, said, “I think we’ll all agree to that. What is the defense’s point?”

  “If she’s an expert witness, then I should be able to question her.”

  “But she’s not giving testimony,” the judge said. “She’s explaining what she’s doing so we’ll be able to follow along.”

  “How is that different from collecting any other evidence?” Salvia said. “If she were any other expert, I would be allowed to question her methodology.”

  I had to give it to him, he was making a point. A point that could keep us here for hours.

  “Your honor,” I said, “may I ask Mr. Salvia a question?”

  The judge gave me his long, considering look, then nodded. “I’ll allow it.”

  I looked at the lawyer. He wasn’t that much taller than me, but he stood straight for every inch of it. So did I, but his stance was more aggressive, as if he were squaring himself for an attack. I guess in a way he was.

  I’d testified in court a few times when a lawyer got clever and tried to win an appeal on a zombie who had said this will is real, not this one. I’d even been called into court for an insurance company that decided to appeal the zombie’s testimony on the grounds that the dead were not competent to give testimony. I’d stopped getting dragged into court to defend myself after I’d offered to bring the zombie into court to give open court testimony. The offer was accepted. And that was back in the days when my zombies actually looked more like the shambling dead than a person.

  We’d all made the papers, and the media had made much of the fact that the mean ol’ company had traumatized the family a second time. In fact, it had been the beginning of a countersuit for mental distress. The insurance company would eventually pay more in the second suit than in the original life insurance claim. Everyone learned their lesson, and I got to stay in the cemetery and out of the courtroom. But I’d spent weeks being drilled with the argument that I was not a true forensic expert. Salvia was about to hear me spit that argument back at him.

  “Mr. Salvia, would you say that most evidence is open to interpretation depending on which expert you get to interpret that evidence?”

  He considered that for a moment. Most lawyers won’t answer questions fast, especially not in court. They want to think it through first. “I would agree with that statement.”

  “If I was here to collect DNA or some other physical evidence, my actions might be open to scrutiny, because my method of collection could impact how reliable my evidence was, correct?”

  Micah gave me a look. I shrugged at him. I could talk lawyer-speak up to a point, in a good cause. Getting us out of here before five a.m. was a good cause.

  Salvia finally answered a cautious “I would agree. Which is why I need to question your methods, so I can understand them well enough to represent my client.”

  “But, Mr. Salvia, what I’m about to do is not open to interpretation of any kind.”

  He turned to the judge. “Your honor, she is refusing to explain her methods. If I don’t understand what the marshal is doing, then how will I be able to adequately defend my client?”

  “Marshal Blake,” the judge said, “I’m sorry that I opened this issue with my request for information, but I can see the defense’s point.”

  “For most experts, I would see his point, too, your honor, but may I make one more point before you rule on whether the defense gets to question my every move?”

  “I won’t allow him to question your every move, Marshal,” he said with a smile that even by moonlight seemed self-satisfied. Or maybe I was just watching the entire night go up in questions, and that was making me grumpy. I’d never had to raise the dead while being questioned by hostile lawyers. It didn’t sound like a fun evening. “But I will allow you to make your point.”

  “If I raise Emmett Rose from the dead tonight, you’ll be here to see it, right?”

  “Are you speaking to me, Marshal Blake?” asked the defense lawyer.

  “Yes, Mr. Salvia, I am speaking to you.” I fought to keep the impatience out of my voice.

  “Could you repeat the question?” he asked.

  I repeated it, then added, “If I fail to raise Emmett Rose from the dead tonight, you’ll be here to see that, too, right?”

  I could see him frown even in the cooler darkness under the trees. “Yes.” But he said it slowly, as if he didn’t see the trap but suspected that there was one.

  “I will either raise the zombie from this grave, or I will not. Correct, Mr. Salvia?”

  “Your honor, what is Marshal Blake trying to get at?” Salvia asked.

  “Do you concede that my raising Emmett Rose from the dead is either a yes or no question? Either he pops out of the grave, or he does not.”

  “Yes, yes, I concede that, but I still don’t see—”

  “Would you say that the zombie rising from the grave is open to interpretation?” I asked.

  Salvia opened his mouth, closed it. “I’m not sure I understand the question.”

  The judge said, “Marshal Blake has made her point. Either the zombie will rise from the grave, or it won’t. We will all be here to see the zombie either rise, or not rise. It isn’t open to interpretation, Mr. Salvia. Either she will do what she’s being paid for, or she won’t. It either works or it does not.”

  “But the ritual she chooses to raise the dead could affect the ability of Mr. Rose to give intelligent testimony.”

  The judge asked me, “Is that true? Marshal, could your choice of rituals affect the zombie?”

  “Not the ritual. No, your honor. But the ability of the animator.” The moment that last bit left my mouth, I flinched. I should have stopped with “No, your honor.” Dammit.

  “Explain the last part of that statement,” the judge said.

  See, I’d said too much. Given them something to question and be confused by. I knew better than that.

  “The greater the degree of power the animator has, and sometimes the more practice he or she has at raising the dead, the better their zombies are.”

  “Better how?” he asked.

  “More alive. The greater the power used, the more alive the zombie will appear. You’ll also get more of their personality, more of what they were like in life.”

  Again, I’d overexplained. What was the matter with me tonight? The moment I thought it, I knew, or thought I knew. The dead were whispering to me. Not in voices—the true dead have no voices—but in power. It should have taken energy from me to raise a zombie. They shouldn’t have been offering power up to me, like some sort of gift. Power over the dead comes with a price, always. Nothing’s free with the dead.

  Micah touched my arm. It startled me. I looked at him, and he said softly, “Are you all right?”

  I nodded.

  “The judge is talking to you.”

  I turned back to the judge and apologized. “I’m sorry, your honor. Could you repeat what you just said?”

  He frowned at me but said, “You seemed distracted just then, Marshal Blake.”

  “I’m sorry, your honor. I’m just thinking about the job ahead.”

  “Well, we’d like you to concentrate a little harder on this part of the proceedings before you rush ahead of us.”

  I sighed, swallowed a half dozen witty and unhelpful things, and settled for, “Fine, what did you say that I missed?”

  Micah touched my arm again, as if my tone might have been a little less than polite. He was right. I was getting angry. That old tension in my shoulders and along my arms was settling in.

  “What I said, Marshal, was I was under the impression that only a blood sacrifice would give you that much life in a zombie.”

  I thought better of the judge. He’d done some research, but not enough. “There’s always blood involved in raising the dead, your honor.”

  “We understand that the FBI was requested to suppl
y you with poultry,” he said.

  Any normal human being would have said, Is that what the chicken is for? Court time is not the same as real time; it’s sort of like football time. What should take five minutes will take thirty.

  “Yes, that is why the chicken was requested.” See, I could talk the long way ’round the mountain, too. If a question has a simple yes or no answer, then give that. Beyond yes or no questions, explain things. Don’t add, don’t embellish, but be thorough. Because you’re going to have to talk one way or the other. I preferred to give complete answers in the beginning rather than have my explanations be made longer on cross-examination.

  “How does the chicken help you with this protective circle?” he asked.

  “You normally behead the chicken and use its blood, its life energy, to help put up a protective circle around the grave.”

  “Your honor,” Salvia again, “why does Marshal Blake need a protective circle?”

  Laban, our friendly neighborhood prosecutor, said, “Is my esteemed colleague going to question every step of the ritual?”

  “I think I have the right on behalf of my clients to ask why she needs a protective circle. One of my objections to this entire procedure was the worry that something else could animate the corpse, and what is raised will be merely Mr. Rose’s shell but with something else inside it. Some wandering spirit could—”

  “Mr. Salvia,” Laban said, “your fanciful worries did not convince the judge to grant your motion. Why bring it up again?”

  Truthfully, one of the reasons we put up protective circles was to keep wandering spirits, as Salvia put it, from animating the corpse. Though I’m not sure spirits were what I’d worry about. There were other things, nastier things, that loved getting hold of a corpse.

  They’d use it for walking-around clothes until someone made them leave it, or until they’d so damaged it that the body no longer functioned well enough to be useful. I did not say this out loud. To my knowledge, no animator had volunteered this part of the reason for the protective circle. It would open too many legal problems when we were still striving to have animation be accepted as standard practice for court cases. The circle also helped raise power, and that was the main reason for it. The whole corpse-being-highjacked thing was so rare that I actually didn’t know anyone who had ever had it happen to one of their zombies. It was one of those stories that always seems to happen to the friend of your uncle’s cousin, who no one actually ever met. I wasn’t going to help Salvia keep us here all night.

  “Mr. Laban is right,” the judge said. “There is nothing in the literature about zombies being taken over by alien energy.” His voice held distaste, as if Salvia had actually proposed some sort of alien possession theory.

  For all I knew, he had. I guess if the prosecution’s star witness can be raised from the dead to testify, then the defense is allowed to look for unusual help, too. Aliens seemed a little far-fetched, but hey, I raise the dead for a living and slay vampires. I really couldn’t throw stones.

  “Marshal Blake, once you have your protective circle, how much more ritual will you need?” I think the judge was tired of the delays, too. Good—me getting impatient didn’t help much. But the judge getting impatient—that could be very helpful.

  I thought about it and was glad he’d phrased the question the way he had. How much ritual would I need? A very different question from, What comes next in animating the dead? Once the circle was up, I deviated so far from normal animating ritual that it was like comparing apples to watermelons.

  “Not much more, your honor.”

  “Can you be more exact?” he asked.

  “I’ll call Emmett Rose from the grave. Once he’s above ground, then I’ll put blood on or in his mouth, and he’ll be able to answer questions very soon after that.”

  “Did you say you put blood on the zombie’s mouth?” Salvia again.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re going to have the zombie suck on the chicken?” This from one of the agents who had been waiting with the judge.

  We all looked at him, and he had the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry.”

  “Not suck on the chicken, no. But I’ll spread the blood across the mouth.”

  “Mr. Rose was a good Christian. Isn’t painting him up with chicken blood a violation of his religious freedom?” Salvia said.

  The judge said, “As much as I appreciate your concern over Mr. Rose’s religious freedom, Mr. Salvia, I have to point out that he isn’t your client, and that the dead have no rights to violate.”

  Of course, I had to add my two cents’ worth. I just couldn’t help myself. “Besides, Mr. Salvia, are you implying that you can’t be a good Christian if you sacrifice a few chickens and raise a few zombies?” The anger was creeping from my shoulders and into my voice. Micah started rubbing his hand up and down my arm, as if to remind me that he was there, and my temper was, too. But his touch did help make me think. I guess sometimes I needed an “assistant” for more than sex and blood. Sometimes I just needed a keeper.

  I got a few startled looks. Salvia wasn’t the only one who’d assumed I wasn’t Christian. I don’t know why it still hurts my feelings, but it does. The judge said, “You may answer Marshal Blake’s question.” I was definitely not the only one sick of Salvia’s bitching.

  “I didn’t mean to imply anything about your own religious beliefs, Marshal Blake. I apologize for assuming that you weren’t Christian.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Salvia. Lots of people assume all sorts of shit about me.”

  Micah whispered, “Anita.” One word, but enough.

  I could have used the dead as an excuse, and it might even have been true, but the real reason was I’ve never held my temper well. I’m better sometimes, worse others, but it never takes long for me to get tired of assholes.

  Salvia was pissing me off, and the judge with his Please explain the unexplainable, Marshal Blake wasn’t far behind in the pissing-me-off department.

  “Sorry about that, your honor, but can we cut to the chase here?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean by cutting to the chase, Marshal Blake.”

  “Emmett Rose is the recently dead. I mean he hasn’t hit one year dead. It’s an easy job, your honor. A little blood, a little power, and voilà, a zombie. He’ll be able to answer questions. He’ll be able to be cross-examined. He’ll do everything you want him to be able to do. Having experienced Mr. Salvia’s questioning technique, I think the cross-examination may last a long damned time. So in the interest of all of us not spending the entire bloody night in the cemetery, can I please get on with it?”

  Franklin made a noise low in his throat. Fox was shaking his head. I knew I was fucking it up but I couldn’t seem to stop. I wanted out of this cemetery. I wanted away from the graves and their promise of power. I needed my circle of protection up now, not an hour from now. My head would stop echoing with half-heard whispers like words from a distant room. Or a radio station turned down low. I could almost hear the voices, almost hear the dead. I shouldn’t have been able to do that. They weren’t ghosts. The quiet dead are just that, quiet.

  “I will remind you, Marshal, that this is still a court of law. I can hold you in contempt.”

  Micah turned me to him and drew me into a hug. His breath was warm against my face. “Anita, what’s wrong?”

  I felt movement at my back a moment before Fox asked quietly, “Are you all right, Blake?”

  I leaned into Micah. His arms held me, tight and almost fierce, as if he would press me out the other side of his body. He whispered against my face, “What is wrong, Anita? What is it?”

  I grabbed on to him and pressed as much of him against me as I could, so that we were plastered against each other, as close as we could get with clothes on. I buried my face against the side of his neck, drawing in the warm, sweet scent of his skin. Soap, the slight sweetness of his cologne, and underneath that the scent of his skin. The scent of Micah. And underneath that, t
hat faint, neck-ruffling scent of leopard. The moment I smelled it, I felt better. That musky, almost-sharp scent of leopard helped chase back the almost-voices of the dead.

  “Do you want me to hold you in contempt, Marshal Blake?” The judge’s voice dragged me back from Micah’s skin, pulled me away from falling into the warmth and life of him.

  I barely turned my head to look at the judge, but it felt like some huge physical wrenching. The moment I couldn’t bury my face in Micah’s skin, the voices were back. The dead were trying to talk to me. They shouldn’t have been doing that. Ghosts would sometimes do that if they couldn’t find a medium to speak with, but once you were in a grave, you weren’t supposed to be this lively.

  I looked at the judge and tried to explain what was happening without giving Salvia more ammunition to delay things. “Your honor—” And I had to clear my throat to make my voice reach him only a few yards away. I tried again, pressing Micah’s body against mine. Even with everything that was going wrong, I could feel his body beginning to respond to my nearness. We had that effect on each other. It didn’t bring on the ardeur or distract me. Feeling his body respond helped me think, helped me feel alive.

  “Your honor, I need my protective circle up sooner rather than later.”

  “Why?”

  “This is another tactic to rush these proceedings,” Salvia said.

  “As you’re trying to delay them?” Laban said. Never good when the lawyers start sniping at each other.

  “Enough,” the judge said, and then he looked at me. “Marshal Blake, why is it so important that you get your protective circle up?”

  “The dead feel my power, your honor. They are, even now, trying to. . .” I sought a word that wouldn’t be too much. If I said, talk, they might ask what the dead were saying, and it wasn’t like that.

  Micah answered for me. “The circle isn’t to protect the zombie, your honor. In this case it’s to protect Anita, Marshal Blake. She let her psychic shields down when we entered the cemetery, and she’s being overwhelmed by the dead.”