Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “You’re about to shoot an unarmed civilian,” Edward said, in his good-ol’-boy voice. “Is that a good thing, Lieutenant, or a bad thing?”

  Dolph frowned, and the tip of the gun wavered. “He’s not a civilian.”

  “Well, now,” Edward said, “I agree with you, but legally he’s a citizen with rights. You kill him, and you’re up on charges. If you’re going to go down for killing one of them, why not make it one that’s actually breaking the law? Lose your badge saving some innocent human from a bloodsucker about to munch on ’em. That’d be satisfyin’.” Edward’s down-home accent was growing thicker as he talked. He was also easing deeper into the room. He waved Olaf to stay near the door, then crept closer to Dolph.

  Dolph didn’t seem to notice. He just stood there, frowning, as if he were listening to things I couldn’t hear. His cross kept up a steady white light. He shook his head as if trying to chase off some buzzing thing. His gun pointed at the floor, and he looked up. The cross faded, but it had never had the light it should have for such an attack. It was almost as if whatever Mercia’s powers were, they somehow didn’t set off holy objects as much as they should have. Dolph looked first at Edward. “I’m okay now, Marshal Forrester.”

  Edward, with Ted’s smiling face, said, “If you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I’d feel better if you came out of the room.”

  Dolph nodded, then put the safety on his gun and handed it butt first to Edward. Edward let his face show surprise. I didn’t try to hide the shock I felt. No cop gives up his gun voluntarily, least of all Dolph. Edward took the gun. “You still not feelin’ okay, Lieutenant Storr?”

  “I’m okay at the moment, but if this vampire can get past my cross once, it can do it again. I almost shot him.” He jerked a thumb in Requiem’s direction. “I want to talk to Marshal Blake alone.”

  Edward gave him all the doubt on his face, and said, “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea, Lieutenant.”

  Dolph looked at me. “We need to talk.”

  “Not alone,” Requiem said.

  Dolph didn’t even look at him, but kept those dark, angry eyes on me. “Anita.”

  “Dolph, this bad vamp wants me dead. Even unarmed you outmuscle me. I’d rather we had company for the talk.”

  He pointed a finger at Requiem. “Not him.”

  “Fine, but someone.”

  He looked at Edward. “You seem to feel like I do about them.”

  “They’re not my favorite thing,” Edward said, and the good ol’ boy was starting to fray around the edges.

  “Fine, you stay.” He looked at Olaf and the people in the hallway beyond. “Just the marshals.”

  Edward said something low to Olaf, who nodded. He started to close the door.

  Dolph said, “No, the vampire leaves, too.”

  “His name’s Requiem,” I said.

  Requiem squeezed my hand and gave me one of his rare smiles. “I take no offense, my evening star; he hates what I am, many people do.” He raised my hand and gave it a kiss, then picked up his cloak from the floor and moved toward the door.

  He stopped closer to the door and Edward, away from Dolph, but turned to the big man. “‘Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme.’”

  “Are you threatening me?” Dolph asked, in a voice gone cold.

  “Not you,” I said. “I don’t think he was threatening you.”

  “Then what did he mean by that?”

  “He’s quoting Keats. ‘Ode to a Nightingale,’ I think,” I said.

  Requiem looked back at me and nodded, making it almost a bow. He kept looking at me, and there was too much intensity in that gaze. I met it, but it took effort.

  “I don’t care what he’s quoting, Anita. I want to know what he meant by it.”

  “What it means,” I said, meeting Requiem’s blue, blue gaze, “at a guess, is that he’s half-wishing you’d pulled the trigger.”

  Requiem bowed then, a full-out sweeping movement, using his cloak as part of the theatre of it. It was a lovely, graceful show of body, hair, and all of him. But it made my throat tight, and my stomach jump. My stomach didn’t like that, and I winced.

  Requiem put his cloak on, drawing the hood around his face. He gave me the full force of that handsome face, those eyes, and said, “‘I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried, “La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!’”

  Dolph looked at me then, then back at the vampire. Requiem glided out the door all black cloak and melancholy. Dolph looked back at me. “I don’t think he likes you very much.”

  “I don’t think that’s the problem,” I said.

  “He wants to pick out curtains,” Edward said from where he was slouched beside the door. He only slouched when he was pretending to be Ted Forrester.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “You fucking him?” Dolph asked.

  I gave him the look the question deserved. “That is none of your damn business.”

  “That’s a yes,” he said, and his face was taking on that look, that disapproving look.

  I glared at him, though frankly it’s hard to glare in a hospital bed hooked up to tubes. It always makes you feel so vulnerable. Hard to be tough when you’re feeling weak. “I said what I meant, Dolph.”

  “You only get defensive when the answer’s yes,” he said. The disapproving look was sliding into his angry look.

  “My answer’s always defensive when someone asks me if I’m fucking someone. Try asking if I’m dating him, or hell, even if he’s my lover. Try being polite about it. It’s still none of your business, but I might, might, answer the question if you weren’t ugly about it.”

  He took in a lot of air, which with his chest was a whole lot, and let it out very slowly. Olaf was taller, but Dolph was bigger, beefier, built like an old-style wrestler before they all went to heavy bodybuilding. He actually closed his eyes and took another breath. He let that out and nodded. “You’re right. You are right.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said.

  “Are you dating him?”

  “I’m seeing him, yes.”

  “What do you do on dates with a vampire?” It seemed to be a real question, or maybe he was just trying to make up for being pissy.

  “Pretty much what you do on a date with any guy, except the hickeys are really spectacular.”

  It took him a second, and then he stared at me. He tried to frown, then laughed and shook his head. “I hate that you date the monsters. I hate that you are fucking them. I think it compromises you, Anita. I think it makes you have to choose where your loyalties lie, and I don’t think us mere humans always win the coin toss.”

  I nodded and found that it didn’t hurt my stomach to do it. Had I healed more in the little bit we’d been talking? “I’m sorry that’s how you feel.”

  “You aren’t going to deny it?”

  “I’m not going to react all angry and defensive. You’re being reasonable about your feelings, so I’ll be reasonable back. I don’t shortchange the humans, Dolph. I do a lot to make sure that the citizens of our fair city stay upright and mobile, the living and the dead, the furry and the not-so-furry.”

  “I hear you’re still dating that junior high teacher, Richard Zeeman.”

  “Yeah.” I said it carefully, trying not to act tense about it. To my knowledge the police didn’t know Richard was a werewolf. Was his secret identity about to be revealed? I rubbed my hand over my stomach to give my eyes somewhere else to look and hoped that any tension in my body would be attributed to the wounds. Hoped.

  “I asked you once if you were dating any humans, and you said no.”

  I fought not to look too relaxed, or too tense. This was Richard’s world I was playing with. “You probably asked during one of our many breakups. We’re pretty on and off.”

  “Why?”

  “Why all the questions about my love
life? We have a dangerous vampire out there to catch.”

  “To kill,” he said.

  I nodded. “To kill, so why all the questions about who I’m dating?”

  “Why don’t you want to answer questions about Mr. Zeeman?”

  We were on dangerous ground. Dolph hated the monsters, all monsters. His son was engaged to a vampire, and she was trying to talk the son into joining her as undead. It had made Dolph’s attitude toward the preternatural citizens go from cynical and dark to downright dangerous. Did he know about Richard, or suspect?

  “Truthfully, Richard was who I thought I’d spend my life with, and the fact that we seem to be headed for the big breakup still hurts, okay?”

  He gave me cop eyes, as if he were tasting the truth and weighing the lie. “What changed?”

  I thought about how to answer that. The first time we’d broken up had been after I saw Richard eat someone. It had been a bad guy, but still, a girl’s got to have standards. Or that’s what I thought at the time. If I had it to do over again, would I have made a different choice? Maybe.

  Dolph was beside the bed now. “Anita, what changed?”

  “Me,” I said softly, “I changed. We broke up, and I started dating Jean-Claude. I went back and forth between them for a while, and finally Richard just couldn’t take me not deciding. So he decided for us, for me. If I couldn’t choose, he’d take away one of my choices.”

  “He didn’t want to share you.”

  “No.”

  “But he’s dating you again, now.”

  “Some.” I so did not like where this conversation was going.

  Edward must not have liked it either, because he interrupted. “Not that this isn’t fascinating, Lieutenant, but we still have a very powerful vamp out there. She’s killed, or helped kill, at least two women that we know of: one Bev Leveto, and Margaret Ross.” I think he used their names to make them more real to Dolph. Names have a way of doing that. “Shouldn’t we be concentrating on catching the bad vampire, instead of quizzing the marshal here about her dates?” He said it all with a smile and a face full of down-home charm. I would never be the actor that Edward was, but damn there were moments when I wished I could be.

  “How did you manage not to catch both of the vampires in the hotel room?” I asked. Maybe if we concentrated on crime-stopping, Dolph would let the other topic go.

  Edward did his “aw, shucks” look, like he was embarrassed. The reaction wasn’t his, but maybe the emotion was; it was incredibly rare for Edward to miss a target. He came to stand by the head of the bed. One, so I could see him around Dolph’s broad build, but two, I think, so Dolph wouldn’t be able to scrutinize my reactions so damn closely.

  “When we got to the hotel room there was only one vampire in the room. She was dead when we got there, but we took her head and heart, just like we’re supposed to. I know that dead doesn’t always mean dead for these guys.”

  “That must have been Nivia.”

  “How did you know her name?” Dolph asked.

  I opened my mouth, closed it, and said, “An informant.”

  “Who, Anita?” he said.

  I shook my head. “Don’t ask, and I won’t have to lie to you.”

  “You have someone who knows more about these murderers, and you won’t bring them in so we can all question them. You, and just you, get to do the interrogation.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “You’re good at your job, Anita, but you’re not a better cop than I am, or Zerbrowski is.”

  “I never said I was.”

  “But you exclude us. You keep secrets from us.”

  “Yeah, just like you keep them from me. I know you don’t call me in all the time anymore. You don’t trust me.”

  “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  “I trust you, Dolph, but I don’t trust the hate in you.”

  “I don’t hate you, Anita.”

  “No, but you hate some of the people I love, and that makes it hard, Dolph.”

  “I’ve never hurt any of your boyfriends.”

  “No, but you hate them, hate them for just being what they are, who they are. You’re like an old-time racist, Dolph; your hate blinds you.”

  He looked down, took another deep breath. “I’ve been to the company shrink. I’m trying to come to an understanding with…” He looked at Edward, who looked innocently back at him.

  “Your family,” I finished for him so he wouldn’t have to go into details.

  He nodded.

  “I’m glad, Dolph, really. Lucille’s been…” I shrugged. What was I supposed to say, that his wife, Lucille, had been frantic, afraid for him and of him? His rages had trashed a room or two of their house, much like he’d done to an interrogation room with me in it, once. He’d manhandled me at a crime scene. Dolph was close to losing his badge, if he didn’t get a grip.

  “She said you’ve been helpful about it. Her.”

  I nodded. If Edward hadn’t been in the room, I’d have said your son’s fiancée. “I’m glad I could help.”

  “I will never be okay with you dating the monsters.”

  “That’s fine, as long as you don’t let it rain all over police business.”

  “Fine, police business.” He glanced at Edward, then reached into his suit coat and got out his notebook. “What killed the vampire in the hotel room?”

  “When her animal to call died, the master didn’t survive it. It happens like that sometimes: kill one and they all die.”

  “The police have killed wereanimals that were guarding vampire lairs, and the master vampire didn’t die.”

  “Most master vamps have an animal that they can control, but the phrase ‘an animal to call’ means it’s the furry equivalent of a human servant.”

  “A human that’s helping a vampire because of mind tricks?” He made it a question.

  “I thought that once, too, but a human servant is more than that. It’s a human with a preternatural connection, a mystical connection, with the vampire. Sometimes the vampire survives the death of its servant, but the servant usually doesn’t survive the death of the vampire. I’ve also seen the body survive, but the human servant driven crazy by the master’s death. But this weretiger had healing abilities that it shouldn’t have had. It was almost like it had the best of both worlds on healing. The lycanthropy healing, and the rotting vampire’s ability to laugh off bullets, even silver.”

  “I thought you just woke up?” Dolph said.

  “I did.”

  “How did you know she rotted?”

  “I didn’t, but her animal healed like a rotting vampire, so I assumed she was one of them. But even if she was, her animal to call should not have had that close a tie with the vampire’s powers. It’s unusual, very unusual, as if the tie between master and servant was closer even than normal.”

  “She started to rot as soon as we took her head,” Edward said.

  “Ol…Otto must have been disappointed,” I said.

  “He was, but at least they don’t smell like they look. Why is that?” Edward asked. “Not complaining, mind you, but why don’t they smell like a rotting corpse?”

  “I don’t know, I think maybe because they aren’t really rotting. It’s like they, the vampires, went to a certain stage of rotting, then stopped. The smell is from decomposition. If the vampire isn’t actually rotting, then no decomp, no smell.” I shrugged. “Truthfully, that’s just theory. I don’t know for sure. I don’t think I’ve seen more than a handful of them. It doesn’t seem to be a common type of vamp, at least not in this country.”

  “They’re all rotting corpses, Anita,” Dolph said.

  “No,” I said, and met his eyes just fine, “no, they aren’t. Most vampires, if you ever see them rotting like that, looking like that, they are well and truly dead. But the rotting ones can actually rot around you, then sort of heal themselves. They can go from looking like the walking dead to looking normal.”

  “Normal,” Dolph said,
and made a sound.

  “Normal as they started,” I said. I turned to Edward. “Do we know where the other vamp went?”

  Dolph answered, “We know that a white male, late twenties, early thirties, brown hair, cut short, jeans, jean jacket, carried a large duffel bag out to his car and drove away while two uniforms watched.”

  “They watched,” I said.

  “Civilians who saw the incident said the man told the officers”—Dolph flipped back through his notebook, then read—“‘You’re going to let me go to my car, aren’t you?’ The policemen replied, ‘Yes, we are.’”

  “Shit, he pulled an Obi-Wan,” I said.

  “What?” Edward and Dolph said together.

  “You know, from Star Wars, ‘These are not the droids you’re looking for.’”

  Edward grinned. “Yeah, while Otto and I were taking the other vampire apart, the man pulled an Obi-Wan.”

  “He had to do it to several officers, or some version of it,” Dolph said. “By the time he drove off there were police all over that hotel. I thought daylight wasn’t good for vamps.”

  “I think the vampire was in the duffel bag. My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that as the weretiger shared her master’s healing ability, so the human servant of this other one shared her mind powers. I’ve never heard of anything like it, but it makes sense. If I think of another theory that makes more sense, I’ll let you know.”

  “How did you know they would be at the hotel, Anita?” Dolph asked.

  “I told you, an informant.”

  “Was the informant a vampire?”

  “No,” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Was the informant human?”

  “I’m not giving you the name, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “How many vampires are involved with these murders?”

  “Two that I’m sure of.”

  “How close is your tie to your master, Anita?”

  “What?” I just stared at him.

  He looked at me, and there was no anger in his eyes, just a demand. He repeated the question.

  My pulse was in my throat, and I couldn’t help it. My voice was almost normal when I said, “Are we going to catch these bastards, or are you going to go back to obsessing on how up close and personal I am with the vampires? I’m sorry that I’ve disappointed you, Dolph. I’m sorry that you disapprove of my personal life, but we have dead on the ground. We have injured people. Can we please, please, concentrate on that instead of your obsession with my love life?”