Serpentine

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "Is she in the car?" Bernardo asked.

  The leopard shook his head.

  "Have you lost the scent?" I asked.

  He nodded.

  "Did they get in a car and drive away?"

  He looked at me, and again there was that weight of intelligence and human thinking in the leopard eyes that no ordinary cat had. He nodded.

  Tyburn cursed softly. "We'll try to see if any of the witnesses remember the same car parked in this slot, but I wouldn't hold my breath."

  "The jacket was new; she'd never worn it before," Bernardo said.

  "Lucky we had the purse," I said.

  "They got in a car and were driven away by a man--that's the only thing that the few witnesses that saw them can agree on," Tyburn said. Apparently, while we'd been sniffing purses and jackets, he'd been gathering intelligence to share. It was a nice division of labor; too bad it didn't help us find a clue.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I got it out and saw that it was Micah. "What do you have for me?"

  He didn't chastise me, or say I love you; he just told me, which is one of the reasons we worked as a couple. "Two of the extended family work there. One of them is at the hospital with Christy and the baby. The other one, Cleo, was working today." He gave me her name and then texted me a picture of a smiling young woman with hair so white it couldn't be natural.

  "She's got a few streaks of color in the white now, her cousin says; the funky hair color helps hide that she's got snake locks."

  "Like the new baby," I said.

  "Yes, but Cleo didn't get hers until she was three."

  "Thanks, Micah."

  "I hope it helps. I'm at the hospital with Bram."

  "Where are R and R?" I asked.

  "I sent them down to try to get an update on Denny."

  "She's still unconscious as far as we know," I said.

  "If I find out different, I'll text."

  "Thanks," I said, and saw a woman with short white hair and streaks of color. "I think I see her. Love you." I hung up to his "I love you, too."

  I tried to question Cleo Stavros, but she panicked at the sight of Nathaniel on his leash. We could hunt for missing persons with a leopard on a leash, but questioning witnesses with him seemed to go under the heading of coercion, or undue influence. Basically, if I wanted to talk to Cleo, Nathaniel had to go somewhere else.

  Dalton volunteered to drive Nicky and Nathaniel back to the hotel. Nicky would order some rare steaks and pay-per-view and then wait for Nathaniel to change back to human form. I rubbed my face against Nathaniel's furred one, which made a few more of the witnesses and one of the cops scream; then I kissed Nicky good-bye, wrapping the faint scent of lion just below his skin around me. If I was going to be close to Olaf again, I wanted my lioness to remember we already had a lion in our lives.

  Tyburn helped us find a spot to question Cleo alone with just him and the Four Horsemen. I learned how he was managing so many different overlapping jurisdictions out of our way so often. He'd been part of the county sheriff's office, but Kirke Key had offered him more money and a promotion. It still seemed like a political miracle, but so far, everyone seemed to know him and like him. Sometimes the good-ol'-boy network can work for you, instead of against you, even if you're not one of the boys.

  61

  CLEO'S WHITE HAIR was streaked with pale purple and what I thought at first was black, but in the sunlight, it was a blue so dark it was almost the shade of Jean-Claude's eyes. The hair was shorter than I thought it would be since it was trying to hide the big family secret, but it was thick and straight and almost touched her shoulders. Her eye makeup and lipstick were black and purple to match her hair. She also seemed to stay out of the sun, or she was using one of the best white bases I'd ever seen, because it looked invisible on her skin.

  I tried to be friendly, the good cop--I mean, I had Edward and Olaf to play bad cop--but to every question I asked she had only one reply: "I told the other cops everything I know." She worded it slightly differently, but the meaning was the same.

  "She's better at avoiding answering the questions than I am at asking them," I said when the four of us took a huddle to regroup. Tyburn was talking to Cleo, his deep voice rumbling in reassuring tones.

  "Whatever she is hiding must be important or she would not be working this hard to hide it," Olaf said.

  "Maybe we're overcomplicating this," Bernardo said.

  We all looked at him. "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "What if all she's hiding is the family secret?"

  "Go on," Edward said.

  "Maybe that's why she's good at keeping secrets; she's had to keep one all her life."

  We all thought about it, and I finally said, "You really aren't just another pretty face, Bernardo."

  "The compliment would mean more to me normally. Right now, I just don't want to see another girl butchered the way Bettina was."

  "Let's lie," I said.

  "What do you have in mind?" Edward asked.

  "Tyburn will need to be in on it," I said.

  "In on what?" he asked.

  "We're the Four Horsemen, the scourge of bad little supernaturals everywhere."

  "We don't have a warrant of execution for this crime," Olaf said.

  "She doesn't know that."

  Bernardo nodded. "Nice."

  "Simple," Edward said.

  "Frightening," Olaf said.

  "Yes," I said.

  "So we're all bad cops," Bernardo said.

  "Exactly."

  "I like it," he said.

  "As do I," Olaf said.

  "Let's do it," Edward said.

  62

  WE SAT CLEO Stavros down at one of the picnic bench seats and crowded her, though I made sure that Olaf and I were the ones closest to her. I knew she had at least one snake hidden in her hair somewhere. We had to consider the snake potentially venomous, just like you considered suspects armed until you patted them down.

  "We don't want to hurt you, Cleo," I said.

  She frowned at me, unsure for the first time. "What are you talking about?"

  "We know that there's a supernatural element to Bettina Gonzales's murder and the disappearances of the other women."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

  "If you tell us what you know before the warrant arrives, then we won't use the warrant against you."

  "What kind of warrant?"

  I looked at the other men and we bounced our glances around like it was a game of catch. "You know who we are, right?"

  "You know what we are," Bernardo said.

  She frowned at us all. "You're marshals."

  "We're marshals with the preternatural branch," Edward said.

  She frowned harder, and then the first flicker of unease went through her eyes. "The preternatural branch. You kill monsters."

  "We kill supernatural citizens that break the law," I said.

  "We kill monsters that prey on humans," Olaf said.

  "I know what the preternatural branch does," she said, and she still sounded angry, but she also sounded nervous. We were making progress.

  "Once the warrant of execution gets here, Cleo, we can't help you anymore. We will be duty bound to execute the order as written," I said.

  "There are no monsters for you to kill here."

  "Now, Cleo, you know that's not true."

  "I don't know what you're talking about, but I want a lawyer."

  "Normally, Ms. Stavros, that would be the end of this interview and we'd get you a lawyer," Tyburn said from farther back in the room, "but supernatural Americans that commit murder don't have the same rights as ordinary American citizens."

  "I want a lawyer," she said.

  Tyburn should have called it, because we didn't have a warrant of execution. We couldn't actually prove supernatural involvement in the first murder or the abductions yet, but we had two missing women and less than a day to find them alive. We'd all agreed to push enough boundaries
that Cleo would never be able to be successfully tried for anything, but we didn't want her; we wanted what she knew.

  "Talk to us before the judge signs off on the warrant and it gets delivered here, Cleo," I said.

  "Once we have the warrant in hand, Ms. Stavros, we will have to consider you part of the conspiracy to murder Bettina Gonzales, and if anything happens to the other two women, that will be added to the charges," Edward said.

  "The first murder is enough," Olaf said. "We can only kill her once."

  "What are you talking about? You're not going to kill me," she said, and she was more angry than nervous. Had we overplayed our hand?

  "I'd rather not kill a beautiful young woman like you, but if you're conspiring to kill human beings, I won't have a choice," Bernardo said, sounding sad.

  "What are you talking about? You're all crazy. I want a lawyer, now."

  "I'm sorry, Ms. Stavros," Tyburn said, and he looked sad about it, "but the judge has already signed the warrant; we're just waiting for it to be delivered to the marshals. The judge signing it means that anyone involved in the murders, human or inhuman, loses their constitutional rights. If you help us find the other two women before they come to harm, then the marshals have enough legal discretion to spare your life, but once the warrant is in hand, then it is literally a warrant of execution. Your life will be in the hands of the Four Horsemen."

  "The Four Horsemen? What are you babbling about? This is ridiculous. I want my damn lawyer, and I want him now!" She stood up and Olaf put a hand on her shoulder and forced her to sit back down.

  Her hair moved, not like wind blowing, but like something moved it. Olaf removed his hand from her shoulder; he'd seen it, too. "I guess we're not as infamous as we thought," Bernardo said.

  "I am Death," Edward said, and there was not a hint of Ted Forrester anywhere in him. His eyes were cold as January skies.

  "I am Plague," Olaf said, and he was so close that his leg touched her leg. It made her jump and scoot away from him.

  "I'm Hunger," Bernardo said.

  "I used to be called the Executioner, but I killed so many people, I got promoted. Now I'm War."

  "Wait, I read about you on the Internet, but I haven't done anything to earn a death warrant."

  "Warrant of execution," Edward said.

  "Whatever you call it, I haven't killed anyone."

  "You helped him kidnap the women today. If he hurts them, kills them, then you're just as guilty as he is for the murders," Edward said.

  "I didn't help him do anything."

  Olaf leaned over her, so close that his chest almost touched her hair. She looked up at him like he was some fairy-tale giant about to devour her. I couldn't see his expression, but from the look on her face it was scary as fuck.

  "We don't have time for this," Bernardo said.

  "No, we do not," Olaf said, and the next thing I knew he had grabbed the woman and slammed her down on top of one of the tables. The only reason she didn't scream was that he'd probably knocked the breath out of her. He pinned both her wrists above her head against the table with one big hand. She started to try to kick, but Bernardo caught her ankles and held them on the table.

  She got her breath back enough to say, "You're crazy. Let me go!"

  Olaf drew a knife longer than my forearm. He held it above her face so she could see herself reflected in the flat of it. "Oh God," she whispered, "you're police. Police don't do things like this."

  I came up on one side of the table and Edward on the other. We leaned over her and I said, "We're not the police."

  "We're executioners," Edward said.

  Olaf caressed the flat of the blade down the side of her face. She screamed and a snake appeared in her hair, mouth wide, fangs bared. If Olaf had been human, she'd have bitten him, but he wasn't human. He moved in a blur of speed, too fast for the snake to bite him. It hissed at him, and she struggled like she knew she was stronger than a plain human. She'd counted on the snake to either kill one of us or startle some of us into letting go. Cleo was playing for the wrong audience. Edward and I were both pointing guns at her. I was looking at a point just above her eyes. Edward was aiming at her heart.

  "Attack us again and I will put a bullet in your head," I said. My voice was soft, careful, because I was pointing a loaded gun at her forehead. What had started out as pretend had suddenly become real.

  The serpent in her hair was joined by a second. They rose through white and striped hair like deadly hair accessories. Olaf said, "Stupid bitch, we don't have to wait for the warrant now; you tried to kill a U.S. Marshal."

  "You scared me," she said.

  "We have not begun to scare you," Olaf said, and with that he turned the blade in a silver-edged blur and cut off the head of the snake that had tried to bite him. Blood gushed out and the snake body flopped and sprayed blood over her face, over Olaf, over me and the whole fucking room. She was screaming bloody murder, but the last snake head hid back in her hair, trying to save itself.

  When she calmed down enough to talk, she told us about her uncle Terry and how he'd overheard the early dinner plans for the bridal party and how he wanted two of them. "He has this voice, this voice, and people will do anything he wants. I saw him come up to them in the parking lot; he just talked to them and they smiled and they took his hands and they went with him."

  "Where has he taken them?" Edward asked.

  "I don't know."

  Olaf cleaned the blood off his knife over the front of her shirt, across her breasts.

  "I swear I don't know."

  Olaf twirled the still bloody knife in his hand and said, "You still have one more snake in your hair."

  "It hurts, but they'll grow back; we can't get rid of them."

  "Do your fingers grow back?" he asked, and he stared down into her blood-covered face with his deep, dark eyes.

  I wasn't sure if he was serious, but just in case he was, I said, "Not fingers again. I told you not to start with fingers."

  He smiled up at me with her pinned and bloody under his hands. "What do you want me to cut off of her first, then, dearest?" He caressed the flat of his blade down the front of her body, slowly, sensuously.

  Fine, I could play. "We talked about this, Holmes. Leave her all the parts that let her do her job and earn money."

  "For you, Adler. She is a waitress, so she does need her fingers, but her uniform will cover scars on her torso."

  He slipped the tip of the blade underneath her T-shirt so that the naked blade touched naked flesh. I said, "Hold very still, Cleo. If you move, you'll cut yourself on his blade and he'll enjoy that. Won't you, honey?"

  "Very much, dearest, very much," he whispered, voice so deep it rumbled.

  I saw his hand move minutely and blood blossomed through the cloth of her shirt. She screamed. He cut her again.

  I pulled her shirt up so I could see how bad the cuts were. They were surprisingly shallow. I was relieved. She struggled and I watched her movements cause her to cut herself on the razor-sharp blade again.

  "Stop moving, Cleo, and he won't cut you again."

  Cleo didn't just stop moving; I think she held her breath while the big blade slid further under her clothes. I came in close to her face, out of snake-striking range but close enough that she could move her eyes and see my face, as I said, "He's going to take the blade away from your skin and then you're going to tell us everything you know, because if you don't, he's going to make you bleed again, and you don't want him to do that again, do you, Cleo?"

  She made a small, whimpering, "Hmm-mm."

  "Move the knife away, dear, so she can talk to us."

  "Only for you, dearest," he said, and he slid the blade slowly out from under her shirt. When she could see the blade and know it wasn't touching her she started to shake, and then to cry, but she told us everything she knew and confessed that she had been willing to sacrifice two more girls the same way Bettina had been sacrificed, because it was supposed to lift the family curse. Cl
eo even knew where the girls were being held and readied for sacrifice. She also knew it was an accelerated time schedule. They were going to kill them at sundown tonight, something about an astrological event that would make it work better than it had twenty years ago. Cleo even knew about the victims back when Tyburn was a new cop.

  "I've told you everything I know. Please, please, don't hurt me anymore."

  "You're begging us not to hurt you, when you helped send two other women about your own age to certain death. He guts them, Cleo. He butchers them like a hog or a deer," I said.

  "Please," she said.

  Bernardo said, "Did Bettina Gonzales say please? Did Bettina beg for mercy? Did she, Cleo? Did she? Did she beg for her life, Cleo? Did she?" Bernardo let go of her legs and just walked away from her. I think he didn't trust what he'd do if he didn't put some distance between himself and Cleo Stavros.

  There was an ambulance waiting outside for Cleo, though once we explained exactly all the parts of her that were bleeding, the EMTs were a touch less eager to put her in their vehicle. I think they were still under the impression that the snakes were pets and might crawl off of her and hide somewhere. If they'd been that easy to get rid of, Bettina Gonzales wouldn't be dead.

  Tyburn came to us and took us to one side. "Her uncle Terry is Terry Rankin."

  "We figured that," I said.

  "I know her grandfather's place. I use to go fishing with her uncles. Hell, I dated her mother before she married."

  "Did you know what they were?" Edward asked.

  "Murderers, no."

  "Did you know about the family curse?" I asked.

  He took in a deep breath, let it out, and said, "I knew about some of it, but I thought it was like lycanthropy, just something they couldn't help."