Affliction ab-22

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  ‘Even animal predators don’t like killing one of their own friends, but vampires are just like regular people. They find it hard to kill someone they’ve known a long time, so they try to imprison them and hope they can cure them.’

  ‘You mean rehabilitate them?’ she asked.

  ‘Something like that,’ I said. In truth, being trapped in a coffin was usually more punishment than trying to save you. I’d known vampires that had been driven crazy from long coffin imprisonment, but that wasn’t something I was sharing with Hatfield. She was being friendly, but she wasn’t my friend, not yet.

  ‘So, say you had a vampire wake up, or escape being imprisoned, whatever; they’d go after the nearest food, which would probably be animals, right?’ Hatfield asked.

  ‘Animals are harder to catch than you’d think,’ I said, ‘but maybe you can’t actually sustain yourself on animal blood, not even freshly killed animals.’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked.

  ‘Because you need that spark, that extra energy, whatever it is from humans to go with the blood.’

  ‘You mean like drinking someone’s soul?’

  ‘That presupposes that animals don’t have souls and I wouldn’t be willing to say that,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, then what? What makes us so special for vampires?’

  I smiled. ‘If you can answer that question in a definitive way, Hatfield, you’ll be doing better than hundreds of years of religion and philosophy.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I get that. But why do you think it’s an old vamp that just woke up?’

  ‘Because it’s a really rare talent, and I’ve only seen it in ancient vampires. If there were a vampire that old and this powerful, we’d know about it. You just can’t hide this much power from both the vampire and human community, not to mention the shapeshifters. He was able to mess with my friend through the bite of one of the vampires he possessed, not even his own bite, and he was able to control Ares, or drive him crazy, from a distance.’

  ‘I’ve never even heard of a vampire being able to possess its vamp followers in any of the literature. You should write a paper about it, publish it for the rest of us to read.’

  I looked at Edward and he looked back. ‘Not all the really old vamps like their secrets being that out in the open, Hatfield.’

  ‘Oh, you mean they’re still alive. I guess I thought you killed them.’

  ‘I don’t kill every vampire I meet, Hatfield.’

  She looked a little embarrassed. ‘I guess not; I mean, you are with your Master of the City. No offense meant.’

  ‘None taken; I am dating him.’

  Hatfield had a moment where thoughts chased across her face so quickly I wasn’t sure what she was thinking; maybe she didn’t even know what she was thinking exactly.

  ‘Just say it, Hatfield,’ Edward said.

  ‘I don’t think I could ever get past the fact that he was dead, but if you had to be dating a vampire, your Master of the City is pretty gorgeous – again, no offense.’

  I smiled. ‘Why should I be offended? Jean-Claude is gorgeous.’

  ‘I’m sorry I said pretty horrible things to you earlier about him, and Micah Callahan, and … oh, hell, I was awful and it was just that you cast a long shadow over the Preternatural Branch of the Marshals Service for the rest of us female officers.’

  ‘I’m sorry if my dating preternaturals makes it harder for the rest of you, but I’m not going to stop dating the men I love because people are bothered by it.’

  ‘Now that I’ve seen you in person, I realize a lot of it’s jealousy. You’re as tough as you are beautiful, which means a lot of women must hate you on sight, and the men can’t decide whether to try to compete with you or sleep with you.’

  I frowned at her. ‘Sorry, I spend most of my time around men who make me look like the ugly stepsister, so I don’t get the beauty-being-intimidating part, but on the tough part, most of them can’t compete.’

  ‘If you’re the ugly stepsister, then your guys must be even prettier than their pictures.’

  ‘They’re pretty spectacular,’ I said.

  ‘And you let the men know they can’t compete,’ she said.

  I shrugged. ‘In our job we can’t afford to baby anyone’s ego. They’re either up to the job or they’re not.’

  She gave a small laugh. ‘Oh, yeah, a lot of your haters are just insecure around you. I didn’t think anyone could live up to your reputation, but you made a believer out of me, Blake.’ Her face sobered. She looked down at the papers in front of her. ‘This disease is pretty terrible. I’m sorry about Sheriff Callahan for a lot of reasons, but if he really is your future father-in-law, I’m sorry that Micah Callahan had to come home to this.’

  ‘The best thing I can do for Micah and his dad is find the vampire that started all this. Until night falls and we can question the vampires, we look at what the victims can tell us. I want to see how close the missing-person reports are to each other geographically. I need a map to see if I’m right, but if I am, then it may be where our master vampire is hiding his body. If the missing persons are clustered originally in one area like I’m thinking, then I’d send police up to check on anyone living up in the area. There are always people in the mountains who don’t come to town much if you go far enough up. Some because they’re just good old-fashioned mountain people and antisocial. Or, the new mountain people have money and some of them have helipads at the summit of their mountains, so either way potentially no one would know they’re missing for a while.’

  ‘You really think we have a lot more people missing?’

  ‘I’m half-hoping we do, because that will give us someplace to start looking for the master vampire’s body.’

  ‘You say body like he’s not in it,’ Hatfield said.

  ‘A vampire that can take over his created offspring this easily usually does leave their body somewhere safe and just uses other bodies as a sort of stalking horse. That body gets damaged, they abandon it like a sinking ship and find another boat to take over.’

  ‘They jump bodies that easily?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve known a couple that could, and I’m thinking worst-case scenario here.’

  ‘If the bad vamp can jump bodies that easily, how do you kill it?’

  Edward and I spoke in unison. ‘Destroy the original body.’

  She looked from one to the other of us and almost laughed. ‘You’ve done this before.’

  Edward and I looked at each other. Then I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, giving us wide eyes, ‘let’s go find that map.’

  57

  They found a map, and the cluster of pins – red for known victims, green for missing people, yellow for missing people found dead of presumed natural causes – did form a pattern, but not the one I was hoping for. There was a cluster at the beginning in a remote spot in the mountains, but then the next cluster was miles away and less isolated, and the next one closer to one of the small towns in the mountains, and then bypassing it and heading toward Boulder.

  The big surprise was that Travers joined us for the planning/briefing session. I’d known that Truth had sucked out the rot, but I’d assumed he’d been more hurt than just the vampire bite. He was bandaged up enough for the dressing to show at the collar of his shirt, and he moved carefully as he leaned against one of the pillars in the room, wincing as he settled his six-feet-plus frame. Everyone had said how glad they were to see him and hadn’t expected him. I’d said hi and good to see him. He’d given me a tiny nod, his face guarded. Last I’d seen, me and my people had saved his ass twice. Something told me he was going to be weird about it. Sigh.

  ‘How did we not see this?’ Detective Foster asked. He was an older detective who was down to that fringe of hair, and in his glasses he looked more like a high school math teacher than a cop, until you noticed the width of his shoulders and the small muscles that played in his forearms.

  ‘We didn’t see
it, because there’s nothing to see,’ Travers said, in his big, deep voice, all gruff like when he’d been trash-talking me in the mountains. ‘That is every hiker and tourist gone missing for three months. It is not vampire victims.’

  ‘You guys usually lose that many hikers in a three-month period?’ I asked.

  There was a moment of silence, and then Foster said, ‘No, and that’s what I mean about how did we miss it? Even if it wasn’t vampires or some other preternatural, it’s still too many people to lose. Someone should have red-flagged it.’

  Captain Jonas stepped up beside the map. ‘This is the first time that all the cases have been put together. Individually it was a bigger number of missing and accidents than normal, but not that much bigger.’

  ‘It’s the same problem we run into all the time as marshals. Different law enforcement agencies covering different areas mean that you don’t share information unless there’s a reason for it. Different jurisdictions, hell, different ranger stations cover at least two of these areas. Some of them could still just be runaways; an elderly man who wandered off and was found dead by a presumed fall and exposure may be just that. People die by accident all the damn time, especially in wilderness areas if they don’t have experience and they don’t understand how fast the temperature can drop or the weather can change.’

  ‘How do you know so much about mountains? You’re from St Louis – that’s what, a few hundred feet above sea level?’ Travers called out.

  ‘I’ve executed warrants all over the country. I had one in the mountains where a snowstorm came up so fast we were lucky to find shelter, so I did more research on weather patterns and survival for this kind of terrain, because you’re right, I’m a flatlander, and it damn near got me killed once. I’ve worked to make sure it doesn’t happen a second time.’

  ‘Aren’t you just the little Boy Scout,’ he said.

  ‘What is your problem with Blake?’ Hatfield asked.

  He looked surprised. ‘Since when did you become her biggest fan? I heard you called her a fur-banger and coffin bait.’

  Hatfield looked embarrassed. ‘I didn’t know Marshal Blake then, and when I did I jumped on her bandwagon, Officer Travers. Since five people died last night, because I didn’t have her expertise with the undead.’

  ‘The vampires looked dead; they were dead. No one could have known the vampires weren’t dead enough,’ Travers said.

  ‘Blake knew. Forrester knew.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ he said.

  ‘Travers, what the hell is your problem? Everyone else who came off that mountain with her has nothing but good to say about her. I hear one of her vampires saved your life,’ Captain Jonas said.

  ‘Yeah, one of her vampire lovers fixed me all up.’ He sounded bitter.

  ‘Travers, shut the fuck up. If Blake has to keep defending her honor against all our people, I’m going to run out of people to send into the field,’ Jonas said.

  ‘I heard about Rickman. He’s good in a fight; she got a lucky shot,’ Travers said.

  Edward laughed.

  Travers glared at him. ‘You got a problem, Forrester?’

  ‘Anita didn’t get in a lucky shot.’

  ‘I say she did,’ Travers said, and pushed away from the pillar and winced, but he straightened so all six foot five of him towered over the room, and by implication Edward.

  ‘Anita didn’t need luck to win the fight,’ Edward said.

  ‘You were there, right?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then how the hell do you know what happened? You ever even meet Rickman?’

  ‘I don’t have to meet him,’ Edward said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Anita doesn’t win because she’s lucky. She wins because she’s just that good.’

  ‘Well, I guess you’d know how good she is,’ Travers said.

  Edward pushed off the desk where he’d been half-sitting.

  Travers started moving toward him slowly, stiffly, but moving. He was smiling. I knew that kind of smile. It meant he wanted a fight, but he wasn’t picking on me; he wanted a piece of my ‘boyfriend.’

  Jonas said, ‘That’s it, Travers; go home.’

  ‘You need every man you can get,’ he said.

  ‘I need every man and woman who wants to work as a team and do their damn jobs. I know Rickman is like one of your best buds, but now that Blake beat his sorry ass, you don’t need to take his place as her bully.’

  ‘I got no beef with Blake.’

  ‘Then stop trying to pick a fight with her and Forrester. Make one more out-of-line remark and I will send you home and write your ass up officially.’

  ‘Write me up for what?’

  ‘Sexual harassment, for starters,’ Jonas said.

  ‘I didn’t sexually harass anybody.’

  ‘Maybe my memory is better than yours, Travers, so I’ll quote you back to yourself: “Well, I guess you’d know how good she is.” That was a sexual remark aimed at both our visiting marshals.’

  ‘I wasn’t talking to Blake, so how is that harassing her?’

  ‘Did you sleep through the last sexual harassment seminar? Comments made in the presence of a female officer can also constitute harassment.’

  Weirdly it sort of hurt my feelings that Travers seemed angrier with me now than before I’d saved his ass in the mountains, and then I wondered if he hadn’t liked being saved by a woman and a bunch of preternaturals? If that was it, it pissed me off even more.

  Hatfield stood up for me. ‘If one of her vampires hadn’t sucked out that rotting disease, you’d be dying like the sheriff.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for the help,’ he said.

  ‘Ungrateful bastard,’ I said.

  He turned those angry eyes to me. ‘You want a piece of me, Blake?’

  ‘If you mean sexually, no thanks.’

  He flushed, his face coloring.

  ‘If you mean a fight, I’ll wait until you’re healed. It wouldn’t be fair while you’re wounded.’

  His face darkened even more, and he started walking toward me, which meant toward Edward, too, since we were beside each other.

  ‘Don’t finish walking over here, Travers,’ Edward said, ‘because I don’t care if you’re wounded.’

  ‘You think you can take me?’

  ‘I know I can,’ and he smiled as he said it, which was the guy equivalent of saying he didn’t want the fight at the same time he was encouraging it.

  Travers kept coming. Captain Jonas intercepted him. He looked small beside the other man, but there was nothing small about his attitude. ‘Go home, Travers. I’ll be recommending you get some counseling, because you’re obviously traumatized by recent events.’

  ‘I’m not hurt that bad; I can help find this bastard.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were hurt, I said you were traumatized. Now go home while I can still give you the benefit of the doubt. If you touch either Forrester or Blake, I will suspend you without pay, now – go home right now!’

  He turned to go but had to throw a comment over his shoulder. ‘I don’t owe your vampire anything, Blake.’

  ‘Truth didn’t save you so you’d owe him something. He saved you because it was the right thing to do and he respects fellow warriors.’

  ‘He is not a fellow warrior. He’s just a damn bloodsucker!’

  ‘Would you rather be rotting away in the hospital like Sheriff Callahan?’ I didn’t yell it, but my voice was getting louder.

  ‘Why didn’t your vampire save him?’

  ‘Because the disease has spread through his body, and there’s no one place to suck the poison out.’ I felt the bite of tears behind my eyes. I would not cry in front of this bastard. ‘It’s too late to save Micah’s dad, but we were able to save you, you fucking ungrateful, misogynistic, prejudiced, racist, undeserving bastard.’

  Travers’s face sort of froze, and then it was like he looked lost – that was the only word I had for it. That one expression was enough; so
mething about the fight in the mountains, being wounded, being saved by Truth, had affected him deeply, and not in a good way. He just turned without another word and walked out.

  ‘What the hell was that about?’ Jonas asked, to no one in particular.

  Since the question hadn’t been directed at anyone in particular, no one answered it. In fact, the silence was a little thick.

  It was Deputy Al from the back of the room. ‘Sorry I’m late, but damn, Anita, you cuss real pretty.’

  It made people laugh, at least a little. I smiled as Al walked farther into the room. He smiled at me, and the look on his face let me know he’d heard enough of what had just happened to want to make it better. Travers might be an ungrateful bastard, but for every one of those there was an Al, and a Hatfield, and a Jonas. I had more friends than enemies in most cities. It was just that I didn’t understand why some people kept resenting me; I just didn’t get it, and I never would. I wasn’t much for hating people for things they couldn’t change, like the way they looked, or psychic gifts, or whatever. I was grumpy and killed people almost everywhere I went, but I didn’t hate them. That probably wasn’t much of a comfort to the people I executed, but hey, sometimes you take what you can get.

  58

  Once upon a time, hunting vampires was all about daylight. You hoarded the hours while the vamps couldn’t be up and hunting you back so you could find them in their daytime lair and put a stake through their hearts, or decapitate them while they were dead to the world and couldn’t fight back, but we had two vampires in custody that might be able to answer all our questions. They probably knew his daytime retreat, but while the sun was up they couldn’t talk to us. Yes, there was that pesky lawyer thing, but now that the warrant was mine I could use all the power it granted me. That power included being able to force the lawyer to let me question them with him present, if I believed more lives would be lost without their information. We’d lost five people last night, and only two of them had a job that put them in harm’s way; the other three had been innocent bystanders. I had all the proof I needed to be able to question the vampires once the sun went down. I was looking forward to nightfall and being able to talk to them, at the same time that I was worried what this rogue master had up his undead sleeve. The zombies at the hospital and the rotting vampires that wouldn’t die had been pretty terrible, even by my standards. So, on one hand I was eager for the day to pass, and on the other hand, not so much.