Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10

by Laurell Hamilton

  AN HOUR LATER, I’d finished the witness reports. I stretched my lower back while still sitting in the chair, just bending slowly at the waist until my hands touched the floor or almost touched the floor. Three stretches, and I could press my palms flat to the floor. Better. I got up and checked my watch. Midnight. I felt stiff and strange, estranged from this quiet room and the peaceful surroundings. My head was filled with what I’d read, and what I’d read hadn’t been peaceful.

  Standing, I could see Edward. He’d moved to the floor, lying flat on the floor, holding the reports up in front of his face. If I had lain down, I’d have been asleep. Edward always did have a will of iron.

  He glanced at me. I got a glimpse of what he was looking at. He’d moved on to the pictures. Something must have shone on my face because he placed the pictures face down on his chest. “You finished?”

  “With the witness reports, yeah.”

  He just looked at me.

  I went around the table and sat in the chair he’d started the night in. He stayed lying on the floor. I would have said like a contented cat, but there was something more reptilian about him than feline; a coldness. How could Donna miss it? I shook my head. Business, concentrate on business.

  “The majority of the houses are isolated ones, mostly because of the wealth of the owners. They’ve got enough money to give them land and privacy. But three of the houses were located in developments like the Bromwells’ with neighbors all around. Those three attacks occurred on one of the few nights that all the neighbors were gone.”

  “And?” he said.

  “And I thought this was going to be a brainstorming session. I want your ideas.”

  He shook his head. “I brought you down here for a set of fresh eyes, Anita. If I tell you all our old ideas, it may lead you down the same wrong paths we’ve already taken. Tell me what you see.”

  I frowned at him. What he said made sense, but it still felt like he was keeping secrets. I sighed. “If this was a person, I’d say he or they stake out the houses night after night, waiting for that one night when all the neighbors are out of the way. But do you know the odds of an entire street clearing out on any given night in the suburbs?”

  “Long odds,” Edward said.

  I nodded. “Damn straight. A few people had plans for that night. One couple went to a niece’s birthday party. Another family had their once a month dinner with the in-laws. Two couples from different crime scenes were both working late, but the rest of the people didn’t have plans, Edward. They just all left home about the same time on the same night for different reasons.”

  He was watching me, eyes blank, but steady, intense, and neutral at the same time. From his face I didn’t know whether I was saying something he’d heard a dozen times before, or something brand new. Detective Sergeant Dolph Storr likes to stay neutral and not influence his people so I was kind of used to it, but Edward made Dolph seem positively loaded with influence.

  I continued, but it was like slogging through mud without any feedback at all. “The detective in charge of the second case, he noticed it, too. He went out of his way to ask why they left their houses. The answers are almost identical where the police take the time to ask details.”

  “Go on,” Edward said, face still blank.

  “Dammit, Edward. You’ve read all the reports. I’m just repeating what you already know.”

  “But maybe you’ll end up someplace new,” he said. “Please, Anita, just finish your thought.”

  “They all got restless. A spur of the moment trip to get ice cream with the kids. One woman decided to go grocery shopping at eleven o’clock at night. Some of them just got in their cars and went for a drive, no place in particular. Just had to get out for a while. One man described it as cabin fever.

  “A woman, Mrs. Emma . . . shit. I’ve read too many names in too short a space of time.”

  “Was it an unusual name?” Edward asked without a single change of expression.

  I frowned at him and leaned across the table, lying on it to reach the reports. I shuffled through them until I found the one I wanted. “Mrs. Emma Taylor said, ‘The night just felt awful. I just couldn’t stand being inside.’ She goes on to say, ‘Outside the air was suffocating, hard to breathe.’ ”

  “So?” he asked.

  “So I want to talk to her.”

  “Why?”

  “I think she’s a sensitive, if not a psychic.”

  “There’s nothing in the reports that say she’s either.”

  “If you have the gift and you ignore it or pretend it’s not real, it doesn’t go away. Power will out, Edward. If she’s a strong sensitive or a psychic that has neglected her powers for years, then she’ll be either depressed or manic. She’ll have a history of treatment for mental illness. How serious will depend on how gifted she is.”

  He finally looked interested. “You’re saying that having psychic ability can drive you crazy?”

  “I’m saying that psychic ability can masquerade as mental illness. I know ghost hunters that hear the voices of the dead like whispers in their ears, one of the classic symptoms of psycophernia. Empaths, people who draw impressions from other people, can be depressed because they’re surrounded by depressed people, and they don’t know how to shield themselves. Really strong clairvoyants can spend their lives getting visions from everything they touch, unable to turn it off, again seeing things that aren’t there. Psycophernia. Demonic possession can mask itself as a multiple personality. I could give you examples for the next hour matching mental illness with different types of power.”

  “You’ve made your point,” he said. He sat up and didn’t seem the least bit stiff. Maybe the floor was good for his back. “I still don’t understand why you want to talk to this woman. The report was taken by Detective Loggia. He was very thorough. He asked good questions.”

  “You noticed that he took more time with why people left than the rest of the cops, just like I noticed it.”

  Edward shrugged. “Loggia didn’t like the way everyone cleared out. Too damn convenient, but he couldn’t come up with anything that tied the people together into a conspiracy.”

  “A conspiracy?” I almost laughed then stopped at the seriousness in his face. “Did someone actually suggest that an entire upper-middle-class to more-than-middle-class neighborhood conspired together to kill these people?”

  “It was the only logical explanation for why they all left within thirty minutes of each other on the night of the murders.”

  “So they investigated all these people?” I asked.

  “That’s where some of the extra paperwork comes from.”

  “And?” I said.

  “Nothing,” Edward said.

  “Nothing?” I made it a question.

  “A few neighborhood squabbles over kids destroying the flowers, one affair where the husband that turned up dead was banging the next door neighbor’s wife.” Edward grinned. “The neighbor was lucky that the other man got cut up in the middle of a string of serial killings. Otherwise, he’d have been the top of the hit parade.”

  “Could it have been a copycat?” I asked.

  “The police don’t think so, and believe me they tried to make the pieces fit.”

  “I believe you. The police hate to let a good motive slide since most of the time motive isn’t even one of their top priorities. Most people kill over stupid things, impulse, screw motive.”

  “Do you have a logical reason why all these people would vacate their houses just at the right time for the killer, or killers, to make their move?”

  I nodded. “Yep.”

  He looked up at me, a slight smile on his face. “I’m listening.”

  “It’s very common in hauntings for people to be uncomfortable in the area where the ghost is strongest.”

  “You’re saying ghosts did this?”

  I waved a hand. “Wait, wait until I’m done.”

  He gave a small nod. “Dazzle me.”

  �
�I don’t know if it’s dazzling, but I think it’s how it was done. There are spells that supposedly can make a person uneasy in a house or a place. But the spells I read in college were for one person or one house, not a dozen homes and twice that many people. I’m not even sure a coven working together could affect that big an area. I don’t know that much about actual witchcraft of any flavor. We’ll need to find a witch to ask. But I think it’s moot. I just mentioned it as a possibility.”

  “It’s a possibility the cops haven’t come up with yet.”

  “Nice to know I haven’t entirely wasted the last five hours of my life.”

  “But you don’t think it was witches,” Edward said.

  I shook my head. “Witches of almost any flavor believe in the threefold rule. What you give out comes back to you three-fold.”

  “What goes around comes around,” Edward said.

  “Exactly, and no one is going to want this shit coming back on them three-fold. I would have said they also believe in ‘do what you will, only harm none,’ but you can have bad pagans just like you can have bad Christians. Just because your belief says something is wrong doesn’t mean someone’s not going to break the rules.”

  “So what do you think caused them all to leave their homes just when our killer needed it?”

  “I think whatever is doing this, is big enough and powerful enough to simply arrive on the spot and want the people to go, and they went.”

  Edward frowned at me. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “Our monster arrives, knows which house it wants, and he fills the rest of the houses with dread, driving the other families out. That takes a hell of a lot of power, but to then turn around and shield the murder house so that that one family doesn’t flee, that’s truly impressive. I know some preternatural critters that can throw a sense of unease around them. Mostly I think to keep hunters at bay. But I don’t know anything that can cause this kind of controlled panic.”

  “So you’re saying you don’t know what it is,” he said, and there was just a tinge of disappointment in his voice.

  “Not yet, but if this is true, then it rules out a hell of a lot of things. I mean some vampires can throw out fear like this, but not on this large a scale, and if they could do the other houses, they couldn’t shield the murder house.”

  “I know a vampire kill when I see it, Anita, and this isn’t one.”

  I waved my hands in the air as if clearing it. “I’m just throwing out examples, Edward. Even a demon couldn’t do this.”

  “How about a devil?” he asked.

  I looked at him, saw he was serious, so I gave him a serious answer. “I won’t go into how long it’s been since anyone saw a devil, a greater demon, above ground, but if it were anything demonic, I’d have felt it today in the house. The demonic leave a stain behind, Edward.”

  “Couldn’t one that was powerful enough hide its presence from you?”

  “Probably,” I said. “I’m not a priest, so probably, but whatever is mutilating these people doesn’t want to hide.” I shook my head. “It’s not demonic, I’d almost bet the farm on it, but again I’m not a demonologist.”

  “I know that Donna can help us locate a witch tomorrow. I don’t think she knows any demonologists.”

  “There are only two in the country. Father Simon McCoupen, who has the record in this century in this country for number of exorcisms performed, and Doctor Philo Merrick, who teaches at the University of San Francisco.”

  “You sound like you know them,” Edward said.

  “I attended a class taught by Merrick, and a talk given by Father Simon.”

  “I didn’t know you were that interested in demons.”

  “Let’s just say that I’m tired of running into them without knowing much about them.”

  He looked at me, sort of expectantly. “When did you run into a demon?”

  I shook my head. “I won’t talk about it after dark. If you really want to know, ask me again tomorrow when the sun is shining.”

  He looked at me for a second or two, as if he wanted to argue, but he let it go. Which was just as well. There are some stories, some memories, that if you tell them after dark, they seem to gain weight, substance, as if there are things listening, waiting to hear themselves spoken of again. Words have power. But even thinking about them is sometimes enough to make the air in a room heavy. I’d gotten better over the years at turning off my memories. It was a way to stay sane.

  “The list of what our murderer isn’t is getting longer,” Edward said. “Now tell me what it is.”

  “I don’t know yet, but it is preternatural.” I leafed through the pages until I found the part I’d marked. “Four of the people now in the Santa Fe hospital were only found because they wondered outside their homes at night, skinned and bleeding. Neighbors found them both times.”

  “There’s a transcript of the 911 call somewhere in this mess. The woman who found the Carmichaels had hysterics over the phone.”

  I thought about what I’d seen in the hospital and tried to imagine finding one of my neighbors, perhaps a friend, in that condition in the middle of the street. I shook my head and chased the image back. I did not want to imagine it. I had enough nightmares of my own, thank you very much.

  “I don’t blame her,” I said. “But my point is this: how could they walk around in that condition? One of the survivors attacked his neighbor when the man came to help. He bit his shoulder so badly that the man was taken to the hospital with the mutilation victims. Doctor Evans said that they have to restrain all the patients in Albuquerque or they try to get up and leave. Don’t you find that strange?”

  “Yes, it’s all strange. Is there a point in here somewhere?” And I heard that thread of tiredness in his voice.

  “I think that whatever skinned them was, is, calling them.”

  “Calling them how?” he asked.

  “The same way a vampire calls a person he’s bitten and mind-raped. The skinning or something about it gives the monster a hold over them.”

  “Why doesn’t the monster just take them with him the night he skins them?” Edward asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you prove that the skinned victims are being called by some bogeyman?”

  “No, but if the doctors would okay it, I wonder where one of the survivors would go, if no one stopped him. Maybe the mutilation victims could lead us right to the thing.”

  “You saw the hospital today, Anita. They are not going to let us take one of their patients and set him free. Between you and me, I’m not sure I could stand to watch it myself.”

  “Well, the great Edward, afraid at last,” another voice said.

  We both turned to see Olaf standing in the far doorway. He was wearing black dress slacks, and a black polo-style shirt, the shirtsleeves a little short for his long arms. I guess there just aren’t a lot of choices when you wear Jolly Green Giant sizes.

  He glided into the room, and if I hadn’t spent so much time around vampires and shapeshifters, I’d have said he was good at gliding. For a human, he was very good.

  Edward stood as he spoke. “What do you want, Olaf?”

  “Has the girl solved your mystery?”

  “Not yet,” Edward said.

  Olaf stopped at the edge of the table closest to us. “Not yet. Such confidence you have in her. Why?”

  “Four hours and that is the best question you can come up with,” I said.

  Olaf turned to me with a snarl. “Shut up!”

  I took a step forward, and Edward touched my elbow. He shook his head. I stepped back, gave them some room. Truthfully, I wasn’t up to arm wrestling Olaf, and I couldn’t really shoot him just for yelling at me. It kind of limited my options.

  Edward answered Olaf’s question. “When you look at her, Olaf, you see just the surface, just the small, attractive packaging. Underneath all that prettiness is someone who thinks like a killer, and a cop, and a monster. I don’t know an
yone else who bridges all three worlds as well as she does. And all the preternatural experts you find are specialists; they’re witches, or clairvoyants, or demonologists.” He glanced at me as he said the last, then back to Olaf. “But Anita is a generalist. She knows a little about most of it and can tell us whether we need to find a specialist, and what kind of specialist we need.”

  “And what kind of magical specialist do we need?” He put a lot of sarcasm into that question.

  “A witch, someone who works with the dead.” He’d remembered my earlier request about finding out what I’d sensed on the road. “We’re making a list.”

  “And checking it twice,” I said.

  Edward shook his head.

  Olaf turned to me. “Was that a joke?”

  “A little one, yes.”

  “Perhaps you should not try to make jokes.”

  I shrugged.

  He turned back to Edward. “You told me all this before she came. You waxed eloquent about her abilities. But I have worked with your magical people in the past, and you never talked about them as you speak of her. What is it about her that is so goddamned special?”

  Edward glanced at me, then back to Olaf. “The Greeks believed that once there were no male and female, that all souls were one. Then the souls were torn apart, male and female. The Greeks thought that when you found the other half of your soul, your soul mate, that it would be your perfect lover. But I think if you find your other half, you would be too much alike to be lovers, but you would still be soul mates.”

  I was fighting hard to keep my face from showing the growing surprise at this little speech. I hoped I was succeeding.

  “What are you trying to say?” Olaf demanded.

  “She is like a piece of my soul, Olaf.”

  “You are mad,” Olaf said, “a lunatic. Soul mates, bah!”

  I kind of agreed with Olaf on this one.

  “Then why is the thought of giving her a gun while I hunt her one of my greatest fantasies?” Edward asked.

  “Because you are mad,” Olaf said.

  Hear, hear, but I didn’t say it out loud.

  “You know that I have no greater compliment to give than that,” Edward said. “If I wanted to kill you, Olaf, I would just do it. The same with Bernardo because I know that I’m better than both of you. But with Anita I’ll never be sure unless we do go up against each other for real. If I die without knowing which of us is better, I’ll regret the not knowing.”