Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10

by Laurell Hamilton

  Bernardo frowned at him, but took the keys. “Gee, thanks, Dad.”

  Edward turned back to the police officers. “We’re ready to go when you are, Lieutenant.” He opened his door as he said it. The door swinging open made Marks and the uniform take a step or so back.

  I took it as my cue and got out on my side. It wasn’t until I came around the front of the Hummer in full sight that Marks finally paid attention to me. He stared at me, and his face was harsh. He could manage not to show outright hatred in his face, but he couldn’t manage neutral. He didn’t like me being here. He didn’t like it one little bit. Who had twisted his tail in a knot hard enough to force him to let me back on board?

  He opened his mouth as if he’d say something, closed it, and just started walking towards the house. The uniformed officer followed at his heels, and Edward and I trailed behind. Edward had his good ol’ boy face on, smiling and nodding to the police officers, the emergency workers, everyone and everything in his path. I just stayed at his side, trying not to frown. I didn’t know anybody here, and I’d never been comfortable greeting strangers like long-lost friends.

  There were a lot of cops outside in the yard. I spotted at least two different uniforms, enough plainclothes to open up a discount men’s store, and some plainclothes detectives that stood out. I don’t know what they do during FBI training that is different from anywhere else, but you can usually spot them. The clothes are slightly different, more uniform, less individual than with regular cops, but it’s more an aura about them. An air of authority as if they know that their orders come straight from God and yours don’t. I used to think it was insecurity on my part, but since I’m rarely insecure, that can’t be it. Whatever “it” was, they had it. The Feds had arrived. That could speed things up, be a big help, or slow things to a crawl and fuck up what little progress had already been made. It depended almost entirely on how the police in charge got along with each other, and how protective everyone was of their turf.

  These crimes were gruesome enough that we might actually see some cooperation between jurisdictions. Miracles do happen.

  Usually, when there’s a body on the ground, the police of whatever flavor are inside at the scene walking on the evidence. But there were too many people out here. There couldn’t possibly be that many more inside the house. The house was big, but not that big.

  Only one thing would keep them out in the New Mexico heat. The scene was a bad one. Gory, piteous, frightening, though no one will admit out loud to that one. Pick an adjective, but the police milled around the yard in the heat with their ties, the women in high heels on the loose gravel. Cigarettes had appeared in a lot of hands. They talked in small hushed voices that didn’t carry above the crackle of radios. They huddled in small groups, or sat alone on the edge of cars, but not for long. Everyone kept moving, as if to remain still was to think and that was a bad thing. They reminded me of the horses nervously running in circles.

  A uniformed police officer was sitting at the open doors of the ambulance. The emergency medical technician was bandaging his hand. How had he gotten hurt? I hurried to catch up with Marks. If he were the man in charge, he’d know what had happened. Edward just fell into step behind me, no questions, just following my lead. He had ego problems with me sometimes, but on the job there was nothing but the job. You left the shit outside the door. You could always pick it up on your way back out.

  I caught up with Marks on the long narrow wraparound porch. “What happened to the uniform that’s getting his hand bandaged?”

  Marks stopped in mid-stride and looked at me. His eyes were still a hard, pitiless green. You always think of green eyes as being pretty or soft, but his were like green glass. He had a big hate on for me, a big one.

  I smiled sweetly and thought, fuck you, too. But I’d learned lately to lie even with my eyes. It was almost sad that I could lie with my eyes. They really are the mirror to the soul, and once they go, you are damaged. Not beyond repair, but damaged.

  We stared at each other for a second or two, his hatred like a fine burning weight, my pleasant smiling mask. He blinked first, like there’d been any doubt. “One of the survivors bit him.”

  My eyes widened. “Are the survivors still inside?”

  He shook his head. “They’re on their way to the hospital.”

  “Anybody else get hurt?” When you ask that at a scene where vics are down, you almost always mean other cops.

  Marks nodded, and some of the hostility drained from his eyes leaving them puzzled. “Two other officers had to be taken to the hospital.”

  “How bad?” I asked.

  “Bad. One nearly got his throat ripped out.”

  “Have any of the other mutilation vics been that violent?”

  “No,” he said.

  “How many vics were there?”

  “Two, and one dead, but we’re missing at least three other people, maybe five. We’ve got a couple unaccounted for, but other guests heard them talking about a picnic earlier. We’re hoping they missed the show.”

  I looked at him. He was being very helpful, very professional. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  “I know my job, Ms. Blake.”

  “I never said otherwise.”

  He looked at me, then at Edward, then finally settled his gaze on me. “If you say so.” He turned abruptly and walked through the open door behind him.

  I looked at Edward. He shrugged. We followed Marks in, though I noticed we’d lost the uniformed officer somewhere in the walk across the yard. No one was spending more time inside than they had to.

  The living room looked as if someone had taken white liquid and poured it down to form the sloping walls, the curved doorways leading away into the house, the freeform fireplace. There was a bleached cow skull above the fireplace. A brown leather couch wrapped a huge nearly perfect square in front of the cold fire. There were pillows with Native American prints on them. A huge rug that looked almost identical to one of Edward’s took up most of the center of the floor. In fact the entire place looked like an updated version of Edward’s place. Maybe I still hadn’t seen Edward’s sense of style. Maybe this was just a type of southwestern style that I’d just never seen.

  There was a large open section that had been a dining room area. The table was still there. There was even a chandelier formed of what looked to be deer antlers. There was a pile of white, red-soaked cloth to one side of the table. Blood was seeping out of the bottom of the cloth bundle, leaking across the polished hardwood floor in tiny rivulets of crimson and darker fluids.

  A photographer was snapping pictures of something on the table. My view was hidden by three suit-covered backs. Panic clawed at my throat, and it was suddenly harder to breathe. I didn’t want the men to move. I did not want to see what was on the table. My heart was pounding in my throat, and I had to take a deep, shaking breath, clearing my throat. The deeper breath had been a mistake. The smell of fresh death is like a cross between an outhouse and a slaughterhouse. There was an acrid stink, and I knew the intestines had been perforated. But there was another smell under the almost sweet smell of too much blood. A smell of meat. I’d tried to find other words for it, but it was the closest I could come to describing it. It was like drowning in the scent of raw hamburger. Meat, a person reduced to so much meat.

  That one smell made me want to run. To just turn on my heel and walk away. This was not my job. I was not a cop. I was here as a favor to Edward. If I left now, he could bill me. But of course, it was too late. Because I wasn’t here just because of a favor to anyone now. I was here to help stop this from happening again. And that was more important than any nightmares I was about to accumulate.

  A thin heavy line of liquid oozed off the edge of the table and fell slowly to the floor with a sparkle of crimson from the bright chandelier. The short man in the middle turned and caught a glimpse of us. His face was grim, but when he caught sight of us, of me, something close to a smile curled his lips. He left the others group
ed around the table and came towards us. He was short for an FBI agent, but Special Agent Bradley Bradford walked with a confident swinging stride that covered ground and made taller men sometimes have to hurry to keep up.

  We’d met over a year ago in Branson, Missouri, on a vampire case that had turned out to be vampires plus a little something older and less local. People had died, but mostly the monsters had died. Bradford must have been happy with my performance because he kept in touch. I knew that he was now assigned to the new FBI preternatural division. Last I heard they were calling it the Special Research Section, just like the Serial Killer Profiler unit was now called Investigative Support. The FBI tries to avoid sensational buzzwords like serial killer or preternatural or monster. But call it what you like, a spade’s a spade.

  He started to put his hand forward to be shaken, then stopped. His hands were encased in plastic gloves splattered with blood, and a spot on one side that was too black, too thick, to be blood. He smiled an apology as he lowered his hands.

  I knew who had twisted Marks’ tail and gotten me back in the ball game. I took shallow, even breaths and tried not to embarrass him. I hadn’t thrown up at a murder scene in nearly two years. Be a shame to spoil my record now.

  “Anita, it’s good to see you again.”

  I nodded and felt myself smile. I was happy to see Bradley, but . . . “We really need to start meeting when there aren’t bodies on the ground.” See, light joking, I could be cool. I was also delaying the final walk to what lay on the table. I could do semi-clever repartee all damn day if I just didn’t have to see what was bleeding in the dining room.

  Why was this one getting to me so badly? No answer, but it was.

  Another agent joined us. He was tall, slender, skin actually dark enough to be called black. His hair was cut close to his head in a low, well-groomed wedge. He straightened his tie, and settled his coat in place with long-fingered hands that seemed to dance even in these small movements. I’m not one of those women who notices hands usually, but there was something about his that made me think poet, musician, as if he did other things with them besides shooting practice.

  “Special Agent Franklin, this is Ted Forrester and Anita Blake.”

  He shook hands with Edward, but didn’t answer the Ted smile with one of his own. He turned serious eyes to me. His hand was enough longer than mine that shaking was a little awkward, but we managed. But it was somehow an unsatisfying handshake as if we still didn’t have the measure of each other. Some men still use a handshake as a way of sizing you up.

  “How long have you been in the house, Ms. Blake?” he asked.

  “Just got here,” I said.

  He nodded as if it were important. “Bradford has painted a glowing picture of you.” There was something in his voice that made me say . . .

  “I take it you don’t share Bradford’s opinion of me.” I smiled when I said it.

  He blinked and looked startled, then his shoulders relaxed just a touch, and a very small smile played across his lips. “Let’s say I’m skeptical of civilians with no special training coming into a crime scene.”

  I raised eyebrows at the “no special training.” Edward and I exchanged glances. The Ted face was slipping, letting some of his own natural cynicism leak into those blue eyes, that nearly boyish face.

  “Civilians,” he said softly.

  “We don’t have badges,” I said.

  “That must be it,” he said, voice still soft, and vaguely amused.

  Franklin frowned at us. “Are we amusing you?”

  Bradford stepped between us almost literally. “Let’s let them look at the scene, then we’ll decide things.”

  Franklin’s frown deepened. “I don’t like it.”

  “Your objection has been noted, Franklin,” Bradford said, and there was a tone in his voice that said he’d had enough of the younger man.

  Franklin must have heard it too, because he smoothed his perfect tie once more and led the way towards the dining room. Bradford followed him. Edward looked at me, asking a question with his eyes.

  “I’m coming,” I said. Once I’d tried being more macho than the police. Nothing phased me. I was heap-big-vampire-slayer. But lately, I just didn’t give a crap. I didn’t want to do this anymore. It was almost a shock to realize that I really didn’t want to be here. I’d seen too many horrors in too short a space of years. I was burning out, or maybe I’d already burned out and hadn’t realized it.

  Panic tightened my stomach into a hard knot. I had to get it under control. I had to separate myself from the task ahead, or I was going to lose it. I tried to take a few calming breaths, but the smell came thick on my tongue. I swallowed, wished I hadn’t, and stared at the tips of my shoes. I stared at the ends of my Nikes as they touched the fringe of the dining room rug until the knot in my gut eased, and I felt calm. There was still a soft flutter in my chest, but it was the best I could do.

  Agent Franklin said, “Ms. Blake, are you all right?”

  I raised my eyes and saw what lay on the table.

  32

  I LET OUT a low, “Wow.”

  “Yes,” Bradford said, “wow is good.”

  The table was pale natural pine, a pale, almost white wood. It matched the walls and the rest of the decor and made a dramatic showpiece for the thing on the table. Thing, it, no other pronouns would do. Distance, distance, mustn’t think that this was once a human being.

  At first all I could see was the blood and pieces of meat. It was like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing. The first thing I was sure of was the neck. I could see the broken edge of the spine sticking up above the flesh of the neck. I looked around for the head, but none of the blood-covered lumps was the right size. But there was a leg nearly perfectly whole, only ripped away from the hips, but it was intact. It had not been disjointed. Once I saw that, I found a hand lying on its back, fingers cupped as if cradling something.

  I bent closer, hands in my pockets because I’d forgotten my own surgical gloves back in St. Louis. How unprofessional of me. I leaned over the hand and I wasn’t smelling the stink anymore. I wasn’t thinking oh, my, God, how awful. The world narrowed down to a nickel-sized lump cupped in the hand. I saw what was there. The hand had long, carefully groomed fingernails, some broken off, as if she’d struggled. She. I looked to the ring finger and found a wedding band set that looked heavy and expensive, though to be sure I’d have to move the hand and I wasn’t ready for that yet. I registered all the information as if from a great distance because I’d found a clue. I concentrated on that like it was a lifeline, and maybe it was.

  “There’s something in her hand. It may be only a piece of cloth, but . . .” I bent so low over it that my breath caressed the skin and brought a scent up from it to me. Musty, an animal smell. My breath did one other thing. It moved the edge of the thing in her hand. The one tiny edge wasn’t as blood-logged, and it moved as I blew across the hand.

  I straightened. “I think it’s a feather.” I looked around the room trying to see where it could have come from. Except for the antler chandelier nothing else in the room seemed made of animals.

  Bradford and Franklin looked at each other. “What?” I asked.

  “What made you say her?” Franklin asked.

  “The nails, the wedding ring set.” I glanced up at the rest of the body. The only other clue that this had been a woman was maybe the size of the neck, dainty. “She was small, about my size, maybe a little smaller.” I heard myself say it and felt nothing. I felt empty like a shell thrown up on the sand, empty and echoing. It felt a little bit like being in shock, and I knew that later I’d pay for it. Either I’d have screaming hysterics once I had some privacy, or . . . I’d broken something in myself that might never come back, might never fix.

  “Besides the fact that it’s female, what else do you see?” Franklin asked.

  I didn’t like being tested, but somehow I just didn’t have the energy to bitch about it. “The other vics were disjo
inted down to their finger bones. This one isn’t. When I first heard that survivors were being carefully skinned, then mutilated, and that the dead were all torn apart, I thought we might be dealing with a pair of killers. One very organized and in charge, the other disorganized and following. But the bodies weren’t torn up. They were very carefully dissected. It was organized, very thought out. But this . . .” I motioned at the thing on the table. “This was not organized. Either our organized killer is beginning to dissolve and become less coherent, or we have two killers like I originally thought. If we have two killers, then the organized one in charge has lost control over his follower. This murder was not well planned. That means mistakes, which will help us. But it may also mean that anyone that crosses paths with this thing is dead. Higher body count from here on out, more frequent kills maybe, maybe not.”

  “Not bad, Ms. Blake. I even agree with you on most of it.”

  “Thank you, Agent Franklin.” I wanted to ask what parts didn’t he agree with, but was pretty sure where we disagreed. “You still think this is a human serial killer?”

  He nodded. “I do.”

  I looked at the remains like lumpy red paint tossed across the table. The bloodstains had spread until I was standing in the edge of it. The cops hated to have you tracking blood everywhere. I stepped back, and the stain spread out towards me. I took another step back. My foot crunched in something. I knelt and found salt on the floor. Someone had gotten messy during lunch. I stood up.

  “This is fresh kill, Agent Franklin, real fresh. How long would it take a person, even two people, to reduce another human being to this?”

  His long hands played over his tie again. I wondered if he knew he did that when he was nervous. If he didn’t, I’d play poker with him any day. “I really couldn’t give an estimate, not and be accurate.”

  “Fine. Do you really think a person is strong enough to tear someone apart like this quickly enough to have the blood this fresh? The damn thing’s bleeding like it’s still alive, it’s so damn fresh. I don’t think a human being could do this much damage this quickly.”