Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10

by Laurell Hamilton

  The house was one of those nouveau architect homes that people with more money than taste are always hiring people to build. It looked like a giant had dumped white concrete in a free form slide putting windows and doors here and there like raisins in an oatmeal cookie. A nice surprise, but never where you expect to find them. The mismatched windows made the house look deformed. The door was off center but round, like a wide open mouth. The windows were not only round and mismatched, but the number of windows didn’t seem to match the floor plan as if some of the windows looked into blank walls where no room could possibly be.

  White steps led up to the round door like one of those cartoon tongues that spill out of mouths and go tumbling downstairs. The steps weren’t wide enough for us to walk side by side, so Edward moved a couple of steps ahead. Neither of the men behind us protested, so we kept moving.

  It had been so long since I carried a purse instead of a fanny pack that it felt awkward on my shoulder. I had to keep a hand on it to keep it from swinging around. I’d put it on the left shoulder, leaving my right hand uncompromised out of habit. Not that I had anything left to draw or pull or whatever. But it was always good to have your strong hand empty, just in case. So Edward and Dolph had always told me.

  At the top of the porch in a spill of bright yellow light, they told us to stop. We stopped. They moved up to flank us and move a little back to either side. I didn’t understand what they were doing at first, until the door opened and another man pointed the same kind of submachine gun at us. Muscle Man and Glasses had moved out of his line of fire and moved so they wouldn’t catch him in their fire line. It is not easy to use three submachine guns in that small a space without crossing your own men, but they made it look easy, very smooth. The other men had carried an extra clip for the sub guns in a thigh holster, but this one had two clips at his waist.

  The man in the door was African American and tall, like Olaf’s height, very six foot plus. He was also completely bald just like Olaf. If they ever met, they’d look like light and dark versions of each other.

  “What took so long?” he asked; his voice matched the body, deep.

  “They were carrying a lot of hardware,” Muscle Man said.

  The new guy was smirking at me. “From the way Russell talked I expected you to look like Amanda. You’re just a little bitch.”

  “Amanda the Amazon that came to Ted’s house?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  I shrugged. “I wouldn’t believe much that Russell said.”

  “He said you broke his nose, kicked him in the balls, and beat his head in with a piece of wood.”

  “Everything but the last bit. If I’d beaten his head in, he’d be dead.”

  “What’s the holdup, Simon?” Muscle Man asked.

  “Deuce is having some trouble locating the wand.”

  “Deuce would have trouble keeping track of his head if it wasn’t attached,” Muscle Man said.

  “True, but we still wait.” He was looking at both of us, the gun held easily in his big hands. “What’s with the sunglasses, bitch?”

  I let the name calling go. They had all the guns. “They look cool,” I said.

  He laughed then, a warm growly sound. A nice laugh if he hadn’t been armed.

  “What about you, Ted? I hear you are a bad dude.”

  Edward transformed into Ted, like a magician deciding he was going to have to perform after all. “I’m a bounty hunter. I kill monsters.”

  Simon looked at him, and there was something about the way he did it that said the Ted act wasn’t fooling him. “Van Cleef recognized your picture, Undertaker.”

  Undertaker?

  Ted smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know anybody named Van Cleef.”

  Simon just looked at Glasses. Edward had time to turn his head so he took the blow on his shoulder. He moved a step, but didn’t fall. Simon gave another look. Glasses hit his knee, and Edward collapsed onto one knee.

  “We only need the girl up and running,” Simon said. “So I’ll ask you this just once, do you know Van Cleef?”

  I stood there, not sure what to do. We were so totally covered by the guns, and the priority had to be getting the children out. So no heroics until they were safe. If we died, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that Bernardo and Olaf would risk their lives to get them out. So I stood there and looked at Edward kneeling on the porch, waiting for him to give me some kind of sign what I was supposed to do.

  Edward looked up at Simon. “Yes.”

  “Yes, what, asshole?”

  “Yes, I know Van Cleef.”

  Simon smiled broadly, obviously happy with himself. “Boys, this is the Undertaker, the man that still has the highest body count of anyone Van Cleef ever trained.”

  I felt, rather than saw, the two men twitch. The information not only made sense to them, but it scared them. It made them afraid of Edward. Who the hell was Van Cleef, and when had he trained Edward, and for what? I wanted to know the answers, but not badly enough to ask. Later, if we survived, I’d ask Edward. Maybe he’d even tell me. “I don’t know you,” Edward said.

  “I came in just after you left,” Simon said.

  “Simon?” Edward made the name a question, and the big man seemed to understand what was being asked.

  “As in whatever the fuck Simon says, you damn well better do.”

  How colorful, I thought, but didn’t say out loud.

  “Can I get up now?” Edward asked.

  “If you can stand, then help yourself.”

  Edward got to his feet. If it hurt, it didn’t show. His face was empty, eyes like bits of pale blue ice. I’d seen him kill with that face.

  Simon’s smile faltered around the edges. “You’re supposed to be one mean son of a bitch.”

  “Van Cleef never said I was mean.” He sounded very sure of that.

  Simon’s smile disappeared altogether. “No, he didn’t. He said you were dangerous.”

  “What would Van Cleef say about you?” Edward asked.

  “Same thing,” Simon said.

  “I doubt that,” Edward said.

  They looked at each other, and there was a weight and a testing like something nearly visible in the air between them. Muscle Man’s nerve broke first. “Where the hell is Deuce with the wand?”

  Simon blinked, and switched very cold brown eyes to the man behind me. “Shut up, Mickey.”

  Mickey? It didn’t have quite the ring to it that the other nicknames did. Of course, Simon hadn’t sounded too tough until it was explained.

  “Van Cleef didn’t recognize her picture.”

  “No reason he should,” Edward said.

  “The newspapers call her the Executioner.”

  “That’s what the vampires call her.”

  “Why do they call her that?”

  “Why do you think?”

  Simon looked at me. “How many vampire kills you got, bitch?”

  If I had a chance tonight, I was going to teach Simon some manners, but not right now. “I don’t know exactly.”

  “Guess.”

  I thought about it. “I stopped keeping track around thirty.”

  Simon laughed. “Hell, every man on this porch has more kills than that.”

  More kills than thirty? Who the hell were these guys? I shrugged. “I didn’t know it was a competition.”

  “Did you count the human kills?” Edward asked.

  I shook my head. “He asked about vampire kills, not human.”

  “Add those in,” he said.

  That was harder. “Eleven, twelve maybe.”

  “Forty-three,” Simon said, “you got Mickey beat, but not Rooster.” Apparently, Rooster was Glasses.

  “Add in the shapeshifters,” Edward said.

  It had turned into a competition. I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to seem as dangerous as I really was, but I trusted Edward’s judgment. “Oh, hell, Edward, I don’t know.” I started counting in my head. Finally, I said, “Seven.”
>
  “So fifty,” he said.

  Just hearing it out loud made me want to cringe. It sounded so Psychos ’R Us.

  “I’ve still got you beat, bitch,” Simon said.

  He was beginning to get on my nerves. “The fifty only counts the people I did personally with a weapon.”

  “You mean it doesn’t count the ones you killed barehanded?” He smiled when he said it, like he didn’t believe it.

  “No, I counted those.”

  The smile got positively condescending. “Then what didn’t you count, little bitch.”

  “Witches, necromancers, things like that.”

  “Why not count them?” This from Mickey.

  I shrugged.

  “Because using magic to kill is an automatic death sentence,” Edward said.

  I frowned at him. “I never said anything about magic.”

  “We aren’t friends,” Simon said, “but you can be honest tonight, bitch. We won’t tell the cops. Will we, boys?” He laughed and they laughed with him, with that same sort of nervous mirth that Itzpapalotl’s vampires had had, like they were afraid not to laugh.

  I shrugged. “Most of the fifty are sanctioned kills. The cops already know about them.”

  “You ever been on trial?” This from the until now silent Rooster.

  “No.”

  “Fifty legal kills,” Simon said.

  “Give or take,” I said.

  Simon looked at Edward. They had another one of those weighted staring contests.

  “Would Van Cleef like her?”

  “Yes, but she wouldn’t like him.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s not big on orders and listening to people just because they’ve got an extra stripe on their shoulder.”

  “Not disciplined,” Simon said.

  “She’s disciplined. You just got to have more than rank to get her to listen to you.”

  “She listens to you,” Simon said. “She didn’t want to talk about her kills, but she took your lead.”

  His saying that meant Simon was very observant, too observant for comfort actually. I’d underestimated him. Stupid of me. No, not stupid, careless.

  Another man came up with the identical gun in his hands. He was just shy of six feet, but seemed smaller, delicate somehow. The hair was a deep brown, cut short, curly. The face was pretty in a girlish kind of way. His skin was that dark tan that isn’t really tan at all. He had a set of small headphones around his neck, with wires connecting them to a metal box and a small flat . . . wand attached with a cord to the box. It had to be Deuce and the wand.

  I didn’t know what it was, but Edward went very still. He knew what it was, and he didn’t like it. Not a good sign.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” Mickey said.

  “Mickey,” Simon said, and he said “Mickey” the way that Edward could say “Olaf” and get perfect obedience. There was no more comment from the backup players. Simon looked at Deuce. “Do it.”

  Deuce slipped the headphones on, hit a switch and some knobs on the box, and a light went on on the box. He got a distracted inward look on his face as if he were listening to things we couldn’t hear. He started at Edward’s hat and worked down, hesitated over the chest area, then continued the sweep. He knelt on the ground beside Edward and waved the wand up the backside of Edward. He was careful to stay out of the line of fire of all three guns. His own gun was on a sling that he pushed far behind his back, keeping it out of the way with a well-placed elbow as he moved.

  He stood, slipped the headphones off, and unplugged them from the box. “Listen to this.” He waved the wand over Edward’s chest. It beeped frantically.

  “Take off the shirt,” Simon said.

  Edward didn’t argue. He unbuttoned the shirt and handed it to Deuce, who waved the wand over it. The thing stayed silent.

  Deuce waved the wand over Edward’s chest again, and the wand beeped. He ran the wand over the shirt in his hand, no noise. Deuce shook his head.

  “The undershirt,” Simon said.

  Edward had to take his hat off. He handed it to me, then lifted the undershirt over his head. The Kevlar looked very artificial and white. He handed the undershirt to Deuce, and we went through the same routine again.

  “Take the vest off,” Simon said.

  “Tell me one thing first,” Edward asked. “Are the kids all right?”

  “Why the fuck do you care about some bitch’s kids?”

  Edward just looked at him, but there was something in that look that made Simon take a step back. He noticed what he’d done and took the step back, pointing the gun very solidly at Edward’s chest. “Take off the damn vest.”

  “It’s too hot for body armor anyway,” Edward said. It seemed an odd thing to say for Edward, man of few words, but you had to know Edward to know it was odd. I had the feeling that Edward had just put the word out for zero survivors. He undid the Velcro, slipped it over his head and handed it to Deuce.

  Edward stood there naked from the waist up. He looked fragile beside the musclebound Mickey or the very tall Simon, but they saw in him what I saw in him because unarmed and half-naked they were still scared of him. It was there in the way Simon reacted to him. The way the others, except Deuce, kept their distance. Deuce didn’t seem to be working on the same instincts as the rest, though he never once crossed the fire line. He made Edward stretch out his hand, or he knelt under the direct line of fire. None of them were careless. It wasn’t a good sign.

  He ran the wand over the vest. When the wand beeped, he handed it to Simon. Then he ran the wand over Edward’s bare chest. Silence. Good, because I think Simon would have said, “Skin,” in the same voice he’d said shirt, undershirt, vest. Just because Edward made him nervous didn’t mean he wasn’t scary all of his own.

  “In the body armor, that’s good,” Simon said. “Most people, even if they have you strip, don’t check the armor.”

  Edward just looked at him.

  “Her next.”

  Deuce duck-walked in front of us. Just in case someone started shooting, he was safe. No one shot anyone. Of course the night was young. He stood on the other side of me. He didn’t bother to put the earphones back on, just ran the wand over me. It beeped. “Hand the hat back to him, please.”

  Please—refreshing after hearing myself called bitch about a dozen times. “My pleasure,” I said and handed Edward’s hat back to him.

  Deuce had looked up when I spoke, as if he wasn’t used to politeness in others either. The wand ran over me, and it beeped at chest level.

  “Take the shirt off, bitch,” Simon said.

  I untucked the shirt and started unbuttoning it. “My name’s Anita, not bitch.”

  “Like I give a fuck,” he said.

  Fine, I’d tried being nice. I handed the shirt to Deuce and his magic wand. It beeped, but when he ran it back over me, nothing. He laid the box gently on the ground, the wand on top of it, and started looking at the shirt. In less than a minute he’d found a small wire with a slightly thicker head sewn into the collar of the shirt. “Looks like a transmitter, maybe a homing beacon.”

  Simon tossed the vest to Deuce. “Cut it open, find out what’s inside.”

  Deuce pulled a gravity knife from his back pocket, did one of those quick wrist movements that spilled the blade open. He went over the vest with his hands first, eyes closed, then he started cutting. It was a longer wire, with a little box attached. “It’s a receiver. Someone out there is hearing everything we say.”

  “Destroy the homer.”

  Deuce crushed mine under his heel. When it was a little metallic and plastic slimy place on the porch, he smiled up at us as if he’d done a good thing. Deuce was a few bricks shy of a load. Funny how many people that Edward introduced me to were.

  “Who’s out there, Undertaker?” Simon asked.

  Edward had put his hat back on. It looked funny with the shirt gone, but he seemed perfectly at ease. If he was nervous, you couldn’t tell it.


  “I am going to ask you this one more time nice, then it won’t be so nice.” He seemed to square his shoulders as if he were the one about to take a beating. “Who was on the other end of this wire? Who’s out there?”

  Edward shook his head.

  Simon nodded.

  Rooster hit him in the back, and it must have been hard because it drove him to his knees. Something on the butt of the gun broke the skin in two small cuts. He stayed on all fours for a few seconds as if it had stunned him, then he got up on his feet and faced Simon.

  “Answer the question, Undertaker.”

  Edward shook his head, again. He was ready for the next blow. It staggered him, but he didn’t go down. There was a third small cut. The cuts weren’t anything, but they showed how much force was being used. He was going to be bruised all to hell come morning.

  “Maybe she knows,” Mickey said.

  “I don’t know who they are,” I said, and the lie fell smoothly off my tongue. “Edward said we needed backup. He found some.”

  “You’d come into a situation like this with unknown people at your back? You don’t seem that stupid,” Simon said.

  “Edward vouched for them,” I said.

  “And you trust him?”

  I nodded.

  “You trust him with your life?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Simon looked at me, then back to Edward. “She your squeeze?”

  Edward blinked, and I knew that was him trying to buy time to think what answer would be the least painful. “No.”

  “I’m not sure I believe you, either of you, but if we start beating up the bitch, and she gets too hurt to do the spell, Riker’d be pissed.”

  “Why don’t you have Undertaker ask the backup to come in?” Deuce said.

  Everyone sort of froze, then looked at him. Simon said, “What did you say?”

  “If they can hear us, why not have him ask them to come up, hands up, that sort of thing.”

  Simon nodded, then turned back to Edward. “Tell them to come up to the house. Hands where we can see them.”

  “They won’t come,” Edward said.

  “They’ll come or we’ll blow your fucking head off.” Simon put the short-butted gun to his shoulder, and put the barrel against Edward’s forehead. “Ask them to come into the house. Hands up. Throw their guns down.”