Circus of the Damned abvh-3

by Laurell Hamilton

  “You don’t drink coffee on a white couch,” I said.

  “Ah.” He got up in one smooth motion, all grace and energy. He’d have been very impressive if I hadn’t spent most of the night with vampires.

  We sat across from each other. His eyes were the color of spring skies, that warm pale blue that still manages to look cold. His face was pleasant, his eyes neutral and watching everything I did.

  I told him about Yasmeen and Marguerite. I left out Jean-Claude, the vampire murder, the giant cobra, Stephen the Werewolf, and Rick Zeeman. Which meant it was a very short story.

  When I finished Edward sat there, sipping his coffee and staring at me.

  I sipped coffee and stared back.

  “That does explain the burn,” he said.

  “Great,” I said.

  “But you left out a lot.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I was following you.”

  I stared at him, choking on my coffee. When I could talk without coughing, I said, “You were what?”

  “Following you,” he said. His eyes were still neutral, smile still pleasant.

  “Why?”

  “I’ve been hired to kill the Master of the City.”

  “You were hired for that three months ago.”

  “Nikolaos is dead; the new master isn’t.”

  “You didn’t kill Nikolaos,” I said. “I did.”

  “True; you want half the money?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then what’s your complaint? I got my arm broken helping you kill her.”

  “And I got fourteen stitches, and we both got vampire bit,” I said.

  “And cleansed ourselves with holy water,” Edward said.

  “Which burns likes acid,” I said.

  Edward nodded, sipped his coffee. Something moved behind his eyes, something liquid and dangerous. His expression hadn’t changed, I’d swear to it, but it was suddenly all I could do to meet his eyes.

  “Why were you following me, Edward?”

  “I was told you would be meeting with the new Master tonight.”

  “Who told you that?”

  He shook his head, that inscrutable smile curling his lips. “I was inside the Circus tonight, Anita. I saw who you were with. You played with the vampires, then you went home, so one of them has to be the Master.”

  I fought to keep my face blank, too blank, so the effort showed, but the panic didn’t show. Edward had been following me, and I hadn’t known it. He knew all the vampires I had seen tonight. It wasn’t that big a list. He’d figure it out.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You let me go up against that snake without helping me?”

  “I came in after the crowd ran out. It was almost over by the time I peeked into the tent.”

  I drank coffee and tried to think of a way to make this better. He had a contract to kill the Master, and I had led him right to him. I had betrayed Jean-Claude. Why did that bother me?

  Edward was watching my face as if he would memorize it. He was waiting for my face to betray me. I worked hard at being blank and inscrutable. He smiled that close, canary-eating grin of his. He was enjoying himself. I was not.

  “You only saw four vampires tonight: Jean-Claude, the dark exotic one who must be Yasmeen, and the two blonds. You got names for the blonds?”

  I shook my head.

  His smile widened. “Would you tell me if you had?”

  “Maybe.”

  “The blonds aren’t important,” he said. “Neither of them were master vamps.”

  I stared at him, forcing my face to be neutral, pleasant, attentive, blank. Blank is not one of my better expressions, but maybe if I practiced enough…

  “That leaves Jean-Claude and Yasmeen. Yasmeen’s new in town; that just leaves Jean-Claude.”

  “Do you really think that the Master of the freaking City would show himself like that?” I put all the scorn I could find into my voice. I wasn’t the best actor in the world, but maybe I could learn.

  Edward stared at me. “It’s Jean-Claude, isn’t it?”

  “Jean-Claude isn’t powerful enough to hold the city. You know that. He’s, what, a little over two hundred? Not old enough.”

  He frowned at me. Good. “It’s not Yasmeen.”

  “True.”

  “You didn’t talk to any other vampires tonight?”

  “You may have followed me into the Circus, Edward, but you didn’t listen at the door when I met the Master. You couldn’t have. The vamps or the shapeshifters would have heard you.”

  He acknowledged it with a nod.

  “I saw the Master tonight, but it wasn’t anyone who came down to fight the snake.”

  “The Master let his people risk their lives and didn’t help?” His smile was back.

  “The Master of the City doesn’t have to be physically present to lend his power, you know that.”

  “No,” he said, “I don’t.”

  I shrugged. “Believe it or not.” I prayed, please let him believe.

  He was frowning. “You’re not usually this good a liar.”

  “I’m not lying.” My voice sounded calm, normal, truthful. Honesty-R-Us.

  “If Jean-Claude really isn’t the Master, then you know who is?”

  The question was a trap. I couldn’t answer yes to both questions, but hell, I’d been lying; why stop now? “Yes, I know who it is.”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  I shook my head. “The Master would kill me if he knew I talked to you.”

  “We can kill him together like we did the last one.” His voice was terribly reasonable.

  I thought about it for a minute. I thought about telling him the truth. Humans First might not be up to tangling with the Master, but Edward was. We could kill him together, a team. My life would be a lot simpler. I shook my head and sighed. Shit.

  “I can’t, Edward.”

  “Won’t,” he said.

  I nodded. “Won’t.”

  “If I believe you, Anita, it means I need the name of the Master. It means you are the only human who knows that name.” The friendly banter seeped out of his face like melting ice. His eyes were as empty and pitiless as a winter sky. There was no one home that I could talk to.

  “You don’t want to be the only human who knows the name, Anita.”

  He was right. I didn’t, but what could I say? “Take it or leave it, Edward.”

  “Save yourself a lot of pain, Anita; tell me the name.”

  He believed. Hot damn. I lowered my eyes to look down into my coffee so he wouldn’t see the flash of triumph in my eyes. When I looked back up, I had my face under control. Me and Meryl Streep.

  “I don’t give in to threats, you know that.”

  He nodded. He finished his coffee and sat the mug in the middle of the table. “I will do whatever is necessary to finish this job.”

  “I never doubted that,” I said. He was talking about torturing me for information. He sounded almost regretful, but that wouldn’t stop him. One of Edward’s primary rules was “Always finish a job.”

  He wouldn’t let a little thing like friendship ruin his perfect record.

  “You saved my life, and I saved yours,” he said. “It doesn’t buy you anything now. You understand that?”

  I nodded. “I understand.”

  “Good.” He stood up. I stood up. We looked at each other. He shook his head. “I’ll find you tonight, and I’ll ask again.”

  “I won’t be bullied, Edward.” I was finally getting a little mad. He had come in here asking for information; now he was threatening me. I let the anger show. No acting needed.

  “You’re tough, Anita, but not that tough.” His eyes were neutral, but wary, like those of a wolf I’d seen once in California. I’d just walked around a tree and there it had been, standing. I froze. I had never really understood what neutral meant until then. The wolf didn’t give a damn if it hurt me or not. My choice. Threaten it, and the shit hit the fan. Give
it room to run, and it would run. But the wolf didn’t care; it was prepared either way. I was the one with my pulse in my throat, so startled that I’d stopped breathing. I held my breath and wondered what the wolf would decide. It finally loped off through the trees.

  I’d relearned how to breathe and gone back down to the campsite. I had been scared, but I could still close my eyes and see the wolf’s pale grey eyes. The wonder of staring at a large predator without any cage bars between us. It had been wonderful.

  I stared up at Edward now and knew that this, too, was wonderful in its way. Whether I had known the information or not, I wouldn’t have told him. No one bullied me. No one. That was one of my rules.

  “I don’t want to have to kill you, Edward.”

  He smiled then. “You kill me?” He was laughing at me.

  “You bet,” I said.

  The laughter seeped out of his eyes, his lips, his face, until he stared at me with his neutral, predator eyes.

  I swallowed and remembered to take slow, even breaths. He would kill me. Maybe. Maybe not.

  “Is the Master worth one of us dying?” I asked.

  “It’s a matter of principle,” he said.

  I nodded. “Me, too.”

  “We know where we stand, then,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  He walked towards the door. I followed, and unlocked the door for him. He paused in the doorway. “You’ve got until full dark tonight.”

  “The answer will be the same.”

  “I know,” he said. He walked out without even glancing back. I watched him until he disappeared down the stairs. Then I shut the door and locked it. I stood leaning my back against the door and tried to think of a way out.

  If I told Jean-Claude, he might be able to kill Edward, but I didn’t give humans to the monsters. Not for any reason. I could tell Edward about Jean-Claude. He might even be able to kill the Master. I could even help him.

  I tried picturing Jean-Claude’s perfect body riddled with bullets, covered in blood. His face blown away by a shotgun. I shook my head. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know why exactly, but I couldn’t hand Jean-Claude over to Edward.

  I couldn’t betray either of them. Which left me ass-deep in alligators. So what else was new?

  Chapter 11

  I stood on the shore under a black fringe of trees. The black lake lapped and rolled away into the dark. The moon hung huge and silver in the sky. The moonlight made glittering patterns on the water. Jean-Claude rose from the water. Water was streaming in silver lines from his hair and shirt. His short black hair was in tight curls from being wet. The white shirt clung to his body, making his nipples clear and hard against the cloth. He held out his hand to me.

  I was wearing a long, dark dress. It was heavy and hung around me like a weight. Something inside the skirt made it stick out to either side like a tiny malformed hoop. A heavy cloak was pushed back over my shoulders. It was autumn, and the moon was harvest-full.

  Jean-Claude said, “Come to me.”

  I stepped off the shore and sank into the water. It filled the skirt, soaking into the cloak. I tore the cloak off, letting it sink out of sight. The water was warm as bath water, warm as blood. I raised my hand to the moonlight, and the liquid that streamed down it was thick and dark and had never been water.

  I stood in the shallows in a dress that I had never imagined, by a shore I did not know, and stared at the beautiful monster as he moved towards me, graceful and covered in blood.

  I woke gasping for air, hands clutching at the sheets like a lifeline. “You promised to stay out of my dreams, you son of a bitch,” I whispered.

  The radio clock beside the bed read 2:00 P.M. I’d been asleep for ten hours. I should have felt better, but I didn’t. It was as if I’d been running from nightmare to nightmare, and hadn’t really gotten to rest. The only dream I remembered was the last one. If they had all been that bad, I didn’t want to remember the rest.

  Why was Jean-Claude haunting my dreams again? He’d given his word, but maybe his word wasn’t worth anything. Maybe.

  I stripped in front of the bathroom mirror. My ribs and stomach were covered in deep, nearly purple bruises. My chest was tight when I breathed, but nothing was broken. The burn on my chest was raw, the skin blackened where it wasn’t covered in blisters. A burn hurts all the way down, as if the pain burrows from the skin down to the bone. A burn is the only injury where I am convinced I have nerve endings below skin level. How could it hurt so damn bad, otherwise?

  I was meeting Ronnie at the health club at three. Ronnie was short for Veronica. She said it helped her get more work as a private detective if people assumed she was male. Sad but true. We would lift weights and jog. I slipped a black sports bra very carefully over the burn. The elastic pressed in on the bruises, but everything else was okay. I rubbed the burn with antiseptic cream and taped a piece of gauze over it. A man’s red t-shirt with the sleeves and neck cut out went over everything else. Black biker pants, jogging socks with a thin red stripe, and black Nike Airs completed the outfit.

  The t-shirt showed the gauze, but it hid the bruises. Most of the regulars at the health club were accustomed to my coming in bruised or worse. They didn’t ask a lot of questions anymore. Ronnie says I was grumpy at them. Fine with me. I like to be left alone.

  I had my coat on, gym bag in hand, when the phone rang. I debated but finally picked it up. “Talk to me,” I said.

  “It’s Dolph.”

  My stomach tightened. Was it another murder? “What’s up, Dolph?”

  “We got an ID on the John Doe you looked at.”

  “The vampire victim?”

  “Yeah.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. No more murders, and we were making progress; what could be better?

  “Calvin Barnabas Rupert, friends called him Cal. Twenty-six years old, married to Denise Smythe Rupert for four years. No children. He was an insurance broker. We haven’t been able to turn up any ties with the vampire community.”

  “Maybe Mr. Rupert was just in the right place at the wrong time.”

  “Random violence?” He made it a question.

  “Maybe.”

  “If it was random, we got no pattern, nothing to look at.”

  “So you’re wondering if I can find out if Cal Rupert had any ties to the monsters?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I sighed. “I’ll try. Is that it? I’m late for an appointment.”

  “That’s it. Call me if you find out anything.” His voice sounded positively grim.

  “You’d tell me if you found another body, wouldn’t you?”

  He gave a snort of laughter. “Make you come down and measure the damn bites, yeah. Why?”

  “Your voice sounds grim.”

  The laughter dribbled out of his voice. “You’re the one who said there’d be more bodies. You changed your mind on that?”

  I wanted to say, yes, I’ve changed my mind, but I didn’t. “If there is a pack of rogue vampires, we’ll be seeing more bodies.”

  “Can you think of anything else it could be besides vampires?” he asked.

  I thought about it for a minute, and shook my head. “Not a damn thing.”

  “Fine, talk to you later.” The phone buzzed dead in my hand before I could say anything. Dolph wasn’t much on hello and good-bye.

  I had my back-up gun, a Firestar 9mm, in the pocket of my jacket. There was just no way to wear a holster in exercise clothes. The Firestar only held eight bullets to the Browning’s thirteen, but the Browning tended to stick out of my pocket and make people stare. Besides, if I couldn’t get the bad guys with eight bullets, another five probably wouldn’t help. Of course, there was an extra clip in the zipper pocket of my gym bag. A girl couldn’t be too cautious in these crime-ridden times.

  Chapter 12

  Ronnie and I were doing power circuits at Vic Tanny’s. There were two full sets of machines and no waiting at 3:14 on a Thursday afternoon. I wa
s doing the Hip Abduction/Hip Adduction machine. You pulled a lever on the side and the machine went to different positions. The Hip Adduction position looked vaguely obscene, like a gynecological torture device. It was one of the reasons I never wore shorts when we lifted weights. Ronnie either.

  I was concentrating on pressing my thighs together without making the weights clink. Weights clinking means you’re not controlling the exercise, or it means you’re working with too much weight. I was using sixty pounds. It wasn’t too heavy.

  Ronnie lay on her stomach using the Leg Curl, flexing her calves over her back, heels nearly touching her butt. The muscles under her calves bunched and coiled under her skin. Neither of us is bulky, but we’re solid. Think Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2.

  Ronnie finished before I did and paced around the machines waiting for me. I let the weights ease back with only the slightest clink. It’s okay to clink the weights when you’re finished.

  We eased out from the machines and started running on the oval track. The track was bordered by a glass wall that showed the blue pool. A lone man was doing laps in goggles and a black bathing cap. The other side was bordered by the free weight room and the aerobics studio. The ends of the track were mirrored so you could always see yourself running face on. On bad days I could have done without watching myself; on good days it was kind of fun. A way to make sure your stride was even, arms pumping.

  I told Ronnie about the vampire victim as we ran. Which meant we weren’t running fast enough. I increased my pace and could still talk. When you routinely do four miles outside in the St. Louis heat, the padded track at Vic Tanny is just not that big a challenge. We did two laps and went back to the machines.

  “What did you say the victim’s name was again?” She sounded normal, no strain. I increased our pace to a flat-out run. All talking ceased.

  Arm machines this time. Regular Pull-over for me, Overhead Press for Ronnie, then two laps of the track, then trade machines.

  When I could talk, I answered her question. “Calvin Rupert,” I said. I did twelve pullovers with 100 pounds. Of all the machines, this one is easiest for me. Weird, huh?

  “Cal Rupert?” she asked.