I caught a glimpse of the road sign. "Damn." I slowed down, but couldn't see over the crest of the hill. I didn't dare U-turn until I was sure there were no cars coming the other way. It was another half mile before we came to a gravel road. There was a row of mailboxes beside the road.
Trees grew so close to the road that even winter-bare they covered the one-lane road in shadows. There was no place to turn around. Hell, if a second car had come, one of us would have had to back up.
The road rose up and up, as if it were going to go straight into the sky. At the crest of the hill I could see nothing in front of the car. I had to simply trust that there was more road in front of us, rather than some endless precipice.
"Jesus, this is steep," Larry said.
I eased the Jeep forward and the tires touched road. My shoulders loosened just a little. There was a house just up ahead. The porch light was on, like they were expecting company. The bare light bulb was not kind. The house was unpainted wood with a rusting tin roof. Its raised porch sagged under the weight of the front seat of a car that was sitting by the screen door. I turned around in the dirt in front of the house that passed for a front yard. It looked like we weren't the first car to do it. There were deep wheel ruts in the powder-dry dirt from years of cars turning in and out.
By the time we got down to the end of the road, the darkness was pure as velvet. I hit the Jeep's high beams, but it was like driving in a tunnel. The world existed only in the light; everything else was blackness.
"I'd give a lot for a few streetlights right now," Larry said.
"Me, too. Help me spot our road. I don't want to drive past it twice."
He leaned forward in his seat, straining against the shoulder belt. "There." He pointed as he spoke. I slowed and turned carefully onto the road. The headlights filled the tunnel of trees. This road was just bare red earth. The dirt rose in a mist around the Jeep. For once I was glad of the drought. Mud would have been a real bitch on a dirt road.
The road was wide enough that if you had nerves of steel, or were driving someone else's car, you could drive two cars abreast. A stream cut across the road, with a ditch at least fifteen feet deep. The bridge was nothing but planks laid across some beams. No rails, no nothing. As the Jeep crept over the bridge, the planks rattled and moved. They weren't nailed in. God.
Larry was staring at the drop, his face pressed against the tinted glass. "This bridge isn't much wider than the car."
"Thank's for telling me, Larry. I'd have never noticed on my own."
"Sorry."
Past the bridge, the road was still wide enough for two cars. I guess if two cars met at the bridge they took turns. There was probably some traffic law to cover it. First car on the left gets to go first, maybe.
At the crest of the hill, lights showed in the distance. Police lights strobed the darkness like muticolored lightning. They were farther away than they looked. We had two more hills to go up and down before the lights reflected off the bare trees, making them look black and unreal. The road spilled into a wide clearing. A lawn spread up from the road, surrounding a large white house. It was a real house with siding and shutters and a wraparound porch. It was two-storied and edged with neatly trimmed shrubs. The driveway was white gravel, which meant someone had shipped it in. Narcissus edged the driveway in two thick stripes.
A uniformed policeman stopped us in the foot of the sloping drive. He was tall, big through the shoulders, and had dark hair. He shined a flashlight into the car. "I'm sorry, miss, but you can't go up there right now."
I flashed my ID at him and said, "I'm Anita Blake. I'm with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team. I was told Sheriff St. John is expecting me."
He leaned into the open window and flashed his light at Larry. "Who's this?"
"Larry Kirkland. He's with me."
He stared at Larry for a few seconds. Larry smiled, doing his best to look harmless. He's almost as good at it as I am.
I had a good view of the cop's gun as he leaned into the window. It was a Colt .45. Big gun, but he had the hands for it. I caught a whiff of his aftershave; Brut. He'd leaned too far into the window to look at Larry. If I'd had a gun hidden in my lap, I could have fed it to him. He was big, and I bet sheer size saw him through a lot, but it was careless. Guns don't care how big you are.
He nodded and pulled out of the car. "Go on up to the house. Sheriff's expecting you." He didn't sound particularly happy about that.
"You got a problem?" I asked.
He gave a smile, but it was sour. He shook his head. "It's our case. I don't think we need any help; that includes you."
"You got a name?" I asked.
"Coltrain. Deputy Zack Coltrain."
"Well, Deputy Coltrain, we'll see you up at the house."
"I guess you will, Miss Blake."
He thought I was a cop and deliberately didn't call me "officer" or "detective." I let it go. If I really had a professional title I'd have demanded it, but getting into an argument because he wouldn't call me "detective" when I wasn't one seemed counterproductive.
I drove up and parked between the police cars. I clipped my ID to my lapel. We walked up the pale curve of sidewalk, and no one stopped us. We stood outside the door in a silence that was almost eerie. I'd been to a lot of murder scenes. One thing they weren't was silent. There was no static crackle of police radios, no men milling around. Murder scenes were always thick with people: plainclothes detectives, uniforms, crime scene techs, people taking photographs, video, the ambulance waiting to take the body away. We stood on the freshly swept porch in the cool spring night with the only sounds the calls of frogs. The high-pitched, peeping sound played oddly with the swirling police lights.
"Are we waiting for something?" Larry asked.
"No," I said. I rang the glowing doorbell. The sound gave a rich bong deep within the house. A small dog barked furiously, somewhere deep in the house. The door opened. A woman stood framed in the light from the hall, placing most of her in shadow. The police lights strobed across her face, painting in neon Crayola flashes. She was about my height with dark hair that was either naturally curly or had a really good perm. But she'd done more with it than I did, and it framed her face neatly. Mine always looked sort of unruly. She was wearing a button-down shirt with long sleeves untucked over jeans. She looked about seventeen, but I wasn't fooled. I looked young for my age, too. Heck, so did Larry. It can't just be being short, can it?
"You aren't the state police," she said. She seemed very sure of that.
"I'm with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team," I said. "Anita Blake. This is my colleague Larry Kirkland."
Larry smiled and nodded.
The woman moved back out of the door, and the light from the hallway fell full on her face. It added five years to her age, but they were a good five years. It took me a minute to realize she was wearing very understated makeup. "Please come in, Miss Blake. My husband, David is waiting with the body." She shook her head. "It's awful."
She peered out into the colored darkness before she closed the door. "David told him to turn off those lights. We don't want everyone for miles to know what's happened."
"What's your name?" I asked.
She blushed slightly. "I'm sorry; I'm not usually this scattered. I'm Beth St. John. My husband is the sheriff. I've been sitting with the parents." She made a small motion towards a set of double doors to the left of the main entrance.
The dog was still barking behind those doors like a small furry machine gun. A man's voice said, "Quiet Raven." The barking stopped.
We were standing in an entryway that had a ceiling that soared up to the roof, as if the architect had cut a piece out of the room above us to create the sweeping space. A crystal chandelier sparkled light down on us. The light cut a rectangle out of the darkened room to our right. There was a glimpse of a cherrywood dining room set so polished it gleamed.
The hallway cut straight back to a distant door that probably led to
the kitchen. Stairs ran along the wall with the double doors. The bannister and door edges were white, the carpet was pale blue, the wallpaper white with tiny blue flowers and tinier leaves. It was open and airy, bright and welcoming, and utterly quiet. If we could have found a piece of uncarpeted floor, we would have dropped a pin and listened to it bounce.
Beth St. John led us up the blue-and-white stairway. In the center of the hallway on the right-hand side was a series of family portraits. They began with a smiling couple; smiling couple and smiling baby; smiling couple and one smiling baby, one crying baby. I walked down the hallway, watching the years pass by. The babies became children, a girl and a boy. A miniature black poodle appeared in the pictures. The girl was the oldest, but only by about a year. The parents grew older, but didn't seem to mind. The parents and the girl smiled; sometimes the boy did, sometimes he didn't. The boy smiled more on the other wall, where the camera had caught him tanned with a fish, or with hair slicked back from just coming out of the pool. The girl smiled everywhere you looked. I wondered which of them was dead.
There was a window at the end of the hallway. The white drapes framed it; no one had bothered to draw them. The window looked like a black mirror. The darkness pressed against the glass like it had weight.
Beth St. John knocked on the last door to the right, next to that pressing darkness. "David, the detectives are here." I let that slide. The sin of omission is a many-splendored thing.
I heard movement in the room, but she stepped back before the door could open. Beth St. John backed up into the middle of the hallway so there would be no chance of her seeing inside the room. Her eyes flicked from one picture to another, catching glimpses of smiling faces. She put a slender hand to her chest, as if she was having trouble breathing.
"I'm going to go make coffee. Do you want some?" Her voice was strained around the edges.
"Sure," I said.
"Sounds good," Larry said.
She gave a weak smile and marched down the hallway. She did not run, which got her a lot of brownie points in my book. I was betting it was Beth St. John's first murder scene.
The door opened. David St. John was wearing a pale blue uniform that matched the one his deputy wore, but there the resemblance ended. He was about five-foot-ten, thin without being skinny, like a marathon runner. His hair was a paler, browner version of Larry's red. You noticed his glasses before you noticed his eyes, but the eyes were worth noticing. A perfect pale green like a cat's. Except for the eyes it was a very ordinary face, but it was one of those faces you wouldn't grow tired of. He offered me his hand. I took it. He barely touched my hand, as if afraid to squeeze. A lot of men did that, but at least he offered to shake hands; most don't bother.
"I'm Sheriff St. John. You must be Anita Blake. Sergeant Storr told me you'd be coming." He glanced at Larry. "Who's this?"
"Larry Kirkland."
St. John's eyes narrowed. He stepped fully into the hallway, closing the door behind him. "Sergeant Storr didn't mention anyone else. Can I see some ID?"
I unclipped my badge ID. He looked at it and shook his head. "You're not a detective."
"No, I'm not." I was mentally cursing Dolph. I'd known it wouldn't work.
"How about him?" He jerked his chin at Larry.
"All I have on me is a driver's license," Larry said.
"Who are you?" the sheriff asked.
"I am Anita Blake. I am part of the Spook Squad. I just don't happen to have a badge. Larry is a trainee." I fished my new vampire executioner's license out of my jacket pocket. It looked like a glorified driver's license, but it was the best I had.
He peered at the license. "You're a vampire hunter? It's a little early for you to be called in. I don't know who did it yet."
"I'm attached to Sergeant Storr's squad. I come in at the start of a case instead of the end. It tends to keep the body count down that way."
He handed back the license. "I didn't think Brewster's law had gone into effect."
Brewster was the senator whose daughter got eaten. "It hasn't. I've been working with the police for a long time."
"How long?"
"Nearly three years."
He smiled. "Longer than I've been sheriff." He nodded, almost as if he'd answered a question for himself. "Sergeant Storr said if anybody could help me solve this, it was you. If the head of RPIT has that much confidence in you, I'm not going to refuse the help. We've never had a vampire kill out here, ever."
"Vampires tend to stay near cities," I said. "They can hide their victims better that way."
"Well, no one tried to hide this one." He pushed the door open and made a little arm gesture, ushering us in.
The wallpaper was all pink roses, big old-fashioned cabbage roses. There was an honest-to-God vanity, with a raised mirror and everything, that looked like it might be an antique, but everything else was white wicker and pink lace. It looked like the room for a much younger girl.
The girl lay on the narrow bed. The bedspread matched the wallpaper. The sheets twisted up underneath her body were jellybean pink. Her head lay on the edge of the pillows, as if it had slipped to one side after she was laid on them.
The pink curtains fanned against the open window. A cool breeze crawled through the room, ruffling her thick black hair. It had been curled and styled with hair gel. There was a small red stain under her face and neck where the sheets had soaked up some blood. I was betting there was a bite mark on that side of the neck. She wore makeup not nearly as well applied as Beth St. John's, but the attempt had been made. The lipstick was badly smeared. One arm hung off into space, the hand half-cupped as if reaching for something. The nails were shiny with fresh red nail polish. Her long legs were spread-eagled on the bed. There were two fang marks high on her inner thigh—not fresh, though. Her toenails were painted to match her fingers.
She was still almost wearing the black teddy she'd started the night in. The straps had been pushed down her shoulders, exposing small, well-formed breasts. The crotch had been ripped out, or was one of the ones that snapped open, because the bottom was pushed up nearly to her waist until the teddy was little more than a belt. With her legs spread wide, she was completely exposed.
That, more than anything, pissed me off. He could have at least covered her up, not left her like some whore. It was arrogant and cruel.
Larry was standing across the room at the other window. It was open too, spilling cool air into the room.
"Have you touched anything?"
St. John shook his head.
"Have you taken any photos?"
"No."
I took a deep breath, reminding myself that I was a guest here and had no official status. I could not afford to piss him off. "What have you done?"
"Called you, and the state cops."
I nodded. "How long ago did you find the body?"
He checked his watch. "An hour ago. How did you get here so fast?"
"I wasn't ten miles away," I said.
"Lucky for me," he said.
I looked at the girl's body. "Yeah."
Larry was hugging the windowsill, gripping it with his hands. "Larry, why don't you run down to the Jeep and get some gloves out of my bag?"
"Gloves?"
"I've got a box of surgical gloves in with my animating stuff. Bring the box."
He swallowed hard and nodded. Every freckle stood out on his face like ink spots. He moved very quickly to the door and shut it behind him. I had two sets of gloves in my jacket pocket, but Larry needed air.
"This his first murder?"
"Second," I said. "How old is the girl?"
"Seventeen," he said.
"Then it's murder even if she consented."
"Consented? What are you talking about?" There was the very first hint of anger in his voice.
"What do you think happened here, Sheriff?"
"A vampire climbed in her window while she was getting ready for bed and killed her."
"Where's all the blood?"
"There's more blood under her neck. You can't see the mark, but that's where he drained her."
"That's not enough blood to kill her."
"He drank the rest." He sounded a little outraged.
I shook my head. "No single vampire can consume the entire blood supply of an adult human in one sitting."
"Then there was more than one," he said.
"You mean the bites on her thighs?"
"Yeah, yeah." He paced the pink shag carpet in quick, nervous strides.
"Those marks are at least a couple of days old," I said.
"So he hypnotized her twice before, but this time he killed her."
"It's awfully early for a teenager to be going to bed."
"Her mother said she wasn't feeling well."
That I believed. Even if you want it to happen, that much blood loss can take the sparkle out of your step.
"She fixed her hair and makeup before she went to bed," I said.
"So?"
"Did you know this girl?"
"Yes, hell yes. This is a small town, Miss Blake. We all know each other. She was a good kid, never in any trouble. You never found her parked with a boy, or out drinking. She was a good girl."
"I believe she was a good girl, Sheriff St. John. Being murdered doesn't make you a bad person."
He nodded, but his eyes were sort of wild, too much white showing. I wanted to ask how many murders he'd seen, but didn't. Whether this was his first or his twenty-first, he was sheriff.
"What do you think happened here, Sheriff?" I'd asked the question once, but I was willing to try it again.
"A vampire raped and killed Ellie Quinlan, that's what happened here." He said it almost defiantly, like he didn't believe it either.
"This wasn't rape, Sheriff. Ellie Quinlan invited her killer into this room."
He paced to the far window and stood like Larry had, staring out into the darkness. He wrapped his arms around himself like he was hugging himself. "How am I going to tell her parents, her kid brother, that she let some... thing make love to her? That she'd been letting it feed off her? How can I tell them that?"
"Well, in three nights, two counting tonight, Ellie can rise from the dead and tell them herself."
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