Bullet ab-19

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Then I had a bad, bad thought. I scrambled my phone out of my back pocket and dialed Marshal Finnegan’s number. He answered on the first ring. “Blake, that was fast.”

  “I know that you have to film evidence before you torch the place, but tell me the vampire executioner did torch the place already.”

  “Morgan killed the Master of the City. Took his head, took his heart. We’re already hearing complaints from the vampire lobby lawyers that we may have condemned all low-level vampires to certain death. Apparently without their master they may not wake up at dark, but we’ve found out that the lesser vampires that do wake up are usually fine. When the Master of the City goes crazy like this, kill him, or her, and the crazy goes with him. We try to spare most of the murdering vampires, and we’re still hearing from their daytime lawyers.”

  “All potentially true, but, Finnegan, the Master of the City is a rotting vampire. Taking just their heart and head with a shotgun doesn’t kill them, ever. The only reason he didn’t get up and eat your executioner is that it was daylight and he couldn’t rise from the grave, but if he’s as old as most rotters he will rise in late afternoon underground, and definitely at full dark. Worse yet, some of the intact vampires might not rot unless shot up, so you may have an entire crypt of rotters.”

  “You make that sound bad.”

  “Finnegan, get your people out of there.”

  “You helped write the new law that makes us leave the lesser vampires alive when we can prove that it’s the Master of the City gone apeshit,” he said. “Now you’re telling me that it’s going to get my people killed.”

  “I’m saying the apeshit Master of the City is still alive, and when it gets dark enough he’ll rise and all his vampires will rise with him and keep slaughtering people. The new law only works if the Master of the City is really, truly dead.”

  “I’ll try to clear the scene. I hope you’re wrong.” He hung up.

  “Fuck,” I said. “Who’d he say was the executioner on this?”

  “Morgan,” Nicky said.

  “I’ve worked with him once, unless we have two of them.” I flipped through my contacts praying that the name was in there. I found it and hit the screen. I was praying as the phone dialed. Please, pick up, please pick up.

  “Blake, I take it you saw the tape.”

  “Morgan, where are you?”

  “Atlanta,” he said.

  “No, where are you standing.”

  “I’m outside the crypt in case some of the little vampires wake up still crazy.”

  “Are there still techs down there?”

  “For another hour and then we’ll clear it, except for me.”

  “Get them out. Get them out, now!”

  “I took care of it, Blake. He ain’t getting up.”

  “He’s a rotting vampire, Morgan. They don’t die when you destroy the brain and heart. Even sunlight may not do it. Fire is the only certainty and then the ashes need to be scattered over different bodies of flowing water.”

  “He didn’t rot until I shot him, Blake. Once they look like a corpse, they’re dead.”

  “He didn’t turn into a corpse, Morgan, he rotted. It’s different. Please, just trust me on this. Get your people out of there and flamethrower everything in the crypt.”

  “We’re still dragging bodies out of there, Blake. I can’t fry the evidence. We haven’t even started to identify the dead.”

  I fought the urge to scream. “Morgan, just humor me. Just pretend I’m right, and at least clear the crypt of personnel, okay? Just do that and we’ll debate the whole flame thing later. Please, God, please, just do this one thing for me.”

  “You really think he’s a genuine rotting vampire. Those are really rare in the United States,” he said.

  “They are, but just in case, Morgan. It doesn’t hurt to clear out the techs and the cops.”

  “All right, but unlike you, I don’t carry a flamethrower as part of my usual vampire-hunting kit, Blake.”

  Truth was, neither did I. “Just clear the crypt and call an extermination team.”

  “You mean a bug squad.” That was one name for the exterminators who did everything from cockroaches to rogue wererat infestations and ghouls. They were who you called if you found a zombie just wandering down the street, since fire would destroy it and most animators couldn’t put the zombie back without knowing the grave it came from.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’ll ask my superiors if I can call them as backup, but they aren’t going to let me burn everything down there. The lesser vampires may wake up sane and fine now that he’s dead.”

  “He’s not dead, Morgan.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I almost said, Because the Lover of Death was looking for his bloodline last night, but I couldn’t share that without explaining things I couldn’t explain to the cops at all.

  “If you’re asking me am I a hundred percent sure, I’m not, but I’m ninety-eight percent sure and I wouldn’t have my people down in that hole this late in the day.”

  “Rotting vampires rise earlier than most, though they can’t pass for human until full dark because they look like decayed corpses until then.” He sounded like he was quoting. Morgan was one of the newer executioners who had been recruited for the job, and not grandfathered in like most of us. He was part of a new breed of vampire hunter, trained in classrooms with books and guest lectures. It wasn’t a bad way to learn, and you probably had less death in the learning curve, but in this moment I’d have taken an old-fashioned shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later vampire hunter.

  “I’ll clear the crypt, Blake, but that’s all I can do until I clear this with someone.”

  “I’ll take what I can get, Morgan. Just get your people out of there.”

  “I will.”

  “Now,” I said.

  “I’m walking toward the entrance to the crypt as we speak. Good enough?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit . . .” The phone fell against something loud enough I had to take it away from my ear.

  “Morgan, Morgan, you all right?” I heard him moving as if he were standing on gravel and the phone were on the ground. “Morgan, are you still there?”

  I heard noises on the phone as if he’d picked it up. “Morgan, talk to me.”

  I heard someone swallow as if his throat hurt. It was a wet sound. “I’m afraid Marshal Morgan can’t come to the phone. To whom am I speaking?” The voice was male and thick, as if he had a speech impediment or injury to his mouth.

  “Marshal Blake,” I said.

  “Anita Blake.” The voice coughed as if to clear something.

  “Yes. Who is this?” But my speeding pulse already knew the answer, before he said, “I am Clayton, Master of the City of Atlanta, Georgia, but my true masters have filled me with purpose. Do you know what that purpose is, Ms. Blake?”

  “To slaughter as many people as you can so that your true masters can feed off the death.”

  “You do know what’s happening.” He hung up.

  I screamed wordlessly into the dead phone. It took everything I had not to fling the phone across the room. I dialed Finnegan’s number. He picked up, voice rushed. “Morgan isn’t picking up his phone.”

  “He’s probably dead,” I said.

  “How do you know that?”

  I told him how I knew.

  “Clayton isn’t supposed to be a rotting vampire. He’s never shown any sign of it.”

  “He was hiding, Finnegan. People may want to be vampires, but not if they think they’ll be spending eternity looking like decayed corpses. That’s not sexy enough for people to volunteer.”

  “How many others are hiding in plain sight, Blake?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I heard sirens, lots of sirens. “I’m almost there. I’ll call you, let you know how bad.”

  “Finnegan, wait, you need an extermination team with flamethrowers. He walked out in daylight; only fire will kill
him.”

  “That’s not standard issue to cops,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  “Fuck,” he said, and this time he didn’t apologize. “If we all live through this I’ll call you back.” He hung up.

  We were hundreds of miles away with no way to help them. “Motherfucker.” Or were we? I reached out for Jean-Claude down that metaphysical pipeline and he was there. He looked up and whispered, “Ma petite.” I didn’t try to tell him everything, I simply opened my mind and he knew what I knew.

  I asked out loud to the room, “Is there anything we can do from here? Can you help me control him from here?”

  “I am sorry, ma petite, but no. He is a Master of the City, as am I. His ties to the land and the vampires there will keep us from interfering.”

  “Damn it!”

  “I am sorry, ma petite.”

  My phone rang. I hit the screen almost yelling. “Finnegan, what’s happening?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m not Finnegan,” a male voice said.

  “Who is this?”

  “Sorry to catch you on a bad day, Anita, but this is Jake. I gave you some jewelry once.”

  I think I stopped breathing for a moment. The turn of events was too fast. My hand went to the charm around my neck. “I’m wearing it now,” I said.

  “You do remember, then,” he said.

  “Yeah, though an amazing number of our people don’t seem to.”

  “We need to stay secret, Anita.”

  Jake was the wolf to call of one of the Harlequin. They were the closest thing to police that the vampire world had. They were supposed to be some of the finest warriors to ever live, or unlive.

  “If you’d come to kill us you wouldn’t be calling, so why are you calling?” Jesus, didn’t I have enough disasters on my plate without the Harlequin? Some days it doesn’t rain, it fucking drowns you.

  “Your Nimir-Raj put out the word that he’s wanting clanless weretigers. He wants to honor all the weretigers and not just the clans.”

  “Micah’s very fair-minded.”

  “He is,” Jake said.

  “You just want to bring us some tigers,” I said.

  “I’d also want to come back to work as security for you.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Are you saying you can’t use another guard?”

  “No, extra manpower is going to come in handy.”

  “I want the kittens safe, Anita, and things are getting very dangerous out here.”

  “Kittens?” I made it a question.

  “The weretigers, someone’s hunting and killing them. It started in Europe, but I’m afraid it will spread to here.”

  “Funny coincidence that we’re calling for weretigers and someone else is killing them.”

  “Do you really believe in coincidence?” he asked.

  “No. How soon can you get here?”

  “I’m in your parking lot in a van being watched by your guards. If you’ll ask them to allow us inside, I would beg an audience with you alone before you meet my tigers.”

  “Just me?”

  “I think at first, yes.”

  “Jean-Claude won’t let me see you alone.”

  “Fine, choose the guard you would most want to stake your life on, but the fewer who know the truth the better.”

  “What truth?” I asked.

  “Please, Anita, let us inside where it will be safer, and I will tell you everything.”

  I wasn’t sure I believed that last part, but there was nothing I could do for the cops in Atlanta. Hell, I couldn’t even leave the Circus until we had a plan for the hit men who had almost killed Richard. I wasn’t sure that he and Jean-Claude would be as good at healing me, and there was always the chance that I’d take Nathaniel and Damian to their graves. It wasn’t just my life anymore, in a very real way.

  “Fine, I’ll tell the guards to let you in, but you don’t get into the underground with your tigers until I know what’s going on.”

  “If you insist, but if not the underground, then where do you wish to meet?”

  “Do you know where Asher’s office is in the Circus?”

  “Of course, I did work security here once.”

  “I’ll see you there,” I said. I got off the phone and started trying to find a number for one of the wererats who wasn’t wounded and could plausibly be in charge. I guess we were down to Bobby Lee, who was finally back from parts unknown after a lengthy job out of town. I didn’t know details, and with some of the business that the wererats did around the world I probably didn’t want to know. Plausible deniability is good when you play with criminals but carry a badge.

  “Anita,” Damian said, “it isn’t safe to meet Jake like this.”

  “He saved my life.”

  “He’s also an assassin.”

  “Who is this guy?” Nicky asked.

  “Jake is what he calls himself.”

  “But who is he?”

  “Since you get to sit in on the conversation, you’ll find out. Just stand in the corner and look intimidating unless he does something bad.”

  “Then what?” he asked.

  “If he tries to hurt me, then kill him.”

  He widened his one good eye. “You’re usually all about taking ’em in alive.”

  “Not this one. If he’s on our side we are going to be very happy, but if he’s not, then he’s too dangerous for anything but killing.”

  “He must have hurt you bad last time he was in town.”

  “Actually he saved my life and gave me this.” I touched the charm again.

  “But you’ll let me just kill him if he tries anything.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m missing part of the story, aren’t I?”

  “Yep, and you can’t repeat anything you hear in the room unless he kills me, in which case, tell everyone.”

  “If he’s this dangerous, why meet with him at all?” Nicky asked.

  “Because if he really wants to be on our side, maybe he isn’t the only one.”

  “Anita, don’t do this,” Damian said.

  “If he meant us harm he wouldn’t have called,” I said.

  “Unless the council ordered him to lure you into a false sense of security.”

  He had a point, but . . . “They weren’t too happy with Mommie Darkest last time Jake was in town. I’m thinking that everything that’s happened won’t have improved that.”

  “You’re honestly thinking that they might join with us?” Damian asked.

  “It’s a thought.”

  “Who are they?” Nicky asked.

  I dialed Bobby Lee as I said, “You’ll find out.” Bobby Lee wasn’t thrilled that I wanted to meet Jake with just Nicky as backup. He’d been out of town the last time Jake was here, but I was the boss, or the Black Queen, since we were back to using code names even on the phone. I pointed out, “You know, me being the Black Queen isn’t hard to figure out.”

  “Then come up with a better code name.” And that was the theme of the day. Me bitching and the people I was complaining to throwing it back in my face and saying, If you can do better, then do it. I’d try.

  32

  I WOULDN’T LET Damian come with me. I didn’t really think Jake would try to hurt me, but just in case I wouldn’t put both Damian and me within reach of one of the finest close-in assassins in the world. Nathaniel might survive my death, but there was no way he’d survive both Damian and me dying. I’d almost lost Nathaniel just hours ago. I wouldn’t risk it. Jean-Claude wasn’t coming for the same reason. I knew that the guards had picked up Richard still in wolf form. Some of them were waiting for a tow truck and doing their best to keep it from being reported to the police. It would be hard to explain all the blood on the front seats without Richard being hurt. Again, playing Clark Kent was a problem for our furry Superman.

  But right that moment I was more concerned with the werewolf sitting across the desk from me than the one down in the underground. Asher’s offi
ce was at the top of the seats in the one permanent circus tent inside the Circus of the Damned. The office was set up almost like a press box for a ball game, but there were drapes over all the glass windows and the door in the back wall led into a bedroom. The outer office was still very plain: a desk and chair, two client chairs, and a small loveseat against one wall. The drapes at the back of the desk hid the door to the back room. It looked the same as when I’d first entered it years ago, when it was Jean-Claude’s office. Asher had added nothing of himself to it. That seemed sad.

  Nicky leaned against the wall, closer to me than to Jake, so that the other man would have to get past him to reach me. Jake looked like I remembered him: short dark hair, medium complexion, and brown eyes, attractive in a manly-man kind of way, but even there he was almost too ordinary. He was nondescript. He was even an average height. He would blend in, and since the Harlequin were supposed to be spies that was probably right for the job. The weretigers who had come with him were the opposite: eye-catching blonds, tall, and beautiful, or handsome, and somehow unworldly, as if they’d only recently been let out of their cages.

  Jake slumped down in one of the client chairs, looking at everything and nothing with his brown eyes. “Are you sure about talking in front of him?” he asked.

  “Nicky’s okay,” I said. I didn’t feel the need to explain that he was my Bride and couldn’t repeat anything we said unless I told him he could.

  Jake shrugged. “I have to trust your judgment since I trust you with the pretty kittens.”

  “You’re a werewolf. How did you end up with so many weretigers?”

  “I’ve known these kittens their whole lives. I think they’d be safer here with you.”

  “I don’t know, Jake, you may be bringing your lambs to the slaughter.” I told him about the assassination attempt on Richard.

  “Amateurs,” he said.

  “I agree, but they almost killed him. If they’d hit his heart with that second bullet, I don’t think we could have saved him.”

  “I think Jean-Claude could have kept the rest of you alive, but you would have been down a wolf.”

  I frowned at him. “You say that like it’s no big deal.”

  “I don’t mean it that way, Anita.” He rubbed his eyes as if he were tired, and I realized that there were lines around his eyes that I didn’t remember from last time.