Bullet ab-19

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I wanted to look away then, but I forced myself to keep meeting his eyes. I finally said the only truth I had. “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “You just don’t like that your answer would be the same as mine.”

  “If we do evil in the name of good, it’s still evil, Jake.”

  “Lucky for me, you are a good person at heart, Anita Blake. You will do your best not to hurt them, so I can do my duty and not be evil this time. But I never lie to myself. I know the only thing that keeps giving those kids to you from being evil is your own innate goodness. But if you were the most evil bastard on the planet and it would save the rest of us, I would give you all my golden kittens, and that is evil.” He offered me his hand. I took it, expecting him to shake it, but he raised it to his mouth and laid a brief kiss on my knuckles. “Thank you for letting me do my duty, and not be the motherfucking bastard I feared I’d have to be.”

  He rose and turned away, but not before I saw the shine of tears in his eyes. He said he never lied to himself, but he did. He said he didn’t love them like children, and I knew in that moment that he did.

  33

  WE WERE OUT the door and going down the steps when my phone rang again, that peal of church bells. I said a little prayer and picked up. “Blake, here.”

  “Check your email, Marshal.” It was Clayton.

  “What did you send me?”

  “A video. I do love these new gadgets, don’t you?” He hung up.

  I sighed. “Go talk to your tigers. I’ve got to see what the bad guy sent me.”

  “What bad guy?” Jake asked.

  I shook my head and handed the phone to Nicky. “Help me play the video he sent me.”

  “You know we do have spies in almost every major city, Anita. We have us in every major city.”

  I turned and looked at him. “What are you offering?”

  He glanced back at his tigers with their circle of our guards around them. “Tell me what’s happening, and I’ll tell you if we have anyone or anything that can help.”

  “I’ve got it open, Anita,” Nicky cut in.

  “Hold that thought,” I said to Jake, and turned to Nicky. He handed me the phone but stayed close so he could look over my shoulder. I didn’t complain. If I needed to pause it or run it back, I’d need his help anyway. I really had to learn to work this damn thing.

  The screen was surprisingly clear, like a little TV. There was a figure in white crime scene scrubs top to bottom, even with a hood on, and a face mask. She was crawling on the ground in front of the camera. I knew it was a she, because she was crying out, “No, please, no!”

  A decayed hand with bones showing through the putrid flesh reached past the camera. She screamed, scrambling faster on her arms and one good leg. The other leg was covered in blood, the coverall torn so we could see the spurt of blood timed to the beat of her heart in the back of her knee. Something had attacked her down in the crypt. The other vampires were alive and still crazed, and once daylight stopped they’d come out. Only their master could brave the daylight.

  He grabbed her by her wounded leg and dragged her back to him, while she screamed. He sat on her waist, pinning her to the ground. She just screamed, one long ragged scream after another as he jerked her hood down, spilling long brown hair, and tore her mask off with his rotting hand so her face was bare to the camera. He wanted me to see how afraid she was.

  I was whispering something under my breath over and over as he reached for her throat. He gripped the front of her throat and squeezed until her face turned dark, purplish with lack of air, and then he let her go. He let her breathe, and then he reached for her throat again.

  “Don’t,” I whispered.

  “He killed her before he sent this, Anita. It’s not happening now. You can’t save her,” Nicky said.

  “How do you know?”

  “He’d need both hands to send the video,” he said.

  It was such a practical reason for the woman to be dead that it calmed me a little. It helped me watch, but he didn’t strangle her this time; he dug his thick, decaying fingers into the front of her throat and tore it out like you’d rip open a ripe piece of fruit. Blood gushed up and out. Her eyes rolled, and she made sounds, horrible, wet, choking sounds.

  The camera stayed on her until her eyes glazed and the only movement was involuntary twitches. She was dead; she just hadn’t stopped moving yet.

  He put the camera on his face so I could see the Halloween mask that was all he could have for a face in the daylight. Even the rotting vampires that could brave the light couldn’t pass for human in the day, but it didn’t matter now, because Clayton wasn’t trying to pass anymore. The face that stared back at me was a monster and happy with it.

  “Come and get me, Anita Blake. Come and get me, because I and my vampires will kill as many as we can for as long as we can.” His cheek was collapsed on one side, and I could see his tongue working in his mouth. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. With everything he’d done, that sickened me. You never know what will push you over the edge until you see it.

  A gunshot exploded over the speakers and his body jerked. He moved the phone so I saw the second shot go through his chest. “Oh, look, more police to kill.” He turned and the camera swung so that I saw the uniformed officer shooting into him as the vampire strode toward him, no hesitating, as if the bullets meant nothing. A shotgun roared off camera, and the vampire’s body rocked and turned to an older uniform aiming at him over the hood of their car. The vampire laughed at them both and said, “Bullets can’t hurt me while I’m like this.” He laughed again, and the screen went dead as more gunshots sounded.

  I stared at the screen. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Jake came back to me. “What has happened now?”

  I dialed Finnegan’s phone number, wondering if he was alive to pick up. It went to voice mail and my stomach fell into my feet. When the phone rang I made a little squeak. Fuck. “Blake,” I said.

  “Returning your call.” It was Finnegan.

  “Is the vampire still at the cemetery?” I asked.

  “No. He broke through the officers and he’s gone. He’s a rotting corpse and he just disappeared. How can we not find him?” He was almost yelling.

  “He sent me a video,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I think he used Morgan’s phone to send me a video.”

  “Send it to me.”

  “You don’t want to see it.”

  “Send it.”

  “It’s him killing one of your techs and about to kill some uniforms. While he’s in rotted corpse form he’s almost invincible to bullets. Once he looks solid, human, then bullets will work again.”

  “Why?” Finnegan asked.

  “I don’t know. I just know that’s how this kind of vampire works.”

  “How do we find him, Blake? And what the fuck do we do when we find him?”

  “Burn him. Flamethrowers.”

  “We’ve got an extermination crew on its way. We’ll burn the vampires in the crypt. Why did he leave them behind?”

  “I think he’s insane. Vampires go crazy just like living people. Think of him as serial killer who’s devolved into a spree killer.”

  “So he’ll just kill everything he sees.”

  “Probably,” I said.

  “How do we find him?”

  “Follow the trail of bodies. If he hides, then use dogs. He’s a decayed corpse, Finnegan. Right now that’s what he is; get some dogs and track the son of a bitch.”

  “Cadaver dogs?” He made it a question.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s the best idea I’ve heard from anyone. I’ll get them.”

  “Bullets won’t hurt him until after dark. Only fire, so every team of dogs needs a flamer with them.”

  “We don’t have that many cadaver dogs, or that many flamethrower teams.”

  “No city does. Like Morgan said, this type of vampire is very rare in t
he U.S.”

  “I’ll call for the dogs. Send me the video, Blake.”

  “Will do. I could be on the ground in a couple of hours.”

  “In a couple of hours it’ll be over.”

  “Finnegan,” I said.

  “No, the dogs are a great idea. You couldn’t do anything but follow the dogs and the flamethrower crew around like the rest of us.” He hung up.

  I thought, Actually I might be able to track the vampire. I was a necromancer, but the other marshals weren’t always comfortable with my psychic abilities, so I let it lie. Besides, it was a trap. If I went to Atlanta the vampire would either try to kill me or try to open me for the Mother of All Darkness. Without my people to touch and get all metaphysical with, I wouldn’t be as safe against Mommie Darkest. I knew it was too dangerous to go, even if there hadn’t been assassins out to get us.

  “You know it’s a trap,” Nicky said.

  “I know.”

  “Would you really go if they asked you?”

  “I don’t know.” I handed him my phone. “Send the video to Marshal Finnegan.”

  Jake asked, “What is it?”

  I told him, because there was no way to keep this out of the media. Too much death, too much sensationalism, and they had to warn everyone. It probably wouldn’t do anything but make the entire city panic, but if the police didn’t warn the general populace and people died, they’d get sued, because everyone would believe that if they’d known they would have been able to keep themselves safe. I knew better, but sometimes the illusion of safety is all people have. I didn’t even have that, and hadn’t had it for years.

  34

  “TONIGHT MORTE D’AMOUR hit Atlanta. Tomorrow night he’ll hit another city,” Jake said.

  “How many other Masters of the City are descended from his bloodline?” I asked.

  “A few.”

  “Either share your information, Jake, or get out of my face.”

  “We can save the other descendants of Morte d’Amour in this country, Anita.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Pick one of my kittens,” he said.

  “You know, you calling them kittens doesn’t help.”

  He smiled. “Sorry. Does it help to know that they’re all older than Cynric from Vegas?”

  “He’s legal,” I said, deciding that a frontal assault was the best defense.

  “I heard through the grapevine that you were bothered doing anyone under eighteen. If I heard wrong, I’m sorry.”

  I sighed. “No, you’re right. It’s not just the age. It’s the level of innocence. My life isn’t about innocence. I prefer someone who knows his way around.”

  “A sadder-but-wiser girl for you, huh?” Nicky said.

  We both looked at him. “Are you quoting The Music Man at me?”

  If it had been anyone else I’d have said he looked embarrassed. He gave that shallow shrug around all that muscle again. “What, I can’t like musicals?”

  I blinked at him. “I sort of had you pegged for death metal, or club mixes.”

  He grinned. “I like club mixes, but you can’t dance to most death metal. Silas was into that.”

  “You’ve been with us a year. I didn’t know you liked to dance.”

  “You don’t like to dance. You will dance for Nathaniel, Micah, and Jean-Claude, even Jason or Asher, but you don’t enjoy it. My primary emotions seem to be about pleasing you. It makes me anxious if I feel like you’re unhappy with me. Asking you to dance would make you uncomfortable, which would make me anxious. It’s so not worth it.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I looked at Jake. “Do you know much about this whole Bride phenomenon?”

  “I’ve seen it. It’s really rare. It only shows up in bloodlines descended from the Father of the Day, like Belle Morte or the Dragon.”

  “So it’s a power that Mommie Dark doesn’t have?” I asked.

  He nodded. “The Sweet Dark isn’t into long-term relationships, really. Brides can be treated pretty badly by their grooms, but often the vampire who makes them feels responsible for them and it does become more like a group marriage, albeit with a one-sided power structure.”

  “Is there a limit to how many Brides I can make?” I asked.

  “It’s usually limited only by resources. How much blood you can harvest in an area determines how many vampires you can have before they begin to starve.”

  “What’s the biggest number you’ve seen?”

  “Twelve,” he said.

  I gave him wide eyes. He studied my face. “You’re delaying meeting the weretigers; why?”

  “I know this is going to sound churlish, or childish, or just stupid, but I don’t know how to go down to your tigers and pick one to sleep with when I haven’t even introduced myself.”

  “There’s a reason that most vampires who have Brides are men,” he said.

  “And that would be?” I asked.

  “Women complicate things.”

  Nicky made a sound that he turned into a cough, but I was pretty sure it started as a laugh. “You got something to say, Nicky?” I asked.

  He caught his breath, face shining a little too much with his “cough.” “Nope.”

  “Fine, if I were a guy I’d just march down there and pick someone. I get it.”

  “Why don’t you have Jean-Claude help you pick?” Jake suggested.

  It wasn’t a bad idea. I tended to pick low-power wereanimals and vampires to bond with, with a few rare exceptions like Micah. Jean-Claude could always be trusted to pick the wereanimal or necromancer most likely to up his power level, and if we were going to add someone else to our bed then it might as well pack a power punch to offset the embarrassment. My embarrassment, never Jean-Claude’s.

  35

  THE WERETIGERS WERE in the living room, but the rest of us were in Jean-Claude’s bedroom. I was sitting in one of the chairs by the fireplace. I was drinking coffee and watching the men in my life discuss how to pick the next man. Jean-Claude was in the other chair. Nathaniel was sitting curled by the fireplace, sipping tea and watching everything. Damian, Asher, and Micah were moving around the room as they talked.

  Richard was still in wolf form, so his part of the discussion was sitting beside the chair and watching. I kept the coffee mug in one hand, but the other was on the ruff of his neck fur. He was warm and alive under my hand. His cinnamon fur was rougher than most dogs’, but the pulse and beat of him seemed closer to his skin than it would in a dog. Most wolves are about the size of a German shepherd, but Richard was like most werewolves; his wolf form was somewhere between a mastiff and a Great Dane in bulk and height. No modern-day wolf was ever this big. It should have been comforting to touch him the way it was comforting to touch a dog, but it wasn’t. Because this “dog” watched the other men talk, his bright amber eyes moving back and forth following the conversation in a way that no dog, or wolf, would, could, or would want to. Dog just wouldn’t care.

  “Anita.” It was Micah leaning over me.

  I stared up into his chartreuse eyes, blinking. “I’m sorry, what?”

  He touched my face. “Your skin is cooler than it should be. You’re shocky.” He laid the back of his hand on my forehead. “Did something happen with Jake that you aren’t telling us?”

  “Not with Jake, no,” I said, and my voice sounded distant.

  He knelt and looked at me. The wolf turned and looked at me with too much “person” in his eyes. With Micah kneeling and the wolf sitting, the wolf was taller, but neither set of eyes was human.

  Jean-Claude looked past us to someone behind my chair. “Nicky, did Anita do more with the police than talk to them on the phone?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that,” Nicky said.

  “Just answer it,” Micah said, gazing past me to the other man.

  “Anita has to tell me to answer it,” he said.

  “Ma petite, did you forbid Nicky to tell us something?”

  Micah took the hand in
my lap in both his hands. I didn’t remember when I’d stopped touching the wolf’s fur. Richard put that huge head next to mine and sniffed above my skin. “Anita, did you tell Nicky not to tell us something?”

  I shook my head.

  “Nicky,” Jean-Claude said, “is she lying?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I turned too fast and Micah had to grab my coffee or I’d have spilled it. I glared at Nicky. “I didn’t tell you not to tell them.”

  “You told me not to mention the police work to anyone, that it was an ongoing investigation and that I couldn’t share the information with anyone.”

  I thought about it. “I didn’t mean . . . it is . . . I mean.” I couldn’t seem to organize my thoughts.

  Micah touched my face and made me look at him. “Tell Nicky he can tell us anything we need to know.”

  I nodded.

  “You have to say it out loud,” Micah said.

  “You can tell the people in this room what happened,” I said.

  Nicky and Damian both told about the crime scene video, because when I had said Nicky could tell everyone, I hadn’t included his name so it freed them both up to talk. But it was when Nicky started talking about everything that had happened on the phone that Micah held my hand tighter, and Richard laid his head on my lap, eyes rolled up like a dog will do, though there was too much in those eyes. I laid my free hand on top of his big furry skull, but I realized that dogs weren’t comforting just because of the fur and the cuteness, but because there was no demand to them. The eyes in Richard’s wolf face demanded too much.

  Jean-Claude cupped my face in his hands, raising me up so I gazed into those blue eyes. “And you were going to flirt with the new weretigers and take one to your bed with no time between these horrible events?”

  I just looked up at him.

  He kissed my forehead and laid his face against mine. “Ma petite, ma petite, you give yourself no time.”

  I drew back so I could look into his face. “There isn’t any time to give. We need to do this now, right?” I started getting angry and I wasn’t even sure why. I stood up, pulling free of all of them. I strode to the middle of the room and stared at them all, and in that moment I hated them. I wanted to lash out. I wanted to hurt something. I knew it wasn’t rational. I knew it wasn’t fair. But the anger needed to go somewhere.