"Also they can enter their own homes without being invited in first," I said.
Edward nodded. "I told them that vampires can't enter a private residence unless invited."
I added, "So any private house or building that they were invited into when alive they can still enter as a vampire, unless someone who owns the building revokes the invitation."
"How do you revoke an invitation?" Sheridan asked.
"You say, 'I revoke my invitation.'"
"Really, that formal?"
"I don't know. I've literally only done it by saying those words." I looked at Jake and Kaazim. "Gentlemen, does it work without the phrase?"
"Telling them to get out and that they are no longer welcome in your home would work," Jake said.
"Simply telling them, 'You are no longer welcome,' or 'You are no longer my guest,' works as well," Kaazim said.
"Unless they lived in the house in life," Jake added.
Kaazim agreed. "That does make it more complicated."
"It seems like there are a lot more rules to vampires than we knew," Sheridan said.
"Yeah, there are rules," I said.
"We need to know all the rules," Pearson said, "but right now I would like the Marshals to accompany us to look at the victims."
"If they have fangs, Superintendent, they aren't victims. They're vampires," I said.
"I talked to Helena Brady for the first time a month ago, and then two weeks ago. I've been looking at the picture of her daughter Katie for weeks hoping we'd find her alive. Her best friend is Sinead Royce. When she went missing just after Katie, we didn't think it was vampires; we thought we had a child abductor that knew the girls. We thought it was a child molester, or a stalker, or anything but vampires, and now they're all lying in there dead, or undead, but whatever they are, something did that to them. Something drank Katie Brady's blood and turned her into this, and that makes her a victim, Marshal Blake."
"Yes, of course it does, but . . ." Edward grabbed my arm and stopped me. He was one of the handful of people on the planet who could grab me and tell me to stop, and I'd stop. I looked up at him, waiting for an explanation.
"One step at a time; let's see what there is to see first."
"Sure, Ted, whatever you say."
Kaazim and Jake had been so helpful that Pearson let all four of them stay by the door with only one uniformed officer standing by to make sure they didn't touch anything. We were all inside the crime scene, which was more than I thought we'd get, and if the vampires in the next room rose early we had at least four people within earshot who would be more than just humanly helpful. If I didn't piss Pearson off completely, we were part of the investigation at last. I didn't want to piss the Irish detectives off so badly that I got put back on a plane for home, but I had a bad feeling that they were going to try to treat the vampires like people with fangs. That would be a mistake; eventually it would be a fatal mistake for someone.
40
THE ROOM WAS done in bright colors. One half of the room was a circus theme complete with a cartoon-circus-parade wall mural and a clown lamp beside the twin bed. The other half of the room was covered in posters of boy bands I didn't know, some actors that I did know, and a rugby poster that seemed to be mostly a shot of buff men in small shorts fighting in mud. I'd never really thought of rugby as the male equivalent of women wrestling in oil, but suddenly I could see the analogy, because I was trying to see anything but the bodies in the room.
Helena Brady lay on the twin bed underneath the rugby poster with her daughter curled beside her. She had a protective arm around the girl, and if they'd been breathing, it would have been a charming example of mother-daughter love. The only positive was that Katie Brady looked to be about fifteen or sixteen years old. If we could keep Katie from killing anyone else and the Irish legal system didn't want to execute her for anything she'd already done, then as the years passed and she grew older in her mind and emotions, she'd have a body that would be adult enough to have a grown-up life.
Sinead Royce lay on the other bed underneath the circus parade. She looked older than Katie and could have easily passed for eighteen. "How old is this one?" I asked.
"Sixteen. They're both sixteen," Pearson said.
"How old is the younger sister that's at the hospital?"
"Eight."
"That's a big age gap to share a room," I said.
"They moved Michael Brady's mother in with them after his grandfather died, and then moved her mother in when she had a bad fall, so the girls had to share a room."
"The dutiful son and daughter," Edward said.
"They were, or are, good people," Pearson said.
I stared down at the bodies on the bed and was angry. "This isn't right."
"No," Edward said, "it's not."
I shook my head. "One of the few taboos that all vampires have is you don't bring over children. The two teenagers you could make a case for, because if the vampire is old enough they may think of sixteen as an adult, because for centuries it was, but whoever made Katie Brady a vampire let her loose on her family. Whoever made her had an obligation to keep track of her until she was able to think for herself, because like Ted says, one of the first things vampires do is go home. The vampire creator is supposed to keep that from happening."
"Why?" Pearson asked.
"One, it's morally questionable, but two, it's bad for business. One of the ways that vampires got discovered back in the old days was that one person would die from some unknown disease, a wasting disease they used to call it, and then one by one the rest of the family would die, so someone would get the bright idea to dig up the first family member that died, and voila, there's the vampire. Most of the old vamps liked to stay in their coffins during the day, because it was the most sunlightproof place they knew, and some believed that they needed to sleep in their original coffin at night or they'd die at dawn and not rise again."
"Are you saying that vampires are superstitious?" Sheridan asked.
"People are superstitious. Why not vampires?"
"Katie didn't have a funeral. She went missing," Pearson said.
"Modern burial techniques like embalming, or organ donation, will kill a vampire before it can rise the first time. If creator vampires want their offspring to rise from the dead, they'll take the body with them and hide it."
"You said if. Some vampires do not care if their--what did you call it--offspring rise?" Sheridan asked.
"You know how some people are crazy, or mean, or just careless?"
"Yes."
"Vampires can be all those things, too."
"What can we do for them?" Pearson asked.
"They're all new enough that once darkness falls they will have to feed. If this is Mrs. Brady's first night as a vampire, she will be uncontrollable, or at least not controllable by a baby vampire like Katie, or Sinead. I don't mean baby vampire because they're teenagers. I mean they're less than a month dead. Whoever made Katie should still have her with them at night and be controlling how she feeds. There were rules against shit like this before vampires were legal."
"In America, would you execute Katie?" Pearson asked.
"It depends on whether she's outright killed someone that we can prove; for all we know some of the bodies with their throats torn out are hers."
"I hope not," he said.
"Me, too, but she had to be getting her blood somewhere besides her family."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because she needs to feed every night, and she hasn't been feeding on her family long enough to have them be her only food source."
"How do you know that?"
"The parents wouldn't have come to you two weeks ago demanding more action on her disappearance if she'd already started feeding on them."
"She fed on Sinead."
"Is her family still alive and well?"
"To our knowledge."
"Do they live close to here?" I asked.
"Yes."
; "You might want to check on Sinead's family, then."
Pearson cursed as he walked out of the room, already on his phone. He was sending officers to the other home. I hoped the other family was okay. I didn't really want this kind of moral dilemma twice in one day.
"What can we do for them when they wake for the night?" Sheridan asked.
"There are only three options," I said.
"Kill them," Edward said.
"Yep, that's option one."
"What's option two?" Sheridan asked.
"Lock them in a coffin or cell with holy items all over it and contain them. Though you need to make sure that whoever guards them is religious and wearing their holy item of choice, because even baby vamps can capture you with their gaze and make you their bitch."
"And the third option?" she asked.
"Do nothing and let them keep attacking people," Edward said.
"Okay, four options, then," I said.
He looked at me. "What fourth option?"
"You get a vampire strong enough to control them."
"I don't think we want to give the Brady family over to Damian's creator," Edward said.
"No," I said.
"She's the only master vampire in Ireland."
"Not anymore, she's not," I said.
We looked at each other. "Shouldn't you talk to your vampires before you volunteer them for babysitting duty?"
"Yes, but I can't talk to them until after dark and by that time the vampires in this room will rise, too, and it'll be too late to ask."
"Catch-22," he said.
"Yeah," I said.
"I don't understand," Sheridan said.
"Anita brought more than one vampire with her."
"Are you saying your vampires might be able to control the new ones?"
"The three in this room maybe, but since they didn't make them, and they aren't related to the vampire that did make them, I'm not sure how much control they'll have over them."
"Then we're back to three options," he said.
"We won't let you execute them," Sheridan said.
"Two options," he said.
"We can't let them feed on whoever they want," she said.
"Option number two, it is."
"How strong are your holding cells and do they all have windows?" I asked.
41
I DON'T KNOW who had Nolan's back in the government, but whoever it was had clout, because the police gave the three sleeping vampires over to him. Pearson and Sheridan didn't like it. In fact, we got to hear Pearson yelling on the phone that it wasn't right, that Helena and Katie Brady and Sinead Royce were still Irish citizens and deserved better than this. He said other things, but that was the big part he kept repeating in different ways. None of it made any difference. Nolan, Brennan, and Donahue--Donnie--put the three women into body bags like the corpses they almost were and loaded one vampire per vehicle, which meant there were two vampires per, because we'd brought our own. Edward told Nolan that if he valued his expensive toys he shouldn't lock us in the back once we were inside them. I was glad he'd said it, because it saved me having to threaten his old friend. Admittedly, it would have been Nicky or one of the other wereanimals that actually tore the door off, but I'd have given the order.
Dev was soaked by the time we walked back down to the trucks so that when he got inside water streamed from his hair down inside his rain jacket. He was so wet that Nathaniel kissed him but asked him to sit on the other side with Kaazim and Jake. It also gave us enough room on our side to not be quite so cramped. We still had Damian in his duffel bag at our feet, but now Nolan and Edward had a body bag full of vampire at their feet, too. They'd tagged the vamps on the outside of the bags, so we knew it was Helena Brady with us.
Nolan's phone sounded and he looked at the screen. The lines in his face seemed to deepen as if some extra burden had been added. "What's wrong?" I asked.
"Pearson sent me baby pictures."
"Of his kids?" Dev made it a question.
"No, of the vampires."
"He sent you baby pictures of Katie and Sinead?" I asked.
Nolan nodded. "Want to see them?"
"No," I said.
Edward just shook his head.
"Why would he send you baby pictures of them?" Dev asked.
"The text with the pictures says, 'Whatever you do to them, remember they're someone's babies.'"
"Pearson thinks it will make it harder for us to kill them," I said.
"Harder for me," Nolan said. "He didn't send the pictures to you."
"He doesn't have my phone number," I said.
Edward's phone sounded. He shook his head but got it out and checked. "Pearson," he said, but put the phone away without swiping it open.
"You're not even going to look at it?" Dev asked.
"No."
"It doesn't matter if they were adorable babies if they wake up trying to tear people's faces off," I said.
"Maybe it does," he said.
"Are you saying that if someone's cute as a baby, we shouldn't kill them?" Nicky asked.
"I'd rather not kill anyone," Dev said.
We all looked at him, even Nathaniel. Edward said, "You do know why we're here, right?"
"To figure out why vampires are suddenly able to spread in Ireland as fast as anywhere else in the world, and to stop it if we can."
"How do you think we're going to stop this, Dev?" I asked.
"Solve the mystery and fix what's gone wrong."
I exchanged a look with Edward, who without saying a word let me know that this was why Dev hadn't been on his list of who to bring to Ireland.
It was Nathaniel who said, "Dev, honey, do you understand what fixing means for Anita and . . . Ted?"
"I'm not stupid, Nathaniel. I know. I didn't say I wouldn't do what's necessary. I just said I'd rather not kill people. Why is that a bad thing?"
"Because it makes us all wonder if you're a shooter," Edward said.
"My scores are good at the range."
Edward looked at me, as if to say, Explain it to him.
"You know that's not what we mean when we say someone is a shooter, Dev."
"I know what it means, Anita. I know you pride yourself on your kill count being higher than any other vampire hunter in the U.S."
"I may have the highest legal count worldwide, not just in America."
He frowned at me. "And that's great, but even you prefer not to kill when you don't have to, or did I miss something?"
"Would I prefer not to have to kill people while we're in Ireland? Yes, but I'll still do it."
"And if you need me to pull the trigger, I will, but why did I lose guy points from everybody in this truck because I said I'd prefer not to?"
"It makes us wonder if you'll hesitate when the time comes," I said.
"I didn't hesitate in Colorado," he said.
"No, you didn't." In my head I added, That wasn't the problem.
"Those were zombies," Edward said. "It's easier to kill them, because they look like corpses."
"You're saying that I'll hesitate because the vampires look like people."
"No, I'm saying that I'm concerned you might hesitate when I need you, or Anita needs you, or Nolan needs you."
"And you're more worried because I said I didn't want to kill people if I didn't have to?"
"Yes."
"Don't most people prefer not to kill other people?"
"Yes," Edward said.
"So what did I say wrong?"
We all exchanged a look, and I mean all of us. Nathaniel understood something that Dev still didn't seem to get, but then Nathaniel had picked up a gun and killed to save our lives before. The guard that had dropped the gun had been shot to death at our feet, but Nathaniel hadn't frozen; he'd picked up the gun and used it. He'd never been one of the armed guards, but he'd proven everything he needed to prove to me that day. Dev still hadn't. Though come to think of it, I wasn't sure that Nathaniel would have been as cool under fire wit
h the zombies in the hospital. It had been one of the worst things I'd had to do, and that was saying something. Maybe I wasn't being fair to my golden tiger?
Dev looked at Jake sitting beside him, as if for help. "You must stop looking to me for help, Mephistopheles," he said.
"Why would he look to you?" Nolan asked.
"I am older and more experienced," Jake said, his face and voice utterly bland. He was smiling slightly, and I realized that his pleasant face, which was one of his versions of blank cop face, was very similar to Dev's; was that where my golden tiger had learned it? I knew that Jake had helped raise and keep safe generations of golden tigers. He'd been one of the Harlequin who had hidden the entire clan bloodline from the Mother of All Darkness when she'd declared that it needed to be destroyed. Legend handed down for thousands of years said that the clan tigers were the key to defeating her, but in particular the gold tigers, because they were supposed to rule over all the rest. Jake and others had rescued a few gold tigers, and that was Dev's family line.
"I thought Devereux was an athletic pretty boy who wouldn't look up to anyone like that," Nolan said.
"Why is being athletic and pretty bad?" Dev said.
"It's not, if you have more going for you than just muscle and looks," Nolan said.
"I don't know if I have much more going for me than that." It was a remarkably self-deprecating comment coming from someone who had been handsome, athletic, and charming all his life, as far as I knew. People like that don't do self-deprecating very well.
"It's too late to play humble, Devereux," Nolan said.
"Am I playing?" Dev looked at him, and suddenly there was confusion on his face, and he looked younger, as young as he was, I guess, since he was still a few years under twenty-five. Nathaniel was only a little older, but he never seemed as young as Dev did from time to time.
"Every man I've ever met who was as big and handsome as you was anything but humble."
Dev flashed him a smile. "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."
"You're too young to know that commercial," Nolan said.
"There are whole websites dedicated to old commercials," Dev said. "My first serious girlfriend showed it to me, because she agreed with you. She also didn't like the fact that I got more attention than she did when we went out to the clubs."
"Beautiful women are used to being the center of attention," Kaazim said.
"A woman won't date someone she thinks is prettier than she is," Nolan said.
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