Circus of the Damned

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  The upper body had been ripped apart as if the vampire had plunged both hands into her chest and pulled. Her spine had shattered like Tinkertoys. Gobbets of flesh, blood, and bone sprinkled the hallway like gruesome flower petals.

  I could taste bile at the back of my throat. I breathed through my mouth in deep, even breaths. Mistake. The air tasted like blood--thick, warm, faintly salty. There was an underlying sourness where the upper intestine and stomach had been broken open. Fresh death smells like a cross between a slaughterhouse and an outhouse. Shit and blood is what death smells like.

  Zerbrowski was scanning the hallway, borrowed gun in hand. He had four bullets. I had thirteen, plus an extra clip in my sport bag. Where was the second guard's gun?

  "Where's her gun?" I asked.

  Zerbrowski's eyes flicked to me, then to the corpse, then back to scanning the hallway. "I don't see it."

  I'd never met a vampire that used a gun, but there was always a first time. "Dolph, where's the guard's gun?"

  Dolph knelt in the blood and tried to search the body. He moved the bloody flesh and pieces of cloth around, like you'd stir it with a spoon. Once the sight would have made me lose my lunch, but it didn't now. Was it a bad sign that I didn't throw up on the corpses anymore? Maybe.

  "Spread out, look for the gun," Dolph said.

  The four uniforms spread out and searched. The blond was pasty and swallowed convulsively, but he was making it. Good for him. It was the tall one with the prominent Adam's apple that broke first. He slid on a piece of meat that set him down hard on his butt in a pool of congealed blood. He scrambled to his knees and vomited against the wall.

  I was breathing quick, shallow breaths. The blood and carnage hadn't been enough, but the sound of someone else throwing up just might be.

  I pressed my shoulders into the wall and moved towards the next corner. I will not throw up. I will not throw up. Oh, God, please don't let me throw up. Have you ever tried to aim a gun while throwing your guts up? It's damn near impossible. You're helpless until you're finished. After seeing the guards, I didn't want to be helpless.

  The blond cop was leaning against the wall. His face was shiny with a sick sweat. He looked at me and I could read it in his eyes. "Don't," I whispered, "please don't."

  The rookie fell to his knees and that was it. I lost everything I'd eaten that day. At least I didn't throw up on the corpse. I'd done that once, and Zerbrowski had never let me live it down. On that particular case, the complaint was that I'd tampered with evidence.

  If I'd been the vampire, I would have come then while half of us were vomiting our guts out. But nothing slithered around the corner. Nothing came screaming out of the darkness. Lucky us.

  "If you're all done," Dolph said, "we need to find her gun and what did this."

  I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my coveralls. I was sweating, but there hadn't been time to take them off. My black Nikes stuck to the floor with little squeech sounds. There was blood on the bottom of my shoes. Maybe the coveralls weren't such a bad idea.

  What I wanted was a cool cloth. What I got was to continue down the green hallway, making little bloody footprints behind me. I scanned the floor and there it was, footprints going away from the body, back down the hall towards the first guard.

  "Dolph?"

  "I see them," he said.

  The faint footprints walked through the carnage and down the corner, away from us. Away sounded good, but I knew better. We were here to get up close and personal. Dammit.

  Dolph knelt by the largest piece of the body. "Anita."

  I walked over to him, avoiding the bloody footprints. Never step on clues. The police don't like it.

  Dolph pointed at a blackened piece of cloth. I knelt carefully, glad that I was still in my coveralls. I could kneel in all the blood I wanted without messing my clothes. Always prepared, like a good Boy Scout.

  The woman's shirt was charred and blackened. Dolph touched the material with the tip of his pencil. The cloth flaked in heavy layers, cracking like stale bread. Dolph poked a hole through one of the layers. It crumbled. A burst of ash and a sharp acrid smell came up from the body.

  "What the hell happened to her?" Dolph asked.

  I swallowed, still tasting vomit at the back of my throat. This wasn't helping. "It's not cloth."

  "What is it, then?"

  "Flesh."

  Dolph just looked at me. He held the pencil like it might break. "You're serious."

  "Third-degree burn," I said.

  "What caused this?"

  "Can I borrow your pencil?" I asked.

  He handed it to me without a word.

  I dug at what was left of her chest. The flesh was so badly fried that her shirt melted into it. I pushed the layers aside, digging downward with the pencil. The body felt horribly light, and crisp like the burned skin of a chicken. When I'd plunged half the length of the pencil into the burn, I touched something solid. I used the pencil to pry it upward. When it was almost at the surface I put fingers inside the hole and pulled a lump of twisted metal from the burned flesh.

  "What is it?" Dolph asked.

  "It's what's left of her cross."

  "No," he said.

  The lump of melted silver glinted through the black ash. "This was her cross, Dolph. It melted into her chest, caught her clothing on fire. What I don't understand is why the vampire kept contact with the burning metal. The vampire should be nearly as burned as she is, but it's not here."

  "Explain that," he said.

  "Animalistic vampires are like PCP addicts. They don't feel pain. I think the vampire crushed her to his chest, the cross touched him, burst into flames, and the vampire stayed against her, tearing her apart while they burned. Against any normal vampire, she would have been safe."

  "So crosses can't stop this one," he said.

  I stared at the lump of metal. "Apparently not."

  The four uniforms were looking at the dim hallway, a little frantically. They hadn't bargained on the crosses not working. Neither had I. The bit about not feeling pain had been a small footnote to one article. No one had theorized that that would mean crosses didn't protect you. If I survived, I'd have to work up a little article for the Vampire Quarterly. Crosses melting into flesh, wowee.

  Dolph stood up. "Keep together, people."

  "The crosses don't work," one uniform said. "We gotta go back and wait for special teams."

  Dolph just looked at him. "You can go back if you want to." He glanced down at the dead guard. "It's volunteer only. The rest of you go back outside and wait for special teams."

  The tall one nodded and touched his partner's arm. His partner swallowed hard, his eyes flicking to Dolph, then to the guard's crispy-crittered body. He let his partner drag him away down the hall. Back to safety and sanity. Wouldn't it have been nice if we all could have gone? But we couldn't let something like this escape. Even if I hadn't had an order of execution, we would have had to kill it, rather than take the risk of letting it get outside.

  "What about you and the rookie?" Dolph asked the black cop.

  "I've never run from the monsters. He's free to go back with the others."

  The blond shook his head, gun in hand, fingers mottled with tension. "I'm staying."

  The black cop gave him a smile that meant more than words. He'd made a man's choice. Or would that be a mature person's choice? Whatever, he was staying.

  "One more corner and the vault should be in sight," I said.

  Dolph glanced at the last corner. His eyes met mine and I shrugged. I didn't know what was going to be around the corner. This vampire was doing things that I would have said were impossible. The rules had been changed, and not in our favor.

  I hesitated on the wall farthest from the corner. I pushed my back into the wall and slid slowly into sight, around the corner. I was staring down a short, straight hallway. There was a gun lying in the middle of the floor. The second guard's gun? Maybe. On the left-hand wall there should have been a
big steel door with crosses hanging on it. The steel had exploded outward in a twisted silver mess. They'd put the body in the vault after all. I hadn't gotten the guards killed. They should have been safe. Nothing moved. There was no light in the vault. It was just a blasted darkness. If there was a vampire waiting in the room, I couldn't see it. Of course, I wasn't all that close, either. Close did not seem to be a good idea.

  "Clear, as far as I can see," I said.

  "You don't sound sure," Dolph said.

  "I'm not," I said. "Peek around the corner at what's left of the vault."

  He didn't peek, but he looked. He let out a soft whistle. Zerbrowski said, "Je-sus."

  I nodded. "Yeah."

  "Is it in there?" Dolph asked.

  "I think so."

  "You're our expert. Why don't you sound sure?" Dolph asked.

  "If you would have asked me if a vampire could plow through five feet of silver-steel with crosses hung all over the damn place, I'd have said no way." I stared into the black hole. "But there it is."

  "Does this mean you're as confused as we are?" Zerbrowski asked.

  "Yep."

  "Then we're in deep shit," he said.

  Unfortunately, I agreed.

  18

  THE VAULT LOOMED UP before us. Pitch black with a crazy vampire waiting inside; just my cup of tea. Ri-ight.

  "I'll take point now," Dolph said. He had the second guard's gun in his hands. His own gun was tucked out of sight. He had silver bullets now; he'd go first. Dolph was good about that. He'd never order one of his men to do something he wouldn't do himself. Wish Bert was like that. Bert was more likely to promise your first-born child, then ask if it was alright with you.

  Dolph hesitated at the open mouth of the vault. The darkness was thick enough to cut. It was the absolute darkness of a cave. The kind where you can touch your eyeballs with your fingers and not blink.

  He motioned us forward with the gun, but he went past the darkness, farther down the hallway. The bloody footprints entered the darkness and came back out. Bloody footprints going down the hall, around the corner. I was getting tired of corners.

  Zerbrowski and I moved up to stand on either side of Dolph. The tension slid along my neck, shoulders. I took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. Better. Look, my hand's not even shaking.

  Dolph didn't roll around on the floor to clear the corner. He just went around back to the wall, two-handed aim, ready for bear.

  A voice said, "Don't shoot. I'm not dead."

  I knew the voice.

  "It's John Burke. He's with me."

  Dolph glanced back at me. "I remember him."

  I shrugged; better safe than sorry. I trusted Dolph not to shoot John by accident, but there were two cops here I'd never met. Always err on the side of caution when it comes to firearms. Words to survive by.

  John was tall, slender, dark complected. His short hair was perfectly black with a broad white streak in front. It was a startling combination. He'd always been handsome, but now that he'd shaved off his beard, he looked less like a Hollywood villain and more like a leading man. Tall, dark, and handsome, and knew how to kill vampires. What more could you ask for? Plenty, but that's another story.

  John came around the corner smiling. He had a gun out, and better yet, he had his vampire kit in one hand. "I came ahead to make sure the vampire didn't get loose while you were en route."

  "Thanks, John," I said.

  He shrugged. "Just protecting the public welfare."

  It was my turn to shrug. "Anything you say."

  "Where's the vampire?" Dolph asked.

  "I was tracking it," John said.

  "How?" I asked.

  "Bloody bare footprints."

  Bare footprints. Sweet Jesus. The corpse didn't have shoes, but John did. I turned towards the vault. Too late, too slow, too damn bad.

  The vampire came out of the darkness, moving too fast to see. It was just a blur that smashed into the rookie, driving him into the wall. He screamed, gun pressed to the vampire's chest. The gun was loud in the hallway, echoing in the pipes. The bullets came out the back of the vampire like they'd hit mist. Magic.

  I moved forward, trying to aim without hitting the rookie. He was screaming, one continuous sound. Blood sprayed in a warm rain. I shot at the thing's head but it moved, incredibly fast, tossing the man against the other wall, tearing at him. There was a lot of yelling and movement, but it all seemed far away, slowed down. It would all be over in a matter of moments. I was the only one close enough with silver bullets. I stepped in, body brushing the vampire, and put the barrel to the back of its skull. A normal vampire wouldn't have let me do it. I pulled the trigger, but the vampire whirled, lifting the man off his feet, throwing him into me. The bullet went wide and we crashed to the floor. The air was knocked out of me for a second with the weight of two adult males on my chest. The rookie was on top of me, screaming, bleeding, dying.

  I wedged the gun against the back of the vamp's skull and fired. The back of the head exploded outward in a fine spray of blood, bone, and heavier, wetter things. The vampire kept digging at the man's throat. It should have been dead, but it wasn't.

  The vampire reared back, blood-clotted teeth straining. It had paused like a man breathing between swallows. I shoved the barrel in its mouth. The teeth grated on the metal. The face exploded from the upper lip to the top of the head. The lower teeth mouthed the air but couldn't get a bite. The headless body raised up on its hands, as if trying to get up. I touched the gun to its chest and pulled the trigger. At this distance I might be able to take out its heart. I'd never actually tried to take out a vampire using just a pistol. I wondered if it would work. I wondered what would happen to me if it didn't.

  A shudder ran through the thing's body. It breathed outward in a long, wordless sigh.

  Dolph and Zerbrowski were there dragging the thing backwards. I think it was dead already, but just in case, the help was appreciated. John splashed the vampire with holy water. The liquid bubbled and fizzed on the dying vampire. It was dying. It really was.

  The rookie wasn't moving. His partner dragged him off me, cradling him against his chest like a child. Blood plastered the blond hair to his face. The pale eyes were wide open, staring at nothing. The dead are always blind, one way or another.

  He'd been brave, a good kid, though he wasn't that much younger than me. But I felt about a million years old staring into his pale, dead face. He was dead, just like that. Being brave doesn't save you from the monsters. It just ups your chances.

  Dolph and Zerbrowski had taken the vampire to the floor. John was actually straddling the body with a stake and mallet in hand. I hadn't used a stake in years. Shotgun was my choice. But then, I was a progressive vampire slayer.

  The vampire was dead. It didn't need to be staked, but I just sat against the wall and watched. Better safe than sorry. The stake went in easier than normal because I'd made a hole for it. My gun was still in my hand. No need to put it up yet. The vault was still an empty blackness; where there was one vampire there were often more. I'd keep the gun out.

  Dolph and Zerbrowski went to the ruined vault, guns out. I should have gotten up and gone with them, but it seemed very important right now just to breathe. I could feel the blood pumping through my veins; every pulse in my body was loud. It was good to be alive; too bad I hadn't been able to save the kid. Yeah, too bad.

  John knelt beside me. "You alright?"

  I nodded. "Sure."

  He looked at me like he didn't believe it, but he let it go. Smart man.

  The light flashed on in the vault. Rich, yellow light, warm as a summer's day. "Je-sus," Zerbrowski said.

  I stood up, and nearly fell; my legs were shaky. John caught my arm, and I stared at him until he let go. He gave a half-smile. "Still a hard case."

  "Always," I said.

  There had been two dates between us. Mistake. It made working together more awkward, and he couldn't cope with me being a female version of
him. He had this old southern idea of what a lady should be. A lady should not carry a gun and spend most of her time covered in blood and corpses. I had two words for that attitude. Yeah, those are the words.

  There was a large fish tank smashed against one wall. It had held guinea pigs, or rats, or rabbits. All it held now were bright splashes of blood and bits of fur. Vampires don't eat meat, but if you put small animals in a glass container, then throw it against the wall, you get diced small animals. There wasn't enough left to scoop up with a spoon.

  There was a head near the glass mess, probably male, judging from the short hair and style. I didn't go any closer to check. I didn't want to see the face. I'd been brave tonight. I had nothing left to prove.

  The body was in one piece, barely. It looked like the vampire had shoved both hands into the chest, grabbed a handful of ribs, and pulled. The chest was nearly torn in two, but a band of pink muscle tissue and intestine held it together.

  "The head's got fangs," Zerbrowski said.

  "It's the vampire counsellor," I said.

  "What happened?"

  I shrugged. "At a guess, the counsellor was leaning over the vamp when it rose. It killed him, quick and messy."

  "Why'd it kill the vampire counsellor?" Dolph asked.

  I shrugged. "It was more animal than human, Dolph. It woke up in a strange place with a strange vampire leaning over it. It reacted like any trapped animal and protected itself."

  "Why couldn't the counsellor control it? That's what he was here for."

  "The only person who can control an animalistic vampire is the master who made it. The counsellor wasn't powerful enough to control it."

  "Now what?" John asked. He'd put up his gun. I still hadn't. I felt better with it out for some reason.

  "Now I go make my third animation appointment of the evening."

  "Just like that?"

  I looked up at him, ready to be angry at somebody. "What do you want me to do, John? Fall into a screaming fit? That wouldn't bring back the dead, and it would annoy the hell out of me."

  He sighed. "If you only matched your packaging."

  I put my gun back in the shoulder holster, smiled at him, and said, "Fuck you."

  Yeah, those are the words.

  19

  I HAD WASHED MOST of the blood off my face and hands in the bathroom at the morgue. The bloodstained coveralls were in my trunk. I was clean and presentable, or as presentable as I was going to get tonight. Bert had said to meet the new guy at my third appointment for the night. Oakglen Cemetery, ten o'clock. The theory was that the new man already raised two zombies and would just watch me raise the third one. Fine with me.