Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15

by Laurell K. Hamilton

He just looked at me, but he didn’t deny it. That was enough.

  “He took money to betray cops?” Marconi asked.

  “No,” I said, “not money.”

  “No,” Cooper said, “not money.”

  “What then?” Smith asked.

  “Immortality,” I said, “right, Cooper?”

  “Not just that.”

  “What then?” I said.

  “You’re the Master of the City’s human servant, you know what else.”

  I blinked at him, not sure what to say, but I leaned back enough so that I wasn’t pressing a gun into his chest. I knew what it was like to finally be seduced by the thing you hunted. Mine just happened to be a more traditional seduction. Okay, at least I was still among the living.

  “What does he mean?” Smith asked.

  Malcolm’s rich voice filled the parish hall with its tables and punch bowl. Everything was all set out for cookies and punch, though the punch looked a little red for my tastes, a little thick. “Power, Officer, power and sex, that is what Jean-Claude offers.”

  “Be careful about the stones you throw, Malcolm, sometimes they get thrown back.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “No, just a friendly warning that only the pure of motive should cast stones.”

  “Ask your friend there. Ask him, was it sex with one of us that lured him. I have watched mortals come to this life for centuries for the sake of sex.”

  “First,” I said, “he’s not my friend. Second, it doesn’t matter why, only that he did it.” I’d touched Cooper while I searched him for weapons, and I’d gotten no flashes of information. No images. I hadn’t acquired Malcolm’s ability to see through touch, I’d only borrowed it. I wanted to borrow it again.

  I guess I should at least pretend to try to do it the normal way. I turned to Cooper. “Where is your master? Where is he now?”

  “Feeding, most likely.”

  “Where is the daytime lair?”

  He shook his head, with something like a smile on his face. “I won’t tell you anything, Anita Blake. I would no more betray my master than you would yours.”

  “But see, my master doesn’t ask me to butcher helpless unarmed women, like yours does.”

  He shook his head again. “I will not betray him.”

  Now, technically the vampire had no more rights. I could have put a bullet in his brain now, legally. The warrant read that I could use the force I deemed necessary. No one talked about it much, but I knew, and the rest of us legal hunters knew, that some of us used that part of the warrant to justify torture. I didn’t like torture, not on either side of the chains. Besides, Cooper had had a reputation for being tough. We didn’t have the time for him to be tough. We needed to know where his master lived.

  I walked over to Malcolm. He didn’t look happy to see me that close to him. “What do you want, Ms. Blake? You have your villain, take him and go.”

  I lowered my voice so only we and the soon-to-be-dead Cooper would hear. “Try to read my mind by touch again.”

  “I did not . . .”

  “If you deny it, I’ll make sure that all those people that you’ve done negotiations with over the years know exactly how you outsmarted them. A shake of the hand, and you had them.”

  “I did not bespell anyone.”

  “No, but you read their minds, took knowledge from them, against their will. That’s illegal.”

  “Is that a threat again, Ms. Blake?”

  “Negotiation is simple with me, Malcolm. If you use your little clairvoyant powers on me now, it’s our little secret. If you don’t, then it won’t be our little secret. See? Very simple.”

  “How can I trust you?”

  “Maybe you can’t, but what choice do you have?”

  I felt his power then, like water filling the room. Once, I’d worried I’d drown in his power. Now, I knew I could swim in it, or simply ignore it. “Grandstanding won’t win you any points with me.”

  “I will do this, but not because you forced me. I want these killings stopped, and if we habored vipers among us, unbeknownst, then I want to know who they are. I will not have such things done in my church, or by my church members.”

  “Fine.” I held my hand out to him. “Talk is cheap.”

  He frowned at me, but he gave me his hand, and the moment his fingers touched mine, I felt him riffle through my head. I felt him get a second image of the dead woman. A more complete image. I thrust my power outward like a defending blade. He was prepared this time. He simply drew his hand away and stepped back. “May it give you all the joy it has given me over the centuries.”

  It sounded like some kind of blessing turned curse, but I ignored it. Malcolm and I could squabble later. I had to use his gift while I still had it. I turned back to the vampire that was still cuffed to the chair.

  He’d heard at least part of what Malcolm and I had said. His face was angry, defiant. “I won’t talk.”

  “I won’t ask you to.”

  “What’s happening, Anita?” Zerbrowski asked.

  “I’m going to find out what we want to know.”

  “How?” He looked positively suspicious.

  It made me laugh. “God, Zerbrowski, what do you think I’m about to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  That made the laughter fade, and the smile went with it. It’s always hard to see your friends look at you like they don’t trust you not to be monstrous. “I’m not going to do anything you haven’t seen me do already tonight.”

  He widened eyes at me. “This guy doesn’t like you, the other one did.”

  “It won’t matter.”

  He made a small gesture as if to say, help yourself, but he looked like he’d believe it when he saw it. I guess I couldn’t blame him. I reached out toward Cooper’s face.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Would you rather I shoot you?”

  He just glared at me.

  “Then hold still.” If I hadn’t been afraid that he’d either try to hurt me with his hands or his teeth, I’d have touched him from behind, but he was a vampire, and you don’t cuddle one if you aren’t sure about your safety. I touched him from the side, so if he tried to bite me I’d feel it, and could move. I touched the side of his face. He was clean shaven, but he was also cold. He hadn’t fed tonight.

  I thought, Who is your master?

  He fought me. He tried to think random thoughts. I got chaotic images. I saw the second stripper, the one from last night. I saw her alive and dancing on the stage. I saw a cloaked figure huddled by her stage.

  “No!” he jerked his head away from me.

  I pressed my hip against his arm and put a hand on either side of his head. His hair was soft, but not as soft as Avery’s. Cooper’s hair had the texture of someone who, if they let it grow out at all, it would have body and wave to it.

  “Don’t,” he said, but it wasn’t a shout this time. He tried to think of anything, everything. But somewhere in those confused images, I recognized a face. A woman’s face. I remembered her at a banquet table. I remembered her at Belle’s court. It wasn’t my memory.

  I thought, Jean-Claude. He whispered through me, and this time I got a sense that he was busy, or about to be. “Do you need me to come to you, ma petite? I can put this off.”

  I said it out loud, but for his ears, though more heard it. “Who is she?”

  “Gwenyth, Vittorio’s lovely Gwennie.”

  “Vittorio,” I said, and I had a face with the name. He was darkly handsome, and I doubted he’d started life with an Italian name. He looked very dark, Arabic maybe. “Vittorio.” I must have whispered it out loud, because Cooper screamed and stood up. He stood up still cuffed to the chair. He stood up, and the last thing I got from him was a very clear thought. I’ll make them kill me.

  I was the closest, but I’d had to put my gun up to do my little hand trick. I did the first thing I thought of, I hit him. I hit him as hard and fast as I could. I hit him the way I’d
been trained for years in martial arts. You don’t try to throw someone to the floor, you aim for three feet below the floor. My target wasn’t his cheek, it was the other side of his face. When I was merely human, it was just a way to concentrate, to get the maximum punch out of your body. Now, suddenly, aiming to punch a hole through someone had a whole new meaning.

  Blood spattered, and his cheek gave under my fist. I thought I heard his jaw break. The blow spun him around, and he fell onto his side, chair and all. He fell on the floor and didn’t get back up.

  “Jesus,” one of the uniforms said, “Jesus, you broke his neck.”

  Had I? I stood there for a second with my right hand covered in blood, and I realized that my hand hurt. I’d cut myself on his teeth. “He’s not dead,” I said, and my voice was hoarse.

  Everyone was staring at me, and not in a good way. More like I’d sprouted a second head, and it was a big, scary one. I looked at Malcolm. “Does this work while he’s unconscious?”

  Malcolm just nodded.

  I knelt beside the fallen vampire. I touched his hair and tried not to look at what I’d done to his face. I hadn’t literally punched a hole through him, but I’d split the skin away from his teeth, as if I’d used a dull blade. I closed my eyes, and thought, Daytime retreat, where is the daytime retreat?

  He couldn’t fight me now. His thoughts came like smooth silk, and I knew in that moment that Malcolm could read people easier in their sleep. I let the thought go and followed Cooper’s thoughts, images. It was a big building, a condo. A fucking modern condo. I wanted to see the front of the building. I saw it. I had the address. Wait, number and name on the condo, and I was looking at the little boxes with all the names and numbers. I was looking at it from higher up than I would have seen it. Street, I thought, what street are we on?

  I said the address out loud, street and name that the condo was under. “Got it,” Zerbrowski said.

  I opened my eyes and took my hands off of Cooper. His eyes fluttered open. He made a sound, a low groan. The look he flashed up at me as I stood over him was one of surprise and fear. I was as surprised as anyone, but I couldn’t let anyone see that. I’d known that joining with Jean-Claude and Richard would up the metaphysics, but hadn’t thought what it would mean to the physical. If Cooper had been human, my punch would have snapped his neck. Shit.

  Zerbrowski was already on his phone.

  “Who are you calling?” I asked.

  “Mobile Reserve. We’ll want the fire power.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  Zerbrowski hit the button on his phone, killed it. “Wait for what?”

  “If we give them the address, they may go in tonight. We don’t want that.”

  “We want to catch these bastards,” Smith said.

  “Yeah, but they’re out hunting now. They won’t be home, or at least most of them won’t be. We’ll miss some of them, or all of them, and once we’ve got that many police around the place, they’ll know it. They’ll never come back to the place again, and we won’t know where to look for them.”

  “We can’t withhold the address,” Roarke said, “not if we’re asked.”

  “If the address leaves this room, more women are going to die. If the address leaves this room, maybe cops are going to die. His master is someone so powerful that no master vamp in this city sensed him. That means he’s really, really good. Mobile Reserve is who I want in a firefight, but they aren’t immune to vampire powers. They go in at night when he’s at his best, and they may all die.”

  Everyone was looking at me, except Zerbrowski. He had already moved on and didn’t need convincing. Marconi would be cool, it was the uniforms and Smith I had to convince.

  “Zerbrowski, call Mobile Reserve, get me Captain Parker.”

  Zerbrowski raised an eyebrow at me. “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “No, but he knows me. And he’s the man in charge of Mobile Reserve. Get him for me.”

  Zerbrowski made a face. “Your funeral.”

  “Let’s hope not,” I said.

  I looked down at Jonah Cooper, vampire, ex-vamp executioner. He blinked up at me. He’d have probably had something to say to me, but a broken jaw cuts down on the chit-chat.

  Zerbrowski clicked his phone shut. “I’ve left a message. He’ll get back.”

  I nodded. I looked down at Jonah again. I had everything he knew, all of it. I’d seen him helping murder women. I’d seen his own memory of it. I sighed.

  “While we wait for the call back, help me move our prisoner outside.”

  Zerbrowski gave me a look. I gave him one back. It was his turn to sigh. “Smith, take his other arm. We’re going to escort him outside.”

  Smith was looking at us sort of funny, but he helped Zerbrowski lift the vampire to his feet. Cooper made small protesting noises and hissed curses under his breath. Maybe I hadn’t broken his jaw, or at least not badly.

  Zerbrowski and Smith got him on his feet and started him for the door. I got my gun out and followed them. One of the uniforms said, “What are they going to do?”

  “Go outside if you want to see the show,” Marconi said, “I’ve seen it.” He sounded tired.

  Roarke and the other uniform, whose name I couldn’t remember, followed me. It was like a parade. I’ve got over eighty kills. Most of them actually legal. But I usually whack the bad guys when they’re dead to the world. I usually haven’t had to question them, touch them. I usually don’t know who they were in life, or if I do, I feel like I’m putting them out of their misery, or did once, when I believed vampires were truly dead. Jonah Cooper had been what I am, and he had betrayed everything he stood for. He’d sacrificed law enforcement officers that had gone in as his backup. He’d murdered innocent women for kicks. I knew all that, but I’d have liked it better if I didn’t know that his hair had nice texture, or that he’d gotten a hero’s funeral. There’s a reason that executioners through history usually only come in at the end when it’s time to kill. If he’d run for it or fought, then the other cops could have shot him, killed him for me. But he wasn’t going to run now, and no one else here had the legal authority to do what I was about to do.

  We were outside in a small side area near the far parking lot. Cooper had figured out what was happening, because even with an injured jaw he was trying to talk to me. The words started out stiff, but got faster as he talked. Fear will override pain. “You’re Jean-Claude’s human servant. How is what I’m doing any different from that?”

  “I haven’t killed innocent civilians because my master doesn’t like strippers.”

  “I killed more people as a hunter than I’ve killed as a vampire,” he said. He tried to turn around and look at me, but apparently that hurt too much.

  We were on a plot of grass, with flowers to one side and the parking lot to the other. “Good enough,” I said.

  Zerbrowski turned, and Smith moved with him. They turned the vamp around so I could see his face. “I kill because the law says I can, not because I want to,” I said.

  “Liar.”

  “Knees,” I said.

  He fought them, and I didn’t blame him. I shot him in the leg, and he collapsed to the ground. I hadn’t expected to have to shoot him so soon, or for wounding. The echo of the gun up my arm thrilled through my body, like the gun was where all the adrenaline came from, tingling up my arm.

  Smith looked pale. Zerbrowski grim. But they still had his arms, even with him on the ground.

  “I can make this quick, Cooper, or I can make it slow. Your choice.” My voice was empty. Nothing showed on my face. I just looked at him and knew that if he struggled I would shoot him by inches, until he was too wounded to get away, and I could let Zerbrowski and Smith move away without risking Cooper getting away.

  He struggled, and I shot him again.

  Smith let go of the arm. “I can’t do this. This isn’t right.”

  “Then get the fuck away from him,” I said, and there was anger in my voice now, because
I agreed with Smith. “Zerbrowski.”

  “Yeah.” His voice was very careful.

  I had the gun on Cooper, and my body had gone quiet, the anger sliding away on the nice white static in my head. “Move.”

  He moved. Cooper tried to levitate. I figured he would. I put two shots into the center of his body, and he collapsed back to earth. He hadn’t been able to fly in the church when he was healthy, I hadn’t expected him to get better wounded. He didn’t.

  I walked up to him, gun in a two-handed grip, aimed on the center of his forehead. “You’re enjoying this,” he said, and he made a sound in his throat. There was blood on his lips, his blood.

  “No,” I said, “I’m really not.”

  “Liar,” he said again, and tried to spit blood at my feet, but apparently his jaw hurt too much, and it made him writhe on his knees.

  “I don’t want to kill you, Cooper, and I don’t enjoy it.”

  He looked up at me, puzzled. “You feel empty inside. I enjoyed killing.”

  “Bully for you,” I said, and I knew I should have pulled the trigger, should have ended it. Never let them talk.

  “You really don’t enjoy this, do you?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, looking into those brown eyes.

  “Then how do you stay sane?”

  I let all the air ease from my body, as the world narrowed down to the center of his forehead. But I could still see his eyes, so alive, so . . . real. I answered him, “I don’t know.” I squeezed the trigger, and the impact knocked him backward. He fell on his side, and I moved up on him, gun still held two-handed, because whether he was dead or whether he wasn’t, I wasn’t done.

  He had a smallish hole in the middle of his forehead above his surprised eyes. I fired into his forehead until the top of his head exploded in brains and bone. Decapitation was nice, but spilling the brains all over the grass works, too. I switched my aim to his chest, and fired until my gun emptied. Then I got a second clip from my belt, reloaded and fired into his chest until I could see light through his body. Legally I could not carry my vamp executioner kit in the car unless I had a current warrant. I’d left home without a warrant, so my sawed-off shotgun was at home with my stakes and machete. Handguns will do the job, but it takes longer, and it wastes a hell of a lot of ammo.