“It never occurred to me not to shoot, Edward. I didn’t even hesitate.”
Edward took a deep breath through his nose and let it out through his mouth. “I knew that’s what had happened. If you’d lied to me, I’d have killed you.” He walked away to stand at the foot of the bed.
“While I’m unarmed?” I tried to make light of it, but it didn’t work.
“Check your pillow.”
I slid my hand under and came up with the Firestar. I held it in my lap, laying it on my sheet-covered legs. “What now?”
“You owe me a life.”
I looked up at that. “I saved your life last night.”
“Our lives don’t count, we’d back each other up, no matter what.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about then.”
“Occasionally I’ll need help, like Harley. Next time I need help, I’ll call you.”
I wanted to argue because I wasn’t entirely sure what mess Edward would drag me into, but I didn’t. Looking into his empty eyes, holding the gun he’d put under my pillow, I knew he’d do it. If I refused his bargain, his trade as it were, he’d pull down on me, and we’d find out once and for all who was better.
I stared down at the gun in my hands. “I’ve already got the gun out; all I have to do is point.”
“You’re injured. You need the edge.” His hand hovered near the butt of his gun.
I laid the gun on the sheets beside me, and looked at him. I lay back on the pillows. “I don’t want to do this, Edward.”
“Then, when I call, you’ll come?”
I thought about it for another brief second, then said, “Yeah, I’ll come.”
He smiled, his Ted (good ol’ boy) Forrester smile. “I’ll never find out how good you really are until you draw down on me.”
“We can live with that,” I said. “By the way, why the invitation to come monster hunting now? And don’t tell me it’s about Harley.”
“You killed him, Anita. You killed him without thinking about it. Even now, there’s no regret in you, no doubt.”
He was right. I didn’t feel bad about it. Scary, but true. “So you invited me to come play because I’m now as much of a sociopath as you are.”
“Oh, I’m a much better sociopath,” he said. “I’d never let a vampire sink his fangs into my neck. And I wouldn’t date the terminally furry.”
“Do you date anyone, ever?”
He just smiled that irritating smile that meant he wasn’t going to answer. But he did. “Even Death has needs.”
Edward dating? That was something I had to see.
46
* * *
I GOT out of the hospital with no permanent scars. That was a switch. Richard had touched the wounds Gabriel gave me, his face very serious. No one had to say it out loud. In a month, we’d know. The doctors offered to put me in one of the shapeshifter halfway houses (read prisons) for the first-time furry. It has to be voluntary, but once you sign yourself in, it’s almost impossible to sign yourself out. I told them I’d take care of it myself. They scolded me, and I told them to go to hell.
I spent the night of my first full moon with Richard and the pack, waiting to see if I was going to join the killing dance. I didn’t. Either I’d gotten incredibly lucky or just as a vampire can’t catch lycanthropy, neither could I. Richard wouldn’t have much to do with me after that. I can’t blame him.
I still love him. I think he still loves me. I love Jean-Claude, too. But it’s not the same kind of love. I can’t explain it, but I miss Richard. For brief moments in Jean-Claude’s arms, I forget. But I miss Richard.
The fact that we are both bound to Jean-Claude doesn’t help. Richard has accidentally invaded my dreams twice. Having him that close to me is too painful for words. Richard fought it, but he finally agreed to let Jean-Claude teach him enough control so that he doesn’t leak all over both of us. He talks to Jean-Claude more than he talks to me.
The triumvirate is useless. Richard is too angry at me. Too full of self-loathing. I don’t know how he’s doing with the pack. He’s forbidden anyone to speak of pack business with me, but he hasn’t chosen a new alpha female.
Willie McCoy and the rest of the vampires I accidentally raised seem fine. Big relief there. Monica’s baby is due in August. Her amnio came back clean. No Vlad syndrome. She seems to think I’m her friend now. I’m not, but I help out sometimes. Jean-Claude is playing the good master and taking care of her and the baby. Monica keeps talking about me baby-sitting. I hope she’s kidding. Auntie Anita, she calls me. Gag me with a spoon. Funnier still, is Uncle Jean-Claude.
My dad saw me on television in Jean-Claude’s arms. He called and left a very worried message on my answering machine. My family are devout Catholics. There is no such thing as a good vampire to them.
Maybe they’re right. I don’t know. Can I still be the scourge of vampire kind when I’m sleeping with the head bloodsucker?
You bet.
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Copyright © 1998 by Laurell K. Hamilton
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For my grandmother, Laura Gentry,
who at 4' 11" taught me that you could be
small, female, and still be tough.
Acknowledgments
To my brother-in-law, Officer Shawn Holsapple, who should have been mentioned in these pages long ago.
Thanks for firefighter info to Paty Cockrum, who among her many talents is also a volunteer firefighter. To Bonnee Pierson, also a volunteer firefighter. To Florence Bradley, member of the Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service Department. She does this firefighting stuff for a living.
Thanks also to Dave Cockrum, who came up with the color for Asher’s eyes.
As always to my writing group, the Alternate Historians: Tom Drennan, N. L. Drew, Deborah Millitello, Rett MacPherson, Marella Sands, Sharon Shinn, and Mark Sumner. I would be lost without you guys.
Here’s the address for the newsletter: Laurell K. Hamilton Fan Club, P. O. Box 190306, St. Louis, MO 63119.
I look at ev
ery piece of mail personally, which explains the slow response time. I’ll be getting help soon, which should speed things up.
For those on the information superhighway, here’s my official web-site: www.laurellkhamilton.org.
I don’t read the computer messages. Someone else handles all the techie stuff.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Afterword
1
MOST PEOPLE DON’T stare at the scars. They’ll look, of course, then do the eye slide. You know, the quick look, then drop the gaze, then just have to have that second look. But they make it quick. The wounds aren’t like freak show bad, but they are interesting. Captain Pete McKinnon, firefighter and arson investigator, sat across from me, big hands wrapped around a glass of iced tea that our secretary, Mary, had brought in for him. He was staring at my arms. Not the place most men look. But it wasn’t sexual. He was staring at the scars and didn’t seem a bit embarrassed about it.
My right arm had been sliced open twice by a knife. One scar was white and old. The second was still pink and new. My left arm was worse. A mound of white scar tissue sat at the bend of my arm. I’d have to lift weights for the rest of my life or the scars would stiffen and I’d lose mobility in the arm, or so my physical therapist had said. There was a cross-shaped burn mark, a little crooked now because of the ragged claw marks that a shapeshifted witch had given me. There were one or two other scars hidden under my blouse, but the arm really is the worst.
Bert, my boss, had requested that I wear my suit jacket or long-sleeved blouses in the office. He said that some clients had expressed reservations about my ah…occupationally acquired wounds. I hadn’t worn a long-sleeved blouse since he made the request. He’d turned the air conditioner up a little colder every day. It was so cold today I had goose bumps. Everyone else was bringing sweaters to work. I was shopping for midriff tops to show off my back scars.
McKinnon had been recommended to me by Sergeant Rudolph Storr, cop and friend. They’d played football in college together, and been friends ever since. Dolph didn’t use the word “friend” lightly, so I knew they were close.
“What happened to your arm?” McKinnon asked finally.
“I’m a legal vampire executioner. Sometimes they get pesky.” I took a sip of coffee.
“Pesky,” he said and smiled.
He sat his glass on the desk and slipped off his suit jacket. He was nearly as wide through the shoulders as I was tall. He was a few inches short of Dolph’s six foot eight, but he didn’t miss it by much. He was only in his forties, but his hair was completely grey with a little white starting at the temples. It didn’t make him look distinguished. It made him look tired.
He had me beat on scars. Burn scars crawled up his arms from his hands to disappear under the short sleeves of his white dress shirt. The skin was mottled pinkish, white, and a strange shade of tan like the skin of some animal that should shed regularly.
“That must have hurt,” I said.
“It did.” He sat there meeting my eyes with a long steady look. “You saw the inside of a hospital on some of that.”
“Yeah.” I pushed the sleeve up on my left arm and showed the shiny place where a bullet had grazed me. His eyes widened just a bit. “Now that we’ve proven we’re big tough he-men, can you just cut to the chase? Why are you here, Captain McKinnon?”
He smiled and draped his jacket over the back of his chair. He took the tea off my desk and sipped it. “Dolph said you wouldn’t like being sized up.”
“I don’t like passing inspections.”
“How do you know you passed?”
It was my turn to smile. “Women’s intuition. Now, what do you want?”
“Do you know what the term firebug means?”
“An arsonist,” I said.
He looked expectantly at me.
“A pyrokinetic, someone who can call fire psychically.”
He nodded. “You ever seen a real pyro?”
“I saw films of Ophelia Ryan,” I said.
“The old black-and-white ones?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“She’s dead now, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Burned to death in her bed, spontaneous combustion. A lot of the firebugs go up that way, as if when they’re old they lose control of it. You ever see one of them in person?”
“Nope.”
“Where’d you see the films?”
“Two semesters of Psychic Studies. We had a lot of psychics come in and talk to us, demonstrate their abilities, but pyrokinetics is such a rare ability, I don’t think the prof could find one.”
He nodded and drained the rest of his tea in one long swallow. “I met Ophelia Ryan once before she died. Nice lady.” He started to turn the ice-filled glass round and round in his large hands. He stared at the glass and not at me while he talked. “I met one other firebug. He was young, in his twenties. He’d started by setting empty houses on fire, like a lot of pyromaniacs. Then he did buildings with people in them, but everybody got out. Then he did a tenement, a real firetrap. He set every exit on fire. Killed over sixty people, mostly women and children.”
McKinnon stared up at me. The look in his eyes was haunted. “It’s still the largest body count I’ve ever seen at a fire. He did an office building the same way, but missed a couple of exits. Twenty-three dead.”
“How’d you catch him?”
“He started writing to the papers and the television. He wanted credit for the deaths. He set fire to a couple of cops before we got him. We were wearing those big silver suits that they wear to oil rig fires. He couldn’t get them to burn. We took him down to the police station, and that was the mistake. He set it on fire.”
“Where else could you have taken him?” I asked.
He shrugged massive shoulders. “I don’t know, somewhere else. I was still in the suit, and I held on to him. Told him we’d burn up together if he didn’t stop it. He laughed and set himself on fire.” McKinnon sat his glass very carefully on the edge of the desk.
“The flames were this soft blue color almost like a gas fire, but paler. Didn’t burn him, but somehow it set my suit on fire. The damn thing is rated for something like 6,000 degrees, and it started to melt. Human skin burns at 120 degrees, but somehow I didn’t melt into a puddle, just the suit. I had to strip it off while he laughed. He walked out the door and he didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to grab him.”
I didn’t say the obvious. I let him talk.
“I tackled him in the hallway and slammed him into a wall a
couple of times. Funny thing, where my skin touched him, it didn’t burn. It was like the fire crawled over a space and started on my arms, so my hands are fine.”
I nodded. “There’s a theory that a pyro’s aura keeps them from burning. When you touched his skin, you were too close to his own aura, his own protection, to burn.”
He stared at me. “Maybe that is what happened, because I threw him hard up against the wall over and over. He was screaming, ‘I’ll burn you. I’ll burn you alive.’ Then the fire changed color to yellow, normal, and he started to burn. I let him go and went for the fire extinguisher. We couldn’t put the fire on his body out. The extinguishers worked on the walls, everything else, but it wouldn’t work on him. It was as if the fire was crawling out of his body from deep inside. We’d dampen some of the flames, but there was just more of it until he was made of fire.”
McKinnon’s eyes were distant and horror-filled as if he was still seeing it. “He didn’t die, Ms. Blake, not like he should have. He screamed for so long and we couldn’t help him. Couldn’t help him.” His voice trailed off. He just sat there staring at nothing.
I waited and finally said, gently, “Why are you here, Captain?”
He blinked and sort of shook himself. “I think we’ve got another firebug on our hands, Ms. Blake. Dolph said that if anyone could help us cut the loss of life, it was you.”
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 42
