“What?” Dolph said.
“The history books call it the Day of Cleansing. The vampires call it the Inferno. Two hundred years ago the Church joined forces with the military in Germany, England, oh, hell, almost every European country except France—and burned out every vampire or suspected vampire sympathizer in a single day. The destruction was complete and a lot of innocent people went up in the flames. But the fire accomplished their goal, a lot fewer vampires in Europe.”
“Why didn’t France join with everyone?”
“Some historians think the King of France had a vampire mistress. The French Revolutionaries put out propaganda that the nobility were all vampires at one point, which wasn’t true of course. Some say that’s why the guillotine was so popular. It kills both the living and the undead.”
Somewhere during the mini-lecture I realized that I could ask Jean-Claude. If he missed the French Revolution, it wasn’t by much. For all I knew, he’d fled the Revolution by coming to this country. Why hadn’t I thought to ask? Because it still freaked me out that the man I was sleeping with was nearly three hundred years older than I was. Talk about a generation gap. So sue me if I tried to be as normal in some areas as possible. Asking my lover about events that happened when George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were still alive was definitely not normal.
“Anita, are you all right?”
“Sorry, Dolph, I was…thinking.”
“Do I want to know about what?”
“Probably not,” I said.
He let it go. Not more than a handful of months ago Dolph would have pushed until he thought I’d told him everything about everything. But if we were going to stay co-workers, let alone friends, some things were best left unsaid. Our relationship couldn’t survive full disclosure. It never had, but I don’t think Dolph understood that until recently.
“Day of Cleansing, okay.”
“If you talk to any vampires, don’t call it that. Call it the Inferno. The other phrase is like calling the Jewish Holocaust a racial cleansing.”
“You’ve made your point,” he said. “Remember while you’re out there doing police work that you’re still on someone’s hit parade.”
“Gee, Dolph, you do love me.”
“Don’t push it,” he said.
“Watch your own back, Dolph. Anything happens to you, Zerbrowski’s in charge.”
Dolph’s deep laughter was the last thing I heard before the phone clicked dead. I don’t think in the nearly five years I’d known Dolph that he’d ever said goodbye on the phone.
The phone rang as soon as I put it down. It was Pete McKinnon. “Hi, Pete. Just got off the phone with Dolph. He told me you wanted me down at the main branch of the Church.”
“He tell you why?”
“Something about Malcolm.”
“We’ve got nearly every human member of his Church screaming for us to make sure their big cheese didn’t get toasted. But we opened the floor up to check on some vamps on the west side and they weren’t in coffins. Two of them went up in smoke. If we let Malcolm get cooked, trying to save him…Let’s just say I don’t want to do the paper work.”
“What do you want me to do?” I seemed to be asking that a lot lately.
“We need to know if it’s safe to leave him alone until he can rise on his own, or if we need to figure out how to rescue him. Vampires can’t drown, can they?”
I thought the last was a strange question. “Except for holy water, vamps don’t have any problem with water.”
“Even running water?” he asked.
“You’ve been doing your homework. I’m impressed,” I said.
“I’m big into self-improvement. What about running water?”
“To my knowledge, water isn’t a deterrent, running or otherwise. Why do you ask?”
“You’ve never been to a building after a fire, have you?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“Unless the basement is airtight, it’ll be full of water. A lot of water.”
Could vampires drown? It was a good question. I wasn’t sure. Maybe they could, and that was why some of the folklore talked about running water. Or maybe it was like saying that vampires could shapechange, not true at all. “They don’t always breathe, so I don’t think they’d drown. I mean, if a vampire woke with his coffin underwater, I think they could just not breathe and get out of the water. But, truthfully, I’m not a hundred percent sure.”
“Can you tell if he’s okay without going down there?”
“Truth is, I’m not sure. I’ve never tried anything like that.”
“Will you try?”
I nodded, realized he couldn’t see it, and said, “Sure, but you’re second on my list, not first.”
“All right, but hurry. The media is all over this thing. Between them and the Church members, we are not having a good time.”
“Ask them if Malcolm is the only vamp down there. Ask them if the basement is steel-reinforced.”
“Why would it be?”
“A lot of the basements where vamps sleep have concrete ceilings reinforced with steel beams. The church’s basement doesn’t have any windows, so it could mean that the lower area was specially designed with vamps in mind. I think you’d need to know that even if you decide to open the floor up.”
“We do.”
“Take some of the bitching faithful aside and ask them questions. You need to know the answers either way, and it’ll at least give them the illusion that something’s happening until I can get there.”
“That is the best idea I’ve heard in two hours.”
“Thanks. I’ll be there as soon as I can, promise.” I had a thought. “Wait, Pete. Does Malcolm have a human servant?”
“A lot of the people here have vampire bites.”
“No,” I said. “I mean a true human servant.”
“I thought that was just a human with one or two vampire bites.”
“So did I once,” I said. “A human with just a couple of bites is what the vamps call a Renfield, as in the character from the novel Dracula.” I’d asked Jean-Claude what they called them before the book came out. He’d said, “slaves.” Ask a silly question.
“What’s a human servant, then?” Pete asked. It reminded me of Dolph.
“A human who’s bound to the vampire by something called marks. It’s sort of mystical and magical shit, but it gives the servant and the vamp a tie that we could use to see if Malcolm is okay.”
“Can any vampire have a servant?”
“No, only a master vampire, and not even all of them. I’ve never heard of Malcolm having one, but he could if he wanted to. Ask the faithful, though I think if he had one, the servant would be yelling louder than the rest. It’s still worth a shot. If you solve it before I get there, call. Dolph says there’s plenty of other shit to go around.”
“He’s not kidding. The city is going nuts. So far we’ve managed to contain the fires to just a few buildings, but if the crazies keep this up, it’s going to get out of hand. There’s no telling how much of the city could go up.”
“We need to know who’s behind this,” I said.
“Yes, we do,” Pete said. “Get here as soon as you can.” He sounded so sure I could help. I wished I was as certain. I wasn’t sure I could do shit in broad daylight. I’d been told once that the only reason I couldn’t raise the dead at high noon was that I thought I couldn’t. I was about to put it to the test. I still didn’t think I could do it. Doubt is the greatest enemy of any magic or psychic ability. Self-doubt is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Great. I won’t lie. I’m relieved that somebody with vampire experience is going to be on-site. The cops are starting to get some training on how to handle the preternatural, but no one trains firemen for this kind of shit.”
It had never occurred to me that firemen have to deal with the monsters almost as much as the police. They don’t hunt them down, but they enter t
heir houses. That can be just as dangerous, depending on if the monster in question realizes you’re there to help or not.
“I’ll be there, Pete.”
“We’ll be waiting. See ya.”
“Bye, Pete.”
We hung up. I went for my shoulder holster and a different shirt. The shoulder holster would chafe with just a tank top on.
35
I CHANGED INTO a navy polo shirt and didn’t run into Richard. The water had stopped running, but he hadn’t come out. I did not want to see him again, especially not half naked. I wanted away from him. Lucky for me the shit had hit the fan, professionally speaking. Police work, lots of it, maybe enough to keep me out of the house all day. Fine with me. The ambulance arrived, and Zane was loaded in. Cherry went with him. I felt guilty not going with him, but she could do more good than I could. The police had still not shown up for the corpse. I hated leaving the others to talk to the cops without me, but I had to go. The fact that I was relieved to go caused me a few moments of guilt, but not much.
Ronnie had gone back to sitting on the couch. She asked just before I walked out the door, “Am I going to jail tonight?”
I knelt in front of her, taking her strangely cold hands in mine. “Ronnie, you didn’t kill him.”
“I shot the top of his head off. What kind of ammo do you have in that gun of yours anyway?”
“I shot him twice in the chest. There isn’t enough left of his heart to scrape up with a spoon,” I said.
She closed her eyes. “His brains are leaking out all over the porch. Don’t tell me that wouldn’t have killed him all by itself.”
I sighed and patted her hands. “Please, Ronnie, you did what you had to do. Maybe it will take a medical examiner to decide which bullet did him in, but when the cops get here, make sure you don’t take credit.”
“I’ve been here before, Anita, remember. I know what to say and what not to say.” She looked at me and it wasn’t an entirely friendly look.
I released her hands and stood. “I’m sorry, Ronnie.”
“I’ve only shot two people and both times I was with you.”
“Both times you did it to save my life,” I said.
She looked up at me with bleak eyes. “I know.”
I touched her face and wanted to pat her on the head or something, comfort her the way you’d comfort a child, but she wasn’t a child. “I am sorry this happened, Ronnie. Truly, but what else could you have done?”
“Nothing,” she said, “and that makes me wonder if I’m in the right business.”
Something inside of me tightened. “Don’t you mean, wondering if you have the right friends? This didn’t happen because of your business. It happened because of mine.”
She gripped my hand tight. “Best friends, Anita, forever.”
“Thanks, Ronnie, more than you’ll ever know. I don’t think I’d ever get over losing you as a friend, but don’t decide to stay with me because of loyalty. Think about it, Ronnie, really think about it. My life doesn’t seem to be getting any safer. If anything, it’s getting more dangerous. You might want to think about whether you want to be in the line of fire.” Just making the offer made my eyes burn. I squeezed her hand and turned away before she could see that the scourge of vampirekind was tearing up.
She didn’t call me back and profess undying friendship. I’d half wanted her to, but the other half was glad she was really thinking about it. If Ronnie got herself killed because of me, I just might pull the guilt down over my ears and crawl into a hole. I caught Richard watching me from the doorway below the stairs. Maybe he and I could share a hole together. That’d be punishment enough.
“What’s happened now?” he asked. He’d dried his hair into a shining mass of waves that slid over the top of his shoulders as he moved into the room. He’d put his jeans back on and found a shirt that fit him. It was a large T-shirt with a caricature of Arthur Conan Doyle on it. I used it for sleeping. It was a little snug on Richard through the shoulders and chest. Not small, mind you, just tight. On me the shirt hung nearly to my knees.
“See you found the blow-dryer and the T-shirt drawer. Help yourself,” I said.
“Answer my question,” he said.
“Ask Jamil. He’s got all the details.”
“I asked you,” Richard said.
“I don’t have time to stand here and tell it twice. I’ve got to go to work.”
“Police or vampire?”
“You used to ask that because you worried more if I was out on a vampire execution. You were always relieved if it was just police work. Why the hell do you want to know now, Richard? What do you care?” I walked out without waiting for an answer.
I had to step over the dead man on my porch. I hoped the cops got there soon. It was a typical July day in St. Louis—hot and claustophobically humid. The body would start to smell if it didn’t get carried away soon. Just another of the many joys of summer.
My Jeep was in the garage, where it should have been. I’d let Jean-Claude use it to ferry everyone here. Though he hadn’t driven. I’d never met an older vamp that drove. The older ones tended to be a bit technophobic. I was actually backing out of the garage when I saw Richard in the rearview mirror. He looked angry. I thought very seriously about just continuing out. He’d move. But just in case he’d be stupid enough not to, I waited for him to come up to the driver’s-side window.
I pressed the button and the window whirred down like it was supposed to. “What?” I asked. I let that one word be as hostile as his eyes.
“Three of my pack in danger. Three of my people may be under arrest, and you didn’t tell me.”
“I’m taking care of it, Richard.”
“It’s my job to take care of my wolves.”
“You want to go down there in person and announce that you’re their Ulfric? You can’t even go down there and be their friend because that might jeopardize your precious secret.”
He gripped the edge of the window hard enough for his fingers to grow pale. “Most pack leaders have secret identities, Anita. You know that.”
“Raina was your public alpha, Richard. She would have gone down to the hospital for them. But she’s dead. You can’t go. Who’s left?”
Something popped in the door.
“I will be pissed if you break my car,” I said.
He moved his hands slowly as if he needed something to hold just to keep his hands busy. “Don’t get too comfortable as lupa, Anita. I am going to replace you.”
We stared at each other from less than a foot away. Once he’d have come out to the car for one last goodbye kiss. Now it was one last fight.
“Fine, but until you find someone else, I’m all you’ve got. Now I’ve got to go and see if I can keep our wolves out of jail.”
“They wouldn’t be in police custody if you hadn’t put them in harm’s way.”
He had me there. “If I hadn’t put guards on Stephen and Nathaniel, they’d be dead right now.” I shook my head and started easing the Jeep back. Richard stepped out of the way so I could do it without risking his toes.
He stood there and watched me drive away. If he’d asked, I would have found him a shirt, but it wouldn’t have been that one. One, it was a favorite; two, it reminded me of a particular weekend. There’d been a Sherlock Holmes movie marathon, starring Basil Rathbone. Not my favorite, mainly because they make Dr. Watson out to be a buffoon, but still good. I wore the shirt that weekend even though it was too big to wear outside the house. The fashion police didn’t get me, but Richard loved the shirt. Had he just grabbed a shirt and not even remembered? Or had he worn it to remind me of what I’d given up? I think I preferred it as a vindictive gesture. If he could wear the shirt and not remember that weekend, I didn’t want to know. We’d managed to spill popcorn all over me and the couch. Richard wouldn’t let me get up and dust myself off. He’d insisted on cleaning me up himself. Cleaning up seemed to involve no hands at all and a lot of mouth. If the memory meant nothing to
him, then maybe we’d never been in love. Maybe it had all been lust and I just confused the two. God, I hoped not.
36
ANOTHER CRIME SCENE, another show. At least, the body had been removed. That was an improvement from my house. I’d left three werewolves behind to guard Stephen and Nathaniel. Two of those werewolves were in the hallway. Lorraine was still dressed like the ideal second-grade school teacher except for the handcuffs, which didn’t seem to match the outfit. She was sitting in one of those straight-backed chairs that all hospitals seem to have. This one was in a horrid orange color which matched none of the soft pastel walls. She was sobbing with her hands covering her face. Her wrists looked small in the handcuffs. Teddy knelt beside her like a small weightlifting mountain, patting her thin back.
There was a uniformed cop on either side of them, at attention. One of the uniforms had his hand sort of casually resting on the butt of his gun. The strap that held the gun in the holster was already unsnapped. It pissed me off.
I walked up to the cop in question, way too close, invading the hell out of his personal space. “Better snap up the weapon there, Officer, before someone takes it away from you.”
He blinked pale eyes at me. “Ma’am?”
“Use your holster the way it’s meant to be used or get away from these people.”
“What’s the problem here, Murdock?” A tall, lanky man with a headful of dark curls walked towards us. His suit hung so loose on his thin body that it looked borrowed. His face was taken up by a huge pair of blue eyes. Except for the height, he looked like a twelve-year-old who had borrowed his daddy’s clothes.
“I don’t know, sir,” Murdock said, eyes front. I was betting that he’d been in the military or wanted to be. He just had that taste to him of a wannabe.
The tall man turned to me. “What seems to be the problem, Detective…?” He left a long blank space for me to put a name in.
“Blake, Anita Blake. I’m with the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team.”
He held out a large-knuckled hand to me. He pumped my hand a little too vigorously but he didn’t squeeze hard. He wasn’t trying to test me, just glad to see me. His touch made my skin tingle. He was psychic. A first among the police I’d met, except for a witch they’d hired on purpose.
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10 Page 69
