Circus of the Damned abvh-3

by Laurell Hamilton

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  He shrugged, the leather creaked and slithered over his skin. Good leather always moved like it was still alive.

  “Do you watch TV?” he asked.

  “My television broke two years ago, and I never replaced it.”

  “You must do something for fun.”

  I thought about it. “I collect toy penguins.” The minute I said it, I wished I hadn’t.

  He grinned at me. “Now we’re getting somewhere. The Executioner collects stuffed toys. I like it.”

  “Glad to hear it.” My voice sounded grumpy even to me.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “I’m not very good at small talk,” I said.

  “You were doing fine.”

  No, I wasn’t, but I wasn’t sure how to explain it to him. I didn’t like talking about myself to strangers. Especially strangers with ties to Jean-Claude.

  “What do you want from me?” I said.

  “I’m just passing the time.”

  “No, you weren’t.” His shoulder-length hair had fallen around his face. He was taller, thicker, but the outline was familiar. He looked like Phillip in the shadowed dark. Phillip was the only other human being I’d ever seen with the monsters.

  Phillip sagged in the chains. Blood poured in a bright red flood down his chest. It splattered onto the floor, like rain. Torchlight glittered on the wet bone of his spine. Someone had ripped his throat out.

  I staggered against the wall as if someone had hit me. I couldn’t get enough air. Someone kept whispering, “Oh, God, oh, God,” over and over, and it was me. I walked down the steps with my back pressed against the wall. I couldn’t take my eyes from him. Couldn’t look away. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t cry.

  The torchlight reflected in his eyes, giving the illusion of movement. A scream built in my gut and spilled out my throat. “Phillip!”

  Something cold slithered up my spine. I was sitting in my car with the ghost of guilty conscience. It hadn’t been my fault that Phillip died. I certainly didn’t kill him, but… but I still felt guilty. Someone should have saved him, and since I was the last one with a chance to do it, it should have been me. Guilt is a many splendored thing.

  “What do you want from me, Richard?” I asked.

  “I don’t want anything,” he said.

  “Lies are ugly things, Richard.”

  “What makes you think I’m lying?”

  “Finely honed instinct,” I said.

  “Has it really been that long since a man tried to make polite small talk with you?”

  I started to look at him, and decided not to. It had been that long. “The last person who flirted with me was murdered. It makes a girl a little cautious.”

  He was quiet for a minute. “Fair enough, but I still want to know more about you.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?”

  He had me there. “How do I know Jean-Claude didn’t tell you to make friends?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  I shrugged.

  “Okay, let’s start over. Pretend we met at the health club.”

  “Health club?” I said.

  He smiled. “Health club. I thought you looked great in your swimsuit.”

  “Sweats,” I said.

  He nodded. “You looked cute in your sweats.”

  “I liked looking great better.”

  “If I get to imagine you in a swimsuit, you can look great; sweats only get cute.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “We made pleasant small talk and I asked you out.”

  I had to look at him. “Are you asking me out?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  I shook my head and turned back to the road. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “I told you.”

  “Just because one person got killed on you doesn’t mean everyone will.”

  I gripped the steering wheel tight enough to make my hands hurt. “I was eight when my mother died. My father remarried when I was ten.” I shook my head. “People go away and they don’t come back.”

  “Sounds scary.” His voice was soft and low.

  I didn’t know what had made me say that. I didn’t usually talk about my mother to strangers, or anybody else for that matter. “Scary,” I said softly. “You could say that.”

  “If you never let anyone get close to you, you don’t get hurt, is that it?”

  “There are also a lot of very jerky men in the twenty-one-to-thirty age group,” I said.

  He grinned. “I’ll give you that. Nice-looking, intelligent, independent women are not exactly plentiful either.”

  “Stop with the compliments, or you’ll have me blushing.”

  “You don’t strike me as someone who blushes easily.”

  A picture flashed in my mind. Richard Zeeman naked beside the bed, struggling into his sweat pants. It hadn’t embarrassed me at the time. It was only now, with him so warm and close in the car, that I thought about it. A warm flush crept up my face. I blushed in the dark, glad he couldn’t see. I didn’t want him to know I was thinking about what he looked like without his clothes on. I don’t usually do that. Of course, I don’t usually see a man buck naked before I’ve even gone out on a date. Come to think of it, I didn’t see men naked on dates either.

  “We’re in the health club, sipping fruit juice, and I ask you out.”

  I stared very hard at the road. I kept flashing on the smooth line of his thigh and lower things. It was embarrassing, but the harder I tried not to think about it, the clearer the picture seemed to get.

  “Movies and dinner?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “Something unique. Caving.”

  “You mean crawling around in a cave on a first date?”

  “Have you ever been caving?”

  “Once.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “We were sneaking up on bad guys at the time. I didn’t think much about enjoying it.”

  “Then you have to give it another chance. I go caving at least twice a month. You get to wear your oldest clothes and get really dirty, and no one tells you not to play in the mud.”

  “Mud?” I said.

  “Too messy for you?”

  “I was a bio-lab assistant in college; nothing’s too messy for me.”

  “At least you can say you get to use your degree in your work.”

  I laughed. “True.”

  “I use my degree, too, but I went in for educating the munchkins.”

  “Do you like teaching?”

  “Very much.” Those two words held a warmth and excitement that you didn’t hear much when people talked about their work.

  “I like my job, too.”

  “Even when it forces you to play with vampires and zombies?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “We’re sitting in the juice bar, and I’ve just asked you out. What do you say?”

  “I should say no.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You sound suspicious.”

  “Always,” I said.

  “Never taking a chance is the worst failure of all, Anita.”

  “Not dating is a choice, not a failure.” I was feeling a wee bit defensive.

  “Say you’ll go caving this weekend.” The leather coat crinkled and moved as he tried to move closer to me than the seat belt would allow. He could have reached out and touched me. Part of me wanted him to, which was sort of embarrassing all on its own.

  I started to say no, then realized I wanted to say yes. Which was silly. But I was enjoying sitting in the dark with the smell of leather and cologne. Call it chemistry, instant lust, whatever. I liked Richard. He flipped my switch. It had been a long time since I had liked anybody.

  Jean-Claude didn’t count. I wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t. Being dead might have something to do with that.

  “Alright, I’ll go caving
. When and where?”

  “Great. Meet in front of my house at, say, ten o’clock on Saturday.”

  “Ten in the morning?” I said.

  “Not a morning person?” he asked.

  “Not particularly.”

  “We have to start early, or we won’t get to the end of the cave in one day. “

  “What do I wear?”

  “Your oldest clothes. I’ll be dressed in coveralls over jeans.”

  “I’ve got coveralls.” I didn’t mention that I used my coveralls to keep blood off my clothes. Mud sounded a lot more friendly.

  “Great. I’ll bring the rest of the equipment you need.”

  “How much more equipment do I need?”

  “A hard hat, a light, maybe knee pads.”

  “Sounds like a boffo first date,” I said.

  “It will be,” he said. His voice was soft, low, and somehow more private than just sitting in my car. It wasn’t Jean-Claude’s magical voice, but then what was?

  “Turn right here,” he said, pointing to a side street. “Third house on the right.”

  I pulled into a short, blacktopped driveway. The house was half brick and some pale color. It was hard to tell in the dark. There were no streetlights to help you see. You forget how dark the night can be without electricity.

  Richard unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Do you need help getting him inside?” My hand was on the key as I asked.

  “No, I got it. Thanks, though.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  He stared at me. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  He smiled, a quick flash in the darkness. “Good.” He unlocked the back door behind him, and got out of the car. He leaned in and scooped Stephen up, holding the blanket close so it didn’t slide off. He lifted with his legs more than his back; weightlifting will teach you that. A human body is a lot harder to lift than even free weights. A body just isn’t balanced as well as a barbell.

  Richard shut the car door with his back. The back door clicked shut, and I unbuckled my seat belt so I could lock the doors. Through the still-open passenger side door Richard was watching me . Over the idling of the car’s engine his voice carried, “Locking out the boogeymen?”

  “You never know,” I said.

  He nodded. “Yeah.” There was something in that one word that was sad, wistful, innocence lost. It was nice to talk with another person who understood. Dolph and Zerbrowski understood the violence and the nearness of death, but they didn’t understand the monsters.

  I closed the door and scooted back behind the steering wheel. I buckled my seat belt and put the car in gear. The headlights sparkled over Richard, Stephen’s hair like a yellow splash in his arms. Richard was still staring at me. I left him in the dark in front of his house with the singing of autumn crickets the only sound.

  Chapter 10

  I pulled up in front of my apartment building at a little after 2:00 A.M. I’d planned to be in bed a long time before this. The new cross-shaped burn was a burning, acid-eating ache. It made my whole chest hurt. My ribs and stomach were sore, stiff. I turned on the dome light in the car and unzipped the leather jacket. In the yellow light bruises were blossoming across my skin. For a minute I couldn’t think how I’d gotten hurt; then I remembered the crushing weight of the snake crawling over me. Jesus. I was lucky it was bruises and not broken ribs.

  I clicked off the light and zipped the jacket back up. The shoulder straps were chafing on my bare skin, but the burn hurt so much more that the bruises and the chafing seemed pretty darn minor. A good burn will take your mind off everything else.

  The light that usually burned over the stairs was out. Not the first time. I’d have to call the office once it opened for the day and report it, though. If you didn’t report it, it didn’t get fixed.

  I was three steps up before I saw the man. He was sitting at the head of the stairs waiting for me. Short blond hair, pale in the darkness. His hands sat on the top of his knees, palms up to show that he didn’t have a weapon. Well, that he didn’t have a weapon in his hands. Edward always had a weapon unless someone had taken it away from him.

  Come to think of it, so did I.

  “Long time no see, Edward.”

  “Three months,” he said. “Long enough for my broken arm to heal completely.”

  I nodded. “I got my stitches out about two months ago.”

  He just sat on the steps looking down at me.

  “What do you want, Edward?”

  “Couldn’t it be a social call?” He was laughing at me, quietly.

  “It’s two o’clock in the freaking morning; it better not be a social call.”

  “Would you rather it was business?” His voice was soft, but it carried.

  I shook my head. “No, no.” I never wanted to be business for Edward. He specialized in killing lycanthropes, vampires, anything that used to be human and wasn’t anymore. He’d gotten bored with killing people. Too easy.

  “Is it business?” My voice was steady, no tremble. Good for me. I could draw the Browning, but if we ever drew down on each other for real, he’d kill me. Being friends with Edward was like being friends with a tame leopard. You could pet it and it seemed to like you, but you knew deep down that if it ever got hungry enough, or angry enough, it would kill you. Kill you and eat the flesh from your bones.

  “Just information tonight, Anita, no problems.”

  “What sort of information?” I asked.

  He smiled again. Friendly ol’ Edward. Ri-ight.

  “Can we go inside and talk about it? It’s freezing out here,” he said.

  “The last time you were in town you didn’t seem to need an invitation to break into my apartment.”

  “You’ve got a new lock.”

  I grinned. “You couldn’t pick it, could you?” I was genuinely pleased.

  He shrugged; maybe it was the darkness, but if it hadn’t been Edward, I’d have said he was embarrassed.

  “The locksmith told me it was burglarproof,” I said.

  “I didn’t bring my battering ram with me,” he said.

  “Come on up. I’ll fix coffee.” I stepped around him. He stood and followed me. I turned my back on him without worrying. Edward might shoot me someday, but he wouldn’t do it in the back after telling me he was just here to talk. Edward wasn’t honorable, but he had rules. If he planned to kill me, he’d have announced it. Told me how much people were paying him to off me. Watched the fear slide through my eyes.

  Yeah, Edward had rules. He just had fewer of them than most people did. But he never broke a rule, never betrayed his own skewed sense of honor. If he said I was safe for tonight, he meant it. It would have been nice if Jean-Claude had had rules.

  The hallway was middle-of-the-night, middle-of-the-week, had-to-get-up-in-the-morning quiet. My day living neighbors were all asnooze in their beds without care. I unlocked the new locks on my door and ushered Edward inside.

  “That’s a new look for you, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “What happened to your shirt?”

  “Oh.” Suave comebacks, that’s me. I didn’t know what to say, or rather, how much to say.

  “You’ve been playing with vampires again,” he said.

  “What makes you think so?” I asked.

  “The cross-shaped burn on your, ah, chest.”

  Oh, that. Fine. I unzipped the jacket and folded it over the back of the couch. I stood there in my bra and shoulder holster and met his eyes without blushing. Brownie point for me. I undid the belt and slipped out of the shoulder holster, then took it into the kitchen with me. I laid the gun still in its holster on the countertop and got coffee beans out of the freezer, wearing just my bra and jeans. In front of any other male, alive or dead, I would have been embarrassed, but not Edward. There had never been sexual tension between us. We might shoot each other one fine day, but we’d
never sleep together. He was more interested in the fresh burn than my breasts.

  “How’d it happen?” he asked.

  I ground the beans in the little electric spice mill I’d bought for the occasion. Just the smell of freshly ground coffee made me feel better. I put a filter in my Mr. Coffee, poured the coffee in, poured the water in, and pushed the button. This was about as fancy as my cooking skills got.

  “I’m going to get a shirt to throw on,” I said.

  “The burn won’t like anything touching it,” Edward said.

  “I won’t button it, then.”

  “Are you going to tell me how you got burned?”

  “Yes.” I took my gun and walked into the bedroom. In the back of my closet I had a long-sleeved shirt that had once been purple but had faded to a soft lilac. It was a man’s dress shirt and hung down nearly to my knees, but it was comfortable. I rolled the sleeves up to my elbows and buttoned it halfway up. I left it gapping over the burn. I glanced in the mirror and found that most of my cleavage was covered. Perfect.

  I hesitated but finally put the Browning Hi-Power in its holster behind the headboard. Edward and I weren’t fighting tonight, and anything that came through the door, with its new locks, would have to go through Edward first. I felt pretty safe.

  He was sitting on my couch, legs out in front of him crossed at the ankle. He’d sunk down until the top of his shoulders rested on the couch’s arm.

  “Make yourself at home,” I said.

  He just smiled. “Are you going to tell me about the vampires?”

  “Yes, but I’m having trouble deciding exactly how much to tell you.”

  The smile widened. “Naturally.”

  I set out two mugs, sugar, and real cream from the refrigerator. The coffee dripped into the little glass pot. The smell was rich, warm, and thick enough to wrap your arms around.

  “How do you like your coffee?”

  “Fix it the way you’d fix it for yourself.”

  I glanced back at him. “No preference?”

  He shook his head, still resting against the couch arm.

  “Okay.” I poured the coffee into the mugs, added three sugars and a lot of cream to each, stirred, and sat them on the two-seater breakfast table.

  “You’re not going to bring it to me?”