Circus of the Damned abvh-3

by Laurell Hamilton

  I jumped. Nearly swallowing the flashlight. Nervous, me? The woman’s flesh was soft. It hadn’t been a moment ago. The woman’s lips were halfparted. Hadn’t they been closed before?

  This was crazy. Even if she had been a vampire, she wouldn’t rise until the third night after death. And she’d died from multiple vampire bites in one massive blood feast. She was dead, just dead.

  Her skin shimmered white in the darkness. The sky was black; if the moon was up in those black-purple clouds, I couldn’t see it. Yet her skin shimmered as if touched by moonlight. She wasn’t exactly glowing, but it was close. Her hair glimmered like spider silk spread over the grass. She’d just been dead a minute ago; now she was… beautiful.

  Dolph loomed over me. At six-nine he loomed even when I was standing up; with me kneeling he was gigantic. I stood up, peeled off one surgical glove, and took the penlight out of my mouth. Never touch anything you’re likely to put in your mouth after touching the open wounds of a stranger. AIDS, you know. I shoved the penlight into the breast pocket of the coveralls. I took off the other glove and crumpled them both into a side pocket.

  “Well?” Dolph said.

  “Does she look different to you?” I asked.

  He frowned. “What?”

  “The corpse; does it look different to you?”

  He stared down at the pale body. “Now that you mention it. It looks like she’s asleep.” He shook his head. “We’re going to have to call an ambulance and have a doctor pronounce her dead.”

  “She’s not breathing.”

  “Would you want the fact that you weren’t breathing to be the only criterion?”

  I thought about that for a minute. “No, I guess not.”

  Dolph leafed through his notebook. “You said a person who dies of multiple vampire bites can’t rise from the dead as a vampire.” He was reading my own words back at me. I was hoist on my petard.

  “That’s true in most cases.”

  He stared down at the woman. “But not in this one.”

  “Unfortunately no,” I said.

  “Explain this, Anita.” He didn’t sound happy. I didn’t blame him.

  “Sometimes even one bite can make a corpse rise as a vampire. I’ve only read a couple of articles about it. A very powerful master vamp can sometimes contaminate every corpse it touches.”

  “Where’d you read the articles?”

  “The Vampire Quarterly.”

  “Never heard of it,” he said.

  I shrugged. “I have a degree in preternatural biology; I must be on someone’s list for stuff like that.” A thought came to me that wasn’t pleasant at all. “Dolph.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The man, the first corpse, this is its third night.”

  “It didn’t glow in the dark,” Dolph said.

  “The woman’s corpse didn’t look bad until full dark.”

  “You think the man’s going to rise?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Wait a minute. He can still tell us who killed him.”

  “He won’t come back as a normal vamp,” I said. “He died of multiple wounds, Dolph; he’ll come back as more animal than human.”

  “Explain that.”

  “If they took the body to St. Louis City Hospital, then it’s safe behind reinforced steel, but if they listened to me, then it’s at the regular morgue. Call the morgue and tell them to evacuate the building.”

  “You’re serious,” he said.

  “Absolutely.”

  He didn’t even argue with me. I was his preternatural expert, and what I said was pretty much gospel until proven otherwise. Dolph didn’t ask for your opinion unless he was prepared to act upon it. He was a good boss.

  He slipped into his car, nearest to the murder scene of course, and called the morgue.

  He leaned out the open car door. “The body was sent to St. Louis City Hospital, routine for all vampire victims. Even ones our preternatural expert tells us are safe.” He smiled at me when he said it.

  “Call St. Louis City and make sure they’ve got the body in the vault room.”

  “Why would they transport the body to the vampire morgue and not put the body in the vault room?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. But I’ll feel better after you call them.”

  He took a deep breath and let it go. “Okay.” He got back on the phone and dialed the number from memory. Shows what kind of year Dolph’s been having.

  I stood at the open car door and listened. There wasn’t much to hear. No one answered.

  Dolph sat there listening to the distant ring of the phone. He stared up at me. His eyes asked the question.

  “Somebody should be there,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “The man will rise like a beast,” I said. “It’ll slaughter everything in its path unless the master that made it comes back to pick it up, or until it’s really dead. They’re called animalistic vampires. There’s no colloquial term for them. They’re too rare for that.”

  Dolph hung up the phone and surged out of the car, yelling, “Zerbrowski!”

  “Here, Sarge.” Zerbrowski came at a trot. When Dolph yelled, you came running, or else. “How’s it going, Blake?”

  What was I supposed to say, terrible? I shrugged and said, “Fine.”

  My beeper went off again. “Dammit, Bert!”

  “Talk to your boss,” Dolph said. “Tell him to leave you the fuck alone.”

  Sounded good to me.

  Dolph went off yelling orders. The men scrambled to obey. I slid into Dolph’s car and called Bert.

  He answered on the first ring; not a good sign. “This better be you, Anita.”

  “And if it’s not?” I said.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “Murder scene with a fresh body,” I said.

  That stopped him for a second. “You’re missing your first appointment.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But I’m not going to yell.”

  “You’re being reasonable,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing except that the newest member of Animators, Inc., is taking your first two appointments. His name is Lawrence Kirkland. Just meet him at the third appointment, and you can take the last three appointments and show him the ropes.”

  “You hired someone? How’d you find someone so fast? Animators are pretty rare. Especially one who could do two zombies in one night.”

  “It’s my job to find talent.”

  Dolph slid into the car, and I slid into the passenger seat.

  “Tell your boss you’ve got to go.”

  “I’ve got to go, Bert.”

  “Wait, you have an emergency vampire staking at St. Louis City Hospital.”

  My stomach clenched up. “What name?”

  He paused, reading the name, “Calvin Rupert.”

  “Shit.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “When did the call come in?”

  “Around three this afternoon, why?”

  “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “What’s wrong, Anita?” Bert asked.

  “Why was it marked urgent?” Zerbrowski slipped into the back of the unmarked car. Dolph put the car in gear and hit the sirens and lights. A marked car fell into line behind us, lights strobing into the dark. Lights and sirens, wowee.

  “Rupert had one of those dying wills,” Bert said. “If he even had one vampire bite, he wanted to be staked.”

  That was consistent with someone who was a member of HAV. Hell, I had it in my will. “Do we have a court order of execution?”

  “You only need that after the guy rises as a vampire. We’ve got permission from the next of kin; just go stake him.”

  I grabbed the dashboard as we bounced over the narrow road. Gravel pinged against the underside of the car. I cradled the phone receiver between shoulder and chi
n and slipped into a seat belt.

  “I’m on my way to the morgue now,” I said.

  “I sent John ahead when I couldn’t get you,” Bert said.

  “How long ago?”

  “I called him after you didn’t answer your beeper.”

  “Call him back, tell him not to go.”

  There must have been something in my voice, because he said, “What’s wrong, Anita?”

  “We can’t get any answer at the morgue, Bert.”

  “So?”

  “The vampire may have already risen and killed everybody, and John’s walking right into it.”

  “I’ll call him,” Bert said. The connection broke, and I shoved the receiver down as we spilled out onto New Highway 21.

  “We can kill the vampire when we get there,” I said.

  “That’s murder,” Dolph said.

  I shook my head. “Not if Calvin Rupert had a dying will.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yeah.”

  Zerbrowski slammed his fist into the back of the seat. “Then we’ll pop the son of a bitch.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Dolph just nodded.

  Zerbrowski was grinning. He had a shotgun in his hands.

  “Does that thing have silver shot in it?” I asked.

  Zerbrowski glanced at the gun. “No.”

  “Please, tell me I’m not the only one in this car with silver bullets.”

  Zerbrowski grinned. Dolph said, “Silver’s more expensive than gold. City doesn’t have that kind of money.”

  I knew that, but I was hoping I was wrong. “What do you do when you’re up against vampires and lycanthropes?”

  Zerbrowski leaned over the back seat. “Same thing we do when we’re up against a gang with Uzi pistols.”

  “Which is?” I said.

  “Be outgunned,” he said. He didn’t look happy about it. I wasn’t too happy about it, either. I was hoping that the morgue attendants had just run, gotten out, but I wasn’t counting on it.

  Chapter 15

  My vampire kit included a sawed-off shotgun with silver shot, stakes, mallet, and enough crosses and holy water to drown a vampire. Unfortunately, my vampire kit was sitting in my bedroom closet. I used to carry it in the trunk, minus the sawed-off shotgun, which has always been illegal. If I was caught carrying the vampire kit without a court order of execution on me, it was an automatic jail term. The new law had kicked in only weeks before. It was to keep certain overzealous executioners from killing someone and saying, “Gee, sorry.” I, by the way, am not one of the overzealous. Honest.

  Dolph had cut the sirens about a mile from the hospital. We cruised into the parking lot dark and quiet. The marked car behind us had followed our lead. There was already one marked car waiting for us. The two officers were crouched beside the car, guns in hand.

  We all spilled out of the dark cars, guns out. I felt like I’d been shanghaied into a Clint Eastwood movie. I couldn’t see John Burke’s car. Which meant John checked his beeper more than I did. If the vampire was safely behind metal walls, I promised to answer all beeper messages immediately. Please, just don’t let me have cost lives. Amen.

  One of the uniforms who had been waiting for us duck-walked to Dolph and said, “Nothing’s moved since we got here, Sergeant.”

  Dolph nodded. “Good. Special forces will be here when they can get to it. We’re on the list.”

  “What do you mean, we’re on the list?” I asked.

  Dolph looked at me. “Special forces has the silver bullets, and they’ll get here as soon as they can.”

  “We’re going to wait for them?” I said.

  “No.”

  “Sergeant, we are supposed to wait for special forces when going into a preternatural situation,” the uniform said.

  “Not if you’re the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team,” he said.

  “You should have silver bullets,” I said.

  “I’ve got a requisition in,” Dolph said.

  “A requisition, that’s real helpful.”

  “You’re a civvie. You get to wait outside. So don’t bitch,” he said.

  “I’m also the legal vampire executioner for the State of Missouri. If I’d answered my beeper instead of ignoring it to irritate Bert, the vampire would be staked already, and we wouldn’t be doing this. You can’t leave me out of it. It’s more my job than it is yours.”

  Dolph stared at me for a minute or two, then nodded very slowly.

  “You should have kept your mouth shut,” Zerbrowski said. “And you’d get to wait in the car.”

  “I don’t want to wait in the car.”

  He just looked at me. “I do.”

  Dolph started walking towards the doors. Zerbrowski followed. I brought up the rear. I was the police’s preternatural expert. If things went badly tonight, I’d earn my retainer.

  All vampire victims were brought to the basement of the old St. Louis City Hospital, even those who die in a different county. There just aren’t that many morgues equipped to handle freshly risen vampires. They’ve got a special vault room with a steel reinforced everything and crosses laid on the outside of the door. There’s even a feeding tank to take the edge off that first blood lust. Rats, rabbits, guinea pigs. Just a snack to calm the newly risen.

  Under normal circumstances the man’s body would have been in the vampire room, and there would have been no problem, but I had promised them that he was safe. I was their expert, the one they called to stake the dead. If I said a body was safe, they believed me. And I’d been wrong. God help me, I’d been wrong.

  Chapter 16

  St. Louis City Hospital sat like a stubby brick giant in the middle of a combat zone. Walk a few blocks south and you could see Tony Award-winning musicals straight from Broadway. But here we could have been on the dark side of the moon. If the moon had slums.

  Broken windows decorated the ground like shattered teeth.

  The hospital, like a lot of inner-city hospitals, had lost money, so they had closed it down. But the morgue stayed open because they couldn’t afford to move the vampire room.

  The room had been designed in the early 1900s when people still thought they could find a cure for vampirism. Lock a vampire in the vault, watch it rise and try to “cure” it. A lot of vamps cooperated because they wanted to be cured. Dr. Henry Mulligan had pioneered the search for a cure. The program was discontinued when one of the patients ate Dr. Mulligan’s face.

  So much for helping the poor misunderstood vampire.

  But the vault room was still used for most vampire victims. Mostly as a precaution, because these days when a vamp rose there was a vampire counsellor waiting to guide the newly risen to civilized vampirehood.

  I had forgotten about the vampire counsellor. It was a pioneer program that’d only been in effect a little over a month. Would an older vampire be able to control an animalistic vampire, or would it take a master vampire to control it? I didn’t know. I just didn’t know.

  Dolph had his gun out and ready. Without silver-plated bullets, it was better than spitting at the monster, but barely. Zerbrowski held the shotgun like he knew how to use it. There were four uniformed officers at my back. All with guns, all ready to blast undead ass. So why wasn’t I comforted? Because nobody else had any freaking silver bullets, except me.

  The double glass doors swooshed open automatically. Seven guns were trained on the door as it moved. My fingers were all cramped up trying not to shoot the damn door.

  One of the uniforms swallowed a laugh. Nervous, who us?

  “All right,” Dolph said, “there are civilians in here. Don’t shoot any of them.”

  One of the uniforms was blond. His partner was black and much older. The other two uniforms were in their twenties: one skinny and tall with a prominent Adam’s apple, the other short with pale skin and eyes nearly glassy with fear.

  Each policeman had a cross-shaped tie tack. They were the latest style and standard issue for the St. Loui
s police. The crosses would help, maybe even keep them alive.

  I hadn’t had time to get my crucifix’s chain replaced. I was wearing a charm bracelet that dangled with tiny crosses. I was also wearing an anklet chain, not just because it matched the bracelet, but if anything unusual happened tonight, I wanted to have a backup.

  It’s sort of a tossup which I’d least like to live without, cross or gun. Better to have both.

  “You got any suggestions about how we should do this, Anita?” Dolph asked.

  It wasn’t too long ago that the police wouldn’t have been called in at all. The good ol’ days when vampires were left to a handful of dedicated experts. Back when you could just stake a vamp and be done with it. I had been one of the few, the proud, the brave, the Executioner.

  “We could form a circle, guns pointing out. It would up our chances of not getting snuck up on.”

  The blond cop said, “Won’t we hear it coming?”

  “The undead make no noise,” I said.

  His eyes widened.

  “I’m kidding, officer,” I said.

  “Hey,” he said softly. He sounded offended. I guess I didn’t blame him.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Dolph frowned at me.

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Don’t tease the rookies,” Zerbrowski said. “I bet this is his first vampire.”

  The black cop made a sound between a laugh and a snort. “His first day, period.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “Can he wait out in the car?”

  “I can handle myself,” the blond said.

  “It’s not that,” I said, “but isn’t there some kind of union rule against vampires on the first day?”

  “I can take it,” he said.

  I shook my head. His first fucking day. He should have been out directing traffic somewhere, not playing tag with the walking dead.

  “I’ll take point,” Dolph said. “Anita to my right.” He pointed two fingers at the black cop and the blond. “You two on my left.” He pointed at the last two uniforms. “Behind Ms. Blake. Zerbrowski, take the back.”