Dead Ice

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Now, the street out front was completely empty except for me. I knew that someone inside had seen me from the very top floor, because the guards kept watch over all entrances. There was even a sniper lookout, though we were short a sniper lately, because we'd lost one of our own. Ares had been a good guy, and for a werehyena he'd been excellent. We still had a few people who could use a sniper rifle, but no one as good as Ares. I wished I hadn't had to kill him.

  If the building had been less massive they could have had someone at the front doors to let me in by now, but I didn't have to wait forever and a day for someone to open the door anymore. I put my key in the lock and felt that satisfying click. I liked having a key. I stepped through and made sure the door locked behind me, though honestly a lot of our potential bad guys wouldn't have much trouble breaking the door down, or tearing a new one in the wall somewhere. We'd hear them, and we had enough guards with enough muscle and firepower to kill them dead before they got very far, but locked doors were more for the casual passerby who was curious to see the Circus during the daylight when all the vampires were in their coffins. If they only knew how many vampires could walk around inside here without waiting for sundown, they'd either be thrilled or never sleep well again. It depended on which side of the preternatural citizen movement they were on. Whether vampires should have been declared "alive" and full citizens of the United States of America was one of the big debates ranking right up there with gun rights and abortion. In a way all of them are about life and death--defining what life is, and what it isn't, and how far we'll go to protect, or take, it.

  I stood there in the huge, echoing dimness of the empty Circus and just enjoyed the quiet of the place. The first time I'd come here during this time of day when everything was closed had been when Nikolaos was still Master of the City and Jean-Claude had just been one of her flunkies. I'd come to kill her and all the bad little vampires and henchmen who had threatened me and my friends. I'd done a good job of it, too. Now I stood there listening, almost feeling the silence of the closed carnival midway that stretched the length of the building. The booths where you could win giant toy bats, or vampire and werewolf dolls and other themed toys, were all shuttered or draped with canvas. It really was a midway complete with rides, but there was no smell of dust and heat. It was cleaner, neater than any real traveling carnival could ever be, but that was very Jean-Claude. He liked to take things that were messy and make them prettier, run smoother, the illusion of perfection so close to perfect that most people couldn't tell the difference. Only his romantic relationships were big, messy, brawling things, because he only fell in love with difficult people, and yes, I was so counting myself on that list of difficult lovers. Truth was truth.

  I walked between the closed food stalls, where the faint smell of corn dogs, popcorn, funnel cakes, and cotton candy seemed to linger like aromatic ghosts. There was one tent in the middle of the midway--once it would have been called the freak show, but now it was the hallway of oddities, though even that some had complained about. They wanted to see the half-man, half-whatever, but they wanted it to be politically correct, because if you were all PC about it then looking didn't make you a bad person. Lately, people seemed to think that morality was the same thing as being politically correct, and it wasn't. Some of the most deeply moral people I knew were least politically correct, because they actually worried about good and evil, not just what they were told was good or bad.

  Some well-meaning citizens had gotten freak shows closed down, but all the people who had protested and felt morally superior about it had other jobs. They could go out in the world and be "normal"; the "freaks" that they'd put out of work didn't always have that option. Sometimes the freak show is your only option, and sometimes it's the only place where you feel safe and okay. I really wish the "normal" people would leave us freaks alone and stop trying to save us. We get by, we take care of each other, and the people who cost the freaks their jobs didn't give them employment, or a place to stay, or a family to be a part of; they just destroyed their world and felt morally superior for doing it.

  I'd seen my first ghost at age ten; by age fourteen I'd accidentally raised dead animals, including my childhood dog, Jenny. My dad had contacted my grandmother Flores and she'd trained me just enough not to have roadkill follow me home, or my dead pet crawl into bed with me. She'd worried I would grow up to become not just an animator, as in to give life, but a necromancer, which usually meant you'd gone evil. Vampires used to kill necromancers when they found them, because we have the potential to have power over all the dead, including them. I'd slipped through the cracks because I was Jean-Claude's human servant and because there hadn't been a full-fledged necromancer in a thousand years. I was one of the freaks; I just hadn't embraced it the first time I walked into the Circus of the Damned.

  I turned to the left and the biggest tent, which took up nearly a quarter of this part of the warehouse interior. The tent was white-and-red striped and gave the illusion that it had just been put up that day by some roustabouts, but it was permanent, only coming down when the tent material needed to be made fresh and bright again. The ticket booth at the entrance was empty like everything else, but even if it hadn't been I'd have gotten in for free. I was engaged to the owner.

  The tent flap was down over the doorway so I couldn't see inside, but I saw the canvas twitch a second before it started moving up. I drew my gun in an automatic motion; it was held two-handed and pointed at the ground before I had time to talk myself out of it. I had it pointed at the ground because I couldn't see on the other side of the canvas. You don't point at anything unless you know what or who you're pointing at, because once you point, then you aim, and then you shoot. Shooting means killing it. For all I knew it could be Jean-Claude on the other side--unlikely, but still, everyone in here was either a lover, a friend, or at least that guy I don't hate.

  The hand that moved the canvas was a lot darker than Jean-Claude's, and I wasn't surprised when Socrates looked through the opening. He was tall, but not too broad; he didn't like doing the serious weight lifting some of the guards did. He'd recently cut his hair so short that my own would have had no curl left, which meant almost shaved, but his hair still had curl to it. He glanced down at the gun in my hands and smiled. "I like that you're that cautious."

  I relaxed my shoulders a little and gave him the ultimate praise; I took my eyes off him while I moved my suit jacket out of the way and holstered my gun. "Some people call it paranoid."

  "They've never been a cop," he said.

  "How's your bid to be reinstated as a detective?" I asked.

  "The two officers who got to keep their badges after catching lycanthropy on the job are both part of the U.S. Marshals Preternatural Branch. I was just an ordinary plainclothes detective on the gang and drugs squad."

  "You might have more luck joining the Marshals Service and playing on my team," I said.

  He grinned, teeth a bright flash in his dark face. "I was a regular cop; we save people, or at least keep the peace, or something like that. Nothing personal, but your duty description is mostly hunting down and killing people. It's closer to a soldier than a cop."

  I shrugged. "True."

  "I just want to be a detective again, Anita. I loved my job, and I was good at it. I've got testimonials from most of the people I worked with back in Los Angeles. I think they still feel guilty that I got cut up by the werehyenas saving some of their asses."

  "Guilt can be a great motivator," I said, as I walked in beside him, and he let the canvas fall back into place. The tent opening was part of the illusion that this was a very solid, very permanent structure. The inside was a onering circus in a tradition old enough that I didn't actually remember it except from pictures, but the bleachers that rose up on every side were very solid and cemented in, as solid as a modern sports arena. We were able to walk side by side between the first row of steps and the rail that kept the crowd from walking out on the now-empty sand.

  "Ye
ah, it can," he said, and he looked sad, as he ran one hand over his nearly shaved head.

  I didn't want sad today for some reason, so I changed the topic. "I can't believe your hair is still curly with it cut that short. Even my curls are gone when it's that close to my head."

  He half-laughed. "Mexican and German genetics aren't going to be enough; you have to go all the way to Africa somewhere in your family tree to get curls like mine."

  I laughed with him. "Fine, genetically you've got a curl advantage."

  He turned up the main stairs, which were wider and led not just to higher seats, but to the draped glass booth at the very top. It looked like a media booth where someone would do a play-by-play, but it was actually the office for the manager of the Circus of the Damned, whoever that happened to be, and there was a small apartment behind it.

  Socrates didn't shorten his stride for me, but I managed to keep pace. The first time I'd walked the stairs my knees had hurt, and that was before I hit twenty-five. Now at thirty-one my knees didn't bother me on the stairs. I moved up them easily, just below and a little to one side of Socrates' longer stride. Yes, I was hitting the gym more now, but I didn't think that was all of it. I'd gotten cut up by shapeshifters on my job, too, but one of the first ones that contaminated me had been the one and only panwere I'd ever seen. He'd had several different forms, and apparently I'd inherited that first, so every wereanimal that bled me after that had shared their beast with me. It was supposed to be medically impossible, and the fact that I didn't change shape into any animal form was even more impossible. We all thought that was because I'd been Jean-Claude's human servant before I caught lycanthropy, and his vampire marks somehow prevented me from shapeshifting. But we were so far out into theoretical metaphysics that we honestly didn't know. I'd learned a few months ago that some of the less public parts of the military were interested in seeing if they could create soldiers that had my combination of the best of being a shapeshifter without turning into an animal form. I'd let people know that it was the vampire marks that prevented the shifting, and they couldn't duplicate that part in a lab. So far no one had come knocking on my door about it and I was good with that.

  It was awesome that I could keep pace with Socrates, who was a werehyena, and none of the old aches and pains hurt, but I wondered what else had changed. What else had changed about my body that I hadn't realized? Which led to the thought, what if all the lycanthropy and vampire marks had affected more than just my physicality?

  "What's wrong, Anita? You look too serious for a woman about to see a jeweler about rings."

  I smiled at him, because I knew he was teasing me. I'd never been much for jewelry. I told him about my knees not hurting.

  "That's a good thing, not a bad thing," he said.

  I nodded. "But what else has changed that I didn't notice?"

  He sighed. "You don't mean just the physical stuff."

  "Nope."

  We were outside the door now. "Someday we should sit down and I'll tell you everything I know about what I've noticed before and after I became a werehyena."

  "I'd like that."

  "You may not like it after you hear it all."

  I shrugged. "That's okay, too. I'd rather know the truth than have to guess."

  "Most people wouldn't," he said.

  "I'm not most people."

  "Well, now that is the truth." He smiled again.

  I smiled back, because that's what you're supposed to do, but I didn't really feel all that smiley.

  Socrates knocked on the door, then put his hand against the slight crack at the edge of the door. I could hear something sniffing on the other side. It was a new thing, but the wereanimal guards were using scent as their "password." You could find out passwords or secret knocks, but you couldn't change the scent of your body. Even if everyone was in human form it was still effective, though their sense of smell was heightened the closer to their animal shape they shifted.

  Lisandro, tall, darkly Hispanic, and handsome, opened the door for us and ushered us into the front office. It held a desk and two chairs, and it was a nice, ordinary office, except for the vintage circus posters framed on the walls, which was really the only sign that this wasn't the office of any normal administrative assistant at any upper-crusty business in the United States. There really would be an admin after full dark tonight, when she finally woke for the day. Betty Lou wasn't a very powerful vampire, but she was a hell of an office assistant. He said, "That new hair product smells too sweet, how can you wear it?" Which meant he'd smelled it through the door; I hadn't smelled it much standing next to Socrates.

  "Like I was telling Anita, neither of you has my fabulous curls, so you wouldn't understand."

  Lisandro used one hand to flip his shoulder-length ponytail. "My hair is about as straight as it gets, so I don't have to worry about it."

  "It's just that wererat nose of yours," Socrates said. "It means everything smells funny to you."

  Lisandro grinned. "You're just jealous because rats have a better scenting capability than hyenas."

  Socrates did a little head shake. "But we can eat through the side of a Buick with one bite, and you can't."

  I rolled eyes at both of them. "Enough interspecies one-upmanship; take me to Jean-Claude."

  "I would say you know the way, but we're being all formal because of the jeweler," Lisandro said.

  I shook my head. "The daytime jeweler is the nighttime jeweler's human servant, and ancient vampires are all about the formalities," I said.

  "Yeah, it's not every day you get to meet a human who can tell you that Helen of Troy had black hair," Lisandro said.

  "She did not say that," Socrates said.

  "Yes, she did."

  "She said, these rings would be worthy of Helen of Troy, another raven-haired beauty."

  "Raven-haired means black hair," Lisandro said.

  "Are you saying she compared me to Helen of Troy?"

  The two men stopped bickering long enough to look at me. Then they looked at each other, and back to me. Lisandro said, "Any other woman I've ever met would be flattered, but you're going to get all weird about it, aren't you?"

  I frowned at him. "I am not going to get all weird."

  "But you won't take the compliment either," Socrates said.

  I sighed, shrugged, touched my gun and shifted the holster just a little on its belt, and thought about it. "When you're spending this much money on rings, they flatter you, it's just part of the whole thing, but no, I don't believe she's sincere when she compares me to one of the great beauties of the ages. Sorry, but I just don't buy it."

  They gave each other another look, which irritated me, because it meant they were being careful around my mood, or my issue, and I hated that. I hated being difficult about my appearance. Thanks to a lot of things from my childhood, and a very ex-fiance, I had trouble seeing myself as beautiful. People reacted to me as if I were beautiful, so I had to accept it, but I had trouble seeing it myself, so the jeweler's flattery, insincere or not, wasn't going to win points with me.

  "Besides, rings don't go near the face, so what does hair color have to do with anything, it's just skin tone that counts," I said, and I sounded grumpy, but I'd managed not to criticize myself, and that was an improvement.

  "Let's not keep the boss waiting," Socrates said.

  It took me a second to realize he meant Jean-Claude, and then Lisandro was opening the door and ushering me inside to the larger and more richly furnished office that screamed upper-level executive, from the rich wood paneling to the desk big enough to slaughter an ox on; there was no hint that it was the manager's office for the Circus of the Damned. Nothing as garish as circus posters in here. I had a moment of wanting to ask one of the guards to stay with me, but they were bodyguards. They couldn't guard me from my sudden case of nerves, as I glanced at the jewels laid out on velvet cloths and samples of different metal wedding bands. The huge desk was covered in them as if a very proper pirate's treasure
had been given over to the accountants to catalog. A tiny, dark-haired woman stood beside it, thin hands clasped in front of her; she could have passed for an accountant, or a servant in an old movie, but the eagerness in her face was another issue. The jeweler was way too excited about all of this. I must have made an involuntary movement for the door, because Jean-Claude said, "Ma petite." Just that, nothing more, but it made me look at him.

  Jean-Claude sat behind that huge desk and that gleaming display of matrimonial treasure, but none of it was as pretty as him. His black hair curled softly past his shoulders, mingling so perfectly with the velvet of his jacket that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. The shirt that peeked from the jacket was scarlet, a red that looked fabulous with the hair and that unearthly white skin of his, a perfect whiteness that no living skin could rival. He was very pale tonight, no blush of color to his face at all, which meant he hadn't fed yet. There was a time I couldn't have told, but I'd been studying his face and moods for years. Once I had refused to be food for any vampire, even him. Now the thought that he hadn't fed, and that it could be part of our foreplay, tightened things low in my body so hard and suddenly that I had to reach for the edge of the desk to steady myself, and I hadn't even gotten to his face.

  I raised my head to finally look into that face, that near perfect curve of cheek, the kissable lips, and finally the coup de grace of eyes. They looked almost black in the overhead lights, but some gleam always seemed to show that swimming blue, like deep seawater where the monsters swim and there are wonders to behold. His dark eyelashes were actually double-rowed on top so they looked like he'd used mascara, but he never had to, and then the perfect arch of black eyebrow . . . He looked too beautiful, too perfect, like a work of art instead of a person. How did this man love me? But the smile on his face, the light in his eyes, said plainly that he saw something wonderful when he looked at me, too. I didn't know whether to be flattered, amazed, or ask, Why me? Why not a thousand more traditionally beautiful women out there? He could have had movie stars, or models, but he'd chosen me. Me, too short, curvy even with my gym workout, and scarred from my job, still struggling to heal all the issues life had saddled me with, and yet he smiled at me, held his hand out to me. I went around the desk to take his hand, but I didn't feel like the princess to his prince; I felt like a clumsy peasant to his very regal king.