Curcus of the Damned

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I agreed, wholeheartedly; it was sorta scary. I agreed with the oldest living thing I'd ever met. He was right. Could I give him Jean-Claude? Should I give him Jean-Claude?

  "I agree with you, Mr. Oliver, but I can't just give him up, just like that. I don't know why really, but I can't."

  "Loyalty; I admire that. Think upon it, Ms. Blake, but do not take too long. I need to put my plan into action as soon as possible."

  I nodded. "I understand. I . . . I'll give you an answer within a couple of days. How do I reach you?"

  "Inger will give you a card with a number on it. You may safely speak to him as to me."

  I turned and looked at Inger, still standing at attention beside the door. "You're his human servant, aren't you?"

  "I have that honor."

  I shook my head. "I need to leave now."

  "Do not feel badly that you could not recognize Inger as my human servant. It is not a mark which shows; otherwise how could they be our human ears and eyes and hands, if everyone knew they were ours?"

  He had a point. He had a lot of points. I stood up. He stood up, too. He offered me his hand.

  "I'm sorry, but I know that touching makes the mind games easier."

  The hand dropped back to his side. "I do not need to touch you to play mind games, Ms. Blake." The voice was wonderful, shining and bright as Christmas morning. My throat was tight, and the warmth of tears filled my eyes. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

  I backed for the door, and Inger opened it for me. They were just going to let me leave. He wasn't going to mind-rape me and get the name. He was really going to let me walk away. That did more to prove him a good guy than anything else. Because he could have squeezed my mind dry. But he let me go.

  Inger closed the door behind us, slowly, reverently.

  "How old is he?" I asked.

  "You couldn't tell?"

  I shook my head. "How old?"

  Inger smiled. "I am over seven hundred years old. Mr. Oliver was ancient when I met him."

  "He's older than a thousand years."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "I've met a vampire that was a little over a thousand. She was scary, but she didn't have that kind of power."

  He smiled. "If you wish to know his true age, then you must ask him yourself."

  I stared up at Inger's smiling face for a minute. I remembered where I'd seen a face like Oliver's. I'd had one anthropology class in college. There'd been a drawing that looked just like Oliver. It had been a reconstruction of a Homo erectus skull. Which made Oliver about a million years old.

  "My God," I said.

  "What's wrong, Ms. Blake?"

  I shook my head. "He can't be that old."

  "How old is that?"

  I didn't want to say it out loud, as if that would make it real. A million years. How powerful would a vampire grow in a million years?

  A woman walked up the hallway towards us, coming from deeper in the house. She swayed on bare feet, toenails painted a bright scarlet that matched her fingernails. The belted dress she wore matched the nail polish. Her legs were long and pale, but it was that kind of paleness that promised to tan if it ever got enough sunlight. Her hair fell past her waist, thick and absolute black. Her makeup was perfect, her lips scarlet. She smiled at me; fangs showed below her lips.

  But she wasn't a vampire. I didn't know what the hell she was, but I knew what she wasn't. I glanced at Inger. He didn't took happy.

  "Shouldn't we be going?" I said.

  "Yes," he said. He backed towards the front door and I backed behind him. Neither of us took our eyes off the fanged beauty slinking down the hall towards us.

  She moved in a liquid run that was almost too fast to follow. Lycanthropes could move like that, but that wasn't what she was, either.

  She was around Inger and coming for me. I gave up being cool and sort of ran backwards towards the front door. But she was too fast for me, too fast for any human.

  She grabbed my right forearm. She looked puzzled. She could feel the knife sheath on my arm. She didn't seem to know what it was. Bully for me.

  "What are you?" My voice was steady. Not afraid. Heap big vampire slayer. Yeah, right.

  She opened her mouth wider, tongue caressing the fangs. The fangs were longer than a vampire's; she'd never be able to close her mouth around them.

  "Where do the fangs go when you close your mouth?" I said.

  She blinked at me, the smile slipping away from her face. She ran her tongue over them, then they folded back into the roof of her mouth.

  "Retractable fangs. Cool," I said.

  Her face was very solemn. "I'm glad you enjoyed the show, but there's so much more to see." The fangs unfolded again. She widened her jaws, almost a yawn, flashing the fangs nicely in the dim beams of sunlight that got around the drapes.

  "Mr. Oliver will not like you threatening her," Inger said.

  "He grows weak, sentimental." Her fingers dug into my arm stronger than she should have been.

  She was holding my right arm, so I couldn't go for the gun. The knives were out for similar reasons. Maybe I should wear more guns.

  She hissed at me, a violent explosion of air that no human throat ever made. The tongue that flicked out was forked.

  "Sweet Jesus, what are you?"

  She laughed, but it didn't sound right now; maybe the split tongue. Her pupils had narrowed to slits, her irises turned a golden yellow while I watched.

  I tugged on my arm but her fingers were like steel. I dropped to the floor. She lowered my arm but didn't let go.

  I leaned back on my left side, drew my legs up under me, and kicked her right kneecap with everything I had. The leg crumpled. She screamed and fell to the floor, but she let my arm go.

  Something was happening to her legs. They seemed to be growing together, the skin spreading. I'd never seen anything like it, and I didn't want to now.

  "Melanie, what are you doing?" The voice was behind us. Oliver stood in the hallway just short of the brighter light of the living room. His voice was the sound of rocks falling, trees breaking. A storm that was just words but seemed to cut and slash.

  The thing on the floor cringed from the voice. Her lower body was becoming serpentine. A snake of some kind. Jesus.

  "She's a lamia," I said softly. I backed away, putting the outside door to my back, hand on the door knob. "I thought they were extinct."

  "She is the last one," Oliver said. "I keep her with me because I fear what she would do left to her own desires."

  "Your creature that you can call, what is it?" I asked.

  He sighed, and I felt the years of sadness in that one sound. A regret too deep for words. "Snakes, I can call snakes."

  I nodded my head. "Sure." I opened the door and backed out onto the sunny porch. No one tried to stop me.

  The door shut behind me and after a few minutes Inger came out. He was stiff with anger. "We most humbly apologize for her. She is an animal."

  "Oliver needs to keep her on a tighter leash."

  "He tries."

  I nodded. I knew about trying. Doing your best, but anything that could control a lamia could play mind games with me all day, and I might never know it. How much of my trust and good wishes was real and how much of it was manufactured by Oliver?

  "I'll drive you back."

  "Please."

  And away we went. I'd met my first lamia and perhaps the oldest living creature in the world. A red-fucking-letter day.

  31

  The phone was ringing as I unlocked the apartment door. I shoved the door open with my shoulder and ran for the phone. I got it on the fifth ring and nearly yelled, "Hello."

  "Anita?" Ronnie made it a question.

  "Yeah, it's me."

  "You sound out of breath."

  "I had to run for the phone. What's up?"

  "I remembered where I knew Cal Rupert from."

  It took me a minute to remember who she was talking about. The first vampire victim. I'd forgotte
n, just for a moment, that there was a murder investigation going on. I was a little ashamed of that. "Talk to me, Ronnie."

  "I was doing some work for a local law firm last year. One of the lawyers specialized in drawing up dying wills."

  "I know that Rupert had a dying will. That's how I could stake him without waiting for an order of execution."

  "But did you also know that Reba Baker had a dying will with the same lawyer?"

  "Who's Reba Baker?"

  "It may be the female victim."

  My stomach tightened. A clue, a real live clue. "What makes you think so?"

  "Reba Baker was young, blond, and missed an appointment. She doesn't answer her phone. They called her at work, and she hasn't been in for two days."

  "The length of time she'd have been dead," I said.

  "Exactly."

  "Call Sergeant Rudolf Storr. Tell him what you just told me. Use my name to get to him."

  "You don't want to check it out ourselves?"

  "Not on your life. This is police business. They're good at it. Let 'em earn their paychecks."

  "Shucks, you're no fun."

  "Ronnie, call Dolph. Give it to the police. I've met the vampires that are killing these people. We don't want to make ourselves targets."

  "You what!"

  I sighed. I'd forgotten that Ronnie didn't know. I told her the shortest version that would make any sense. "I'll fill you in on everything Saturday morning when we work out."

  "You going to be all right?"

  "So far, so good."

  "Watch your back, okay?"

  "Always; you too."

  "I never seem to have as many people after my back as you do."

  "Be thankful," I said.

  "I am." She hung up.

  We had a clue. Maybe a pattern, except for the attack on me. I didn't fit any pattern. They'd come after me to get Jean-Claude. Everybody wanted Jean-Claude's job. The trouble was, you couldn't abdicate; you could only die. I liked what Oliver had had to say. I agreed with him, but could I sacrifice Jean-Claude on the altar of good sense? Dammit.

  I just didn't know.

  32

  Bert's office was small and painted pale blue. He thought it was soothing to the clients. I thought it was cold, but that fit Bert, too. He was six feet tall with the broad shoulders and build of an ex-college football player. His stomach was moving a little south with too much food and not enough exercise, but he carried it well in his seven-hundred-dollar suits. For that kind of money, the suits should have carried the Taj Mahal.

  He was tanned, grey-eyed, with a buzz haircut that was nearly white. Not age, his natural hair color.

  I was sitting across from his desk in work clothes. A red skirt, matching jacket, and a blouse that was so close to scarlet I'd had to put on a little makeup so that my face didn't seem ghostly. The jacket was tailored so that my shoulder holster didn't show.

  Larry sat in the chair beside me in a blue suit, white shirt, and blue-on-blue tie. The skin around his stitches had blossomed into a multicolored bruise across his forehead. His short red hair couldn't hide it. It looked like someone had hit him in the head with a baseball bat.

  "You could have gotten him killed, Bert," I said.

  "He wasn't in any danger until you showed up. The vampires wanted you, not him."

  He was right, and I didn't like it. "He tried to raise a third zombie."

  Bert's cold little eyes lit up. "You can do three in a night?"

  Larry had the grace to look embarrassed. "Almost."

  Bert frowned. "What's 'almost' mean?"

  "It means he raised it, but lost control of it. If I hadn't been there to fix things, we'd have had a rampaging zombie on our hands."

  He leaned forward, hands folded on his desk, small eyes very serious. "Is this true, Larry?"

  "I'm afraid so, Mr. Vaughn."

  "That could have been very serious, Larry. You understand that?"

  "Serious?" I said. "It would have been a bloody disaster. The zombie could have eaten one of our clients!"

  "Now, Anita, no reason to frighten the boy."

  I stood up. "Yes, there is."

  Bert frowned at me. "If you hadn't been late, he wouldn't have tried to raise the last zombie."

  "No, Bert. You are not making this all my fault. You sent him out on his first night alone. Alone, Bert."

  "And he handled himself well," Bert said.

  I fought the urge to scream, because it wouldn't help. "Bert, he's a twenty-year-old college student. This is a freaking seminar for him. If you get him killed, it's gonna look sorta bad."

  "May I say something?" Larry asked.

  I said, "No."

  Bert said, "Certainly."

  "I'm a big boy. I can take care of myself."

  I wanted to argue that, but looking into his true-blue eyes I couldn't say it. He was twenty. I remembered twenty. I'd known everything at twenty. It took me another year to realize I knew nothing. I was still hoping to learn something before I hit thirty, but I wasn't holding my breath.

  "How old were you when you started working for me?" Bert said.

  "What?"

  "How old were you?"

  "Twenty-one; I'd just graduated college."

  "When will you turn twenty-one, Larry?" Bert asked.

  "March."

  "See, Anita, he's just a few months younger. He's the same age you were."

  "That was different."

  "Why?" Bert said.

  I couldn't put it into words. Larry still had all his grandparents. He'd never seen death and violence up close and personal. I had. He was an innocent, and I hadn't been innocent for years. But how to explain that to Bert without hurting Larry's feelings? No twenty-year-old man likes to hear that a woman knows more about the world than he does. Some cultural fables die hard.

  "You sent me out with Manny, not alone."

  "He was supposed to go out with you, but you had police business to handle."

  "That's not fair, Bert, and you know it."

  He shrugged. "If you'd been doing your job, he wouldn't have been alone."

  "There've been two murders. What am I supposed to do? Say sorry, folks, I've got to babysit a new animator. Sorry about the murders."

  "Nobody has to babysit me," Larry said.

  We both ignored him.

  "You have a full time job here with Animators, Inc."

  "We've had this argument before, Bert."

  "Too many times," he said.

  "You're my boss, Bert. Do what you think best."

  "Don't tempt me."

  "Hey, guys," Larry said, "I'm getting the feeling that you're using me for an excuse to fight. Don't get carried away, okay?"

  We both glared at him. He didn't back down, just stared at us. Point for him.

  "If you don't like the way I do my job, Bert, fire me, but stop yanking my chain."

  Bert stood up, slowly, like a leviathan rising from the waves. "Anita . . ."

  The phone rang. We all stared at it for a minute. Bert finally picked it up and growled, "Yeah, what is it?"

  He listened for a minute, then glared at me. "It's for you." His voice was incredibly mild as he said it. "Detective Sergeant Storr, police business."

  Bert's face was smiling, butter wouldn't have melted in his mouth.

  I held out my hand for the phone without another word. He handed me the receiver. He was still smiling, his tiny grey eyes warm and sparkling. It was a bad sign.

  "Hi, Dolph, what's up?"

  "We're at the lawyer's office that your friend Veronica Sims gave us. Nice that she called you first and not us."

  "She called you second, didn't she?"

  "Yeah."

  "What have you found out?" I didn't bother to keep my voice down. If you're careful, one side of a conversation isn't very enlightening.

  "Reba Baker is the dead woman. They identified her from morgue photos."

  "Pleasant way to end the work week," I said.

  Dolph
ignored that. "Both victims were clients with dying wills. If they died by vampire bite, they wanted to be staked, then cremated."

  "Sounds like a pattern to me," I said.

  "But how did the vampires find out that they had dying wills?"

  "Is this a trick question, Dolph? Someone told them."

  "I know that," he said. He sounded disgusted.

  I was missing something. "What do you want from me, Dolph?"

  "I've questioned everyone, and I'd swear they were all telling the truth. Could someone have been giving the information and not remember?"

  "You mean could the vampire have played mind games, so that the traitor wouldn't know afterwards?"

  "Yeah," he said.

  "Sure," I said.

  "Could you tell which one the vampire got to if you were here?"

  I glanced at my boss's face. If I missed another night during our busiest season, he might fire me. There were days when I didn't think I'd care. This wasn't one of them. "Look for memory losses; hours, or even entire nights."

  "Anything else?"

  "If someone has been feeding info to the vampires, they may not remember it, but a good hypnotist will be able to raise the memory."

  "The lawyer is screaming about rights and warrants. We've only got a warrant for the files, not for their minds."

  "Ask him if he wants to be responsible for tonight's murder victim, one of his own clients?"

  "She; the lawyer's a woman," he said.

  How embarrassing and how sexist of me. "Ask her if she's willing to explain to her client's family why she obstructed your investigation."

  "The clients won't know unless we let it out," he said.

  "That's true," I said.

  "Why, that would be blackmail, Ms. Blake."

  "Isn't it, though?" I said.

  "You had to be a cop in a past life," he said. "You're too devious not to be."

  "Thanks for the compliment."

  "Any hypnotists you'd recommend?"

  "Alvin Thormund. Wait a sec and I'll get his number for you." I got out my thin business card holder. I tried to only keep cards I wanted to refer to from time to time. We'd used Alvin for several cases of vampire victims with amnesia. I gave Dolph the number.