Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "Can you find all the body parts in those pictures?" Edward asked, looking at Nolan.

  The Captain was quiet for a moment, watching everyone's face. Only Logan had looked away, arms crossed over his chest, as if he were trying not to give anything away. Finally, Nolan said, "No, but you could have stray dogs, or crows that picked up some pieces."

  "Do you see animal footprints in the blood?" Pearson asked.

  Nolan leaned over Edward farther, looking at the pictures. I pushed them closer toward him, but he finally shook his head. "No."

  "We don't rule out crows, or other birds flying in and grabbing some of the body before we found it, but there's no bird native to the area that could carry off enough of the body to explain the missing pieces."

  "What do you think happened to the missing body parts?" I asked.

  "I don't know," Nolan said.

  "I was actually addressing everyone in the room with the question, not just you, Nolan. You're as late to this party as I am."

  "We'd like to hear your theories first," Sheridan said.

  "Why?"

  "Forrester had his theories, but I requested he not share them with you until you had your own opportunity to view the evidence yourself," Pearson said.

  "Why withhold information from me?"

  "Because Ted here has been bragging about you for days, and we wanted to see if you're as good as he said," Logan said, his arm flung out from his body and half-pointed and half-flapped toward Edward.

  "That is not it," Pearson said, frowning at Logan.

  Sheridan stepped away from the map to say, "Ted had some . . . interesting insights about this particular series of photos. We wanted to see if another vampire hunter would come to the same . . . insights."

  They were all being so careful about their word choices; even Logan had been less obvious and that seemed like something he found difficult. I sighed and gave Edward a look. He gave me a steady look back. "I'd have told you, because I know you'll see it."

  I gathered the pictures back from Nolan and spread them out in front of me again. "Did you put these pictures in here to trip me up?" I asked.

  "What do you mean, trip you up?" Sheridan asked.

  "Trick me."

  "No. I mean, no." She looked puzzled enough that I believed her.

  "Are these photos from another case?" I asked.

  "Why would you ask that, Marshal?" Pearson said.

  "They don't match. Not just this man, but any of the dismembered bodies."

  "We only have three," Sheridan said.

  I looked at her to see if she was kidding, but she looked totally serious. "Does Dublin get enough dismembered bodies that three new ones are no big deal?"

  "No, of course not," she said.

  "It's as rare a crime here as it is back in your city," Pearson said.

  I looked at Nolan and Edward. The first looked puzzled, and the second inscrutable. No one kept a secret like him, no one alive anyway.

  "This doesn't look like the work of a vampire," I said.

  "We thought they were strong enough to do it," Pearson said.

  "They are, but they don't usually go in for this kind of display of pure visceral violence."

  "Why not?" Pearson asked, and he was looking at me as if he wanted to see inside my head to exactly what I was thinking.

  "It wastes blood and it's messy. Once you tear into a fresh body like this, you are going to be covered in blood and gore. No way could you walk the streets after that and not have someone call the police."

  "Except for the wasting blood part, what you just said could apply to anyone," Pearson said.

  "A human being couldn't rip a body apart like that," Logan said, flailing his arm nearly into Sheridan's shoulder. He stepped away from her as if she were hot to the touch and went around to the other side of the room near the door.

  "It doesn't look like a blade was used to dismember the bodies; am I wrong? Did you find tool marks?"

  "No, no tool marks," Pearson said.

  "Then I don't think a human being did it."

  "Then what are you talking about, Blake?" Logan said.

  "I'm saying you might have a vampire crime spree and something else has moved into the city, too. I agree it's supernatural, but the one thing vampires can't do is eat solid food. A human serial killer could take souvenirs to eat later but isn't strong enough to tear the bodies apart. A vampire could tear the bodies up but would have no reason to take meat away from the scene."

  "Did you just call the victims' body parts meat?" Logan demanded, striding into the room and trying to fill more space than he could. Pearson and Nolan were taller, and almost everyone in the room lifted more weights than showed on their frame, and that included Sheridan now that I'd seen her arms in the short sleeves of her white blouse. She was built like a taller version of Mort, all sinew and muscle except with more curves. She might work at being thin, but she worked out, too. I liked that I wasn't the only woman in the room with perceivable biceps.

  "That's what I think our killer thinks."

  "What do you mean, Blake?" Pearson asked.

  I fought a sudden urge to look at Nolan. "A shapeshifter could dismember the body without tools and could have just eaten part of the body."

  "But wouldn't a shapeshifter be covered in blood and unable to hide from the police just like a vampire or a human?" Nolan asked; if he felt weird taking part in the conversation, it didn't show. If I hadn't known his secret, I wouldn't have thought a thing about it.

  "Yes, but a shapeshifter can literally change not just their clothes but their skin, so that the beast form could be covered in blood, but once they shift to human form again they're blood free and clean."

  "But we should have still found a nude human passed out near the crime scene, and we didn't."

  "I told them that not all lycanthropes have to fall into a comalike sleep after they switch back to human form, but they didn't want to believe me," Edward said.

  "Why not? You're right," I said.

  "Because all the literature says that they fall into a deep, almost comalike sleep after they shift from animal to human form," Pearson said.

  "Unless you think you two boyos know more than all the other experts combined?"

  "On this, yes, because the books you're reading are from people who studied lycanthropes, interviewed them. I live with them," I said.

  "I'm just good friends with them," Edward said in his Ted voice, "but that's still more personal than the book experts."

  "How can you be so certain of that?" Sheridan asked.

  "Because we read the same books you're reading," I said, "and I read them before I was close to any shapeshifter. Most of them do have to sleep it off, almost like a blackout drunk. In fact, a lot of the ones that sleep hard like that don't remember most of their night in animal form."

  "But you're saying that some of them just change to human form and can walk away from a scene like this?" Sheridan asked.

  "Absolutely."

  "Is this the point where I say I told you so?" Edward asked in a heavy down-home accent.

  "Only if you're not the gentleman I know you are," Sheridan said with a smile.

  Edward gave her a smile and a little nod. If his hat had still been on his head he'd have tipped it at her. I couldn't tell if he was flirting with her, or he was so far into his part as Ted that he couldn't react any other way.

  "So you were right about her, Forrester," Logan said as he continued to pace the wall by the door. "You trained her. You taught her everything she knows."

  "Oh no, Logan. I trained Anita to be better at killing the monsters. She taught me how to understand them better."

  "Thanks, Ted, and thanks for nothing, Logan. Just love it when men assume that because there's a man in a woman's life they teach us everything we know."

  He scowled at me, but he was an amateur compared to Nolan. "It's just a figure of speech, Blake."

  "You just keep telling yourself that, Logan, while the rest
of us try to catch the bad guys."

  "What do you mean, bad guys, Blake? You're here to help us find the vampire that's behind all this, so it's just one bad guy."

  "Someone is also killing people by tearing them apart, and that's probably not a vampire, and there are a couple of neck wounds that don't show any fangs."

  Edward picked them out of the pile of photos without me needing to point them out. He handed them to me and I held them up to Logan, Pearson, and Sheridan like I was doing show-and-tell. If Nolan wanted to see them better he would have to move his chair. "Did your medical examiner find any marks that couldn't have been made by human teeth?"

  "No," Pearson said, "but a savage bite like that where the vampire worries at the wound like a terrier with a rat can mask precise dentation."

  I had a moment of doing the long blink while I fought not to remember a vampire doing just that to me. "Anita is very aware of that, Superintendent Pearson." I looked at Edward. I was trying to ask with my eyes how much show-and-tell he wanted me to do. I had scars that showed exactly the kind of vampire attack that Pearson was talking about.

  "Are you trying to tell us we have three different crime sprees in Dublin, including a human serial killer that's using their teeth to tear out throats?" Logan demanded, stopping in his pacing long enough to look at me.

  "No, I'm saying that might be what's happening. Just because you have vampires and violent crimes in the same city doesn't mean that all the violence is vampire related."

  "We aren't trying to blame all our violent crimes on the vampires, Marshal Blake," Sheridan said. She was standing beside the corkboard. I think she'd gotten up in hopes that Logan would use her chair; no such luck.

  "I know that, Inspector Sheridan, but this is a lot of victims to come from just one vampire."

  "We aren't stupid, Blake. We know that no single vampire could do all this," Logan said, motioning at the map with a gesture so wide that he almost hit Pearson in the top of the head. Logan either didn't notice or ignored it, because he didn't apologize. In fact, he paced around the table again, going behind Nolan--again.

  Nolan stood up and went to the far corner of the wall with the window. He put his back in the corner so that there was no possible way for Logan to walk behind him again. He'd told Logan at one point that if he walked behind his chair again he'd put him on the floor, but Pearson had taken offense. He didn't like Logan either, but Nolan had been forced into his investigation from on high, so Nolan wasn't his favorite person either. He'd told Nolan, "If you try to put one of my men on the floor, you and I will have words and you will not like them."

  Nolan stood in the corner, glaring at Logan, who walked around the whole table again, crossing behind Edward and me--again. Like I said, the room wasn't big enough to pace, especially with this many adults already in it.

  "Anita doesn't mean that one vampire did all the victims," Edward said.

  "That's what she said."

  "No, it's not. I--"

  "It's what you said."

  "But it doesn't mean--"

  "How can it mean anything else?" he demanded, in a voice that seemed stuck between angry and whining. The tone was not user friendly to his listeners. In fact, I was beginning to have to fight not to grit my teeth.

  "If you'd stop interrupting me, I could explain."

  "You think you're an expert on vampires, so that makes you a better cop than us. Is that it?"

  He paced toward Nolan, who said, "Don't pace in front of me, Logan."

  Logan turned and came back toward the table and me. He tried to pace between Echo's bag and the corkboard, but he was moving faster than he could negotiate the space, and he tripped on the bag. I'd have let that go, except after he tripped, he kicked the bag.

  I stood up and stepped over Echo's bag, driving my shoulder into Logan as I moved. He stumbled back even though he was at least five inches taller and nearly a hundred pounds heavier.

  "What the hell, Blake?" he nearly shouted.

  "You kicked one of my people."

  "They can't feel anything. It's daylight."

  "Who made you the vampire expert, Logan?" I asked, and stepped in close to him again. He had to step back or I'd have stepped into him again.

  "I'm not fucking enough of them to be an expert," he said.

  "Logan!" Sheridan said.

  "I bet vampires aren't the only thing you're not fucking," I said.

  "Marshal Blake!" Pearson said; I heard his chair go back and moved so I could see him standing up. I knew he wasn't a real danger; it was just automatic.

  "What the fuck does that mean?" Logan asked, his face darkening; either he was getting angry or he was blushing.

  "It means anytime someone starts accusing me of using sex to get good at my job, it usually means either they want to fuck me and I said no, and you and I haven't known each other that long, or it means that they aren't getting any, so they're just pissy because I'm having more sex than they are."

  His face was starting to go purple; it wasn't a blush; it was blood pressure. Inspector Logan had a temper, great; maybe I could goad him into doing something stupid enough that Pearson would send him home.

  Edward got out of his chair, but not to come to my aid. He knew I didn't need it, but I also knew he wasn't getting up for nothing. He moved around the table, talking as he moved. "Rachel, I don't think you need to hear all this," he said in his best down-home Ted accent. "Why don't you take me out for that tea you were bragging about at that hotel?"

  Oh, goody, Edward had the same idea I did. We were going to make Logan lose his shit.

  "Oh, Ted . . ." Sheridan began; I was pretty sure she'd say something like she wasn't hearing anything she couldn't handle, but Logan never gave her a chance to answer.

  "You are not taking him to tea at a hotel," Logan yelled, or maybe almost yelled. I was just close enough to him that it was that loud.

  "I will take who I want, where I want," Sheridan said, her voice rising.

  "No!" he yelled.

  I kept looking at him and resisted the urge to turn and look at Sheridan behind me. I was the closest to him and if he lost his shit badly enough I wanted a chance to pour gasoline on the flames, and not get hit or trampled in the process. His face was almost purplish with temper. He was too young, early forties tops, and not nearly overweight enough to turn this kind of color from anger. He made an inarticulate noise low in his throat. I wanted him to leave the room, not have a stroke, and I suddenly didn't know which was more likely. He was literally inarticulate with rage. Wow.

  "Inspector Logan, you will refrain from personal remarks to Inspector Sheridan. You have been warned more than once about this kind of thing," Pearson said in a voice that was deep and projected well, so that it carried over whatever anyone else was going to say. It made me wonder if Pearson had theater training.

  A tic started to pulse just under Logan's right eye. His hands were in fists at his sides. It was like he was afraid to move, or even speak, because he didn't trust himself to do anything. I had a temper, but this was a new level of problem. I wondered if they'd forced him to take anger management classes yet. Or maybe I didn't, because if this was the after, then I was glad I had missed the before.

  He was staring past me at Sheridan, I was pretty sure, but I was looking at Logan. He was so angry. I wondered if his skin would be hot to the touch with it. My stomach cramped as if I were hungry. I'd eaten at breakfast. Then I realized that it had to have been at least five hours since then, probably more. I was overdue for food. Fuck. I stared at the skin jumping just under his eye. He was so angry, so rage-filled. I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to sniff near his skin and see if he smelled like food. I didn't just feed off lust, or love; I could feed on someone's anger. I could touch Logan's arm, his face, and drain all that rage away. If I was careful he'd just be calm. If I wasn't careful he could be disoriented, or even forget the last few minutes and what had happened. It wasn't that dissimilar from vampire mind tricks. If I was carefu
l, I could just take a little and no one would ever know. It would calm things down. It would help. The moment I thought that, I stepped back from him. I could not feed on one of the Irish cops with witnesses. Being a necromancer made them think I was evil; if I sucked energy out of one of them, they'd be sure of it.

  "Are you all right, Anita?" Edward asked, because he'd seen me take that step back. I would never have backed up from Logan, not normally.

  "No, I don't think I ate enough today. I appreciate everyone bringing me coffee when you have all the great tea, but I think I need real food." I emphasized that last word a little, hoping he'd understand what I meant.

  "When you don't think coffee is enough, something really is wrong with you, pardner." He made a drawling joke of it, but he'd understood me. He'd seen me feed before.

  "We can have food brought in," Pearson said.

  "I think I may need some air, too," I said. I had to get away from Logan, who was still almost shaking with his anger. I resisted the urge to tell him he needed to learn to meditate or take a yoga class, just to see how angry I could make him. He'd make such a good snack.

  "I apologize for Inspector Logan," Sheridan said.

  That was it for Logan. He backed up and marched out of the room without a word. I was pretty sure he didn't trust himself, so leaving was his only option. When the door shut carefully behind him, Pearson said, "Don't judge us by Logan."

  "What's his problem?" I asked, taking deep, even breaths.

  Pearson looked at Sheridan, and she looked embarrassed. "I made the mistake of dating a fellow officer, and when I broke it off--" She shook her head. "It was a grave misjudgment on my part."

  "I'm going to go check on Logan. I think it was my misjudgment thinking the two of you could work a case together again." Pearson left, closing the door behind him.

  "If you don't meet people at work, where do you meet them?" I said. Now that Logan was gone, I could breathe a little easier.

  "Exactly," she said, and then her pretty face looked very unhappy, "but it was still a mistake."

  "Dating Logan? Oh yeah."

  "He wasn't always like this. I swear he wasn't. I mean, he had a temper, but not like this."

  "You don't have to apologize for Logan," Nolan said from the wall where he was still standing.

  "But I feel like I should, like it's somehow my fault," she said.

  "You don't have to date a man just because he's upset that you stopped dating him," I said.