Crimson Death

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "I wish I were."

  "That man is too hurt to do anything to anyone," Pearson said.

  "He is not a man, Superintendent. He is a vampire," Jake said.

  Pearson shook his head. "No, no. If you had wanted to help, the time to do it was before the ambulance got here."

  "In the future we will offer more aid. We did not dream that you would try to save what was left," he said.

  Domino, Edward, and Nolan were running toward the closed ambulance. I don't know what had alerted them, but I'd learned if Edward was running to run with him. Jake and Nicky came with me, and the distance was short enough that Pearson was beside us when Edward reached the doors. Domino and Nolan faced them, rifle and handgun at the ready. Edward didn't wait for us to clear the last few feet, but opened the doors, as if even one more second was too long.

  67

  I SKIDDED TO a stop on the other side of Nolan, bringing my gun up before I even looked inside the dimness of the ambulance. It took a second for my eyes to adjust from the sunlight to the shadows. Domino yelled, "No shot, no shot!"

  Nolan echoed him. "No shot, no shot!"

  "No shot!" Edward yelled from the far side of Domino.

  I was left staring into the back of the ambulance to see the nightmare of blackened flesh and bone that was the vampire curled around the paramedic like he'd used the officer inside to shield himself. He was feeding at his neck. It was a normal feed; the man would survive if we could get him out in time. I didn't have the angle, but Edward had a head shot; I knew he did and then I realized the second paramedic was behind the struggling pair. There was no shot that wouldn't hit him. Fuck!

  The paramedic yelled, "Get us out of here!"

  I hopped up into the ambulance as Nolan climbed inside. There wasn't room for anyone else. I heard someone shout my name, probably telling me not to be stupid, but it was too late. I was committed. Nolan put his gun against the vampire's forehead, but the other medic was still in the way. It would go through the vampire and into his chest. The vampire's victim's eyes were unfocused. He'd stopped fighting, because the vampire had mind-fucked him. At least he wasn't scared anymore. The other paramedic was scared shitless and I didn't blame him.

  I tried to ease further in so I'd have a shot from the side, but the vampire growled at me and his eyes flared blue again. The color looked too alive in the blackened skull-like head. The vampire bit harder into the neck, tearing at the flesh just a little bit too much like a warning. If he worried at the side of the man's neck like a dog with a toy, he'd take out his jugular vein and that might be all she wrote.

  "Don't hurt him," I said.

  "He's already eating him!" the paramedic hugging the back of the ambulance yelled.

  "No, he's just feeding on the blood. If that's all he does, your friend will be fine. I'm going to have the other medic get out of the ambulance," I said.

  "What?" he asked.

  "I'm talking to the vampire."

  The vampire bit deeper at the man's neck.

  I changed my grip on my gun, slowly, carefully, so that I was holding it left-handed and pointed at the vampire. I didn't have a killing shot for sure, but if it started to tear out his throat I'd shoot regardless. I spoke to the paramedic. "What's your name?"

  "What?"

  "Who are you?" I asked.

  "Gerald, Gerry."

  "Okay, Gerry, here's what we're going to do. You are slowly going to move toward my hand and you're going to stay at my back, between me and the wall, and you are going to get out."

  If the Wicked Bitch or the vampire she was using knew anything about guns, they wouldn't let him get out, but I was betting that she was like a lot of the really old vamps. Modern firearms weren't their thing. I flexed my free hand at the paramedic like I was trying to get a child to take my hand to cross the street. Gerry the paramedic moved toward me.

  The vampire made a low, evil sound in its chest.

  "You've got one hostage. You don't need two."

  He shook his head, burying his mouth deeper into the neck. Blood was beginning to spill out around the vampire's mouth. He wasn't drinking anymore; he was bleeding him. Fuck. I held my other hand up to stop Gerry from moving closer. He stopped moving. I stared at that shining blue eye and started sinking into that quiet center where I went when I had time to line up my shot and aim into the living eyes of someone else, because those blue eyes were full of so much life. I'd never felt the energy of any vampire burn so--alive.

  Nolan's voice came low and even as he said, "If you tear his throat out we will shoot."

  "If he keeps bleeding like that he'll die anyway," Gerry said.

  "Don't help, Gerry," I said, keeping my eyes on the vampire and his victim.

  There was movement near the door of the ambulance, and it took everything I had not to look in that direction, but Edward was there, Kaazim was there, Jake was there, Domino was there, and Nicky was there. They would have it covered. I had to trust that they would, because I didn't dare look away from the vampire and that one shining blue eye, which was the most I could see of its face as it tried to keep hidden from Nolan and me behind the man's throat and head.

  "She's telling him to fight." Damian's voice.

  "Get out of here," I told him, but I forgot one important thing: his name. Gerry thought I was talking to him, because he came toward me scrambling as fast as he could, but he was only human-fast and that wasn't fast enough. The vampire tore out the side of the victim's throat, pushing him toward Nolan, spoiling his shot. I had time to move in front of Gerry before the vampire slammed into me and drove us both back against the side of the ambulance. The vampire was snapping its teeth at my face as I shoved my empty right hand into its chest and shoulder to keep it off me as I fired point-blank into where its heart should have been. The sound of the gunfire in such a small space was thunderous, and deafened me. The vampire kept coming, screaming soundlessly now into my face as it tried to eat me. I got one knee up enough to help my arm hold it off us, and fired a second shot into the chest. It seemed to hesitate as if that one had hurt more, and then I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. It was Edward. I had a split second to decide. I stopped trying to push the vampire off me with my arm and moved it up to protect my face and eyes. It meant I was blind as I felt the vampire move forward; my knee wasn't enough to keep it away, but another shot echoed. I felt things scattering over my arm and the rest of me, but I kept my eyes closed. I trusted Edward. The vampire wasn't pushing so hard against my knee. The man behind me was grabbing my shoulders and I think screaming. Another shot rang out and I was deaf except for the reverb of the shot echoing inside the metal so that it felt like my bones were reverberating with it. My head was full of a high-pitched, echoing buzz that had nothing to do with any sound outside my head now.

  Someone was pushing my gun hand and gun down, but it wasn't an attack; it was just safety. I lowered my arm and realized that it hurt, but I was looking into Edward's face. I'd known it would be him. He said something, but I just shook my head. He seemed to understand, because he stopped trying to talk to me and touched my arm, gently. There was a large bone splinter sticking out of it; some piece of the vampire was stuck in me. If I hadn't put my arm up, it would have been stuck in my face, but I'd been this close to a head shot before; I knew that blowback could be a lot more than just brains and blood. Nothing like experience to help keep you safe; if it had been anyone but Edward I don't know if I would have trusted enough to block my eyes.

  Gerry the paramedic was pushing out from behind me and fell out the open door of the ambulance. I thought he was running away, but when Edward helped me out of the ambulance Gerry was kneeling beside his friend, taking over first aid from Nolan, who'd been trying to stop the blood from pouring out quite as fast. Gerry had bits of burned flesh and small bits of bone sticking out of his face like shrapnel, but he did his job. He stayed with it. I wasn't sure I had enough brownie points to give him for that. He didn't seem to have any bone fragments as
long as the one in my arm, so we let him do his job. I saw the flashing lights before I realized a second ambulance was pulling up. I hadn't really heard it, or if I had, the ringing in my ears kept me from understanding what I was hearing.

  Nicky pulled the body of the vampire out into the light. It started to combust on the street almost immediately. This time when someone suggested putting extra bullets into the body to put it out of its misery, or to keep it from attacking anyone else--I honestly couldn't hear which was offered, but whichever--Pearson let it happen. Nicky shot until what was left of the vampire's head was gone and the burned rib cage splintered into pieces, spilling the still red and bloody heart out into the street, where it pulsed for a second and then burst into flames.

  68

  NEW AMBULANCES AND new paramedics arrived at the scene. They triaged the injuries, and I was happy not to be in the front of the line. It meant I wasn't dying. They had taken both the men who'd had their throats torn open; I hoped that meant that they would make it, but I knew that in America the ambulance crews in some states are not allowed to declare someone dead at a scene, especially if lifesaving measures have already been started. I prayed that they would be all right, but it really depended on if the vampire had gotten the jugular vein, and then whether he'd just nicked it or torn it wide open. The last possibility was that they were transporting corpses but weren't willing to admit it, but the first two left hope. I prayed for that hope. I prayed even though the memory of the spray of blood inside the station house made me worry the most about the first man. I didn't know what else would make that amount of blood pour from the neck that fast except for the jugular to be torn wide open. You didn't live long once that happened.

  I did want to pray for them, but concentrating on almost anything else beat the hell out of looking at my own injury. The blackened bone splinter hurt, but mostly it looked alarming. It's just not okay to look down at your arm and see something foreign sticking out of it. If I thought about exactly what was sticking out of my arm--a piece of someone's skull, okay; a piece of a vampire's blackened and burned skull--then it got a little creepy. The sensation of something stuck in your body that is big enough to move around in a sort of painful wriggly feeling if you move too much went way beyond just the pain of it. Or maybe the sensation made it hurt more?

  I started to get queasy as I tried to hold my arm absolutely still, waiting for the medics to get around to me. Edward was talking to the police that he'd made work friends with in the days he'd been here ahead of me. He'd been wearing the super-duper earplugs that he'd recommended to me, and I had a pair, but I had been in a police station. I had thought we were safe and I didn't put hearing protection in, so although my head was still ringing from the noise of the shots inside the ambulance so that I couldn't really hear what people were saying, or a lot of other sounds, Edward was fine. Later, I'd ask him if he just lived in the damn earplugs. Knowing Edward, he probably did. The ringing in my head had stopped, and my hearing was returning faster than I'd thought it would. Yay for super-healing ability!

  Nolan was staying with him, though I wasn't sure he was helping with the making-friends part. Jake and Kaazim were searching the crowd for threats, or old friends. I wasn't exactly sure which, and not sure I cared as much as I should have, because I was fighting not to throw up. One, it would make the Irish cops think less of me, and two, there was no way to throw up without moving more of my body than I'd want to move, like my arm.

  Domino, Nicky, and Damian were with me at the ambulance full of exploded bits of vampire like the one in my arm. It was considered unsanitary now, so until they cleaned it up, no one would be using it unless they ran out of supplies in the other ambulances, or got desperate to transport someone. There really weren't messy bits until farther into the ambulance, so Damian was sitting just inside it out of direct sunlight. I sat on the edge of the open back of it with my feet swinging so that I felt like I was five again. Damian had his hand resting against my back. He wasn't rubbing it, or petting me, because that had made my body move minutely, which wasn't good right now. The doors of the ambulance were still open, so we were blocked from sight of most of the crowd that had gathered outside the police tape and barriers. Nice to see some things were the same as back home; if there was a crime scene, you always got a crowd.

  I could look up at Domino standing in front of me like a living shield, blocking me and Damian from sight of pretty much anyone. Nicky had been doing the same on the other side of the door, but now he was kneeling in front of me, helping me hold my arm very still. It wasn't bleeding much, which was both good and bad. The bad was that it meant the bone shard was probably in deep and tight, so that it acted like a cork in the wound stopping me from bleeding much at all, which was good, but it also might mean that they'd want a surgeon to help them take it out of my arm.

  Nicky waved his hand in front of my face, so I'd look at him. He directed my line of sight to his face. I looked into that one blue eye with the fall of his blond hair hiding the other one, if it had been there. I did the long blink, which usually meant I was a little shocky.

  "Is she okay?" Domino asked.

  Nicky didn't answer him, just kept staring at me, so I could keep my focus on his face, on the blue of his eye. Damian answered, "She's a little in shock, but her hearing has come back better than I'd feared."

  I blinked at Nicky and turned my head back to look at Damian, which made my arm move just a fraction too much. My stomach tightened and the wave of nausea rolled up my throat and over me. I felt the sick sweat starting as I swallowed hard.

  Domino touched his own stomach and said, "I felt that one even through shielding. If she throws up, I'm not sure I can keep from joining her."

  "Don't you start," I said; my voice sounded normal in my head, which it shouldn't have, not that soon after all the shooting in the confined space of the ambulance. When Nathaniel had called on my phone earlier I hadn't heard it. Damian had taken it and talked to him. Apparently Nathaniel and Dev--Devereux--had both felt the shadow of the sound concussion and the wound in my arm. At that point, I couldn't hear well enough to talk on the phone; now I was hearing just fine. What the hell? My ears should still have been ringing with it, at the very least. The thought helped chase back the nausea.

  I looked at Nicky where he was kneeling in front of me. "Can you hear me?"

  He smiled and nodded.

  "Say something to me," I said.

  "I'm fine," he said.

  I narrowed my eyes at him, because I didn't believe him. I turned my head again to look at Damian. Nicky tightened his grip on my arm just a little to help steady me. It was exactly what I needed in that moment, which he managed to do most of the time. I said to Damian, "My hearing shouldn't be this good yet. I think Nicky's taken the damage for me like a good cannon-fodder Bride."

  Damian looked past me at Nicky. "It is his job metaphysically as your Bride."

  I sat there with Nicky's hands so firm and steady on my arm, and he didn't feel like expendable cannon fodder. It felt like his hands on me helped me breathe a little better. "Yeah, but now I'm in love with him and that seems shitty. Okay, that seemed shitty once the system was explained to me."

  Damian smiled at me and touched his fingertips to the edge of my face. "You can be so harsh, but you are also one of the most genuinely caring people I've ever met."

  The compliment embarrassed me. I wasn't sure why, but it did. "I don't know what to say to that."

  "You don't have to say anything."

  Domino said, "If Nicky really can't hear well, we need to know that if he's going to keep being one of your bodyguards today."

  "Good point," I said, glancing at him. The sunlight was touching the top of his hair, making the few white curls in all the black almost iridescent, as if the thick Irish sunlight brought out the shine in his hair.

  "He'll feel me talking, because he's touching me. One of you say something where he can't see you talking."

  Damian bent down to ki
ss me so that his face was hidden from Nicky's view. He kissed me, soft and gentle, but as he drew back, he said, "Can you hear me, Nicky?"

  There was no answer from the man holding my arm. I had to fight an urge not to turn and look at his face, because that would be enough to give him a clue. "Try again," I told Damian.

  He bent down and got another kiss, but he kept our foreheads touching so that his long hair fell forward, and even if you'd been standing, you couldn't have seen our faces, let alone our lips. It probably looked very intimate, but Damian spoke like that, hidden from sight. "Nicky, if you can't answer my question, then you have to step down as Anita's bodyguard."

  We waited a second with our faces touching, but Nicky didn't answer the question. Crap. "Nicky, can you really not hear us at all?"

  "That would be a no," Domino said.

  Damian sat back up and looked at Nicky. I turned around and looked at him. I looked into that face, which seemed to steady me just by being here. Not everyone I loved made me feel that way, so maybe it wasn't our special love, but the fact that he was my Bride. I hated thinking that, but it was a type of hiding from the truth not to think it. "Nicky, can you hear anything we're saying?"

  "Yes," he said.

  Domino was standing a little behind him, so that he couldn't see him as he asked, "How much can you hear?"

  Nicky turned and looked at him. "Some."

  "How much is some?" Domino asked.

  "My ears are ringing, and I'm hearing everything down that long tunnel that happens without ear protection."

  I touched his face with my free hand, turning him to look at me. "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "You can hear, right?"

  I nodded.

  He smiled. "Then I'm doing my job."

  "If you shift to lion, will that fix it?" I asked.

  He frowned, which probably meant he didn't understand everything I'd said. I tried again with fewer words and enunciating carefully. "Shapeshifting will heal you?"

  "Yes."

  "But he needs to shift soon," Domino said. "The longer you go without shifting to heal, the greater the chance that you'll have some damage left over. It works that way more with some things than others, but hearing can be one of them."