Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #22) - Page 25

49

We stepped off the elevator into a mass of police, medical professionals, and first responders of every flavor. It was as if the hospital population had tripled between the time we went down to the basement and now.

A uniform who I remembered from the hallway earlier that day, though it seemed like a hundred years ago, said, 'What the hell happened to you guys?'

We all looked at each other. The men's hair was plastered to their heads, and even my curls were dripping wet, as were our clothes. I looked down to find that we were making a puddle on the floor. We had to have done the same thing in the elevator, but we just hadn't noticed.

The uniform laughed. 'How did you get that wet and still look like you walked out of a slaughterhouse?'

I blinked at us all and realized that the sprinklers hadn't exactly gotten all of the mess. It was like I was seeing the world in pieces, which meant that though I was handling it better than Dev, I might be a little shocky. Interesting.

'Zombies,' I said.

'What?'

'They were killing zombies,' Hatfield said as she walked up to us.

'We were killing vampires, but none of us look this bad,' he said.

'Zombies are messier,' she said, and then she said, 'Just give it a rest, Lewis. I need to talk to the marshals.'

He started to say something else, but she said, 'Now, Lewis.'

He frowned, but he walked away.

Hatfield was in full gear like we were, though we had more weapons on us, but then Edward and I tended to overpack. A gurney with a covered body on it wheeled between us. There was blood soaking through the covering, which meant it was a very fresh body.

Hatfield watched it being wheeled into the elevator. She kept watching it as the doors closed behind the dead body and the orderly pushing it. Her eyes reminded me of Dev's earlier. He'd rallied, and to strangers he probably didn't look any worse for wear than the rest of us, except for Yancey, who had gone to find the rest of his squad. He still looked fresh compared to the rest of us, but then he'd only helped with cleanup. The real mess had been the dismembering by shooting; he'd missed that part.

'We've got five dead,' she said, and her voice sounded harsh, angry even, but I knew she wasn't angry with us. She was just angry; I knew all about that.

'Did the guard, Miller, make it?' Dev asked.

She shook her head. 'I've never seen anything like these rotting bastards. They don't die like regular vampires.'

I opened my mouth, and Edward must have been afraid that I'd say I told you so, because he touched my arm. 'They're the hardest type of vamp to destroy,' he said.

'The vampires' bodies have already been put in the incinerator in the sub-basement here. The incinerator is designed to destroy medical waste, and I watched each vampire go into the fire. Is that dead enough?'

'It'll do,' I said.

There was a flinching around her eyes, and she said, 'Could they climb back out of an incinerator? Medical waste has to be destroyed completely, so I thought it was enough; if it's not …' Her voice broke, and she stared down at the floor, one hand resting on the butt of her sidearm. There was a time when I touched my gun like that, like a dangerous teddy bear.

'Fire destroys even the rotting vampires,' I said.

She looked up at me, and the only word I had for her eyes was haunted. She looked haunted. 'I've hunted vampires in the field. I'm not just one of those newbies who's only staked them in the morgue. I know what it's like to hunt them and have them hunt you back, but I've never seen anything like this.'

'Rotting vamps are real rare in this country,' Edward said in his best Ted voice.

She nodded. 'How did they heal the damage to their brains, hearts, and spinal cords? That's supposed to kill anything, even vampires.'

'The rotting vampires are more like zombies,' I said, 'and that means fire is the only certainty.'

'Except daylight, right?' she said.

'I've seen two rotters that could walk in daylight and not burn. Daylight shows them as rotting corpses and they can't pass for human, but they could still walk around and do everything else.'

'Day walkers, that's just legend,' she said.

I shook my head. 'I've known a few other vamps that were powerful enough to walk in daylight. Some are just so damned old that daylight doesn't hurt them anymore; for others it's a power curve, almost like being able to call an animal, or levitate.'

'Every time I think I've seen the worst of these bastards, I'm wrong,' she said, and she wasn't looking at us anymore. She was staring off into space, seeing some horror from the fighting and the dying playing over in her head. How did I know that was what Hatfield was thinking? Because I'd been there, done that, and was tired of collecting that particular T-shirt.

'The rotting vamps are the worst of it,' I said.

She looked at me then. 'Really?'

I met those haunted eyes and said, 'Yeah.'

She gave a laugh, but it was a bitter sound. 'I want to ask you to promise me, like I'm fucking five or something.'

I smiled to take the sting out what I was about to say. 'I wouldn't promise, sorry.'

'You said this was the worst.'

'I did, but there are things that have scared me more. Vampires that scared the fuck out of me.'

'Like the one you killed in Vegas.'

'Yeah, he was pretty scary,' I said.

'Is it true that he could call jinn, like make-a-wish genies?'

'Yeah,' I said.

'I didn't even think jinn existed outside of old stories,' she said.

'Me either,' I said.

'Well, fuck,' she said.

I nodded, shrugged, and said, 'Fuck about covers it.'

'But these vampires are dead, right? It's over, except for the two in custody that I can kill later today.'

'We need the master vampire behind this, Hatfield. Until he's dead he'll make more rotting vampires, and we'll have more flesh-eating zombies. We need the two vampires alive so I can question them tomorrow night. They're our best chance at finding out his daytime location and destroying him once and for all.'

She nodded, and like Dev downstairs it was a little too rapid and a little too often. 'Forrester persuaded me not to kill them earlier, but if you tell me they're more valuable alive than dead, I'll believe you, Blake. I didn't believe you once and people died. It'll be dawn soon; what can we do until the vamps wake up to be questioned?'

'They've lawyered up,' Edward said. 'Questioning them won't be as easy as normal.'

'That fucking new law,' Hatfield said, and then she looked at me. She studied me as if she were trying to see inside my head. 'Knowing all that you know about them, how could you help draft a law that gave these bastards rights?'

'I've worked serial killer cases where the perp was human, but I still support human rights.'

'That's not the same,' she said.

'How many serial cases have you worked?' I asked.

'Every vampire case I've ever worked had multiple deaths.'

I shook my head. 'Most vamps kill to eat or because they're trying to make more vampires. They don't have the same kind of pathology as a serial killer, even though that's technically what they're classed as a lot.'

'What does that even mean?' Hatfield said, and she sounded irritated, a hint of her earlier attitude.

'It means I've seen human serial killers who did things so awful that as horrible as the vampires and shapeshifters can be, it's not as terrible to me.'

'Why not?' she asked, and the irritation was melting with something that was almost tears.

'Because we're human beings, damn it, and we're supposed to remember that and act accordingly. Serial killers don't remember that.'

'It can be worse than we saw tonight.'

I didn't know whether to pat her on the head or laugh in her face. Edward saved me from either. 'Marshal Hatfield, the worst monsters I've ever seen have all been human.'

Her eyes were shiny. 'I don't want to believe that.'

'No one wants to believe that,' he said, 'but that doesn't make it any less true.' He sounded sympathetic, kind even, and I knew he wasn't, not about this kind of thing. He was the consummate actor when he needed to be, and he had his Ted act down to an Oscar-worthy performance. I still didn't understand how he did it, but watching Hatfield look at him with her eyes held wide so the tears wouldn't fall, I watched her buy his sympathy, hook, line, and sinker.

She said, 'I need to go … do something. I'll …' She went for the doors and the outside air. Maybe she needed air, but I was betting she just didn't want anyone to see her cry. No cop wanted the other cops to see them cry, but as a woman, once you cried at a crime scene you never really lived it down. Throwing up at a crime scene was better than crying at one.

'What next?' Dev asked.

'Kiss Nathaniel and Micah, and then I'd like to finally see the hotel, clean up, and get a few hours of sleep.'

'I usually have to make you sleep on a job,' Edward said.

'Maybe I'm getting old,' I said.

'You're younger than I am,' he said.

I smiled. 'Maybe I just got out of the hospital after being shot and spent the last few hours in a brutal fucking battle against killer zombies, and so I'm a little tired.'

He grinned and settled his hat a little lower on his head. 'A little tired,' he said.

'A little tired,' I said, and smiled.

'Well, I'm fucking exhausted,' Nicky said.

'I thought lions were supposed to have stamina,' Dev said, and his eyes were wide and innocent, too innocent.

Nicky raised an eyebrow at him. 'We've got more stamina than tigers, but that's not saying a lot.'

Dev grinned. 'I can think of one way to prove what cat has the most stamina.'

Nicky grinned back.

'I don't know whether to put my fingers in my ears and go la-la-la or find more of your guards so we can take bets,' Edward said.

I frowned at him.

He grinned, and with all of them grinning at me, what else could I do but grin back. 'Fine, but I'm not sure I'm up to anything bet-worthy tonight.'

Dev pretended to pout. Nicky just looked smug. I narrowed my eyes at them. 'Pouting I get, but why smug?'

Nicky grinned again. 'You're dead tired, and you just got out of the hospital, and you've already fed the ardeur, but you still didn't say no.'

I rolled my eyes.

He leaned in close and whispered, 'I love you, too.'

It took me a moment to realize what he was referring to, which let me know just how tired I was, but when my brain caught up to the comment I blushed. Red, hot, to-my-roots blushed, which I'd almost stopped doing.

Nicky laughed, high and delighted. It was such a happy sound that it made people look at us.

'I haven't seen you blush like that in years,' Edward said.

'Fuck you both,' I said, and went for the elevator. I was going to see Micah and Nathaniel and then go to the hotel. I might not be as freaked about it as Dev had been, but I could feel thicker things than blood drying on my skin as I moved. I didn't even want to know how much, or exactly what, was in my hair.

It occurred to me after I'd pressed the button that we were covered in rotting flesh and fresh blood, and Micah's dad had an open wound that they were leaving open to the air. We couldn't go near him.

I hit the earpiece and hoped that he and Nathaniel could come down, or out to us. I needed to see them, touch them, and know they were all right with more than just a voice over the telephone. I felt exhausted and yet, weirdly, wasn't sure I'd be able to sleep. It was like that after a fight sometimes, exhausted but jazzed.

Nathaniel answered the phone. They could come down and say good night. Yay, so very yay! There, the edge of tears now. I didn't usually get this emotional this soon after the violence, but sometimes it was as if my mind didn't know how to cope so it kept trying out different strategies – humor, sarcasm, exhaustion, embarrassment, sadness. Once I'd just been numb, that was how I'd survived, but the problem was that in trying to cope with my job I'd become numb to everything. It had been damn depression, and then Jean-Claude had found me and broken down the walls that I'd so carefully built around myself. The good news was that I'd never been happier. The bad news was that in feeling love, I felt other things, too, and some of them were not so good.

The elevator doors opened and Micah and Nathaniel were there and it was everything I could do to not fall into their arms and start to sob. Two things stopped me. One, I'd have gotten zombie bits all over them and then Micah couldn't have gone back into his father's room without a shower. Two, if I threw myself into my boyfriend's arms and sobbed like a freaking girl I'd never live it down. The other cops would see me as a girl, and I needed them to see me as one of the guys, but as I reached out a hand to each of them, rather than flinging myself on them like I wanted to, I wasn't sure being one of the 'guys' was worth it.

50

The front desk clerk of the very nice hotel took one look at the four of us as we walked through the doors at an hour till dawn and assumed that something was wrong at the hotel. I wanted to see Jean-Claude before dawn, so I didn't have any patience left for it.

'We're just going to our room,' I said.

He looked us up and down, and his face said clearly he didn't believe we had a room in his fine establishment. I think the room rate was probably above most cops' salaries.

It was Edward who touched my shoulder and made me realize I'd taken a step toward the desk clerk. He spoke under his breath. 'Ease down.'

I tried to swallow past the pulse that was suddenly trying to jump out of my throat. What was wrong with me? I nodded to let him know I'd understood.

It was Dev who smiled and charmed the man, flashing the room card that he had. He'd actually seen the rooms while I was off in the mountains hunting vamps with Nicky and Ares. Thinking his name caused that tightening of the chest, the reaction in the gut that would happen for a while. At least he hadn't been a lover, and the moment I thought it I felt bad for being relieved that I hadn't been closer to him, but I was relieved all the same.

We had a suite of rooms, and basically Jean-Claude had taken over a floor of the hotel, which was why we'd invited Edward to come stay the night. There'd be a bed somewhere, or so Dev had said. I might not want him as my backup on a warrant of execution, but I trusted him to report the rooms and the sleeping space available. There are a lot of people I trust to coordinate my life who I wouldn't trust to guard my life, just as there were people I trusted at my back in a fight who would have sucked at the organization part of things. We all had our skills.

I watched Dev, his hair still slimed on one side with drying blood, charm the frightened hotel clerk. He wasted that smile on him that was usually reserved for sexual prospects, and either the clerk was into guys or Dev was just that charming. I didn't know which, and if it would get us up to our rooms sooner I didn't much care which.

The three of us went to the elevators, and Edward had me hold the door while he and Nicky loaded in the bags of weapons; normally I would have insisted on helping load, but it would be bad to have the doors close with our bags in there and none of us with them. So I held the door while the men loaded until there was barely going to be room for us to stand. Edward leaned on the open door, holding it, and Nicky and I got in, and when he put his arm around me I didn't protest. I cuddled under his arm, as close as the body armor would let me get. I let him hold me and tried not to feel much, except that it felt good. Dev trotted up to us, and Edward stepped in and let the doors close.

'He offered us help with our bags,' Dev said.

'Is the clerk into guys, or is your ability to charm devoid of sexual promise?' I asked.

He grinned at me. 'Devoid of sexual promise; you must not be as tired as I thought.'

I scowled at him.

Nicky hugged me a little tighter, and I scowled at him, too.

Dev's grin did not fade; in fact it widened. 'Yeah, the clerk is into guys.'

'You imply that you might see him later?' Edward asked.

'Nothing as strong as that,' Dev said.

'What does that even mean?' I asked, and it sounded grumpy even to me.

'It means he didn't pimp himself out, but he let the clerk think that he liked guys, too,' Nicky said.

I glanced up at him from under his arm, so it felt like being a child and too small and … I moved out from him.

'What did I do wrong?' he asked.

'How did you know that?'

'Flirting for distraction is the same no matter if it's women or men, Anita.'

'You're saying you've done the same thing.'

'I've been the young, cute distraction on a few jobs back when I was with my first lion pride, so yeah.' His face was neutral as he said it, empty of emotion. It was the way he hid when he was feeling something, because Nicky wasn't a born sociopath; his feelings had gotten tortured and abused out of him. It meant he still had feelings, but they were … hidden and a little twisted.

'You do more than just flirt on the job?' I asked.

'Don't do this,' Edward said.

I glared at him. 'Do what?'

'Pick at the people you love, because you've finally got a minute that isn't an emergency and all the feelings you've been shoving down inside are trying to find a way out, and if you won't give them a nice clean exit wound, they'll tear their way out of your life and everyone near you.'

We looked at each other. I wanted to ask who he had torn up that had been close to him, because I knew it wasn't Donna and the kids; whoever he was referring to had been before that, before I knew him. If we'd been alone I would have asked, but he wouldn't answer in front of anyone but me, and maybe not even me.

The doors opened and Dev moved first like a good bodyguard. It moved Edward to check the hall and Nicky to move so that his broad body blocked me from view, though knowing that I loved him meant that him taking a bullet for me had taken on a whole new suck.

There was a murmur of male voices, and then I heard more clearly, 'Sorry, man, but it's orders.'

'What's wrong?' I asked, fighting the urge to peer around Nicky's body.

Edward answered from the door that he was holding open. 'Claudia is in charge of the detail and apparently she's upset.'

'Why? What'd we do?' I asked.

'You aren't in trouble,' Dev said. 'We are.'

'Why?' Nicky asked.

'Apparently, for letting Anita get hurt.'

'When I'm on the job you guys can't protect me.'

A second male voice said, 'Claudia got put in charge of Jean-Claude and Anita's safety, so she's going to yell at both of you.'

'Lisandro, is that you?' I stepped around Nicky then, and he let me, only sliding his hand into mine so we walked out hand in hand.

'It's me,' he said, and there he was, six feet of tall, Hispanic handsome, his long black hair tied back in a ponytail. He was wearing a black T-shirt under a black suit jacket, over black jeans and boots. The suit jacket didn't hide the gun at his waist as well as it would have if his waist had been less slender and his shoulders a little less broad, but Lisandro did the same workout as the other guards, and unlike Dev he worked hard at it. He was built more slender than Nicky and would never muscle up like that, but what muscle he had looked good on him. He was better in a fight than he looked, but …

'You aren't supposed to travel out of town on guard work,' I said.

'When Jean-Claude decided to come out here, Rafael wanted the best guarding him, so Claudia is in charge and I'm her second-in-command, because we are the best.' He said it with no trace of attitude, just a statement of fact.

I opened my mouth and closed it, because what was I supposed to say, that ever since he'd nearly died on an out-of-town guard detail with me, I hadn't wanted him with me again, because I didn't want to tell his wife and kids why their father had died keeping me alive? Or that we'd had one emergency feeding of the ardeur when the Mother of All Darkness and the Lover of Death had messed with us, and his wife had told us no harm, no foul, but if he ever had sex with me again then she was divorcing his ass and taking his kids, and I didn't want to risk it?

'Hey, that makes me the best, too,' and it was Emmanuel, who was five foot eight with short, pale brown hair and the only blue-gray eyes I'd ever seen on someone who was Hispanic. He tanned in the summer, but never as dark as Lisandro was normally. Emmanuel was also one of our younger guards, under twenty-five, though I wasn't honestly sure just how much under.

'You must have been training behind our backs, because last I checked you couldn't beat me in anything.' Dev said it with a smile that let the other man know he was teasing.

'Well, you didn't do so hot at keeping her safe, did you?'

And that was a little too close to home, because Dev stopped smiling. In fact, for a moment a much more serious person looked out of that handsome face, and the first trickle of otherworldly energy whispered through the hallway, which meant he was really pissed, because the golden tigers prided themselves on ultimate control over their inner beast.

'Hey, I'm sorry,' Emmanuel said. 'That was out of line.' He looked genuinely embarrassed, and he should have.

'We're supposed to turn Anita over to the guards in the main room and then escort the two of you to Claudia. I don't have orders for … Marshal Ted,' Lisandro said.

'I figured we had room for him, and if it's a fight, him with us is better,' Dev said.

'I can't argue about the fighting part, and you're right, we have the whole floor to ourselves, so there's a bed for him.'

'Thanks,' Edward said in his Ted voice, even smiling.

Lisandro gave him narrow eyes, because he knew exactly who Edward was; the Ted was so he wouldn't forget around the other cops.

'I didn't think Claudia traveled out of town for guard duty either,' I said.

'We didn't have time to get Bobby-Lee back in town to be point on this, and Fredo had a family event, so that left Claudia and me.'

'I'm sorry for that,' I said, and I wondered if he understood what I was apologizing for.

He smiled bright in the dark handsome of his face. 'You almost died, and you're apologizing because we had to travel out of town at the last minute.' He shook his head.

'I want my weapons in the room near me; if we all carry stuff it'll be quicker,' I said.

They didn't argue. We all picked up bags and Lisandro led the way to a door. He gave a knock that sounded like a signal: two short, one loud. The door opened, though I couldn't see who opened it around everyone's taller and broader bodies. I was used to being the smallest person in the room and certainly the smallest person when the guards were with me. They deposited the dangerous bags just inside the door, because though the room was large there was barely space for this many new bags.

I finally got to see the hotel suite. I'm sure it had looked roomy once, but with all the coffins in it there was barely room to thread a path from the window to the bathroom. Jean-Claude could have slept in the bed just fine, but two things. One, a lot of the older vampires preferred to travel with a coffin. Two, a maid opening the drapes, by accident or on purpose, would be very, very bad. A lot of the maids were devoutly religious and from sections of the world where vampires weren't legal and could still be killed on sight, if you could manage it before they killed you. It just wasn't worth the risk. Some of the newer vamps traveled with mummy sleeping bags. They folded up better in your carry-on bag. Coffins were for vampires who had servants and flunkies to tote and fetch. Jean-Claude had those. In fact, some of the coffins were for the flunkies.

I kissed Nicky good luck as Lisandro led him off to get yelled at by Claudia, about something that wasn't his fault, but I understood chain of command enough to know that my interceding for him would just piss her off more. Claudia was six foot six, the tallest woman I'd ever personally met, and had the shoulders and muscle to go with her size, though she still managed to look feminine, dangerous but beautiful. With no makeup to grace the high cheekbones, and her long hair usually pulled back into a tight ponytail just like Lisandro's, she was still one of the most striking women I'd ever met.

Lisandro led them and Edward off to find her and a bed for Edward and his own bags of dangerous toys. Dev poked his head back in at the last minute. 'You still going to help me clean up?'

I smiled at him, I couldn't help it. 'Yeah.'

He grinned at me, and Emmanuel gave him a halfhearted push through the door. 'You are such a horndog.'

'Yes, I am,' Dev said, and the door closed behind them. I turned to see past the bags, mine and the mountain of Jean-Claude's, and the coffins, to find what guards I'd been handed off to, and smiled.

The Wicked Truth had come as Jean-Claude's bodyguards. Wicked and Truth were tall, broad-shouldered, handsome, with shoulder-length hair. Wicked's hair was straight and thick and very blond. Truth's hair was brown with a slight wave to it. They both had gray-blue eyes, which meant that sometimes they looked blue and sometimes not so much. Once Truth had an almost-beard, nicely scruffy, but he'd shaved it and like most vampires he wasn't able to grow it out once he'd shaved it, so now you could see that they both had a deep dimple in the square, manly chins. Without the facial hair the brothers looked even more like twins, though I knew they'd been born a year apart. I also knew that Wicked had dressed them both in designer suits; his was a pale gray with a blue dress shirt that made his eyes look very blue. Truth was in charcoal gray with a shirt almost the same shade of blue so his eyes were as blue as I'd ever seen them, so that when they turned and looked at me it gave a startling mirror image, and then Wicked's arrogant, teasing smile spoiled the illusion. Truth was far too serious for that smile.

Wicked was still smiling as he said, 'It doesn't do any good to send bodyguards with you if you keep insisting on hunting monsters without us.'

'You are a fool, brother,' Truth said, and moved toward me through the coffins. It looked like an undertaker's showroom.

'I had a bodyguard with me,' I said, quietly.

'I am a fool,' Wicked said, 'and I am so sorry about Ares.'

Truth hugged me, and I let him. I let the strength and solidness of him hold me close. I could trace his shoulder rig under the suit jacket, and my hands found his weapons without thinking about it. The suit jackets were tailored to hide the guns and blades. His torso was long enough that he had a short sword down his back in a back sheath modeled after one I used to hold my biggest blade, though I was short enough that mine was just a big knife. His short sword was longer than my body from neck to waist. I knew that somewhere in his luggage was the great sword, his real sword. He'd fixed up a back harness for it, too, but there was no way to actually wear it concealed, just more modern-looking. His battle-axe didn't really fit under modern clothing either, but then axes are like machine guns; concealment isn't really the point, intimidation and blood is the point. He had several smaller axes, too, but only the smaller throwing axes actually fit under modern jackets, and then barely.

I liked that hugging Truth was always an obstacle course in weapons placement. Some of the men in my life probably felt the same way about me, though I wasn't sure about the 'liking' part.

He stroked my hair and just held me close. Truth was a man of few words, which meant he didn't expect much from others. There were moments when that was a very good thing.

Truth and I pulled back from the hug at about the same time. I looked up into his face and those surprisingly blue eyes and found them grayer than when we'd started the hug. I realized his eyes had changed shade because he was sad, or knew I was; blue-gray eyes did that.

Wicked was at our side now. His handsome face was very serious as he said, 'We understand what it is like to be forced to kill a friend and comrade in arms, Anita.'

I realized that they meant it. Centuries ago the head of their bloodline, their sourdre de sang, had gone insane and been possessed by a blood frenzy that had spread through all the vampires he'd created, except for the two brothers standing with me. They had executed the others of their line, a bloodline known for its warriors, before the Vampire Council's executioners could arrive to carry out the death sentences.

I wrapped an arm around Wicked's waist, while still having a loose arm around Truth. They hugged me together, but it was Wicked who bent over for a kiss. He was the bold one in certain areas.

'We were never allowed such liberties with our Dark Mistress,' a man's voice said.

We turned, and it was one of the executioners sent to carry out that death sentence oh so long ago. Mischa was one of the Harlequin; he had been Graziano, one of the early names of the Dottor or Doctor in the Italian Comedy. He'd spent centuries wearing a mask that matched that name. The only people who saw his real face had been those he spied upon or those he killed. His real face had been the last sight on earth for t