Anita Blake 23 - Jason (20 page)

“No.”

“Enlighten us,” she said, and there was something in the way she said it that I didn’t like. It was just an undercurrent, but if I had to bet, I think something I’d said, or done, while we watched the films had made her suspicious of me. I wondered, if it hadn’t been a male voice ordering the zombie around, if they’d have looked at me as a suspect from the beginning. I hoped not, but a lot of people still saw my psychic ability as evil. Hell, the Catholic Church had excommunicated us all unless we gave up raising the dead, because only Jesus was allowed to do that. Biblical scholars had pointed out that four of his disciples had done it, too, but the Pope, at the time, had found comparing zombie-raising pagans to the disciples of Jesus Christ less than amusing.

“Her soul, her personality, whatever you want to call it, seems to be in the body, except you can’t raise a zombie from the grave if the soul is still in residence,” I said.

“So how do you explain it?” she asked.

“She was just a walking corpse in the first film. Her eyes were empty, she was an it, but between that and the first sex tape that changed.”

“How?” Manning asked.

“You’ve got witches and psychics on the payroll at the FBI now. You even have at least one animator. What’d they come up with?”

“Nothing,” she said.

Brent added, “They all saw what you see, that she was in there somehow, but no one had a clue how it was accomplished.”

“Do you know how it was done?” Manning asked.

I nodded. “I’ve seen it done once.”

“Give us a name and we may have our guy,” Brent said, all eager for a clue.

“It was a woman, and she’s dead.” I added, “I believe she’s dead.”

“Give us a name, we’re good at finding people,” Manning said.

“Dominga Salvador. She was the most powerful vaudun priestess in the midwest.”

“She went missing just after she challenged you.”

I raised eyebrows at Manning. “Challenged me? You mean sent killer zombies into my apartment to murder me? If that’s your definition of challenge, then okay.”

“Some of the local law enforcement officers thought you’d killed her in self-defense.”

“The local leos didn’t trust me as much before I had a badge.”

“I trusted you,” Zerbrowski said.

I smiled at him. “You liked me. I don’t know if you trusted me.”

He grinned and seemed to think about it. “I can’t remember for sure, but I know that long before you got your own badge you proved anything you needed to prove to me.”

“Aw, shucks, Zerbrowski, you’re going to make a girl blush.”

He grinned wider and offered me his fist. I bumped it gently.

“Nice distraction there, Sergeant,” Manning said.

“I don’t know what you mean, agent,” he said.

Her lips curled down in a face that said, clearly, she knew that he knew exactly what he’d done. “It’s going to take more than that to distract me.”

“And that’s the truth,” Brent said. His partner gave him an unfriendly look and he held his hands out empty, as if to say, didn’t mean any harm.

“Why do you think Dominga Salvador is dead?” Manning asked.

“Because I’m alive, and once a person like the señora wants you dead, she doesn’t give up.”

“How do you think she died?”

I tried to appear nonchalant and was glad that I did a better blank-cop face than I had years ago when I’d known Dominga Salvador, because I was about to tell a very big lie to the FBI. “I have no idea.” I could feel my pulse speed in my throat, if I’d been on a Polygraph, I’d have failed.

Manning studied my face like she’d memorize the number of eyelashes I had. I stayed blank and slightly smiling, and felt my eyes dead and empty as last year’s New Year’s resolutions. I wanted to look away from her so badly it almost hurt, but I didn’t. I knew exactly how Dominga Salvador had died, because I had killed her.

Had everyone bitten tonight caught this? The other bites had not looked like vampire bites. They’d been zombie, or human looking. Was this infection something that vampires and shapeshifters could catch? If it was, then it was something new.

Some zombies are raised. Others must be put down. Just ask me, Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter. Before now, I figured I could handle them. Before now, I had never heard of any of them causing human beings to perish in agony. But that’s all changed. These creatures hunt in daylight, and are as fast and strong as vampires. If they bite you, you become just like them. And round and round it goes . . .

Where will it stop? Even I don’t know.

Praise for Laurell K. Hamilton:

‘Hamilton remains one of the most inventive and exciting writers in the paranormal field’ Charlaine Harris

‘Anita Blake is one of the most fascinating fictional heroines since Scarlett O’Hara’
Publishers Weekly

978 0 7553 8905 6

I knew without doubt that if any more of the vampires tried to attack us I’d kill them, too, regardless of apparent age, race, sex, or religious affiliations. I was an equal-opportunity executioner; I killed everybody.

My name is Anita Blake and I am a vampire hunter and necromancer, as well as a US Marshal. So when a fifteen-year-old girl is abducted by vampires, it’s up tome to find her. And when I do, I’m faced with something I’ve never seen before: a terrifyingly ordinary group of people – kids, grandparents, soccer moms – all recently turned and willing to die to avoid serving their vampire master. And where there’s one martyr, I know there will be more . . .

But even vampires have monsters that they’re afraid of. And I’m one of them . . .

Praise for Laurell K. Hamilton:

‘Hamilton remains one of the most inventive and exciting writers in the paranormal field’ Charlaine Harris

‘Anita Blake is one of the most fascinating fictional heroines since Scarlett O’Hara’
Publishers Weekly

978 0 7553 8901 8

We followed the fresh blood even though every molecule in my body was screaming for me to run. Run before dark. Run before the Vampires come. Run.

My name is Anita Blake. The vampires call me ‘The Executioner’. After a series of gruesome murders in the Pacific Northwest, the local police call in me and fellow US Marshal Edward to track down a serial killer they are convinced must be a ‘monster’.

But I know that some monsters are very real. The Harlequin are a secret so dark, even to speak their name can earn you a death sentence. Now they’re here, hunting weretigers and human police. And me.

The Harlequin serve the Mother of All Darkness, the first vampire. Back from the dead, she’s determined to kill Edward and to possess me. And she doesn’t care how many others have to die along the way.

Praise for Laurell K. Hamilton:

‘Hamilton remains one of the most inventive and exciting writers in the paranormal field’ Charlaine Harris

‘Anita Blake is one of the most fascinating fictional heroines since Scarlett O’Hara’
Publishers Weekly

978 0 7553 7092 4

If I had ever wanted to give in to hysterics, it was then. How do you fight something with no body to kill? How do you fight something that can possess the most powerful vampires in the world and use them like puppets?

My name is Anita Blake and I try very had to live a normal life in St Louis – as normal as possible for someone who is a legal vampire executioner and a US Marshal. But then a vampire from my past reaches out. She was supposed to be dead, but the Mother of All Darkness is the first vampire, the dark creator, and it’s hard to kill a god.

She believes that the triumvirate created by master vampire Jean-Claude with me and the werewolf Richard Zeeman has enough power for her to regain a body and to emigrate to the New World. But the body she wants to possess is already taken; I’m about to learn a whole new meaning to sharing my body, one that has nothing to do with the bedroom. And if she can’t succeed in taking over my body for herself, she means to see that no one else has the use of it, ever again . . .

‘Hamilton remains one of the most inventive and exciting writers in the paranormal field’ Charlaine Harris

978 0 7553 7091 7

I’ve earned my reputation, but if you really did your research on me then you also know that I don’t raise zombies for kicks, or thrill seekers, or tormented relatives unless they have a plan . . .

I am Anita Blake, vampire hunter and necromancer, and when I meet with Tony Bennington, who is desperate to have me reanimate his recently deceased wife, I fell sympathy for his loss. After all, I know something about love, and I know everything there is to know about loss. But I also know that what I can do as a necromancer isn’t the miracle Tony thinks he needs. The creature that I could coerce to step out of his late wife’s grave would not be the lovely Mrs Bennington Not really. And not for long.

I have been relaxing just a bit with the men in my private life. The affectionate warmth of being with them seems to bring out something softer in me, a sense of safety I can almost trust. They do love me; that part is for ever and for sure. But flirting with feeling safe is a dangerous thing . . .

‘Hamilton remains one of the most inventive and exciting writers in the paranormal field’ Charlaine Harris

978 0 7553 7441 0