[Anita Blake 17] - Skin Trade (3 page)

“I just want you to know, Blake, really know, what you're walking into, that's all.”

“It must have been bad.”

“I've seen more men dead at one time. Hell, I've lost more men under my command.”

“You must be ex-military,” I said.

“I am,” he said.

I waited for him to say what service; most would, but he didn't.

“Where were you stationed?” I asked.

“Classified, most of it.”

“Ex-special teams?” I made it part question, part statement.

“Yes.”

“Do I ask what flavor, or just let it drop, before you have to threaten me with the old if-I-tell-you-then-I-have-to-kill-you routine?” I tried for a joke, but Shaw didn't take it that way.

“You're making a joke. If you can do that, then you don't get what's happening.”

“You've got three operators dead, one vamp executioner dead and cut up; that
is
bad, but you didn't send just three operators in with the marshal, so most of your team got away, Sheriff.”

“They didn't get away,” he said, and something in his voice made that tight, black pit of fear rise a little higher in my gut.

“But they're not dead,” I said, “or you'd say so.”

“No, not dead, not exactly.”

“Are they badly hurt?”

“Not exactly,” he said.

“Stop beating the bush to death and just tell me, Shaw.”

“Seven of our men are in the hospital. There's not a mark on them. They just dropped.”

“If there are no marks on them, why did they drop, and why are they in the hospital?”

“They're asleep.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“You mean comas?”

“The doctors say no. They're asleep; we just can't wake them up.”

“Do the docs have any clues?”

“The only thing close to this is those patients in the twenties who all went to sleep and never woke up.”

“Didn't they make a movie years back about them waking up?”

“Yes, but it didn't last, and they still don't know why that form of sleeping sickness is different from the norm,” he said.

“Your whole team didn't just catch this sleeping thing in the middle of a firefight.”

“You asked what the doctors said.”

“Now, I'm asking what you say.”

“One of our practitioners says it was magic.”

“Practitioners?” I made it a question.

“We've got psychics attached to our teams, but can't call them our pet wizards.”

“So operators and practitioners,” I said.

“Yes.”

“So someone did a spell?”

“I don't know, but apparently it all reeks of psychic shit, and when you run out of explanations that make sense, you go with what you got.”

“When you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” I said.

“Did you just quote Sherlock Holmes at me?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you still don't get it, Blake. You just don't.”

“Okay, let me be blunt here. Something about my reaction wasn't what you expected, so you're convinced that I don't get the seriousness of the situation. You're ex-special teams, which means to you, women are not going to measure up. You've called me a beautiful woman, and that, too, makes most cops and military underestimate women. But special teams, hell, you don't think most other military men are up to your level, or most cops. So I'm a girl; get over it. I'm petite and I clean up well; get over that, too. I'm dating a vampire, the master of my city; so what? It has nothing to do with my job or why Vittorio invited me to come hunt him in Vegas.”

“Why did he run in St. Louis? Why didn't he run here when he knew we were coming? Why did he ambush our men and not yours?”

“Maybe he couldn't afford to lose that many of his vampires again, or maybe he's just decided to make his last stand in your city.”

“Lucky fucking us.”

“Yeah.”

“I called around, talked to some of the other cops you've worked with, and some of the other vampire executioners, about you. You want to know why some of them thought this vampire ran in St. Louis?”

“I'm all ears.”

“You, they thought he ran from you. Our Master of the City told me that the vampires call you the Executioner—that they've called you that for years.”

“Yeah, that's their pet name for me.”

“Why you? Why you, and not Gerald Mallory? He's been around longer.”

“He's been around years longer than me, but I've got the higher body count. Think about it.”

“How can you have the higher body count if he's been doing this for at least ten years longer than you?”

“One, he's a stake-and-hammer man. He refuses to go to silver ammo and guns. That means he has to totally incapacitate the vampires before he can kill them. Totally incapacitating a vampire is really hard to do. I can wound one, bring it down from a distance. Two, I think his hatred of vampires makes him less effective when hunting them. It makes him miss clues and not think things through.”

“So you just kill them better than anyone else.”

“Apparently.”

“I'll be honest, Blake, I'd feel better if you were a guy. I'd feel even better if you had some military background. I've checked you out; other than a few hunting trips with your dad, you'd never handled a gun before you started killing monsters. You'd never owned a handgun at all.”

“We were all newbies once, Shaw. But trust me, the new is all worn off of me.”

“Our Master of the City is cooperating fully with us.”

“I'll just bet he is.”

“He says bring you to Vegas, and you'll sort it out.”

That stopped me. Maximillian, Max, had met me only once, when he came to town with some of his weretigers after an unfortunate metaphysical accident. The unfortunate accident had ended with me pretty much possessing one of his weretigers, Crispin. He'd taken Crispin back to Vegas with him, but it wasn't because the tiger wanted to leave me. He was disturbingly devoted to me. It wasn't my fault, honest, but the damage was still done. Lately, some of the powers I'd gained as Jean-Claude's human servant seemed to translate into attracting metaphysical men. Vampires, wereanimals, so far just that, but it was enough. Some days it was too much. I didn't remember doing anything that impressive when Max was visiting.

I'd spent most of his visit trying to be a good little human servant for Jean-Claude, and whatever became mine, like a weretiger, became my master's, too. We'd done some fairly disturbing metaphysics, my master and I, for our guest's benefit. We'd left him kind of creeped, unless he was way more bisexual than he'd ever admit.

“Blake, you still there?”

“I'm here, Shaw, just thinking about your Master of the City. I'm flattered that he thinks I can sort it out.”

“You should be. He's old-time mob. Don't take this wrong, but if you think my opinion of women is low, then old-time mobsters think worse.”

“Yeah, yeah, you just think women can't cut it on the job. Mobsters think we're just for making babies or fucking.”

He made another laugh sound. “You are one blunt son of a bitch.”

I took it for the compliment it was; he hadn't called me a daughter of a bitch. If I could get him to treat me like one of the guys, I could do my job.

“I am probably one of the most blunt people you will ever meet, Shaw.”

“I'm beginning to believe that.”

“Believe it, warn the other guys. It'll save time.”

“Warn them about what, that you're blunt?”

“All of it—blunt, a girl, pretty, dates vampires, whatever. Get it out of their system before I hit the ground in Vegas. I don't want to have to wade through macho bullshit to do my job.”

“Nothing I can do about that, Blake. You'll have to prove yourself to them, just like any . . . officer.”

“Woman, you were going to say
woman
. I know how it works, Shaw. Because I'm a girl, I gotta be better than the guys to get the same level of respect. But with three men dead in Vegas and seven more in some sort of a spell, ten dead here in St. Louis, five in New Orleans, two in Pittsburgh, I'd like to think your officers will be more interested in catching this bastard than giving me a hard time.”

“They're motivated, Blake, but you're still a beautiful woman and they're still cops.”

I ignored the compliment because I never knew what to do with it. “And they're scared,” I said.

“I didn't say that.”

“You didn't have to; you're special teams and you admitted it. If it's spooked you, then it's sure as hell spooked the rest. They're going to be jumpy and looking for someone to blame.”

“We blame the vampires that killed our people.”

“Yeah, but I'm still going to be the whipping boy for some of them.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The message on the wall was for me. The head came to me. You already asked me what I did to piss Vittorio off. Some of your people are going to say that I pissed him off enough to make him do all this, or maybe even that he did it all to impress me in that sweet serial killer sort of way.”

Shaw was quiet, only his thick breathing on the phone. I didn't prompt him, just waited, and finally he said, “You're a bigger cynic than I am, Blake.”

“Do you think I'm wrong?”

He was quiet for a breath or two more. “No, Blake, I don't think you're wrong. I think you're exactly right. My men are spooked, and they'll want someone to blame. This vampire has made sure that the police here in Vegas will have mixed feelings about you.”

“What you need to ask yourself, Shaw, is did he do it on purpose, to make my job harder, or did he not give a damn about the effect it had on you and your men?”

“You know him better than I do, Blake. Which is it—on purpose, or didn't give a damn?”

“I don't know this vampire, Shaw. I know his victims, and the vampires he left behind for killing. I thought he'd resurface because most of these guys can't stop once they get to a certain level of violence. It's like a drug, and they are addicted. But I never dreamed he'd send me presents or special messages. I honestly didn't think I'd made that big an impression on him.”

“We'll show you the crime scene when you land. Trust me, Blake, you made an impression on him.”

“Not the impression I wanted to make,” I said.

“And what was that?”

“A hole in his head, and a hole in his heart big enough to see daylight through.”

“I'll help you do it.”

“I didn't think undersheriffs did fieldwork.”

“For this one, I'll make an exception. When can you get here?”

“I'll have to check the airline schedule, and I'll have to check the regulations for my vampire kit. Seems like the rules change every time I have to fly.”

“Our marshal didn't carry anything special on him that you couldn't get on a plane with if you've passed the air marshal test.”

I thought to myself,
Maybe that's why he's dead
. Out loud, I said, “I'm bringing phosphorus grenades if I can get them on the plane.”

“Phosphorus grenades, no shit.”

“No shit.”

“They work on vampires?”

“They work on everything, Shaw, and water makes them burn hotter.”

“You ever seen a man dive into water, thinking it will put it out, but it just flares?” Shaw asked.

I had a sudden picture in my head of a ghoul that had run through a stream trying to get away. He, or one of his pack, had killed a homeless man who'd fallen asleep in the cemetery where the ghouls had come out of the graves. They'd never have attacked him awake, but they still ate him, and that still earned them an extermination. I'd just been backup for a flamethrower team of exterminators. But ghouls that are brave enough to attack and kill the living rather than just scavenge the dead can turn deadly. Which means you don't send civilians in without badges to back them. It'd been the first time I'd used the grenades. They worked better than anything I'd ever used on ghouls. When they go bad, they are as strong as a vampire, faster and stronger than a zombie, immune to silver bullets, and almost impossible to kill with anything but fire. “I saw some run through a stream. The phosphorus flared up around them like a hot, white aura everywhere the water splashed. So bright, the water sparked in the light.”

“And the men screamed for a long time,” Shaw said.

“Yeah, ghouls, but yeah, they did.” I heard my voice utterly cold. I couldn't afford to feel anything yet.

“I thought modern phosphorus didn't do all that,” he said.

“Everything old is new again,” I said.

“I'm beginning to see why the vampires think you're scary, Blake.”

“The grenades aren't what make me scary, Shaw.”

“What does?” he asked.

“That I'm willing to use them.”

“It's not being willing to use them, Blake. It's being willing to use them again.”

I thought about that, and finally said, “Yeah.”

“Call me when you have your flight arranged.” His voice was unhappy with me, as if I'd said something else that wasn't what he wanted to hear.

“I'll let you know as soon as I know. Give me your direct number, if you're my go-to guy.”