Crimson Death (67 page)

Domino did what I asked, but Jake and Kaazim stayed in the doorway. “Our loyalty is to you.”

“Damn it, then carry Echo!” Jake came to do what I'd ordered. Nice to know he listened to some of what I said. Nicky tore the zipper away from Damian's bag so that he was finally free; we helped him to his feet and started running out of the room. Kaazim was still helping Jake get Echo settled on his back. They yelled for us to wait. I listened to them as well as they'd listened to me: selectively.

T
HERE WAS NOBODY
in the hallway except for a few uniformed officers, but Nicky started jogging down the hallway without hesitating on a direction. I stayed with him, trusting his nose to lead us to the blood. I had to drop back a little behind him to keep from running into people as I ran and he jogged. Damian came up beside me, both of us at Nicky's broad back. We got some puzzled looks from the officers
and personnel in the halls. Surely if it had been a serious emergency they'd have been running with us, but it seemed like business as usual except for us. Kaazim and Jake had caught up with us by the time we went around the second corner. No one was acting alarmed, so we'd slowed to a fast walk. Where were Edward and Domino? I wanted to find everyone, but I wasn't emotionally attached to anyone else.

Sheridan was standing outside a closed door. She was so pale her brown eyes looked black and stranded in her face like islands in the middle of a milk-white ocean. Even her lips were bloodless; the light lipstick she'd had on in the other room was gone. She raised one hand up to push at her hair, and I saw the pinkish shine of it as if she'd rubbed her lips a lot in the few minutes since we'd seen her. What the hell had happened?

“It's in the room,” Nicky said.

“What is?” I asked.

“The blood.”

Sheridan looked at us then, her eyes looking like burned-out holes in her head. I'd thought she was beautiful and now she looked haggard, as if every hour of sleep she'd ever lost had all caught up with her at once.

“Sheridan,” I said.

She looked at me but didn't see me, not really.

“Rachel, can you hear me?”

She nodded. “I'm keeping the crime scene intact until forensics gets here.”

“Where are the others?” Jake asked.

“Looking for him.”

I grabbed her upper arms and gave her a little shake. Her eyes focused on me; she even blinked. “Inspector Sheridan, I need you to focus. Report, damn it.”

She jerked away from me. “We found another vampire after Nolan got the others. Pearson . . . all of us wanted to keep this one. They were fixing up a cell that wouldn't expose it to light. It's just a dead body until dark. It should have been safe.”

“Inspector Sheridan, what happened?”

She looked at me as if she didn't like me much, but I didn't care.
“The storage room had a lock on it. It was supposed to keep people from walking in on the body, not to keep it in, but Logan must have come to check on it, and it woke up early and it killed him.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“They're tracking it. Santana could smell the vampire, so they went that way.” She pointed down the hall away from us. Her gaze had slid to the side again, as if she couldn't bear to focus on anything for too long. Her reaction could have been from just the violence of it to someone she knew, but I didn't think it was just that. Yeah, Logan had been an ass, and it had been a mistake to date, but she'd cared for him. I wondered if she'd known just how much she cared for him until now. Fuck.

“Anita, we need to move,” Nicky said.

I nodded. “Can you track them?”

“Yes,” Jake said. We'd worked it out that whichever wereanimal had the best nose was just supposed to take the lead on things like this, rather than debate it. Wolf beat tiger and apparently jackal, and we hadn't brought any wererats, which actually had one of the best noses in the wereanimal kingdom.

“Do it,” I said. Jake moved a little ahead of us with Echo still strapped in her bag to his back. Kaazim dropped back to the rear, putting Damian and me in the middle with Nicky and Jake ahead. I glanced behind us at Sheridan leaning against the wall by the door where maybe the off-again, on-again almost-love-of-her-life was lying dead. I'd give her a hug later, if she'd let me, but right now we had to find Domino and Edward and the vampire that had already killed one Garda. I prayed that it wouldn't kill anyone else before we found it, and then I realized that Edward was ahead of us on the hunt. As I followed Jake and Nicky, I kept waiting to hear gunfire. If I were the vampire, I'd have been running.

“T
HERE'S A MAN
screaming up ahead,” Jake said.

“Stack and move,” I said.

We stacked up on Jake, one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of us, gun in the other hand ready but pointed down. Except for Damian, who hadn't trained with us; the rule was if you didn't train for stacking and moving, then you kept your gun holstered until we weren't standing on top of each other. I put my hand against Nicky's back, because his shoulder was a little high to hold and move at the shuffle-jog. Damian didn't have any trouble putting his hand on my shoulder. Getting the rhythm of the shuffle step was a little harder for him, but he was more graceful than I would ever be, so he managed not to step on me. It was a formation that worked well in crowds, and if we were going into a dangerous situation. Logan was dead, so dangerous it was.

I was pretty certain that the screaming man wasn't Edward, and it was unlikely to be Domino, but it was somebody. Saving somebody would be good. We came out into a larger opening; it wasn't exactly a room, but it seemed too big to call it a hallway. Did police stations have entryways like a house? I just didn't know enough about architecture to know what to call it. But whatever it was, I heard Edward's voice ahead.

“Don't do it, pardner.”

“She's calling,” a man's voice said.

“If you step out there you will burn,” Pearson said.

Damian whispered to me, “She is calling. She wants us to come to her.”

“Why? Why would she want all her vampires to go out into the sunlight?”

“Maybe it amuses her,” he said.

“Is she really that crazy?” I asked.

“Maybe.”

We widened our formation to something that looked like the point of a spear, with Jake still at the head of it. Now we all had better views of what was happening at the door, and if we had to use our guns we wouldn't shoot each other. Pearson, Edward, and Domino were near the outer door with a small group of other police persons. I could only glimpse the vampire by the door around everyone in front of us. He was tall, dark-haired, and had dark eyes. His face was almost pink with the rush of the blood he'd drunk. If we didn't want to be shooting into someone's back we needed to move up closer; of course, if we did that the vampire might move out into the daylight. The crowd moved enough for me to see that the vampire was clutching Logan's suit jacket to himself like he was cold. I knew just how to warm him up.

“Move up. We don't want to risk being friendly fire,” I said.

“He may be afraid of us,” Damian said.

“He should be,” I said.

No one else questioned it. We moved up so we'd have a clean shot if it came to that. The vampire did look at us. The fear showed on his face. Apparently, we looked more threatening than anyone nearer to him. Since one of those was Edward, the vampire just didn't know how to do a good threat assessment.

Pearson turned enough to see us, but not enough to give the vampire his back. Good for him. “Marshal Blake, please stay back.”

“We talked to Sheridan,” I said.

“This is still a citizen of Ireland who deserves a chance at a trial.”

“Logan was one of your men. How can you say his murderer deserves anything?”

“Anita's right. In America we'd have a warrant of execution for all the vampires involved in these crimes,” Edward said.

“We do not execute people in Ireland,” Pearson said, his voice rising.

“I have to go to her,” the vampire said.

Damian called out to him, “Brother, don't do it. Do not listen to that evil voice in your head.”

The vampire looked at him, and for a minute there was someone in there looking out at him like an echo of who the man had once been. “I wish I could shut out the voice, but she is all I hear. I must go.”

“If you go, you will burn alive. I have seen it before.”

“I'm sorry, brother. I'm sorry for the policeman I killed. I don't even remember doing it. I came to myself with my mouth at his throat and his blood everywhere. I would never have hurt anyone like that, but I know I did.” He reached behind him for the doorknob. If they'd let him go, that might have been all except for the barbecue outside.

Some of the uniformed officers jumped him as if he were just human, like you'd tackle any would-be suicide, but he wasn't human. He smashed one man's head open against the wall in a smear of crimson, and grabbed another one. He was slow by comparison to the vampires I was used to—the newly dead are slower—but he was faster than they were expecting. Fast enough to grab one of them and tear out his throat so the arterial spray showered over his face, the walls, other officers, over Logan's jacket. Fast enough to grab another officer before they could all scatter and hold him in front of his body like a shield. Seeing all that, a female officer still crawled up, grabbed the fallen man's arm, and started trying to pull him to safety. Another officer came and took the other arm and they pulled him away from the door and the vampire. I watched them start to try to stanch the blood, but unless they had an emergency room trauma surgeon hiding in the building, it was already too late. It didn't make the effort a bad one, and it didn't change that they'd been brave to pull him to safety.

I kept waiting for a holy object to flare to life, holy fire to help save them, but there was nothing. It was as if the vampire didn't trigger the holy objects even while he was going all vampire on their asses.

Edward and Domino had their custom AR-15 rifles snugged against their shoulders. Nolan had his sidearm out and aimed. We moved up to join them. The vampire's bloody face didn't look human or sympathetic anymore. He hissed at us and then his eyes filled with blue light.

“Welcome home, Damian.” It was the man's mouth moving, but it didn't sound like the same voice of a minute ago. It wasn't a woman's voice, but there was something about the cadence of it that made me think feminine.

“This is not home. This was never my home,” Damian said from beside me.

The vampire gave one of those wild laughs that rise and fall up the
scale like something on a Halloween haunted house sound track, except this was real. It raised the hair at the back of my neck and made my gut tense with the madness in it.

He took one step back and a little behind me. “She can't hurt you, Damian,” I said.

“Are you sure of that, Anita Blake?” the vampire said.

I snugged my own custom AR-15 rifle to my shoulder. “Yeah, pretty sure.”

Edward said, “Can we shoot it now?”

The vampire twisted the officer's head around. Their eyes locked for a moment. I checked and the officer didn't have a visible gun. It was the only saving grace as the vampire bespelled him with his gaze and sent him to run straight at us, while he opened the door behind him and stepped out into the thick summer sunshine.

Edward switched his rifle around and smashed it into the officer's face. He fell to the floor, out cold, and the first screams outside rose to shrieks. The sunlight would do our job for us; all we had to do was wait for the screaming to stop, and then put out what was left.

P
EARSON WOULDN'T LET
the vampire burn. He grabbed a fire extinguisher and went outside. Edward followed him with his rifle still at his shoulder. The rest of us did the same, except for Damian. I told him to stay inside. He wouldn't burn in the sunlight, but he'd watched his best friend and shield brother burn to death because the Wicked Bitch of Ireland had forced him into the sunshine. I'd shared the memory with Damian and could still hear the evil melodious voice:
One to keep, and one to burn.

I wasn't going to let her add to the trauma she'd already caused him. The vampire was completely engulfed in flames; only Logan's
jacket was slow to burn so that it was almost like a movie effect for the Human Torch, but the body standing screaming in the middle of the street wasn't fireproof. Pearson had to get right up on the figure to use the extinguisher. Edward and Domino stayed right with him, rifles to their shoulders, just in case. Vampires burn hot enough to melt human flesh and rupture bones from the heat. I didn't agree with what Pearson was doing, but that close to the flames it was like standing near the door to hell. It was incredibly brave, and I didn't understand why he was risking his life to try to save someone who had killed one and probably three of his officers. I'd have let the bastard burn. Logan could have been bloodlust, but the others at the door weren't.

The rest of us stayed out of the way. If they needed backup, we were there. A police officer came out with a second extinguisher and moved to help Pearson in his humanitarian effort. The fire did go out, but a few seconds later the flames started again, because the vampire was still in the middle of the sunlit street.

Jake leaned in to me and whispered, “Do you want us to help get the vampire out of the sunlight so he'll stop burning?”

“No.”

“As our queen wishes,” he said, and straightened back up to stand at my side and watch the flames flare back to life as new sunlight hit vampiric flesh.

I heard Nicky whisper behind me, “Burn, baby, burn.”

The vampire started to flail its arms as if it were fighting things that we couldn't see. The shrieking started again; it was a bad sound, the kind you'd hear in your dreams later. Vampires burn well once they ignite, but it's not quick. A human being would be so hurt and in such shock that they'd pass out, or at least lose the ability to keep screaming, but vampires are tougher, a lot tougher.

Movement behind us, and it was Damian with a borrowed coat held like a sunshade over his head and upper body. He knew sunshine didn't burn him anymore, but even if he had to go out in it he wore a hat, sunglasses, gloves. It was more phobia than fact, but the fear was real. Everybody was being brave today.

Pearson emptied his extinguisher and could only stand there and
watch. The second officer that had come out was still trying to keep the flames from reigniting. The vampire fell forward to its knees and reached out like a drowning person grabbing that last handhold. He grabbed the officer's arm and the man's yells joined the screams of the vampire, because the hand was on fire that had wrapped around the police officer's arm. The hand would keep burning until it burned through the man's arm.

“Shit.” I reached back under my hair for the big blade that was in a spine sheath, but Kaazim touched my elbow. “Allow me.” He unsheathed a long, curved blade and moved forward in a graceful line of robes. The blade flashed in the sun and then came down on the vampire's wrist, severing it. The small spurt of blood heated to steam and the wound cauterized itself, but the hand continued to burn around the officer's wrist.

Kaazim sheathed his blade and threw the man on his shoulder, running in a blur of speed back inside the building. Once the vampire's hand was out of direct sunlight he'd be able to put the flame out and have it stay out until they could pry it off the officer's arm.

The vampire grabbed at Pearson with his remaining hand; Edward pulled the detective out of reach and Domino stepped up closer, his rifle aimed at the burning vampire. I'd seen Domino flinch around zombies, but apparently vampires didn't bother him even when they were
en flambé
. I wouldn't have wanted to get that close, but then maybe he hadn't ever seen a flaming vampire hold on to a person until they melted through their waist and bi-fucking-sected them. I had, so I stayed standing on the edge of it all with Damian, Jake, and Nicky. Jake would have helped if I'd told him to, but if he couldn't put out the fire I didn't want him close to it either.

Damian huddled near my left side; I'd pretty much broken all my people from clutching at my main gun hand when I was on the job. To use the AR I'd need both hands, but it wasn't his fault that I'd trained him up for handgun cuddling. Besides, he'd been brave enough to come out into the sunlight and watch one of his worst nightmares; I gave brownie points for effort. I let the AR hang from its tactical sling, and I drew my sidearm so it was ready to go in my right hand, just in case, and put my left arm around his waist, pulling him in against me.
He actually put his arm around my shoulders, collapsing the coat around us a little, because he was only holding it up with one hand. Normally I wouldn't have let him compromise my vision on one side and maybe even my hearing through the thick cloth, but Jake and Nicky were on that side. If they couldn't warn me in time, or take out the threat, realistically I was dead anyway, so I cuddled with Damian closer than I'd ever cuddled with anyone at a crime scene.

He pressed his face against the top of my hair, and I realized he was hiding his eyes. He'd watched for a while, but it takes a long time for an adult human being to burn, a lot longer than you think it would. If it had been human, then it would have passed out, and at least have been unconscious toward the end. It also wouldn't have been able to keep screaming. There are all sorts of screams, but these were some of the worst I'd heard. They were higher and more piteous. I wasn't sure how much longer I could listen to it without offering to put a bullet in its head to finish things.

The body was blackened sticks licked with flame, but even with most of the muscle and ligaments burned down to strings it still hadn't curled up against the heat the way a human body would, and it was still able to move. It opened its mouth wide enough to show the still-white fangs and teeth as if the fire wouldn't touch there. Swallowing fire and smoke is one of the ways that people die quicker in fire. It should have worked the same with vampires, because the mechanics of their bodies were still human-ish, but something worked differently for the vampire. Whatever it was, it wasn't a kindness.

Edward spoke to Pearson, but he shook his head. I was betting he'd offered to put the vampire out of its misery just like I was thinking of doing. I didn't understand why he'd refused it until I heard the sirens and realized it was an ambulance. They were going to try to save the vampire. Fuck, there wasn't enough left to save; even if they could do it, they didn't want to.

I kissed Damian and said, “Go back inside. I've got to try to stop this.”

He shook his head. “She's feeding on his terror.”

“The Wicked Bitch?”

“Yes.”

“You're out here so you can sense her better,” I said.

“We need to know what she's doing.”

“I'm sorry to interrupt,” Jake said, “but this needs to stop.”

The ambulance had pulled up and they had a stretcher on wheels coming with equipment and two paramedics. They didn't look as surprised as they should have, so they'd been warned ahead of time. One of them had a fire extinguisher, but the other one had a pile of smooth-filament fire blankets piled on top of the gurney he was pushing. It was like the information that Jake had shared with Pearson and Sheridan had been disseminated to the first responders, or at least the ones riding in the ambulances, but it was too late to try.

I went to Pearson. “You can't do this,” I said.

“We have to help him if we can, Blake.”

“It's too late, Pearson. Even if they can put the fire out and put him on fluids or whatever and keep him from dying, he won't heal. He won't even heal as well as a human being. Fire is one of the few things that a vampire cannot heal from, at all.”

Pearson frowned at me. “What are you saying, Blake?”

“I'm saying that the vampire will be trapped in that body as it is now, but maybe not die ever. Eternity like this is not mercy.”

Pearson looked at me for a second, then blinked and blinked again. “I don't know what to say to that, other than the ambulance is here. Once the medical personnel get on site they are in charge.”

“Pearson, even if they can do this, don't let them.”

“It's out of my hands, Blake.”

“Fuck,” I said.

One of the medics was putting out the fire, and the other one was putting a blanket over the flesh that had stopped burning. I knew that normally they would not have let anything touch third degree, or whatever degree the vampire had burned to, but keeping the fire from reigniting in the sunlight was more important than anything else if they meant to actually save him.

They covered him in a layer of blankets. They got him on the gurney and because they kept him out of direct light they were able to get him in the ambulance. I saw them start an IV before the door closed them inside with the vampire.

Jake and Nicky came up to me, and Jake said, “They need an armed guard.”

“Are you kidding me?” I asked.

“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.