Incubus Dreams (72 page)

“Let's hope not,” I said.

I looked down at Jonah Cooper, vampire, ex-vamp executioner. He blinked up at me. He'd have probably had something to say to me, but a broken jaw cuts down on the chit-chat.

Zerbrowski clicked his phone shut. “I've left a message. He'll get back.”

I nodded. I looked down at Jonah again. I had everything he knew, all of
it. I'd seen him helping murder women. I'd seen his own memory of it. I sighed.

“While we wait for the call back, help me move our prisoner outside.”

Zerbrowski gave me a look. I gave him one back. It was his turn to sigh. “Smith, take his other arm. We're going to escort him outside.”

Smith was looking at us sort of funny, but he helped Zerbrowski lift the vampire to his feet. Cooper made small protesting noises and hissed curses under his breath. Maybe I hadn't broken his jaw, or at least not badly.

Zerbrowski and Smith got him on his feet and started him for the door. I got my gun out and followed them. One of the uniforms said, “What are they going to do?”

“Go outside if you want to see the show,” Marconi said, “I've seen it.” He sounded tired.

Roarke and the other uniform, whose name I couldn't remember, followed me. It was like a parade. I've got over eighty kills. Most of them actually legal. But I usually whack the bad guys when they're dead to the world. I usually haven't had to question them, touch them. I usually don't know who they were in life, or if I do, I feel like I'm putting them out of their misery, or did once, when I believed vampires were truly dead. Jonah Cooper had been what I am, and he had betrayed everything he stood for. He'd sacrificed law enforcement officers that had gone in as his backup. He'd murdered innocent women for kicks. I knew all that, but I'd have liked it better if I didn't know that his hair had nice texture, or that he'd gotten a hero's funeral. There's a reason that executioners through history usually only come in at the end when it's time to kill. If he'd run for it or fought, then the other cops could have shot him, killed him for me. But he wasn't going to run now, and no one else here had the legal authority to do what I was about to do.

We were outside in a small side area near the far parking lot. Cooper had figured out what was happening, because even with an injured jaw he was trying to talk to me. The words started out stiff, but got faster as he talked. Fear will override pain. “You're Jean-Claude's human servant. How is what I'm doing any different from that?”

“I haven't killed innocent civilians because my master doesn't like strippers.”

“I killed more people as a hunter than I've killed as a vampire,” he said. He tried to turn around and look at me, but apparently that hurt too much.

We were on a plot of grass, with flowers to one side and the parking lot to the other. “Good enough,” I said.

Zerbrowski turned, and Smith moved with him. They turned the vamp around so I could see his face. “I kill because the law says I can, not because I want to,” I said.

“Liar.”

“Knees,” I said.

He fought them, and I didn't blame him. I shot him in the leg, and he collapsed to the ground. I hadn't expected to have to shoot him so soon, or for wounding. The echo of the gun up my arm thrilled through my body, like the gun was where all the adrenaline came from, tingling up my arm.

Smith looked pale. Zerbrowski grim. But they still had his arms, even with him on the ground.

“I can make this quick, Cooper, or I can make it slow. Your choice.” My voice was empty. Nothing showed on my face. I just looked at him and knew that if he struggled I would shoot him by inches, until he was too wounded to get away, and I could let Zerbrowski and Smith move away without risking Cooper getting away.

He struggled, and I shot him again.

Smith let go of the arm. “I can't do this. This isn't right.”

“Then get the fuck away from him,” I said, and there was anger in my voice now, because I agreed with Smith. “Zerbrowski.”

“Yeah.” His voice was very careful.

I had the gun on Cooper, and my body had gone quiet, the anger sliding away on the nice white static in my head. “Move.”

He moved. Cooper tried to levitate. I figured he would. I put two shots into the center of his body, and he collapsed back to earth. He hadn't been able to fly in the church when he was healthy, I hadn't expected him to get better wounded. He didn't.

I walked up to him, gun in a two-handed grip, aimed on the center of his forehead. “You're enjoying this,” he said, and he made a sound in his throat. There was blood on his lips, his blood.

“No,” I said, “I'm really not.”

“Liar,” he said again, and tried to spit blood at my feet, but apparently his jaw hurt too much, and it made him writhe on his knees.

“I don't want to kill you, Cooper, and I don't enjoy it.”

He looked up at me, puzzled. “You feel empty inside. I enjoyed killing.”

“Bully for you,” I said, and I knew I should have pulled the trigger, should have ended it. Never let them talk.

“You really don't enjoy this, do you?” he asked.

“No,” I said, looking into those brown eyes.

“Then how do you stay sane?”

I let all the air ease from my body, as the world narrowed down to the center of his forehead. But I could still see his eyes, so alive, so . . . real. I answered him, “I don't know.” I squeezed the trigger, and the impact knocked
him backward. He fell on his side, and I moved up on him, gun still held two-handed, because whether he was dead or whether he wasn't, I wasn't done.

He had a smallish hole in the middle of his forehead above his surprised eyes. I fired into his forehead until the top of his head exploded in brains and bone. Decapitation was nice, but spilling the brains all over the grass works, too. I switched my aim to his chest, and fired until my gun emptied. Then I got a second clip from my belt, reloaded and fired into his chest until I could see light through his body. Legally I could not carry my vamp executioner kit in the car unless I had a current warrant. I'd left home without a warrant, so my sawed-off shotgun was at home with my stakes and machete. Handguns will do the job, but it takes longer, and it wastes a hell of a lot of ammo.

The last gun shot echoed into the night. My ears were full of that ringing silence that happens when you've fired that many shots from that close a range without ear protection. I was standing over the body, one foot on its shoulder, pinning it to the ground. I must have kicked him over onto his back sometime during the chest shots. I didn't remember doing it, but shooting into the ground was a hell of a lot safer than shooting out into the night. Not all the bullets would stop in his body, not when you were trying to punch a hole through the person.

The first sound that came back was the sound of my blood in my ears, the pulse of my own body. Then some sound made me turn. Malcolm had brought his flock to watch, or maybe they had come on their own, and he couldn't stop them, so he'd come with them. Whatever, they were there held back by the uniforms. The vampires and the few humans among them stood staring at me. There was a little girl in front, and for a second I thought,
what the fuck are her parents thinking,
then I realized she was a vamp. I had trouble concentrating, but she was old. Older than the woman holding her hand and pretending to be her mommy.

I popped the clip in my gun and checked how much ammo I had left. I couldn't remember how many shots I'd fired. I'd only brought two clips with me. Silly me. I needed to load up. I needed my Jeep, or home. I put the clip back in and slammed it home with my hand. Some of the vamps jumped at the small sound it made. Somehow with all of them standing there staring at me, I didn't want to put the gun up. I didn't think they'd really rush us, but it was definitely not a friendly crowd.

Zerbrowski came up to me. “Let's get you out of here,” he said, and either he whispered, or my hearing wasn't all the way back. But I didn't argue. I let him take me to his car, and I let Smith and Marconi watch our backs.

I saw Avery in the crowd as we moved. He didn't look happy to see me
anymore. Guess the honeymoon was over. Zerbrowski got me into the passenger seat. Movement caught my eye. It was Wicked and Truth. They were by the entrance to the church. They didn't look upset. Truth gave me a nod, and Wicked kissed the tip of one finger in my direction.

I buckled my seat belt, raised a hand in their direction.

“You made some new friends tonight,” Zerbrowski said, as he put the car in gear and drove us slowly forward. We had to ease close to the waiting group of vampires. They watched us with blank, empty faces.

“Yeah, I make friends wherever I go.”

He gave a small, dry laugh. “Jesus, Anita, did you have to blow a hole clean through his chest?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.” My voice wasn't the least bit friendly.

“I'd stay away from the church for awhile, if I were you. They're going to remember what you did tonight.”

I put my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. “Yeah, me, too.”

“You alright with this?”

“No. Did Parker call back yet?”

“Yeah. I told him you were blowing a hole through a vampire's chest. He said you could call him back.”

I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Is that really what you told him?”

He grinned at me. “Yeah.”

I shook my head. “Give me your damn phone.”

He handed it to me. “Just hit this button, it'll ring him back.”

I hit the button, and the phone started to ring. I was numb. I felt nothing, but a vague shockiness. Parker answered on the second ring, and I started to talk about business. About solving murders, and saving lives. I concentrated on the fact that we were trying to save lives, but my mind kept jumping around. It kept jumping over a vision of Jonah Cooper's eyes, and his question, how do you stay sane? The answer, the real answer, was, you don't.

A
N HOUR LATER,
I was home. I had a date with Mobile Reserve for just after dawn. Captain Parker had told me to get some sleep, as if I sounded like I needed it. He'd even agreed to letting me go in with them. I was to their vampire raids what Haz-Mat was to their meth lab raids. An expert who could help them stay alive and not accidentally blow themselves to hell. Vampires wouldn't blow up like some of the chemicals used in metham-phetamine labs, but lack of knowledge could make you just as dead. I would be their Johnny-on-the-spot expert, and no you don't want to know how much arguing I had to do to get both the invitation to go in with them and to keep the address until I met them at dawn.

I sat at my kitchen table sipping coffee and staring off into space. The coffee was sloshing against the sides of my cup, like it was trying to escape. That shouldn't be happening.

Micah was suddenly at my side. He put his hand on my coffee mug. “You're going to drop it.”

I stared up at him and didn't know what he meant. It must have shown on my face, because he explained, “Your hands are shaking. I'm afraid you're going to drop the cup.” He eased it out of my hands and set it on the table.

I stared at my hands, and he was right. They were shaking. Not a fine tremble, but a full-blown quaking, as if from the wrist down I was having a fit. I stared at my hands like they belonged to someone else.

Micah knelt in front of me, he put his hands on mine, held them tight between his. “Anita, what happened?”

It felt good for him to hold my hands. It helped the shaking to slow, but it didn't go away. What happened? What had happened? What made this one different? Everything, nothing. It took me two tries to talk. “I had to talk to him.”

“Him who?”

“The vampire I killed tonight.” The trembling was quieting under the press of his hands. My voice didn't show the trembling at all, it was empty.

“Why did you have to talk to him?”

“Interrogation, had to interrogate him.”

Micah touched my face, and it startled me, but it made me look at him. His eyes were very green in the dimness of the kitchen, with that yellow around his pupils more like light gathering around a single point. “Did you learn what you needed to know?”

I nodded, still staring at his eyes.

“And why couldn't you wait until dawn to kill him?”

I shook my head. “He was one of our serial killers. Couldn't risk him getting away and warning them.”

“Then you had to kill him.” He put his hand on the side of my face, and that made me look at him more, not just fascinate on his eyes. I saw him now, all of him, saw Micah. I'd known he was there, but it was as if I was only getting pieces of things. I looked at that face that was at once so familiar to me that I knew every curve and line, and yet, I was still surprised sometimes to look at him and realize that he was mine. That this was my sweetie. It still caught me off-guard sometimes, like a really good surprise. As if he was too good to be real, and I kept expecting him not to be there. Why should he be different?

He reached up to me, and I slid off the chair and into his arms. I wrapped myself around his waist, his chest, his shoulders. I hugged him as tight and close as I could with legs and arms, and he got to his feet with me still wrapped around him. We were the same height and weighed within fourteen pounds of each other. If he'd been human, he might not have been able to do it, but he wasn't human, and he stood up and began to walk through the darkened house. I knew where we were going, and I couldn't think of anything better than crawling under the covers and letting him hold me.

The phone rang. Micah kept walking. The machine caught it, and Ronnie's voice came on. “ 'Nita this is Ronnie. I need help.” Micah froze, because it didn't sound like Ronnie.

I hopped down to the floor and was running for the phone while she was still slurring her words. “Ronnie, Ronnie, it's me. What's happened?”

“Anita, it's you.”

“Ronnie, what's happened?” My pulse was thudding in my throat again. Adrenaline had chased the shock and the numbness away.

“I'm drunk,” she said happily.

“What?”

“I'm at a club across the river. I am watching men take their clothes off.”

“What club?”

“Something Dreams.”

“Incubus Dreams,” I said.

“That's it,” and she slurred her
S
.

“Why are you at a strip club getting drunk?” I asked. The adrenaline was easing away.

“Louie won't live with me. He says marriage or nothin', and I said nuthin'.”

“Oh, Ronnie.”

“I am drunk, and the bartender says I need a ride. Can I have a ride?”

Micah was standing close enough that he'd caught some of it. “I'll go get her.”

“Anita, why are men such bastards?”

I wasn't sure that men were such bastards, but I knew better than to argue. “I'll come get you, just stay there, and don't do anything you'll regret when you wake up tomorrow.”

She giggled; Ronnie never giggled. “Oh, I want to do something that Louie will regret tomorrow.”

Shit. “Sit tight, don't do anything stupid. We'll be there as soon as we can.” She hung up, still laughing.

I filled Micah in on the parts he'd missed. “You need to rest, Anita. I'll go get her.”

“First, she's in the men-are-bastards mind-set, and she's wanting to do something that Louie will regret tomorrow. I think you alone wouldn't be a good idea, besides she's my friend. But I'm letting you come with me.”

He was frowning at me.

I touched his arm. “Going to bed with you beside me is the best idea in the world right now, but going to bed without you is like the worst idea in the world. I think alone my head's going to turn ugly. Maybe going out is exactly what I need.”

He frowned harder. “You can just call her a taxi.”

“Ronnie and I just made up from a fight that's lasted for months. I don't want to lose her again.”

“I'm not going to talk you out of this, am I?”

“No.”

He smiled then, though his eyes still weren't happy. “Then let's go.”

I smiled at him. “Thank you.”

“What for, not arguing?”

“Yeah.”

“But I'm driving.”

I didn't argue. I did get my vampire hunter kit and my equipment bag. The equipment bag was new, but it held more weapons. It carried lots of
guns, lots of ammo, pointy weapons, and it all looked like a medium sized black duffel bag, luggage thing.

Micah didn't argue about the extra firepower. He just held the door for me, since I had a bag in each hand. We met Nathaniel coming up the sidewalk. He grinned at me, until he saw my face and the bags. “What's wrong? What's happened?”

I looked at Micah, and he looked at me. “She's got a warrant, so she can carry her entire kit with her.”

“You aren't going to catch vampires with her, are you?”

I sighed. “Right now, we're going to go rescue Ronnie. She's drunk as a skunk over the river at Incubus Dreams. The bartender took her keys.”

Nathaniel's eyebrows went up. “Why go to that dump?”

I laughed and dropped a bag so I could hug him. He hugged me back. “Come with us, and we'll discuss it in the car. I want to get there before she does something stupid.”

“You mean like get drunk at a strip club where I know the dancers will do a lot more than just strip for money?”

I looked at him, and my eyes were wide. “Tell me you don't mean . . .”

He shrugged. “That's the rumor, and I believe the person who told me.”

“Oh, shit.” I started to run for the Jeep, because having sex with a prostitute stripper would qualify nicely as something Louie would regret in the morning. The trouble with that kind of revenge is that you regret it so much more than whoever you're trying to hurt. I threw the bags in the back. Micah drove, and Nathaniel got in the back. We were off to try to save Ronnie from a fate worse than death, or something like that.