Kiss the Dead (43 page)

“They’re people, Weiskopf, just people, and like all people, some of them are good, and some are bad, but now they’re bad people with
super-strength, super-senses, and bloodlust. Without a master to hold their leash, they’re like most people, power drunk.”

“No,” he said.

“They’ve killed two police officers. It was a trap to kill me.”

He looked at the table. “They had talked of slaying you and Jean-Claude. We had told them no, but apparently they went ahead without us.”

“If you’d really been their master, you could have prevented that, and all of this.”

“But that would defeat our purpose, Anita. We wanted them to be free, to prove that vampires did not need to be herded and controlled like animals.”

“You mean like the wereanimals,” I said.

“They are part animal, Anita.”

“I have more lovers who turn furry once a month than sleep in coffins.”

He shuddered, actually shuddered, as if it made his skin crawl. “That is your choice, but vampires have no taint of beast in them.”

“No, just like human serial killers, they’re just people that do unspeakable things.”

Dolph said, “We found bombs at the last house we raided.”

That was a partial lie; we’d found the makings, or leavings, after bombs had been made, according to Alvarez, but the look of shock and horror on Weiskopf’s face made the white lie worth it.

“Oh, no, no.”

“What do they plan on doing with the bombs?” Dolph asked.

“How many did you find?”

And there is the problem with lying, you have to keep doing it.

“Two,” Dolph said.

Weiskopf looked pale. “No, they can’t.”

“What are the targets?” Dolph said, and he leaned on the table, using his size to intimidate, but it was lost on Weiskopf. He was truly shaken by the news.

“They spoke of making bombs, but we told them no.”

“But you didn’t have any real authority over them, because you didn’t make them take your oath,” I said.

“They were better when we were with them.”

“Yeah, the pheromones,” I said.

He shook his head. “We worried that our very presence was affecting them, so we began to sleep elsewhere, away from them.”

“Fuck, Weiskopf, that lost you and your Benjamin what little control you had over these people.”

He looked at me, and there was real anguish in his face. “There has to be a way to be free. There has to be a way to be just human again.”

“You’re vampires, Weiskopf,” I said, and my voice was soft, because I heard the pain in his voice. “That can’t be changed, and that means that you need a master.”

He shook his head faster, as if trying to shake a thought out. “No, no, that would make everything we’ve done… useless.”

“What are the targets for the bombs?” I asked.

He looked at me. “The Church of Eternal Life; they feel that Malcolm betrayed them all by making them take oath to Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude’s clubs and businesses. You and Jean-Claude. There were many who felt if they could kill him, and you, that they would be free. We told them that wasn’t true, that you were the best and most modern prince that we had ever seen. That you gave us hope.”

My pulse had sped, but he wasn’t actually telling us anything we hadn’t suspected. The guards would triple-check everything. We had good people. I believed that, I did, but I was still scared. “Are there any other human servants in your group?” I asked.

“No.”

A little bit of the panic subsided. There was no one to use bombs during the day, and we’d killed their demolitions expert at the warehouse.

“Wait,” I said, “are there Renfields; two-biters?”

He made a face of distaste. “
Two-biter
is an insult to humans we are bringing over.”

“Renfields, then; do any of the vampires in your group have them?”

“A few,” he said.

My pulse was back in my throat. “What are their names?”

He hesitated.

“If the bombs are used, then you and your master will be just as guilty as the rest,” I said.

“You can stop this,” Dolph said.

“If anyone dies because you didn’t tell us, then you are as guilty as they are, and human servants are treated the same as vampires under the law if the vampires in question commit murder and the servants aid them in any way.”

“We would never forgive ourselves if more innocent lives are lost,” Weiskopf said, staring at his hands where they lay clenching each other on the table.

He told us the names. One of them wasn’t in the system at all, but one had a record for assault, and the other was in the system because he’d worked as a court officer before he became a vampire; then he’d lost his job. The government, not just the military branch, didn’t want vampires working for them. There was a case before the Supreme Court right now that might change that, but until it did, Clarence Bradley had lost his job, his pension, and over a decade of time in the system. That sounded like an excellent motive for all sorts of bitterness.

We put out an all-points bulletin on the one we had pictures for, and then started working to get the last picture we needed. My phone rang in the middle of it all, and I was only half-surprised when I heard Nicky’s voice, “We have a problem.”

“What?” I asked, and tried to keep my voice neutral just in case it was a problem that we wanted to handle without the other police.

“We have a Renfield with a bomb strapped to him, and a dead man’s switch, so if he dies it blows.”

“Where?” I whispered.

“Guilty Pleasures.”

“It’s closed right now,” I said.

“They were here rehearsing the new dance routine.”

My mouth was suddenly dry; my pulse couldn’t decide it if was going to beat too fast, or stop altogether. “Who’s
they
?”

“Our people took out two of them, but the last one, the one with the bomb, he grabbed…”

“Nicky, tell me.”

“Nathaniel, the bomber has his arms wrapped around Nathaniel. If we shoot the Renfield, the bomb goes off. If we don’t shoot him, eventually the bomb goes off.”

I had a sudden wave of nausea, and had to sit on the edge of a desk and put my head down. Claudia was there, “Anita, what’s wrong?”

So much for me being cool and hiding shit. “Why hasn’t he blown it already?” My voice sounded almost normal. I didn’t have enough brownie points to give myself for that.

“He wants you to come down. He says he’ll let Nathaniel go for you.”

“Okay,” I said. I gripped the edge of the desk, and lowered myself to the floor with Claudia’s help. I was still nauseous, and dizzy, and the room felt hot. Fuck.

“Anita, he may not let Nathaniel go. He may just blow it with both of you there. He’s your leopard to call; if he takes you both out, then the chances of you actually dying are better, you know that.”

“But
he
doesn’t,” I said.

“You don’t know that, and he may just blow it with both of you because he can, Anita. You can’t do this.”

“I can’t not do it,” I said. I added. “Don’t sacrifice Nathaniel to keep me safe, I’d never forgive you for it.”

There was a crowd gathered around me. Claudia, and Pride, who was kneeling by me. Zerbrowski was there, and Arnet, and Tammy, and Dolph, and… I didn’t care about any of them. In that moment I just cared about the one person who wasn’t there.

“I would never hurt Nathaniel,” he said.

“I thought you’d say, now that I told you you couldn’t, you couldn’t.”

“He means something to me, too, Anita. I’ve had a pride of werelions, but this is the first home I’ve had since the woman who raised me… It doesn’t matter. I want him safe, too.”

And in that moment I knew that Nicky wasn’t nearly as good a sociopath as I’d thought, or maybe as he’d thought.

“Keep him safe for both of us; I’m on my way.”

“I will.”

“Don’t get yourself killed either, okay?”

“I won’t on purpose.

“Nicky?”

But he’d hung up. I could have called him back, but what could I have said?
Don’t die on me. Don’t any of you die on me.
Yeah, I could have said that.

G
UILTY
P
LEASURES IS
in the Riverfront area of St. Louis. The streets are narrow, designed more for horses than cars, and most of them are still paved with bricks. It’s very historic, with very modern clubs in a line that draw in a hell of a lot of tourists. It is one of
the
hot spots on the weekend. There’s almost no parking. It sucks as a staging area for SWAT. But we made do, parking everything far enough away that we couldn’t see the daylight front of the club.

Lisandro stood by the main truck. His shoulder-length hair was back in a braid. He was still tall, dark, handsome, and happily married. Almost a year ago, in the summer, he’d gotten shot helping us defeat the Mother of All Darkness. There’d been a horrible moment when I thought he’d made the ultimate sacrifice and died, but he was too big a dog, or wererat, for that, and he’d lived. I hadn’t had to explain to his wife and kids why I brought their dad back in a box. I was glad of that, but since that moment I’d rejected him from my bodyguard detail. I didn’t want the responsibility of making a widow of his wife, or half-orphans of his kids. Standing out in the thin spring sunshine, I remembered that by my side wasn’t the only dangerous detail.

We were surrounded by SWAT, with Dolph and Zerbrowski in the mix. All of them were paying me and my people the ultimate compliment by letting them be here.

“How the hell did you let someone wearing a bomb get into the club, and then let them take Nathaniel hostage?” I demanded.

Lisandro looked down, took a deep breath, set his shoulders, then met my eyes and reported. “Clay was on the door; he’s never been real military, or seen real violence. With the higher alert I shouldn’t have had him on the door. The young man was here with two others to apply as wait staff.”

“Were the other two in on it?” I asked.

“They ran like hell, so I don’t think so. It seems to have been just the one man.”

“How did he get Nathaniel with Nicky and you here?”

Dolph said, “Anita, these aren’t the questions you need to be asking.”

I looked up at him and started to argue, then swallowed it. I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and nodded.

Hill said, “Let me find out what we need to know, Blake.”

I wanted to say that I could do it, but we didn’t have time for me to lie to myself. I just nodded.

“We’ve got blueprints of the club. Blake gave a rundown of the interior on the way in. Who’s inside? Where exactly is the hostage being held?”

“Inside: Nicky, Nathaniel, Mephistopheles, and Cynric.”

“Wait,” I said, “why’s Sin here? He’s not a guard, or a dancer.”

Lisandro looked uncomfortable. “Nathaniel’s brought him a couple of times before. He watches the practice, works out some.”

“Why is Sin inside, but you’re safe out here?”

“He wouldn’t leave Nathaniel; neither would Nicky.”

“And Dev?”

“He knew Mephistopheles was your golden tiger. He wanted him to stay. I think he plans to take you and two of your cats.”

“Sin is one of my cats, too.”

“He seemed bothered by how young Cynric is.”

“Blake,” Hill said, “we don’t have time. Is Sin someone important to you, too?”

“Every name he mentioned is a lover, and most of them live with me, most of the time.”

The look of sympathy in Hill’s eyes almost undid me. “I’m sorry, Blake.”

“I’ve lived with Nathaniel for three years, four in June.”

Hill nodded solemnly. “We’ll get him out.”

“I know,” I said, and that was a lie. I didn’t know. I hoped, but in this instance, hope didn’t seem enough.

Hill and the others began to ask Lisandro questions about the bomb, and he knew way more about it than I would have. I’d have been stopped at
bomb vest
, and I knew what a dead man’s switch was, but not exactly what it looked like. Lisandro reported clearly, quickly.

Hill and a couple of the others nodded. They approved. Hell, I approved, but there was a little song playing in my head:
Nathaniel’s in there with a bomb. Nicky’s in there. Sin is in there. Dev is in there. With a bomb.
That was the refrain in my head while they asked their good questions and got their answers. It was like an evil song stuck in my head, with the beat of
Bomb, bomb, bomb
. Fire was the only thing that wereanimals couldn’t heal. Silver could kill them, and other preternaturals’ claws and teeth could cut them up, but if they lived they could heal most if not all of the damage. Fire was the only thing that was permanent damage. In fact, some preternaturals burned faster and more completely than a human.

I had an image in my head of a werewolf I’d seen burn last year from being too close to a rocket when it launched. The human form had gone up in flames and tried to shift to animal in an attempt to heal, but it had ended up burned to death, frozen in between both forms, just a blackened, nightmare shape. I did everything I could not to picture Nathaniel like that, or Sin, or Nicky, or Dev.

“Anita can do it.” I heard the voice and had to concentrate to realize it was Pride.

I blinked up into his handsome face, so like Dev’s; they were cousins, after all. “What? What can I do?”

“You can open your link between you and Mephistopheles, or Nathaniel, or Cynric. You can see the room that way. We don’t have to guess.”

Hill studied my face. “Can you really do that?”

“If I drop shields and concentrate, yes.”

“You’ll be able to see inside the club through at least three different sets of eyes, no guesswork?” he asked.

“Yeah, should work exactly that way.”

“Damn,” he said, “does this work with all of your lovers?”

“No, it won’t work with Nicky, just the others.”

Hill frowned. “Later, I want to understand how this works, and see if we can use it. Right now, work your magic, Blake. Give us eyes; give us the location of everyone in the room.”

“I’ll try.”

Zerbrowski said, “Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

It took me a second to realize that he had just quoted
Star Wars
to me. It made me smile, and in that moment I loved him, just for that.