Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter #16 - Blood Noir (45 page)

“So, you find her and you’re going to force her to go back to him?”

“He is her husband and her master.”

Master, that was an interesting choice of words. Was Lorna the wife of the Master of the City Peterson had told me about? “He your master, too, Edmond?”

“He trusted me with this errand.”

“Yes, then,” I said.

“You do not speak like one of Keith Summerland’s bimbos.”

“Is Lorna a bimbo?”

“I would never call my master’s wife such a thing.”

“Then why did she think she could leave her master and husband and go off with Keith? Doesn’t sound very bright.”

“He looks too much like her long-lost love. She does not see his faults, only his face, like a ghost of things lost and forgotten.”

“She had the hots for Jedediah Summerland?”

“Who are you, girl?”

“Jedediah was killed by vampires; are you saying that Lorna saw Keith and decided to try to relive old times?”

“You are taking this all very in stride, girl. Anita, you said your name was?”

“I did.”

“You smell of blood, and sorrow, but you are calm. What is your last name?”

Dawn pressed like a weight against the window and its heavy drapes. He wasn’t panicked enough for a vampire above ground. Human, then, but I was betting human servant. Not just a human that hung with the vamps, but a true servant like I was to Jean-Claude. He said he could smell blood and sorrow, and if he was a longtime servant he might have gained the ability.

“You answer my question, I’ll answer yours.”

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“Yes, she’s trying to relive her lost affair with Jedediah. He was misled by his own power, but he was a compelling man. The boy is nothing to compare to his ancestor, but the resemblance is almost enough to make one speak of reincarnation.”

“Genetics, Edmond, nothing but genetics.”

“I have answered your question, now you answer mine. What is your last name?”

“Blake,” I said.

The quiet was strangely loud, as if I could feel him thinking furiously. “Anita Blake,” he said, finally.

“Yes,” I said.

“Anita Blake, human servant to Jean-Claude, Master of the City of St. Louis?”

“Among other things, yes.”

“We did not know. I swear to you we did not know. We were told the room belonged to Keith, and Lorna was with him. We would never have harmed the human servant of another Master of the City.”

“Yeah, vampire law frowns on that.”

“I swear to you that I would never have sent these two to harm you. When I saw you, and realized you were not Lorna. I was told that these two were professional. I was misinformed. I mean, what sort of vampire mistakes a human for another vampire?”

“A bad one,” I said.

“Why were you with Keith Summerland?”

“Did he tell you his name was Jason Schuyler?”

“Yes, but you only have to look at him to know he is one of the Summerland twins.”

“They were always getting mistaken for each other in school,” I said. I was calm; my voice had almost no inflection. Part shock and part certainty. I was going to kill Edmond, because killing him would most likely kill his master, and I wanted his master dead. Revenge, yes, but also, Edmond couldn’t let me walk out of here. I’d tell Jean-Claude, and he knew I would. If Edmond was to hide his mistake from his master, he had to kill us.

“What are you saying?”

“Don’t master vampires keep track of the names of the
pommes de sang
of other masters of the cities?”

“Not really, they are food.”

“We’re Belle Morte’s bloodline; I guess we treat our food better. Jason really isn’t Keith Summerland. He really is my boyfriend. He really is Jean-Claude’s
pomme de sang
. Do you know what vampire protocol is about harming someone’s
pomme de sang
, Edmond?”

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“You can always get more food.”

“Do-you-know-what-vampire-protocol-is-on-the-harming-of-another-master’s-
pomme-de-
sang
?” My voice wasn’t neutral now. I was beginning to rediscover my anger. If Edmond really meant to flee and leave us alive, he’d have started to leave then, but he was closer to us when he spoke next.

“It is within the master’s right to either demand a new
pomme de sang
from the offending master, or challenge the master to a duel.”

“I don’t think we’d like the kind of
pomme de sang
your master would choose, Edmond.”

“Jean-Claude would challenge my master to a duel?”

“Something like that,” I said.

“The
pomme de sang
is not dead. Let me call for help, get him to a hospital.”

“I’ve already called,” I said. “They should be here soon.”

“You called for help?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Before you came.”

“I don’t mean you any harm, Anita Blake.”

“Then why aren’t you running away, Edmond? I’ve told you the police are coming, but you’re still standing there. Why don’t you run?”

“What will you do if you trace my master back to his city?”

“What do you think I’ll do?”

“You are not just Jean-Claude’s human servant; you are also a vampire executioner. Would you try to get a warrant against my master?”

“I don’t know who your master is, Edmond.”

“Do not treat me as if I am stupid. There are not that many Masters of the City.”

“How many are married to a Lorna, you mean? How many have human servants named Edmond? I guess it does have to be a short list,” I said.

I heard him chamber a round into his gun. It’s funny, but once you know the sound of a slide going back, you never mistake it for anything else. I aimed my gun at the doorway, raising my knee up a little to help steady me, because my other arm was still touching Jason. I saw his gun come around the doorjamb. I think he expected me to wait to see more of him, but I’d used this gun, this ammo, and it was an old house. I shot through the wall, behind his hand. He file://L:\Azures L_Disc Shared Dowloads\EBooks\Anita Blake Series 1-17\(Book16] - Bl... 10/18/2009

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made a satisfying sound, a pain sound, and then he shot into the room without seeing first. I fired two more shots that went wide before he staggered into the doorway. I had a glimpse of a tall, pale man, with short brown hair, and a nice tan suit, and a shirt that was blossoming red, before I shot him in the head. He tried to raise his gun as he fell, and actually squeezed off a shot that went into the foot of the bed. I crawled out of the covers and fired twice more into his body. I walked to him, the gun aimed at him, held two-handed. I kicked his gun away from his limp hand, and then I put two more bullets into his head, until bits of skull and brain exploded onto the floor. My ears were still ringing when I heard shouting, distant, tinny. “Marshal Blake, Marshal Blake!”

I yelled, probably louder than I needed to, “In here. We’re in here!” The cavalry had arrived. file://L:\Azures L_Disc Shared Dowloads\EBooks\Anita Blake Series 1-17\(Book16] - Bl... 10/18/2009

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55

HOURS LATER I
was sitting in a chair back in the hospital in Asheville. Jason was in the bed, hooked up to machines and drips, but alive. The doctors said he was going to make it. He’d heal. I knew his body would heal, but I knew enough about violence to know that there were things that doctors couldn’t see, and IV drips couldn’t help. I sat in the chair, having moved it close enough so that I could hold his hand. The doctors said he was going to be all right; I believed them, but when I felt his hand squeeze mine, then I’d really believe it. Was that stupid? Maybe. But I was past caring. I sat in the chair and held his hand, and waited for him to wake up enough to hold my hand back. I was wearing a borrowed pair of surgical scrubs, because they’d taken my clothes for evidence. I guess I was covered in blood. The techs had even combed pieces of brain and bone out of my hair, apparently. Blowback is a bitch.

They’d taken all the guns at the scene. Because I’d used the fact that I was a federal marshal to make the 911 call, actual federal marshals had come with the rest. They’d come to rescue me. They’d come even though I was one of the preternatural branch, and not all the marshals liked us very much. I couldn’t blame the ones who were leery of us. For some of us it was more like giving a badge to a bunch of bounty hunters with license to kill. We were a real administrative headache for the marshals. But when I put out the SOS they came. People I didn’t know, but who just shared the same badge. Maybe I was just feeling all sentimental because of Jason, but it meant something that they came. But it also meant that I was on review for the shooting. I hadn’t had a warrant of execution for these vampires, let alone for the human servant I’d killed. Heck, they had only my word for it that he was a human servant and not simply human. I had invoked the new Preternatural Endangerment Act. It allowed a vampire executioner to act using deadly force if civilian lives were in imminent danger. The act had come into being after a couple of civilians had died while my fellow preternatural marshals waited on warrants. I’d thought it was just asking for civil rights violations, but now I was hiding behind it. Hypocrisy at its best. For at least the next couple of weeks I would be badge-less and gun-less. I wouldn’t be allowed to take on any warrants until they reviewed the shooting. They took my official duty piece. That was fine; it wasn’t like I didn’t have others. I even had carry permits for several of my guns, because I’d spent so many years being technically a civilian but needing to carry a gun. It was going to be helpful while they looked over the evidence. It looked like it would be ruled a clean shot. They’d found drugs still in my system. They were just impressed that I was able to function with that level of animal tranquilizers in me. I left out the bit about Marmee Noir waking me up. They did ask about the claw marks on my chest. I just said I woke up that way. Truth, as far as it went.

I’d asked for and been given a morning-after pill. They’d offered me a SART exam, Sexual Assault Response Team, and I had declined. When asked why I needed the pill, I replied I’d had sex before we were taken but not had a chance to take my pill for that day. Again, truth, as far as it went. file://L:\Azures L_Disc Shared Dowloads\EBooks\Anita Blake Series 1-17\(Book16] - Bl... 10/18/2009

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We had a uniformed officer on the door. I’d have liked to fetch some of my guns from the hotel safe, but wasn’t sure how the other marshals would feel about me carrying when I was supposed to be under review. I felt naked without a weapon, but I’d flashed the badge and I had to abide by that. It also meant that the other bodyguards Jean-Claude would have sent to me couldn’t come in either. None of them had badges, and some of them had records.

The door opened, and I tensed, my free hand going for a gun that wasn’t there. Damn. But it wasn’t a bad guy, it was a wheelchair being pushed by a nurse. In the wheelchair was Frank Schuyler, Jason’s dad. He had tubes up his nose and an oxygen tank on the back of the chair, and two different IV drips, but he was here.

The nurse said, “I told you he won’t wake up until morning, Mr. Schuyler.”

“I had to see him,” he said in that deep voice that Jason would never have, and then he looked at me with those cavernous dark eyes. It wasn’t exactly a friendly look, more intense. Like so many people when they get whittled down by a disease, he was pared down to nerve endings, emotions, demands. It was there in his eyes, angry eyes—no, rage-filled. Angry at his body, maybe? Or angry in general. Whatever the cause, I was okay with it. If he thought he’d come in here and yell at me, or Jason, then he was wrong. Oh, he could yell, but I’d yell back. I was taking no more shit, and I was definitely making sure that Jason took no more, not from anybody. Apparently the silence and the staring at each other had gone on long enough to make the nurse nervous. “Why don’t I take you back to your room?”

“Push me closer to the bed, damn it. I didn’t come all this way just to look at him.”

The nurse looked at me, as if for permission, or apology.

“If you can behave yourself, you can come closer; if you came here to bitch or yell, you can go,”

I said.

He glared at me, and then his gaze shifted to my hand holding Jason’s. “You really are Jason’s girlfriend, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“And the fact that I’m his father doesn’t cut me any slack with you, does it?”

“Not today it doesn’t.”

“You’d really kick me out of the room. His dying father, out of his only son’s room.”

“If you get nasty, in a heartbeat.”

“And who decides what’s nasty?” he asked.

“Me.”

“You,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, and squeezed Jason’s hand a little tighter.

He looked back at the nurse. “Push me closer, and leave.”

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She looked at me again. I nodded. She pushed him closer, but not like she thought it was a good idea. I wasn’t sure either, but I wasn’t sure it was a bad idea either. I didn’t move back, and my chair was moved up so I could hold Jason’s hand. The wheelchair was close enough that our legs almost touched. It was almost too close for comfort, too much interpersonal space crossed, but I stayed where I was, and he didn’t tell the nurse to move him somewhere else. He laid his hand on Jason’s leg under the covers, then said, “Get out, I’ll buzz you when I need you.”

The nurse gave a look like she wasn’t sure she should be doing it, but she left. He waited for the door to hush closed behind us before he spoke. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe that you were his girlfriend.”

“Me, too.”