Cerulean Sins (17 page)

He looked at me, and even through the glasses I could feel him struggling to remember what I was saying, or rather what the words meant.

“Don't go all preverbal on me, Jason, I need you here with me.”

He took a deep breath that seemed to come from the soles of his feet and slide out the top of his head. His shoulders hunched then straightened like he was trying to shake something off.

“I'm okay.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“I can do it, if you can.”

I frowned at that. “Am I going to have more trouble?”

“I don't have to go up into that room, you do.”

I sighed. “I am so tired of this shit.”

“Which shit?” he asked.

“All of it.”

He smiled. “Come on, marshal, let's go get those gloves.”

I shook my head, but I led the way through the dining room towards the kitchen. I could see the box of gloves sitting beside an open, nearly full trash bag. There'd been a lot of personnel through here to fill up one of those large bags. So where was everyone, and where was Dolph?

D
OLPH FOUND US
in the kitchen while I was helping Jason with the gloves. There's an art to putting them on, and it was Jason's first time, so he was like a small child with his first set of gloves, too few fingers and too many holes.

Dolph came in through the dining room the same way we'd come, though he almost filled the doorway, whereas Jason and I had walked through together with plenty of room to spare. Dolph is built like a pro-wrestler, wide, and he's six eight. I'm sort of used to him by now, but Jason did what most people do. He looked up, and up. Other than that, he behaved himself, which for Jason was a minor miracle.

“What's he doing here?” Dolph asked.

“You said if I wasn't well enough to drive I could bring a civvie driver. Jason's my driver.”

He shook his head, his dark hair so freshly cut that his ears looked pale and stranded. “Don't you have any human friends left?” he asked.

I concentrated on helping Jason into the gloves and counted to ten. “Yeah, but most of them are cops, and they don't like playing chauffer.”

“He doesn't need gloves, Anita, because he is not staying.”

“We had to park too far back for me to walk without someone to catch me if I needed it. I can't send him back through that pack of reporters.”

“Yeah, you can,” Dolph said.

I finally got the last finger in place. Jason stood there flexing his hands inside the gloves. “How come it feels wet and powdery all at the same time?”

“I don't know, but it always does,” I said.

“He is out of here, Anita, do you hear me?”

“If he sits on the front stoop, they're going to have pictures of him. What if someone recognizes him? Do you really want the headlines to read werewolves attack suburbia?” I slipped into my own pair of gloves with practiced ease.

“Gosh,” Jason said, “that was nifty, you made that look easy.”

“Anita!” It was almost a yell.

We both looked up at Dolph. “You don't have to shout, Dolph, I can hear you just fine.”

“Then why is he still standing here?”

“I can't send him back to the car. He can't sit out front. Where would you like him to be while I check out the crime scene?”

He balled his big hands into even bigger fists. “I—want-him-out-of-here.” Every word was squeezed out through gritted teeth. “I don't care where he fucking goes.”

I ignored the anger, because it didn't get me anywhere to pay attention to it. He was in a bad mood, it was a bad scene, and Dolph wasn't too fond of the monsters lately.

Merlioni came into the kitchen. He stopped in the doorway between kitchen and dining room, as if he'd picked up on the tension. “What's going on?”

Dolph pointed a finger at Jason. “He is out of here.”

Merlioni glanced at me.

“You do not fucking look at her, you look at me!” The anger was hot in his voice. He wasn't yelling, but he didn't really need to.

Merlioni walked around Dolph, carefully, and reached out to take Jason's arm. I stopped him with one gloved hand on his hand.

Merlioni glanced back at Dolph, then moved a little farther down the kitchen, out of the line of fire, I think.

“Is there a backyard?” I asked.

“Why?” Dolph asked, his voice gone low and growling, not with the edge of any beast, but with anger.

“Merlioni can take him out back. He'll be out of the house and still safe from the reporters.”

“No,” Dolph said, “he's out of here. Gone, completely gone.”

My headache was coming back, a flutter of pain behind one eye, but it had the promise of great things to come. “Dolph, I do not feel well enough for this shit.”

“What shit?”

“Your shit with anyone not lily-human,” I said, and I sounded tired, not angry.

“Get out.”

I looked up at him. “What did you say?”

“Get out, take your pet werewolf and go home.”

“You bastard.”

He gave me that look that had been making grown policemen cringe for years. I was too tired and too disgusted with it all to flinch.

“I told you I was too sick to drive when you woke me up. You agreed I could bring a driver, even a civilian. You didn't say he had to be human. Now after dragging my ass down here, you're going to send me home without having seen the crime scene?”

“Yes,” Dolph said, that one word almost choking in its brevity.

“No,” I said, “you're not.”

“This is my murder, Anita, and I say who stays and who goes.”

I was finally beginning to get angry. You can only cut even your friends so much slack. I stepped in front of Jason, closer to Dolph. “I'm not here on your sufferance, Dolph. I'm a federal marshal now, and I have the right to investigate any preternatural crime that I see fit.”

“Are you refusing my direct order?” his voice was very quiet now. Not heated—empty—and that should have scared me more, but I wasn't scared of Dolph. I never had been.

“If I think your direct orders are jeopardizing this investigation, then, yes I am.”

He took one step towards me. He loomed over me, but I was used to that, a lot of people loomed over me. “Never question my professionalism again, Anita, never.”

“When you act like a professional, I won't.”

His hands were clenching and unclenching at his sides. “You want to see why I don't want him at this scene? You want to see it?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I want to see it.”

He grabbed me by the upper arm. I don't know if Dolph had ever touched me before. It caught me off guard, and it wasn't until he'd half-marched, half-dragged me across the kitchen to the dining room door that I unfroze. I looked behind me and shook my head at Jason. He probably didn't like it, but he settled back against the cabinets. I caught a glimpse of Merlioni's shocked face before we were into the dining room.

He dragged me to the stairs, and when I stumbled, he didn't give me time to get to my feet, but literally dragged me up the stairs.

The door opened behind us, and I heard a man say, “Lieutenant!” I thought I recognized the voice, but I wasn't sure, and there wasn't time to look, I was too busy trying not to get rug burns from the stairs.

I couldn't get my feet under me long enough to stand in the heels. The headache burst full-blown behind my eye, and the world was a trembling thing.

I found my voice, “Dolph, Dolph, damn it!”

He opened a door and jerked me to my feet. I staggered while the world ran in streamers of dark color. He held me with one of his big hands on each of my arms, only his grip kept me on my feet.

My vision cleared in pieces, as if the scene were some sort of video puzzle. There was a bed against the far wall. I glimpsed white pillows against a lavender wall, then a woman's head, and some of her shoulders. It didn't look real, as if someone had propped a fake head against the pillows. From about collar bones down, there was only a red ruin. I don't mean a body. I mean it was as if the bed had been dipped in dark fluid. The blood wasn't red, it was black. A trick of the light, or the fact that it wasn't just blood.

The smell hit me then—meat. Everything smelled like hamburger. I saw the pile of bedclothes, black, and red, and sodden, soaked in gore. Gore, not just blood, gore. I looked back at the woman's head, I didn't want to, but I couldn't help it. I looked, and I finally could see. It was all that was left of her, all that was left of an adult woman. It was as if she'd exploded with her head on the pillows, and her body . . . everywhere.

I felt the scream building in my throat, and knew I couldn't do it. I had to be stronger than this, better than this. I swallowed the scream, and my stomach tried to come up my throat. I swallowed that, too, and tried to think.

“What do you think?” Dolph said, and he pushed me, trapped between his big hands, towards the bed. “Pretty enough for you? Because one of your friends did this.” He pressed me too close to the bed, and my legs squeezed against the gore-soaked bed clothes. The blood was cool to the touch, and it helped keep my beast from curling up my body. What good was blood if it wasn't hot and fresh?

“Dolph, stop this,” I said, and my voice didn't sound like me.

“Lieutenant,” a voice came from the open door.

Dolph turned with me still gripped between his hands. Detective Clive Perry stood in the doorway. He was a slender African American man, dressed conservatively, neatly, but well dressed. He was one of the most soft-spoken men I'd ever met, and
the
most soft-spoken policeman.

“What is it, Perry?”

Perry took a deep breath, that moved his shoulders and chest up and down. “Lieutenant, I think Ms. Blake has seen enough of the crime scene for now.”

Dolph gave me a little shake that sent my head rattling and my stomach churning. “Not yet, she hasn't.” He jerked me around to face back into the room. He dragged me towards the headboard, which was painted a lavender so close to the wall's color I hadn't seen it. He pushed me forward until my face was inches from it. There was a fresh claw mark like a pale scar in the wood and paint.

“What do you think did that, Anita?” He jerked me around until he was holding me facing him, his big hands still wrapped around my upper arms.

“Let go, Dolph.” My voice still didn't sound like me. No one else could have done this to me. I'd have fought back by now, or been scared, or pissed. I still wasn't any of those things.

“What do you think did that?” And he gave me a little shake. It made my head rattle, my vision stream.

“Lieutenant Storr, I must insist that you let Ms. Blake go.” Detective Perry was behind him, to one side, so I could see his face.

Dolph turned on him, and I think only the fact that his hands were already full kept him from grabbing Perry. “She knows. She knows what did this, because she knows every fucking monster in town.”

“Let her go, Lieutenant, please.”

I closed my eyes, which helped the dizziness. His hands on my arms let me know where his body was. I rammed the pointed heel of my shoe into his instep. He flinched, his hands loosened. I opened my eyes and did what I'd been trained to do. I brought my arms up between his and swept outward, downward. It broke his hold on me, and I drew my right arm back, and hit him a short upper cut into his gut. If he'd been shorter I'd have tried for the solar plexus, but the angle was bad, so I hit what I could get.

The air went out of him in a grunt, and he bent double, hands over his stomach. I still haven't quite come to terms with being more than human strong. I had a second where I hoped I hadn't hurt him more than I meant to, then I stepped back, away from him. The world was trembling, like I was looking at everything through wavy glass.

I kept backing up, and my heels hit something slick and thicker than just blood, and down I went. I landed hard on my ass, and blood spattered upwards. It soaked through my skirt and I struggled to my knees to keep it from soaking into my panties. The blood was cool to the touch, and then my knee smeared in something that wasn't blood.

I screamed and scrambled to my feet. If Perry hadn't caught me I'd have fallen again. But he was moving too slow for the door. I didn't want to throw up in here. I pushed away from him and half-staggered, half-ran through the doorway. When I hit the hallway I fell to all fours and threw up on the pale carpet. My head roared with pain, and my vision exploded with starbursts of white, white light.

I crawled towards the head of the stairs, not sure what I planned to do. The floor came up to smack into my body, and there was nothing but a soft, gray nothingness, then the world was black, and my head didn't hurt at all.

T
HE TILE FELT
so good against my cheek, so cool. Someone was moving around. I thought about opening my eyes, but it seemed like too much effort. Someone put a cool cloth against my neck. It made me shiver, and I opened my eyes. My vision took a second to focus, then I saw the knee beside my face was wearing hose, and a skirt.

I knew it wasn't one of the men, unless they had hobbies I didn't know about. “Anita, it's me, Tammy, how you feeling?”

I rolled my eyes, but some of my own hair was in the way, and I couldn't see up that far. I tried to say,
help me sit up
, but it didn't come out. I tried again, and she had to lean close to hear me. She pushed a piece of her straight brown hair behind her ear, as if that would help her hear better.

“Help me,” I swallowed, “sit up.”

She got an arm under my shoulders and lifted. Detective Tammy Reynolds was five ten, and she worked out at least enough to keep the other—read male—cops from giving her grief. She didn't have much trouble getting me up, my back against the bathtub.

Staying there was my job, and that was a little more trouble. I propped myself on one arm and leaned against the tub.

She picked the rag up from the edge of the sink where she'd laid it, and put it against my forehead. The rag was cold, and I jerked away from her. I felt cold, that was a new symptom. I thought of something.

“Have you been,” I coughed to clear my throat, “putting cool rags on me?”

“Yes, it helps me when I'm sick.”

“Cold rags don't seem to be helping me.” I didn't tell her that it was
probably one of the worst things she could have done for me. Ever since I had inherited Richard's beast, or whoever's beast, cold didn't seem to help me when I was sick. I healed like a lycanthrope now, and that meant that my temperature ran hot when I was sick, like my body was cooking itself. A well-meaning doctor had almost killed me with ice baths for what they thought was a dangerously high fever.

I started to shiver.

She got up, rinsing the washrag out, and spreading it out to dry on the edge of the sink. “I threw up in the yard,” she said. She put her hands on the sink, head bowed.

I hugged myself, trying to stop the shivering, but it didn't really help. I was cold. I hadn't been cold earlier today. Was a new symptom good or bad?

“It's a bad scene,” I said, “I'm sure you weren't the only cop who lost their breakfast.”

Tammy looked at me through a trailing edge of her hair. She had to keep her hair above her collar, just like the male policemen, but she kept it as long as she could. “Maybe, but I'm the only one who passed out.”

“Except for me,” I said.

“Yeah, you and me, the only women at the scene.” She sounded so tired.

Tammy and I weren't actually friends. She was a Follower of the Way, Christianity's version of witches. Most of the Followers of the Way were zealots, more Christian than the right-wingers, as if they had to prove they really were worthy of salvation. Tammy had mellowed since she'd been dating Larry Kirkland, my fellow animator. But this was the first time I'd realized how much of that bright and shiny exterior had been worn away. Police work will eat you up and spit you out.

As women we needed to be tougher just to be accepted. Today hadn't helped either of us.

“It's not your fault,” I said. The shivering was beginning to get a little worse.

“No, it's my damn doctor's fault.”

I looked up at her. “Excuse me?”

“He gives me a prescription for birth control pills then prescribes antibiotics, and doesn't warn me that while I'm taking the antibiotic, the pill won't work.”

My eyes went wide. “I'm sorry, are you saying . . .”

“That I'm pregnant, yes.”

I know the surprise showed on my face, I couldn't help it. “Does Larry know?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“What . . .” I tried to think of something good to say, and gave up. “What are you going to do?”

“Get married, damn it.”

Something must have showed on my face, because she knelt by me. “I love Larry, but I didn't plan on marrying now, and I certainly didn't plan on having a baby. Do you know how hard it is to get ahead in this job as a woman? Of course, you do. Sorry.”

“No,” I said, “it's not the same for me. Police work isn't my entire career.” The shivering had started up again; no amount of astonishment could keep me warm.

She took her own jacket off, showing her gun in its front holster. She wrapped the jacket around me. I didn't argue, but clutched it closed with my hands.

“Is the shivering from the pregnancy?” she asked. “Someone said you said you were sick, are you?”

It took me a second or two, blinking at her sort of stupidly to understand what she'd said. “Did you just say ‘pregnancy'?”

She made a face at me. “Anita, please, I haven't told anyone either, but they're going to guess. I threw up at the murder scene, I've never done that. I didn't pass out cold like you did, but I came close. Perry had to help me out into the yard so I could be sick. It won't take them long to figure it out.”

“This is not the first scene I've thrown up at, not even the fourth,” I said. I haven't done it in a while, but I've certainly done it before. Surely they've told you the story about me throwing up on the body. Zerbrowski loves that one.”

“Sure, but I thought he was exaggerating. You know how Zerbrowski is.”

“He wasn't exaggerating.”

“You can lie to me if you want to, but unless you're planning to abort, they'll all figure it out sooner or later.”

“I am not pregnant,” I said, though I had a little trouble saying it, because I was shivering so badly it was hard to talk. “I'm just sick.”

“You're freezing, Anita, you don't have a fever.”

How could I explain to her that I was having a bad reaction to a vampire bite and the fact that I shared Richard's beast. Odd metaphysics weren't easy to explain. Pregnancy was nice and simple, compared to that.

She grabbed my arms, a lot like Dolph had. “I am three months pregnant. How far along are you? Please tell me, tell me I haven't been a fool. Tell me I haven't ruined my life by not reading the fine print on a bottle of medicine.”

I was shivering so hard, it was hard to talk, but I managed to get out, “I—am—not pregnant.”

She stood and turned her back on me. “Damn you for not sharing.”

I tried to say something, I wasn't even sure what, but she left, leaving the door open behind her. I wasn't sure being left alone was a good thing, the shivering was getting worse, like I was freezing to death from the inside. Larry Kirkland was off being trained to be a federal marshal. He didn't have four years as a vamp executioner yet, so he couldn't get grandfathered in. I wondered if the pregnancy was making it harder for him to be away from Tammy, or easier. Damn it, anyway.

Perry brought Jason up to me. He touched me. “God, you're cold.” He picked me up in his arms like I weighed nothing. “I'm taking her home.”

“We'll give you an escort through the press,” Perry said.

Jason didn't argue. He carried me down the stairs. We waited for a few minutes, while Perry rounded up enough warm bodies to act as a sort of living gauntlet to try and keep the press at bay.

The door opened, the sunlight hit my eyes and the headache roared to life. I buried my face against Jason's chest. Jason seemed to know what was wrong, because he raised an edge of Tammy's jacket across my eyes.

“Are you ready?” Perry's voice.

“Let's do it,” Jason said.

Normally, I'd have felt humiliated to be carried out of a murder scene like a wilting flower, but I was working too hard on keeping the shivering under control. It took all my concentration not to let my body shake itself apart. What the hell was wrong with me?

We were outside, and moving at a good pace. I could judge how close we were to the press by how loud the yelling was getting. “What's wrong with Ms. Blake?” “What happened to her?” “Who are you?” “Where are you taking her?” There were more questions, lots more. They all melded into a noise like the ocean against the shore. The crowd surged around us. There was a moment when I felt them closing like a fist around us, but Merlioni's voice rose to a shout, “Back up, back up now, or we'll clear this area!”

Jason got me inside the Jeep, leaning his shoulder into me, so he could fasten the seat belt. The jacket was across my face now, and strangely it felt claustrophobic.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

I was already doing what he'd asked, but I didn't say anything. The jacket moved away, and the sun was bright against my closed eyelids. I felt the sunglasses slip over my eyes, and I opened them cautiously. Better.

There was a line of detectives and uniforms in front of the Jeep, keeping the pack of reporters back, so we could make our getaway. Every camera they had was pointed our way. God knew what the captions would read once they were done with it.

Jason gunned the engine and backed up with a screech of tires. He was a ways down the street before I could chatter out, “you'll get a ticket.”

“I've called Micah. He's waiting. You and Nathaniel can share the bathtub.”

I managed to get out, “What?”

“I don't know exactly what's wrong, Anita, but you're acting like a shape-shifter that's been badly hurt. Like your body's trying to heal some deep wound. You need heat, and the touch of your group.”

“I,” teeth chattering so hard I couldn't finish, “haven't . . .” I stopped trying for a sentence and settled for, “Not hurt.”

“I know that you're not hurt that badly. But even if it was the vampire bite, you'd be warm to the touch, hot, cooking to heal yourself. You shouldn't feel cold.”

My ears started ringing. It sounded like someone was hitting a chime over and over. The ringing drowned out Jason's voice, the sound of the engine, and finally everything. I passed out for the second time in less than two hours. This was not turning out to be one of my better days.