"We"ve got an extermination crew on its way. We"ll burn the vampires in the crypt. Why did he leave them behind?"
"I think he"s insane. Vampires go crazy just like living people. Think of him as serial killer who"s devolved into a spree killer."
"So he"ll just kill everything he sees."
"Probably," I said.
"How do we find him?"
"Follow the trail of bodies. If he hides, then use dogs. He"s a decayed corpse, Finnegan. Right now that"s what he is; get some dogs and track the son of a b.i.t.c.h."
"Cadaver dogs?" He made it a question.
"Yeah."
"That"s the best idea I"ve heard from anyone. I"ll get them."
"Bullets won"t hurt him until after dark. Only fire, so every team of dogs needs a flamer with them."
"We don"t have that many cadaver dogs, or that many flamethrower teams."
"No city does. Like Morgan said, this type of vampire is very rare in the U.S."
"I"ll call for the dogs. Send me the video, Blake."
"Will do. I could be on the ground in a couple of hours."
"In a couple of hours it"ll be over."
"Finnegan," I said.
"No, the dogs are a great idea. You couldn"t do anything but follow the dogs and the flamethrower crew around like the rest of us." He hung up.
I thought, Actually I might be able to track the vampire Actually I might be able to track the vampire. I was a necromancer, but the other marshals weren"t always comfortable with my psychic abilities, so I let it lie. Besides, it was a trap. If I went to Atlanta the vampire would either try to kill me or try to open me for the Mother of All Darkness. Without my people to touch and get all metaphysical with, I wouldn"t be as safe against Mommie Darkest. I knew it was too dangerous to go, even if there hadn"t been a.s.sa.s.sins out to get us.
"You know it"s a trap," Nicky said.
"I know."
"Would you really go if they asked you?"
"I don"t know." I handed him my phone. "Send the video to Marshal Finnegan."
Jake asked, "What is it?"
I told him, because there was no way to keep this out of the media. Too much death, too much sensationalism, and they had to warn everyone. It probably wouldn"t do anything but make the entire city panic, but if the police didn"t warn the general populace and people died, they"d get sued, because everyone would believe that if they"d known they would have been able to keep themselves safe. I knew better, but sometimes the illusion of safety is all people have. I didn"t even have that, and hadn"t had it for years.
CHAPTER 34
"TONIGHT MORTE D"AMOUR hit Atlanta. Tomorrow night he"ll hit another city," Jake said.
"How many other Masters of the City are descended from his bloodline?" I asked.
"A few."
"Either share your information, Jake, or get out of my face."
"We can save the other descendants of Morte d"Amour in this country, Anita."
"How?" I asked.
"Pick one of my kittens," he said.
"You know, you calling them kittens doesn"t help."
He smiled. "Sorry. Does it help to know that they"re all older than Cynric from Vegas?"
"He"s legal," I said, deciding that a frontal a.s.sault was the best defense.
"I heard through the grapevine that you were bothered doing anyone under eighteen. If I heard wrong, I"m sorry."
I sighed. "No, you"re right. It"s not just the age. It"s the level of innocence. My life isn"t about innocence. I prefer someone who knows his way around."
"A sadder-but-wiser girl for you, huh?" Nicky said.
We both looked at him. "Are you quoting The Music Man The Music Man at me?" at me?"
If it had been anyone else I"d have said he looked embarra.s.sed. He gave that shallow shrug around all that muscle again. "What, I can"t like musicals?"
I blinked at him. "I sort of had you pegged for death metal, or club mixes."
He grinned. "I like club mixes, but you can"t dance to most death metal. Silas was into that."
"You"ve been with us a year. I didn"t know you liked to dance."
"You don"t like to dance. You will dance for Nathaniel, Micah, and Jean-Claude, even Jason or Asher, but you don"t enjoy it. My primary emotions seem to be about pleasing you. It makes me anxious if I feel like you"re unhappy with me. Asking you to dance would make you uncomfortable, which would make me anxious. It"s so not worth it."
I didn"t know what to say to that. I looked at Jake. "Do you know much about this whole Bride phenomenon?"
"I"ve seen it. It"s really rare. It only shows up in bloodlines descended from the Father of the Day, like Belle Morte or the Dragon."
"So it"s a power that Mommie Dark doesn"t have?" I asked.
He nodded. "The Sweet Dark isn"t into long-term relationships, really. Brides can be treated pretty badly by their grooms, but often the vampire who makes them feels responsible for them and it does become more like a group marriage, albeit with a one-sided power structure."
"Is there a limit to how many Brides I can make?" I asked.
"It"s usually limited only by resources. How much blood you can harvest in an area determines how many vampires you can have before they begin to starve."
"What"s the biggest number you"ve seen?"
"Twelve," he said.
I gave him wide eyes. He studied my face. "You"re delaying meeting the weretigers; why?"
"I know this is going to sound churlish, or childish, or just stupid, but I don"t know how to go down to your tigers and pick one to sleep with when I haven"t even introduced myself."
"There"s a reason that most vampires who have Brides are men," he said.
"And that would be?" I asked.
"Women complicate things."
Nicky made a sound that he turned into a cough, but I was pretty sure it started as a laugh. "You got something to say, Nicky?" I asked.
He caught his breath, face shining a little too much with his "cough." "Nope."
"Fine, if I were a guy I"d just march down there and pick someone. I get it."
"Why don"t you have Jean-Claude help you pick?" Jake suggested.
It wasn"t a bad idea. I tended to pick low-power wereanimals and vampires to bond with, with a few rare exceptions like Micah. Jean-Claude could always be trusted to pick the wereanimal or necromancer most likely to up his power level, and if we were going to add someone else to our bed then it might as well pack a power punch to offset the embarra.s.sment. My embarra.s.sment, never Jean-Claude"s.
CHAPTER 35
THE WERETIGERS WERE in the living room, but the rest of us were in Jean-Claude"s bedroom. I was sitting in one of the chairs by the fireplace. I was drinking coffee and watching the men in my life discuss how to pick the next man. Jean-Claude was in the other chair. Nathaniel was sitting curled by the fireplace, sipping tea and watching everything. Damian, Asher, and Micah were moving around the room as they talked.
Richard was still in wolf form, so his part of the discussion was sitting beside the chair and watching. I kept the coffee mug in one hand, but the other was on the ruff of his neck fur. He was warm and alive under my hand. His cinnamon fur was rougher than most dogs", but the pulse and beat of him seemed closer to his skin than it would in a dog. Most wolves are about the size of a German shepherd, but Richard was like most werewolves; his wolf form was somewhere between a mastiff and a Great Dane in bulk and height. No modern-day wolf was ever this big. It should have been comforting to touch him the way it was comforting to touch a dog, but it wasn"t. Because this "dog" watched the other men talk, his bright amber eyes moving back and forth following the conversation in a way that no dog, or wolf, would, could, or would want to. Dog just wouldn"t care.
"Anita." It was Micah leaning over me.
I stared up into his chartreuse eyes, blinking. "I"m sorry, what?"
He touched my face. "Your skin is cooler than it should be. You"re shocky." He laid the back of his hand on my forehead. "Did something happen with Jake that you aren"t telling us?"
"Not with Jake, no," I said, and my voice sounded distant.
He knelt and looked at me. The wolf turned and looked at me with too much "person" in his eyes. With Micah kneeling and the wolf sitting, the wolf was taller, but neither set of eyes was human.
Jean-Claude looked past us to someone behind my chair. "Nicky, did Anita do more with the police than talk to them on the phone?"
"I don"t know how to answer that," Nicky said.
"Just answer it," Micah said, gazing past me to the other man.
"Anita has to tell me to answer it," he said.
"Ma pet.i.te, did you forbid Nicky to tell us something?"
Micah took the hand in my lap in both his hands. I didn"t remember when I"d stopped touching the wolf"s fur. Richard put that huge head next to mine and sniffed above my skin. "Anita, did you tell Nicky not to tell us something?"
I shook my head.
"Nicky," Jean-Claude said, "is she lying?"
"Yes," he said.
I turned too fast and Micah had to grab my coffee or I"d have spilled it. I glared at Nicky. "I didn"t tell you not to tell them."
"You told me not to mention the police work to anyone, that it was an ongoing investigation and that I couldn"t share the information with anyone."
I thought about it. "I didn"t mean . . . it is . . . I mean." I couldn"t seem to organize my thoughts.
Micah touched my face and made me look at him. "Tell Nicky he can tell us anything we need to know."
I nodded.
"You have to say it out loud," Micah said.
"You can tell the people in this room what happened," I said.
Nicky and Damian both told about the crime scene video, because when I had said Nicky could tell everyone, I hadn"t included his name so it freed them both up to talk. But it was when Nicky started talking about everything that had happened on the phone that Micah held my hand tighter, and Richard laid his head on my lap, eyes rolled up like a dog will do, though there was too much in those eyes. I laid my free hand on top of his big furry skull, but I realized that dogs weren"t comforting just because of the fur and the cuteness, but because there was no demand to them. The eyes in Richard"s wolf face demanded too much.
Jean-Claude cupped my face in his hands, raising me up so I gazed into those blue eyes. "And you were going to flirt with the new weretigers and take one to your bed with no time between these horrible events?"
I just looked up at him.
He kissed my forehead and laid his face against mine. "Ma pet.i.te, ma pet.i.te, you give yourself no time."
I drew back so I could look into his face. "There isn"t any time to give. We need to do this now, right?" I started getting angry and I wasn"t even sure why. I stood up, pulling free of all of them. I strode to the middle of the room and stared at them all, and in that moment I hated them. I wanted to lash out. I wanted to hurt something. I knew it wasn"t rational. I knew it wasn"t fair. But the anger needed to go somewhere.
Nathaniel stood up, holding his hands out empty as if to prove he was unarmed. He"d put on a pair of jogging shorts, shoes, and a muscle tank top. His hair was back in a tight braid. It was what he wore when he worked out.