Anita Blake 22 - Affliction (15 page)

The girl stepped away from the wall slowly, as if she weren’t sure what to do. ‘Hi, Mike.’ It was almost a whisper.

‘How are you doing, Essie?’ he asked, his voice soft as if there had always been something fragile, or wrong, with this cousin.

She gave a shy smile. ‘You and Beth are the only ones who still call me Essie.’

‘I’m going by Micah now; do you prefer Esther?’ he asked.

‘No, I always liked you calling me Essie,’ she said quickly, looking up with big, startled blue-gray eyes that were so like Bea’s that I knew which side this cousin was on, which meant she had to be Aunt Bertie and Uncle Jamie’s daughter. Poor kid, though she was probably in her early twenties, so not a kid, just … she seemed much younger than she looked; maybe it was the awful clothes and glasses?

I heard Dev say, ‘Not these guys again.’

It made me look up, but my view was blocked. Ty at six feet plus could see farther and he swore softly under his breath. Bea chastised him, ‘Not in front of the kids,’ as if we were all five.

‘It’s your sister and her husband,’ he said.

She said, ‘Shi … Shotgun! I can’t take much more of them today.’

I looked at Micah and mouthed,
Shotgun?

‘If you meet my grandparents you’ll understand why she doesn’t cuss,’ he said.

I gave him wide eyes.

Aunt Bertie and Uncle Jamie were being trailed by Al. I heard him say, ‘Now, Bertie, it’s enough for one night, with Rush hurt like this.’

‘Rush knows he’s outside God’s grace,’ Jamie said.

I wasn’t sure what that meant, but nothing good. ‘What do they want?’ I asked.

‘To save our souls,’ Micah said, and he sounded tired.

‘My soul is fine,’ I said.

‘I know,’ he said.

Nicky and Dev looked at us. ‘Come on, let us keep them out of the room,’ Dev said.

Micah shook his head.

‘Sorry, no,’ I said.

‘Pleeeassse,’ Dev said, drawing out the word as if he were three instead of twenty-three.

‘Tempting,’ I said.

‘So tempting,’ Micah agreed, ‘but let them through.’

Nicky watched the couple pass between him and Dev like he was watching a couple of wounded antelopes and it was just a matter of time.

Al spoke over their heads as they entered the room. ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t distract them enough. Apparently, I’m not sinful enough to interest them.’

‘You’re a good boy,’ Bertie said, patting his arm.

Al shrugged. ‘Sorry, Mike.’

‘Don’t apologize to him because you aren’t a sinner,’ Jamie said.

‘I don’t think that’s what he was apologizing for, Uncle Jamie,’ Micah said.

‘Leave the boy alone, Jamie,’ Aunt Bobbie said. She sounded disgusted with the situation and she’d just gotten here.

‘If you hadn’t interfered in the first place, Bobbie, there wouldn’t be any Coalition, and hundreds of people would have been saved from becoming monsters for them.’

‘I checked into your allegations, Bertie, and it’s paranoid nonsense,’ Bobbie said.

Micah said, ‘We do not encourage people to become lycanthropes. We help families deal with members who are already shapeshifters. We counsel people after attacks, but we do not encourage anyone to become wereanimals. We aren’t like the Church of Eternal Life; we don’t recruit.’

‘You and the vampires want everyone to be like you,’ Aunt Bertie said.

‘That’s unsubstantiated rumor,’ Aunt Bobbie said.

‘I don’t know where the rumors started,’ Micah said, ‘but I can tell you that they are lies. We help people deal with the trauma of attacks the way I wish someone had helped me.’

‘I’ve heard the rumors, but I didn’t think anyone was taking them that seriously,’ I said.

‘A certain branch of religious conservatives have jumped on the bandwagon pretty strongly,’ Micah said. He looked at his aunt and uncle.

‘The rest of them here will believe your lies, but we know that you’ve deceived hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent humans.’ Bertie turned on Bobbie and pointed an accusing finger at her. ‘Innocent lives that could have been saved from evil if you hadn’t gone against us.’

‘You had no grounds to try to imprison Mike, and a judge agreed with me,’ Bobbie said.

‘What are they talking about?’ Nathaniel asked.

‘Jamie and Bertie wanted me to turn myself in to a government safe house when my tests came back positive for lycanthropy. Their church believed that all shapeshifters should be isolated like lepers. When I wouldn’t do it voluntarily, they tried to get me declared legally incompetent and be made my guardians, because the rest of the family was too emotionally overwrought to take care of me.’

‘The government safe houses are prisons,’ Nathaniel said.

I said, ‘Once you sign yourself in you can’t get out, no matter what they tell you to get you there.’

‘I know, and I had Aunt Bobbie to back me up in court.’

‘Thank you,’ I said to her.

She waved it away. ‘They didn’t have any right to do it, or legal ground to stand on, but they had a judge who was a church member. Once I got him recused, we were fine.’

‘If the monster that attacked you had been in a safe house, Steve and Richie would still be alive and you’d still be human instead of an animal,’ Bertie said.

‘Aunt Bertie!’ Juliet nearly yelled it.

‘That’s enough!’ Bea said; her face was flushed, eyes paling to gray. I was betting that was her angry color of eyes, just a hunch.

‘Just tell me these two are the craziest members of your family,’ I said.

‘Last time I visited, yes.’

‘Good,’ I said.

Uncle Jamie turned on me like he’d been saving up. ‘We know who you are, Anita Blake. You raise the dead from the grave, something only God is allowed to do.’

‘I don’t do resurrection, just zombies.’

‘Of course you can’t do what God can do,’ Bertie said. ‘The devil is only a poor imitation of God.’

I raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Excuse me?’

Aunt Jody stepped up. ‘You are an evil, narrow-minded person.’

‘You are an abomination before the Lord,’ Bertie said, in a voice full of such rage it was almost frightening. She’d been yelling at Micah and me, but she was furious with Jody.

‘You didn’t think that in high school,’ Jody said; her voice was bland, empty, but it fell into the conversation like it was anything but.

‘We were friends once, before you became perverted,’ Bertie said.

‘You liked my perversion just fine in high school and then we scared each other. I married the first man who would have me, and you started sleeping with any man who would have you.’

‘Mama,’ Essie said, and she looked like this was news to her.

‘I’m happy now,’ Jody said. ‘Can you say the same, Bertha?’

‘Don’t call me that! Don’t ever call me that!’

‘It’s your name,’ Jody said.

I felt like I was missing a whole lot. Bertie launched herself at Jody. Al got in the way, keeping the two women apart. Nicky kept Uncle Jamie from joining the fight just by standing in his way and being big. The other man didn’t even try to get past him. Dev moved between us and Aunt Bertie, moving us physically back from the almost-fight. None of us told them to stop; I think they were more afraid of what we might do if the fight spread than the other way around.

Jamie yelled around Nicky, ‘You are the devil’s blood whore!’

‘Can I hit him, just once?’ Nicky called out.

‘No!’ I said, and made sure my voice carried.

‘Is he calling Micah the devil, or Jean-Claude?’ Nathaniel asked.

Dev moved Micah, Nathaniel, and me farther back from the fight. Micah’s mom and stepdad, Aunt Jody, Aunt Bobbie, Aunt Bertie, and Uncle Jamie were all screaming at one another. Juliet, Essie, and the rest of us watched like innocent bystanders at a train wreck. It’s sort of awful, but you can’t look away.

I put my mouth close to Micah’s ear and said, ‘Can’t wait to hear what your family Christmases were like.’

‘I’ve never seen them this bad,’ he said.

Juliet and Essie came to stand near us. Essie gave quick covert glances at Dev and Nathaniel, and even Micah. I was suspecting a childhood crush that still had some life in it.

Juliet spoke above the shouting, ‘Do you remember Ginger Dawson?’

‘I remember the Dawson farm; it was next door to ours.’

‘Do you remember the oldest daughter? The one who went away to the army?’

‘Vaguely,’ Micah said.

‘She and Aunt Jody have been living together for about five years.’

‘Living together, how?’ Micah asked.

‘What did you call cutie here? Your live-in partner?’

‘His name’s Nathaniel,’ I said, automatically.

Micah said, ‘Yeah.’

‘They’re living together like that.’

We all looked at one another. Micah said, ‘I had no clue.’

‘None of us did,’ Juliet said.

Aunt Bertie screamed, ‘You’re bringing up your children with your two catamites!’

‘I do not think that word means what she thinks it means,’ I said.

‘Bertie’s gone crazy,’ Juliet said.

Essie was hunching in on herself, trying to look like she didn’t know any of these people. She muttered, ‘I’m so sorry, Mike.’

He patted her arm. ‘It’s okay, Essie, your parents were never your fault.’

She flashed him adoring blue eyes, and he missed it completely as he watched his mother and aunts fight. Nathaniel looked at me; he hadn’t missed it either.

‘You contaminated one son,’ Bertie yelled. ‘Look what he brought home to you! Stop living in sin before you contaminate your other children!’

The three of us, and Dev, all exchanged looks. He said, ‘I think they mean Nathaniel, but …’

Bertie got a handful of Bea’s hair and the fight was on. Hospital security arrived as the two sisters got down to some serious hair-pulling, fingernail-using girl fighting. It was kind of embarrassing, not that it was Micah’s mom, but that they fought like girls. I’d have to teach Bea how to throw a punch.

Morgues aren’t usually my favorite places, but it had been a choice of the morgue or helping Micah talk to the hospital security and police about not having his mom and aunt hauled off to jail. Frankly, I’d have let them take Aunt Bertie if it wouldn’t have sent his mom to jail, too. Richard Zeeman’s mom, my other almost-mother-in-law, had also had a temper. What was it with the men that I loved having moms who were such … live wires? Maybe they both liked women just like dear old Mom? In Micah’s case, I was a cop like his dad, so he got a two-for-one deal. It was all too weird and Freudian for me.

I stared down at the first plastic-edged corpse and wasn’t happier here with the dead than up trying to figure out the living, but I was less confused. I had felt guilty leaving Nathaniel with Micah and the mess of the living, but he couldn’t come with me. Dr Rogers had barely gotten the okay from the local cops for me to see the first three victims. Including my boyfriends would have been asking too much, and besides, I didn’t want either of them to see the horrors I saw in my job, especially not if this was what would be happening to Rush Callahan. Previews are a bitch. I pushed away that last thought and looked down at the body.

There would be paperwork somewhere that told me her name, maybe even her background. Had she had a family? But I didn’t need, or want, any of that right now. The only way to stay sane was to think
body
,
it
; depersonalize. Background information got in the way of the pronoun
it
and made it more a
her
. Looking down at the body I didn’t want it to be a
her
. I needed it to be a thing. Sometimes I worried that I’d become like some legal serial killer with my victims just rogue vamps and shapeshifters, but moments like this made me understand that my empathy was way too good for me ever to be a serial killer. Most of them saw their victims as things like a lamp, or a chair, or a tree, no more real than that. It was what allowed them to do their crimes with so little remorse. You don’t feel bad about beating up a chair or breaking a lamp, right?

I stared down at the body and fought to keep in that Zen mind-set where it was all impersonal and I didn’t keep seeing Micah’s dad in the hospital bed, or think what this woman must have gone through before she died. I fought to keep all that in the back of my head, because in the front it would stop me from being helpful. I couldn’t function if my emotions were fucking me over. Yay, I wasn’t becoming some emotionless killing machine. Boo, I was staring down at a partially rotted corpse and all I could think was,
What a horrible way to die
.

‘Dazzle us, Blake,’ Detective Rickman said.

Did I mention I had an audience? Dr Rogers and the coroner, Dr Shelley, I’d sort of expected, but I also had Sergeant Gonzales; Rickman; his partner, Detective Conner; Commander Walter Burke; Deputy Al; and Deputy Gutterman. Al was apparently senior officer while Rush was hurt, but I wondered, if we had two of their officers, how many were left on their force to protect and serve while they stayed down here? It was a small-town sheriff’s department, it couldn’t be that big, but I didn’t question Al’s use of manpower. He was in charge and he knew his resources.

The audience had been part of what made Rickman not have a hissy fit about me looking at the bodies. Apparently, he was worried I’d mess up the victims or do suspicious magic. I’d run into officers like him before. Some were ultrareligious, so they thought I was evil, but others just had the same problem with me they had with all female cops, or with a federal cop of any kind butting into their case. I was a woman, a female cop, a godless user of magic, and a Fed – so many reasons for other cops to hate me. The fact that this many different flavors of police were cooperating was rare and good to see. I had a feeling it was Sheriff Rush Callahan’s good rep and work that made them all willing to band together. Normally police fought over jurisdiction like dogs over the last meaty bone. It was better than it had been years ago, but it was still a general rule that cops didn’t like to share, except when they wanted to pass the buck so that a messy or boring case was someone else’s problem. This case was messy, but it wasn’t boring, and one of their own was hurt, so it was personal, but more than that, solve a case like this and it could make your reputation. Fail at solving it and it could break you. I wasn’t big on failing or breaking.