Anita Blake 22 - Affliction (44 page)

‘I haven’t seen Otto since he caught lycanthropy either.’

‘You’re a fur-banger; why would him being a wereanimal bother you?’ Hatfield asked.

I turned and looked at her. ‘What did you call me?’

‘So you don’t deny that you slept with Jeffries, too.’

‘I didn’t sleep with him, but I’ve learned two things. One, it’s impossible to prove a negative, to prove I didn’t do something. Two, when a woman sleeps with more than one man, she gets accused of sleeping with damn near everybody. But let’s get back to you calling me a fur-banger.’

‘I’m not familiar with the term,’ Jonas said, ‘so before I yell at someone for saying it, tell me what it means.’

‘It means someone who fucks shapeshifters,’ Hatfield said.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘It means people who will fuck any shapeshifter just because they are one. It’s like badge bunnies are about cops.’

‘Hatfield, that sounds pretty insulting to a fellow marshal.’

‘I heard you were living with Sheriff Callahan’s son, Mike, and another wereleopard from his group; that true?’

‘Yeah, it’s true.’

‘The two blonds you brought in with you tonight. They’re shapeshifters just like Rickman said, right?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘You sleeping with them, too?’

I took a deep breath in and let it out slow. I counted slow, before saying, ‘Yes.’

‘So four shapeshifters,’ she said.

‘I never said I didn’t date shapeshifters.’

‘And Forrester here, too, right?’

I looked at Edward. ‘Will it do any good to deny it?’ I asked.

‘If she wants to believe it, she’s going to,’ he said, but his voice was losing the Tedness and getting colder and more empty. The real Edward was beginning to seep through.

‘And I hear your Master of the City flew to your side, so you’re also screwing him.’

‘You know, Hatfield, I was going to try to like you, but I don’t think I want to work that hard; let’s just hate each other and get it over with.’

‘You’re fur-banging coffin bait and helping Forrester cheat on his fiancée who has two kids; I was never going to like you, Blake.’

‘Hatfield,’ Jonas said, one word, sharp and unhappy with her.

‘If I’m really doing Ted here, then why is Donna, that’s his fiancée, okay with me being in the wedding? She’s wanting one of my fur-bangees to be in the wedding, too. I know some of the other law enforcement people will be at the wedding; maybe when they see me standing at the altar with Donna and Ted, this stupid rumor will go away.’

Hatfield’s mouth opened and then closed; unfortunately it opened again. ‘If that’s true, I’ll apologize after the wedding.’

‘Fine, what’s the longest-term relationship you’ve ever had?’

‘I don’t see how that’s any of your business,’ she said.

‘You call me names and get up in my face about my personal life. You spread rumors about me and Marshal Forrester, and you get insulted because I ask a simple question?’

She went back to looking sullen. There were lines around her mouth that showed she frowned a lot more than she smiled. Smile lines are happy exclamations; frown lines just makes you look old before your time. If Hatfield wasn’t careful she was going to do the latter.

‘Blake is being polite after everything you’ve said to her, Susan,’ Jonas said.

She frowned harder but said, ‘Three years. I was married for three years.’

‘Okay. Micah Callahan, Nathaniel, and I have been living together for three years. I’ve been dating Jean-Claude, my Master of the City, for almost seven. The blonds, as you call them, have both been with me over a year.’

‘It’s not the same thing as being married,’ she said.

‘It’s not my fault that it’s illegal to marry multiple men at the same time; that’s like saying that a gay couple isn’t as serious as a straight couple because the straight couple is married, at the same time you make it impossible for the gay couple to marry.’

‘Are you saying that you would marry all of them?’ She made sure I didn’t miss the disdain in her voice.

‘Not all of them, but a lot of them, yeah.’

‘A lot of them?’ Again, she made sure the disdain dripped all over her words.

‘We’re still working out who’s going to marry whom,’ I said.

‘Are you telling me that the engagement to Callahan’s son is real?’

‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘It’s not just so the sheriff can die knowing his son is okay, and not gay?’

I laughed; I couldn’t help it. She obviously knew nothing about the sheriff’s domestic arrangements.

‘What’s so funny?’ she asked.

‘Hatfield,’ Jonas said, ‘you may be our local vampire executioner, but you haven’t been here long. You don’t know all the local PD all that well yet.’

She looked from him, to me, to Edward, and back to Jonas. She knew she’d stepped in something, but not exactly what. I had no intention of enlightening her. I wasn’t sure that Edward even knew about Micah’s dad’s love life, but no one living did better poker face than Edward, so it seemed like the only one in the room who didn’t know that Sheriff Callahan was living with another man, and a woman, was Hatfield.

She decided to go back to something she was certain of and said, ‘This is my warrant and I don’t need Forrester or Blake looking over my shoulder. It’s just two vampires to execute.’

‘There were more than two vampires in the woods,’ I said.

‘You saw them die, Blake. From what I hear you helped blow some of them away with that arsenal you carry.’

I turned to Edward and said, ‘Please tell me that someone burned the remains of the rotting vampires that we blew to hell with the guns?’

‘Ask Hatfield; she was the marshal in charge by the time I got here.’ Ted’s cheerful voice was wearing around the edges so that Edward’s coldness was leaking out. He didn’t like Hatfield either.

‘They all either were decapitated or had their chests blown open, and all of them had their spines damaged. That’s dead enough,’ she said.

‘Didn’t you follow what happened in Atlanta when the Master of the City went crazy?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, the police used flamethrowers on the vampire lair and ruined most of the evidence. They still haven’t identified all the victims’ remains. Local police say you were the one who told them they had to use fire to cleanse it, which is bullshit and overkill.’

‘Fire is the only surety with rotting vampires,’ I said.

‘There are still people waiting for news of their loved ones, thanks to your suggestions in Atlanta,’ she said.

‘Anita’s right,’ Edward said, and his voice was cold now. ‘Fire is the only way to make sure the rotters don’t heal and rise again. Tell us you burned their bodies, Hatfield.’

She was looking from one to the other of us. ‘Nothing keeps moving after a decapitation except zombies.’

‘Exactly,’ I said, ‘and rotting vampires are a lot more like zombies than most vampires.’

‘The Master of Atlanta may have needed fire, but that’s a master vampire. They’re all harder to kill. These were all newly risen, right?’

‘New makes them easier to kill,’ I said, ‘but I burn all rotting vampires regardless of age just to be safe, and then sometimes I do the whole scattering of the ashes in different bodies of running water.’

‘You are just trying to spook me now,’ she said.

‘I travel with a flamethrower when I drive,’ Edward said, ‘and sometimes I can even get it on the plane if I promise there’s no fuel in it.’

‘I heard you liked fire, Forrester. Were you a bed-wetter and terror to the neighborhood pets?’

Edward ignored the insult. ‘Captain, where did the bodies from the woods get transferred?’

‘The hospital morgue has a special room for vamp and lycanthrope undead.’

‘Is it more heavily armored so they can’t get out?’ I asked.

‘No, it’s just separate so that the human dead don’t get … contaminated.’ He sounded a little apologetic when he said the last word.

‘To my knowledge normal dead just stay dead even if you mix them with a whole bunch of vampire and lycanthrope bodies, but are you telling us that all the dead from the woods are now in the morgue in the basement of the hospital where Micah and Nathaniel are? Where Sheriff Callahan is?’ Jean-Claude and the rest of the vampires had gone for the hotel because dawn was only two hours away, and traffic accidents happened, and there was no saving throw between a vampire and sunlight, so he was safe, but he also had some of the most dangerous guards with him, so it was a mixed blessing, damn it!

‘Yeah,’ Jonas said, ‘tell me for real, can these things heal enough to attack people again?’

‘Rotting vampires are really rare, but I wouldn’t trust anything short of burning them up like zombies,’ I said.

‘Agreed,’ Edward said.

‘You did burn up all the zombie parts from the woods, right, Hatfield?’ I asked.

‘We couldn’t burn them in the woods; the fire danger’s too high.’

‘What did you do with the parts?’ I asked.

‘Once dawn came, they stopped moving,’ she said.

I wanted to grab her and shake her, but I forced myself to be calm and dig my fingernails into my palms as I made fists so I wouldn’t do it. ‘What-did-you-do-with-the-zombie-parts?’

‘They’re in the morgue with the vampire bodies.’

‘Shit,’ I said.

‘It’s been dark for hours, Blake; if anything was wrong we’d have heard by now,’ Hatfield said.

‘Call the morgue,’ I said to Jonas. ‘If they say everything is hunky-dory, then Ted and I are wrong. I’m good with that. I’d love to be wrong.’

The captain called, because calling didn’t cost him anything. I’d never actually seen a rotting vampire this young in undead terms, so maybe they got their uber-healing powers after a few years. Maybe a few weeks wasn’t enough time to be that scary?

The phone rang a long time; I was getting nervous, and Jonas was looking worried.

‘See,’ Hatfield said, ‘you’ve both been on the job too long; it’s made you paranoid.’

‘Crap,’ Jonas said, and Hatfield and I looked back at the captain. ‘No one answered at the morgue,’ he said to whoever was on the phone. ‘No, I do not want you to send someone down to check. This is Captain Jonas of Boulder PD, and I want all the hospital staff to stay away from the morgue until I have some officers check it out.’

Whoever was on the other end of the line was talking, and he was trying to tell them, no, he didn’t want any of the staff to go down to the morgue. They wanted to know why and Jonas didn’t want to tell them, because in case it wasn’t vampires and killer zombies, but just a bad phone line, he didn’t want to scare everyone at the hospital.

We didn’t have time for this. I got my cell phone out and dialed Micah. It went to voice mail. I dialed Nathaniel’s phone without letting myself think about why Micah hadn’t answered. He was in with his dad, had turned off the ringer, that was it, that had to be it. Nathaniel would answer. When he picked up I thought my heart was going to choke me, so I sort of croaked out, ‘Nathaniel, everything all right there?’

‘Micah’s dad is struggling in his sleep like he’s having a nightmare. The nurse says he shouldn’t be able to move with all the drugs in him.’

‘Is he saying anything?’

‘No, he’s just struggling like a nightmare we can’t wake him up from. Micah and his parents are in with him now. Why would you ask if he said anything?’

‘Ares was possessed just by being bitten with the rotting disease. I wondered if it would work the same way on regular people.’

‘Wouldn’t Micah’s dad have manifested some sort of weirdness by now if it worked that way on humans?’ Nathaniel asked.

‘Probably me being paranoid. Do you recognize any of the cops in the hallway? Anyone who I’ve met since we landed and who didn’t hate me on sight?’

‘Having more trouble with the local police?’ Nathaniel asked.

‘A little, but I really need to talk to someone there right now if possible.’

‘Anita, what’s wrong?’

I had to swallow past a lump in my throat as I said, ‘They stored the vampire bodies in the morgue there, along with the zombie parts.’

‘They didn’t burn them?’ he asked. That was my boyfriend; he knew more than Hatfield did.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Why not?’

‘Fire hazard in the woods, and later I don’t know. Do you recognize anyone in the hallway?’

‘Deputy Al is here.’

‘Good, can you put him on?’

‘I love you, and you’ll explain everything later,’ he said.

‘I love you, too, and yes, I will.’

He didn’t argue, he just did what I needed. I loved him, but in that moment I loved him even more. The next thing I heard was his voice, distant, saying, ‘It’s Anita, she needs to talk to you.’

‘Hey, Anita, what’s up? Your boyfriend here has a serious face on him.’

I explained about the vampire bodies and zombie bits being in the morgue. Deputy Al said, ‘The fire hazard makes burning anything in the forests too dangerous.’

‘I accept that, but … Al, Captain Jonas can’t get anyone to answer the morgue extension. He’s trying to get someone in the hospital admin to let him send someone to check on it without panicking anyone. I don’t care about that, I just want someone I trust to see if the dead vampires stayed dead. I’m not sure if the zombie bits will be moving around, but it’s the rotting vampires that I’m most concerned about.’

‘We blew them to hell, Anita. Brain, spine, heart, all splattered. That’s dead for a vamp, according to most of you marshals.’

‘It is for most vampires, but rotting vamps are different, much harder to kill. Fire is the only sure thing, and even then I’d deposit the ashes in different bodies of running water.’

‘Really?’ he said, and sounded skeptical.

‘Look, if I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but if there is even the faintest chance I’m right, then the vampires have been walking around down there for a while. I have no idea how long it took for them to heal the damage we did to them, but by now, if they can heal it and walk again, they will be.’

‘Now you’re scaring me.’

‘Good, you should be scared,’ I said.

‘Shit, okay, I’ll grab a couple of other men from up here and we’ll go check in with hospital security and see if the morgue is full of dead people or not-so-dead people.’