Honeymoon of the Dead (22 page)

“Wisconsin,” I said, then realized how lame I sounded. “But we were actually headed to Austria. Our flight got canceled.”

“And you were kidnapped,” a male voice added from the doorway of the ambulance. A police officer poked his head around the edge of the door which had been left propped open. Cold air came in along with him as he pulled himself up into the small space.

The ambulance driver looked at me in surprise.

“Yep,” I said, smiling feebly. “I guess that’s me.”

The police officer took off his hat, and closed the ambulance door to keep in the warmth. “I just need to ask you a couple of questions,” he said.

On cue, the ambulance guy found other things to do that involved being elsewhere. Once he’d extracted himself, the officer perched on the gurney opposite mine. The cop looked like someone’s dad—though not mine, since my dad was an aging, hippie, organic chicken farmer. He had steel gray hair and a face that had clearly seen its share of hard times and cold weather. Though not super-buff, you could tell this guy hit the gym more than the proverbial donut shop.

“Ask away,” I offered cheerily, though frankly I’d really had my fill of law-enforcement types too. If I never saw a police officer or FBI agent again, I’d die happy.

While he asked, I answered as honestly as I could in between bouts of “slippage,” when I’d suddenly feel the bruises sustained from invisible blows or a disorienting light headedness. Somehow, despite a steady stream of astral interruptions, I mostly managed to keep track of the conversation. Luckily, the officer had that TV cop tendency to recap before going on with the next question.

“So what you’re saying is this guy, James Something, has been stalking you and your husband for days? And the altercation started because your husband got sick of it.”

I nodded. He had a few more questions, but none of the and-why-didn’t-Sebastian-die-when-jabbed-through-the-heart variety, so I got through them okay.

All at once, I had a sudden, overwhelming feeling of falling and had to reach out and catch myself on one of the officer’s knees. I held on for dear life. Even though my waking mind knew I wasn’t really plummeting through an endless abyss, I couldn’t quite allow myself to let go. The cop’s tone strained in a joking- but-you’re-really-hurting-me tone. “You’ve got quite the grip there, little lady.”

Then the sensation faded. A presence settled over me that was strong and confident. I sat up straighter, with almost military precision. “Our apologies,” I said, my voice overlaid with another’s.

The officer gave me a long measured look and then shook his head like he didn’t want to know. “Okay. Well,” he said finally. “I think that’s all I really needed to know. Thank you for your cooperation. I’ll, uh, get that medic back here, eh?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” I said. “My husband, Sebastian . . . is he okay? Can we go home?”

“I’m afraid he got a little belligerent with one of my colleagues—he tried to bite him.”

Poor Sebastian! He must have been starving to lose control like that!

“He’s downtown. I’d be happy to take you.”

And that’s how I found myself in the back of a police car for the second time in so many days. At least this time I was conscious.

 

 

From my vantage point in the cruiser, I listened in on
the radio chatter and inspected all the gadgets my officer had in his car. I had no idea, for instance, they had laptops and cell phones these days. If it had been under better circumstances the whole ride would have been kind of cool. As it was, I learned all about Officer Hamilton’s family, how long he’d been on the job, and the scariest thing he’d ever encountered (think pit bulls and drug lords with guns). By the time we reached the station, I had him promising to come by the store if he was ever in Madison.

During the ride, I also came to another, perhaps more obvious, conclusion. Sebastian was right: James was a liar. He’d said he was Sebastian’s protector, but clearly that wasn’t true. I hated when I got played like that. Worse, I wondered if it was all part of some plan to get me to trust him. Maybe he was the “master” the Illuminati boys were referring to when they thought I might die.

Officer Hamilton showed me into a waiting area in the police station. Like my own father, I got the sense he thought I was a little kooky, but he cordially offered me coffee while I paced the scuffed linoleum floor waiting for news about Sebastian’s situation.

The coffee was burnt and bitter, but I sipped it, anyway. Before he disappeared back behind the official doors, Officer Hamilton suggested it might be a while until bail was set.

Bail? What a nightmare.

Worse, the longer Sebastian went without feeding, the more crazed he’d become. The waiting area was a shabby, low-ceilinged room. Orange plastic scoop seats circa 1973 were bolted to the floor around the perimeter and in a double row down the center. The beige- painted cinder-block walls were decorated with safety glass-fronted trophy cases filled with curios of Saint Paul police history. A male receptionist or dispatcher in a police uniform sat behind a glass wall that looked like those bulletproof shields some restaurants had in the rattier parts of town, complete with speakers and a kind of transfer box. I guessed he must be an officer, since he wore a uniform. It seemed like a pretty crappy assignment to basically be the receptionist, which might explain why he looked so incredibly grumpy.

A bit nervously, I made my way over to stand in front of the desk. The officer appeared busy shuffling papers and didn’t look up at my approach. I cleared my throat. He still ignored me. Finally, I said, “May I ask you a quick question, please?”

The look he shot me clearly said “no,” as did his tone when he replied, “What is it?”

“My husband is being, I don’t know, detained? Booked?” I had no idea what the official police term was. “Is there any way I can see him?”

As though disinterested, the officer returned to his paperwork. “What’s your husband’s name?”

“Sebastian Von Traum,” I said.

“Oh,” he said with a wry grin, “the vampire.”

My heart pounded in my chest, and I felt the blood drain out of my face when the receptionist called Sebastian a vampire. How could he possibly know?

“He likes to bite, huh?” The officer said with what could only be described as a leer. Was this behavior becoming of an officer? I didn’t think so. With a little rude snicker, he continued, “I guess they had to find him his own cell. He kept chewing on anyone who came near him.”

He must be near starvation! “I need to get him out of there.”

“Yeah, well, I hear he’s already lawyered up, lady. You don’t have to worry about him. Your vampire will be out before the sun sets.” He gave me a gross wink and then began sorting his papers in earnest. To make it crystal clear he was done talking to me, he picked up one of the folders and, turning his back to me, filed it.

What a world-class jerk. If I were a cartoon character, steam would have coiled out of my ears. I really wanted to pound the guy in the head, bulletproof glass barrier or not. This was normally the point at which Lilith would have turned up the heat, but instead I felt a now- familiar rush of vertigo.

My Goddesses must still be fighting.

At least they didn’t seem to be involving me quite as much, because for the most part I felt fairly rooted in reality.

I couldn’t go on like this. My body wasn’t big enough for these two. More to the point, I was really, really annoyed with the constant sick-to-my-stomach feeling. One of them would have to go. I needed to make a decision. Was I a devotee of Lilith or Athena?

Time to think this through.

Even though everyone had clearly suggested I should find somewhere else to be, I strode over to the plastic seats. Sinking into one, I put my head in my hands.

I felt like I should make a list of pros and cons or something, but I had no pen or paper. At times like this, I really wished I carried a purse. Or even, Goddess forbid, a BlackBerry.

The atmosphere of the cop shop was hardly conducive to heavy thinking. A woman I hadn’t noticed before, sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the room, started swearing into her cell phone. It was cringe-worthy stuff about the “fucking cops.” When she saw me, she gave me the classic line, “What you looking at, bitch?”

Lilith grumbled, as She always did, at that word. I don’t know if my eyes flashed lava red, but it was obvious the woman sensed Lilith’s presence because she was the one to break eye contact first.

I smiled. One for Lilith under “pro.”

Okay, it wasn’t nice of me, but I did enjoy the way Lilith could make people back down like that.

Of course, as soon as Lilith asserted Herself inside me, Athena went on the attack. The universe undulated like an ocean wave. My knuckles whitened as I clutched the armrests with the effort not to lurch face first onto the floor.

The woman on the cell phone gave me the you’re- a-crazy-lady eye bulge and turned her back to me. Into her phone she loudly complained about the kind of people she had to put up with.

Once my stomach had settled, I wondered if Athena would have the same kind of sass? Somehow, I doubted it. She seemed so upstanding; not the sort to stick out the magical tongue at anyone. But I didn’t really know, did I? I mean, Athena had never lived inside me.

That was a strike against, in my opinion.

Lilith and I had been together a long time. My meditation at the hospital seemed to imply that Lilith changed because we’d bonded, thus Her features blurred until we could almost pass as sisters. She knew me. We’d had years to come to various agreements about things.

Sebastian, for instance.

I was never a straight-A classics major, but weren’t Athena’s priestesses virgins? A lot of those Greek Goddesses seemed to demand celibacy—or whoring, but that was another story. My memory of my first contact with Athena really led me to believe She wasn’t all that into men.

Lilith liked sex.

Score two for the evil seductress.

What about the whole “evil” thing? Okay, so Lilith was an evil I was used to, but did that make it right?

It was a tangled mess. I’d pray for guidance, but I hardly even knew who to talk to these days.

What about some positives for Athena? To be fair, I needed to consider what She had to offer.

I glanced around the dingy waiting area, and thought, Maybe a few less visits to places like this?

But what kind of major personality transplant would
that
take? I mean, what had the reversal spell taught me? My normal was fairly messed up. That certainly had its downside, witness this crappy place. But it was in this screwed-up reality that I met Sebastian and ended up at Mercury Crossing in Madison with William and Izzy and . . . yes, even Mátyás.

In a lot of ways, I’d have to become someone completely brand new if I really wanted to have less of the hospitals and cops and monkeys.

That was the other thing—the visions. Were they Hers? And, if they came along with having Athena as a patron, did I really need to know that my waitress was the Norse Goddess Freya or that the teller at the bank had the spark of Shiva in him?

I sighed heavily. I kind of missed Bast, in Her form as my Hero. I wondered where that puss was. I hoped he was okay.

I felt someone take the seat next to me. I was ready to unleash my lava eyes and a nasty “Can’t you find somewhere else to sit, jerk?” when I recognized Special Agent Dominguez. My expression instantly shifted from anger to relief, and, without warning, I embraced him in a heartfelt bear hug.

Awkwardly, he returned my affection with a man-pat on the shoulders, so I let him go.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m just so grateful to see you.”

Dominguez gave a little return wave to a female police officer coming out of the locked double doors, and then said to me, “How are you holding up?”

It wasn’t a question I was expecting. Suddenly, everything came tumbling out. I told Dominguez about the Illuminati, Larkin and the “Eat the Rich” kidnapping, and how I figure I must have been fooled by “Green Garter” James since he stabbed Sebastian. I expounded on my visions of monkeys and trolls, my theories about what they really were, and how my Goddesses seemed to be quarreling because all I was getting lately from them was a barf-inducing dial tone.

I even told him about Hero.

Through it all Dominguez nodded thoughtfully and listened intently. When I finally wound down he said, “Wow. What does Sebastian think of it all?”

I sat back and blinked rapidly. “Uh, I haven’t told him. Not all of it, anyway.”

“Well,” he said simply, “maybe you should.”

Standing up, he stretched his arms. I sat in my seat feeling like a world-class idiot. Why had I kept everything from Sebastian? I shouldn’t have held back anything out of some perverse sense of “saving him worry.” After all, he was meant to be my partner, help carry the burdens. To Dominguez, I said, “I just blew the whole marriage thing, didn’t I?”

He laughed. “Luckily, it’s not over yet.” Glancing at the guy behind the glass who’d been watching us intently, Dominguez said, “I’m going to try to persuade the locals into letting me talk to Sebastian.”

I stood up and caught the sleeve of his coat before he could head over. “You’ve got to let me see him.”

“I doubt they’ll go for it. Why are you so desperate?” Dominguez asked.

I gestured for him to let me whisper in his ear. When he lowered his head, I quietly said, “He’s really, really hungry. I’d better go, unless you want to feed him yourself, if you know what I mean.”

Dominguez pulled away with a nervous, but knowing look. “Got you,” he said. “Stay here,” he indicated the seats. “I’ll see what I can arrange.”