31

I MADE THEM shut up about Valentina, but the thought that Nathaniel had been letting her whisper serial-killer fantasies in his ear to let off some of her pressure was almost more than I could handle for the day. I wanted to scream at them both that I didn't need this today. That we had enough problems without borrowing. If Valentina hurt him, I would kill her, but killing her after the damage was done would be cold comfort.

But once the video started, none of us were worried about what Valentina might do in the future. We were too worried about what some other vampires had done last night. We sat in the three computer chairs we dragged up in front of the big flat-screen monitor and watched the horror show in nice HD color. Some things are not meant for high-definition detail. It just makes it worse. The vampire's lair was underground, down a short flight of stone steps. There seemed to be moisture seeping down some of the walls. The first body was at the foot of the stairs with some natural sunlight filtering down from higher up the stairs. The first bodies were obvious vampire victims with neat bite marks at both sides of the throat, wrist, bend of the elbow, inner thigh, bend of the knee. The only thing that made the bites bad was that there were too many of them. No human being could feed that many vampires in one night and live.

"It's the same number of bites as you and some of the other wereanimals have," Nicky said. "Why aren't we dead?"

"Wereanimals are harder to kill, for one thing," I said, as we watched more bodies simply lying against the walls or in the middle of the tunnel. They lay as they'd fallen. No one had taken any time to reposition the bodies. They'd killed them and left them for the next victim.

"They meant to drain these people dry," Damian said. He'd gone very still beside me. I wasn't sure if he wasn't sure how I'd feel about him touching  me while we watched this, or if the sight of all the bites excited him and he didn't want me to know.

"Why aren't we dead, again?" Nicky asked.

"Jean-Claude used the ardeur to keep feeding us all energy so that the Lover of Death couldn't feed off our deaths," I said.

"The bites are getting messier," Damian said in a voice as still as his body in the chair beside mine.

He was right. The bites weren't neat little puncture wounds anymore. There was tearing of the skin around the bites. The next man's neck was torn open on the side; blood had poured out of him. There was a pattern in the dried blood.

"Pause it here, Nicky."

He used the mouse to pause it.

"They didn't even try to feed on him," Damian said.

I leaned forward and pointed at the screen. "Are those the marks of knees, as if whoever tore his throat out knelt and let the blood pour over him?"

"I think so," Damian said.

"Could be," Nicky said.

"Start it up again."

"You mean from the beginning?"

"No, I mean just make it go again."

The images began to march down the corridor again. Someone's inner thigh was torn out, blood pooling between the body's legs in a terrible parody of birth. So much blood, and then the camera moved and I saw the second woman with her own torn neck and thigh so that the blood of both adult women had pooled together in the narrow corridor. There was no way for the police or the crime scene people to avoid stepping in the blood. It was either step in it or stop moving forward.

I watched the camera operator hesitate. The camera pointed downward, then up the corridor where the camera light picked up more pale, naked bodies as far as the light could touch. He, or she, picked their way through the mix of blood and bodies and found more of the same until the corridor went into a wider opening.

I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. I didn't really want to see the devolution of the vampires' kills, because that was what we were seeing. It wasn't going to get any better inside the next room. The only comfort I had was that I wasn't there in person. As bad as the film was, in  person would have been worse. It was nice that the marshals had enough vampire executioners that I was called in for consults rather than being the main shooter. I was very happy to delegate some of this shit.

The camera went through the opening, and it was like a mix of Dracula: Prince of Darkness meets torture porn, slasher flick. There was so many bodies that it was just a mass of dark shapes at first, as my mind couldn't make sense of it. It was like Valentina's pictures; the mind didn't want to see it. The human mind is pretty good at protecting itself and will sometimes just refuse to compute all the data in a vain effort to save the rest of the mind from what the eyes are seeing. But it was my job to look.

Nicky said a soft, "Wow."

Damian got up from his chair and walked away from the screen. I couldn't blame him; if I could have walked away before my mind made sense of it all, I might have. But I kept watching until I could see body after body scattered like broken dolls on the dirt floor. The bodies were torn apart, not by claws and fangs, but strength. The vampires had torn them limb from limb, spraying blood and internal organs like some meaty, bloody jigsaw puzzle. I was happy not to be able to smell it. Because once you perforate the lower digestive system it's not just blood and that thick hamburger smell, but also the outhouse smell. Death, this kind of death, has no romance to it. It was slaughter.

There were more bodies piled around a central coffin that was on a raised dais between two huge candelabras that were still burning, though the wax was low. They'd set up lights in the corners of the room. The light was pitiless, shining off the blood that was still drying, showing the internal organs in huge bloody strands.

The bodies were piled in pieces almost to the lip of the open coffin. There were bodies lying on the body parts as if they'd been placed there. "Pause it," I said.

Nicky did what I'd asked. He and I both leaned toward the screen, trying to make sense of it all. "God, I think those are the vampires."

"How can you tell?" he asked.

I understood why he asked; the intact bodies were covered in as much blood and gore as the pieces. "They're not torn apart, and see there, one of them has fangs showing in her mouth. It's like they bedded down on the mound of their dead. Also, if they were victims that intact, they'd have been moved for medical attention just in case they weren't dead."

"Have you ever seen anything like this?" Nicky asked.

"No," I said.

"You want me to hit play again?"

"No, but do it anyway."

He didn't even ask me to explain. I think my newest pet sociopath wasn't enjoying the show, either.

The camera rose and aimed at the figure in the coffin. Blood pooled around it as if the body were floating in the blood. How had they even gotten that much blood in the coffin? It was if they'd hung the dead over it and drained them, but nothing in that room had been thinking enough to do anything that organized.

"Gives a new meaning to disorganized killer," Nicky said, and his voice held a note I hadn't heard in the year he'd been with us: impressed, and scared.

The corpse in the coffin looked old, like they'd found a badly decayed body to put in the blood. Then I saw the fangs in the gaping skull and knew this was the master. He'd been blown apart with a shotgun so that the top of his head was missing, but the jaws were still intact. His chest had been shot up, too, so that the thickening blood pooled into the ruin of his heart.

"I didn't think vampires decayed like that just from being shot up, even when they die," Nicky said.

"Most don't," I said.

Damian was behind us. He said, "Only the descendants of the Lover of Death rot like that."

"When they're dead," Nicky said.

Then I had a bad, bad thought. I scrambled my phone out of my back pocket and dialed Marshal Finnegan's number. He answered on the first ring. "Blake, that was fast."

"I know that you have to film evidence before you torch the place, but tell me the vampire executioner did torch the place already."

"Morgan killed the Master of the City. Took his head, took his heart. We're already hearing complaints from the vampire lobby lawyers that we may have condemned all low-level vampires to certain death. Apparently without their master they may not wake up at dark, but we've found out that the lesser vampires that do wake up are usually fine. When the Master of the City goes crazy like this, kill him, or her, and the crazy goes with him. We try to spare most of the murdering vampires, and we're still hearing from their daytime lawyers."

"All potentially true, but, Finnegan, the Master of the City is a rotting vampire. Taking just their heart and head with a shotgun doesn't kill them, ever. The only reason he didn't get up and eat your executioner is that it was daylight and he couldn't rise from the grave, but if he's as old as most rotters he will rise in late afternoon underground, and definitely at full dark. Worse yet, some of the intact vampires might not rot unless shot up, so you may have an entire crypt of rotters."

"You make that sound bad."

"Finnegan, get your people out of there."

"You helped write the new law that makes us leave the lesser vampires alive when we can prove that it's the Master of the City gone apeshit," he said. "Now you're telling me that it's going to get my people killed."

"I'm saying the apeshit Master of the City is still alive, and when it gets dark enough he'll rise and all his vampires will rise with him and keep slaughtering people. The new law only works if the Master of the City is really, truly dead."

"I'll try to clear the scene. I hope you're wrong." He hung up.

"Fuck," I said. "Who'd he say was the executioner on this?"

"Morgan," Nicky said.

"I've worked with him once, unless we have two of them." I flipped through my contacts praying that the name was in there. I found it and hit the screen. I was praying as the phone dialed. Please, pick up, please pick up.

"Blake, I take it you saw the tape."

"Morgan, where are you?"

"Atlanta," he said.

"No, where are you standing."

"I'm outside the crypt in case some of the little vampires wake up still crazy."

"Are there still techs down there?"

"For another hour and then we'll clear it, except for me."

"Get them out. Get them out, now!"

"I took care of it, Blake. He ain't getting up."

"He's a rotting vampire, Morgan. They don't die when you destroy the brain and heart. Even sunlight may not do it. Fire is the only certainty and then the ashes need to be scattered over different bodies of flowing water."

"He didn't rot until I shot him, Blake. Once they look like a corpse, they're dead."

"He didn't turn into a corpse, Morgan, he rotted. It's different. Please, just trust me on this. Get your people out of there and flamethrower everything in the crypt."

"We're still dragging bodies out of there, Blake. I can't fry the evidence. We haven't even started to identify the dead."

I fought the urge to scream. "Morgan, just humor me. Just pretend I'm right, and at least clear the crypt of personnel, okay? Just do that and we'll debate the whole flame thing later. Please, God, please, just do this one thing for me."

"You really think he's a genuine rotting vampire. Those are really rare in the United States," he said.

"They are, but just in case, Morgan. It doesn't hurt to clear out the techs and the cops."

"All right, but unlike you, I don't carry a flamethrower as part of my usual vampire-hunting kit, Blake."

Truth was, neither did I. "Just clear the crypt and call an extermination team."

"You mean a bug squad." That was one name for the exterminators who did everything from cockroaches to rogue wererat infestations and ghouls. They were who you called if you found a zombie just wandering down the street, since fire would destroy it and most animators couldn't put the zombie back without knowing the grave it came from.

"Yeah," I said.

"I'll ask my superiors if I can call them as backup, but they aren't going to let me burn everything down there. The lesser vampires may wake up sane and fine now that he's dead."

"He's not dead, Morgan."

"How do you know that?"

I almost said, Because the Lover of Death was looking for his bloodline last night, but I couldn't share that without explaining things I couldn't explain to the cops at all.

"If you're asking me am I a hundred percent sure, I'm not, but I'm ninety-eight percent sure and I wouldn't have my people down in that hole this late in the day."

"Rotting vampires rise earlier than most, though they can't pass for  human until full dark because they look like decayed corpses until then." He sounded like he was quoting. Morgan was one of the newer executioners who had been recruited for the job, and not grandfathered in like most of us. He was part of a new breed of vampire hunter, trained in classrooms with books and guest lectures. It wasn't a bad way to learn, and you probably had less death in the learning curve, but in this moment I'd have taken an old-fashioned shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later vampire hunter.

"I'll clear the crypt, Blake, but that's all I can do until I clear this with someone."

"I'll take what I can get, Morgan. Just get your people out of there."

"I will."

"Now," I said.

"I'm walking toward the entrance to the crypt as we speak. Good enough?"

"Yeah."

"Shit . . ." The phone fell against something loud enough I had to take it away from my ear.

"Morgan, Morgan, you all right?" I heard him moving as if he were standing on gravel and the phone were on the ground. "Morgan, are you still there?"

I heard noises on the phone as if he'd picked it up. "Morgan, talk to me."

I heard someone swallow as if his throat hurt. It was a wet sound. "I'm afraid Marshal Morgan can't come to the phone. To whom am I speaking?" The voice was male and thick, as if he had a speech impediment or injury to his mouth.

"Marshal Blake," I said.

"Anita Blake." The voice coughed as if to clear something.

"Yes. Who is this?" But my speeding pulse already knew the answer, before he said, "I am Clayton, Master of the City of Atlanta, Georgia, but my true masters have filled me with purpose. Do you know what that purpose is, Ms. Blake?"

"To slaughter as many people as you can so that your true masters can feed off the death."

"You do know what's happening." He hung up.

I screamed wordlessly into the dead phone. It took everything I had not to fling the phone across the room. I dialed Finnegan's number. He picked up, voice rushed. "Morgan isn't picking up his phone."

"He's probably dead," I said.

"How do you know that?"

I told him how I knew.

"Clayton isn't supposed to be a rotting vampire. He's never shown any sign of it."

"He was hiding, Finnegan. People may want to be vampires, but not if they think they'll be spending eternity looking like decayed corpses. That's not sexy enough for people to volunteer."

"How many others are hiding in plain sight, Blake?"

"I don't know."

I heard sirens, lots of sirens. "I'm almost there. I'll call you, let you know how bad."

"Finnegan, wait, you need an extermination team with flamethrowers. He walked out in daylight; only fire will kill him."

"That's not standard issue to cops," he said.

"I know that."

"Fuck," he said, and this time he didn't apologize. "If we all live through this I'll call you back." He hung up.

We were hundreds of miles away with no way to help them. "Motherfucker." Or were we? I reached out for Jean-Claude down that metaphysical pipeline and he was there. He looked up and whispered, "Ma petite." I didn't try to tell him everything, I simply opened my mind and he knew what I knew.

I asked out loud to the room, "Is there anything we can do from here? Can you help me control him from here?"

"I am sorry, ma petite, but no. He is a Master of the City, as am I. His ties to the land and the vampires there will keep us from interfering."

"Damn it!"

"I am sorry, ma petite."

My phone rang. I hit the screen almost yelling. "Finnegan, what's happening?"

"I'm sorry, I'm not Finnegan," a male voice said.

"Who is this?"

"Sorry to catch you on a bad day, Anita, but this is Jake. I gave you some jewelry once."

I think I stopped breathing for a moment. The turn of events was too fast. My hand went to the charm around my neck. "I'm wearing it now," I said.

"You do remember, then," he said.

"Yeah, though an amazing number of our people don't seem to."

"We need to stay secret, Anita."

Jake was the wolf to call of one of the Harlequin. They were the closest thing to police that the vampire world had. They were supposed to be some of the finest warriors to ever live, or unlive.

"If you'd come to kill us you wouldn't be calling, so why are you calling?" Jesus, didn't I have enough disasters on my plate without the Harlequin? Some days it doesn't rain, it fucking drowns you.

"Your Nimir-Raj put out the word that he's wanting clanless weretigers. He wants to honor all the weretigers and not just the clans."

"Micah's very fair-minded."

"He is," Jake said.

"You just want to bring us some tigers," I said.

"I'd also want to come back to work as security for you."

"Why?" I asked.

"Are you saying you can't use another guard?"

"No, extra manpower is going to come in handy."

"I want the kittens safe, Anita, and things are getting very dangerous out here."

"Kittens?" I made it a question.

"The weretigers, someone's hunting and killing them. It started in Europe, but I'm afraid it will spread to here."

"Funny coincidence that we're calling for weretigers and someone else is killing them."

"Do you really believe in coincidence?" he asked.

"No. How soon can you get here?"

"I'm in your parking lot in a van being watched by your guards. If you'll ask them to allow us inside, I would beg an audience with you alone before you meet my tigers."

"Just me?"

"I think at first, yes."

"Jean-Claude won't let me see you alone."

"Fine, choose the guard you would most want to stake your life on, but the fewer who know the truth the better."

"What truth?" I asked.

"Please, Anita, let us inside where it will be safer, and I will tell you everything."

I wasn't sure I believed that last part, but there was nothing I could do  for the cops in Atlanta. Hell, I couldn't even leave the Circus until we had a plan for the hit men who had almost killed Richard. I wasn't sure that he and Jean-Claude would be as good at healing me, and there was always the chance that I'd take Nathaniel and Damian to their graves. It wasn't just my life anymore, in a very real way.

"Fine, I'll tell the guards to let you in, but you don't get into the underground with your tigers until I know what's going on."

"If you insist, but if not the underground, then where do you wish to meet?"

"Do you know where Asher's office is in the Circus?"

"Of course, I did work security here once."

"I'll see you there," I said. I got off the phone and started trying to find a number for one of the wererats who wasn't wounded and could plausibly be in charge. I guess we were down to Bobby Lee, who was finally back from parts unknown after a lengthy job out of town. I didn't know details, and with some of the business that the wererats did around the world I probably didn't want to know. Plausible deniability is good when you play with criminals but carry a badge.

"Anita," Damian said, "it isn't safe to meet Jake like this."

"He saved my life."

"He's also an assassin."

"Who is this guy?" Nicky asked.

"Jake is what he calls himself."

"But who is he?"

"Since you get to sit in on the conversation, you'll find out. Just stand in the corner and look intimidating unless he does something bad."

"Then what?" he asked.

"If he tries to hurt me, then kill him."

He widened his one good eye. "You're usually all about taking 'em in alive."

"Not this one. If he's on our side we are going to be very happy, but if he's not, then he's too dangerous for anything but killing."

"He must have hurt you bad last time he was in town."

"Actually he saved my life and gave me this." I touched the charm again.

"But you'll let me just kill him if he tries anything."

I nodded.

"I'm missing part of the story, aren't I?"

"Yep, and you can't repeat anything you hear in the room unless he kills me, in which case, tell everyone."

"If he's this dangerous, why meet with him at all?" Nicky asked.

"Because if he really wants to be on our side, maybe he isn't the only one."

"Anita, don't do this," Damian said.

"If he meant us harm he wouldn't have called," I said.

"Unless the council ordered him to lure you into a false sense of security."

He had a point, but . . . "They weren't too happy with Mommie Darkest last time Jake was in town. I'm thinking that everything that's happened won't have improved that."

"You're honestly thinking that they might join with us?" Damian asked.

"It's a thought."

"Who are they?" Nicky asked.

I dialed Bobby Lee as I said, "You'll find out." Bobby Lee wasn't thrilled that I wanted to meet Jake with just Nicky as backup. He'd been out of town the last time Jake was here, but I was the boss, or the Black Queen, since we were back to using code names even on the phone. I pointed out, "You know, me being the Black Queen isn't hard to figure out."

"Then come up with a better code name." And that was the theme of the day. Me bitching and the people I was complaining to throwing it back in my face and saying, If you can do better, then do it. I'd try.