in my gut.
“But they’re not dead,” I said, “or you’d say so.”
“No, not dead, not exactly.”
“Are they badly hurt?”
“Not exactly,” he said.
“Stop beating the bush to death and just tell me, Shaw.”
“Seven of our men are in the hospital. There’s not a mark on them. They just dropped.”
“If there are no marks on them, why did they drop, and why are they in the hospital?”
“They’re asleep.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“You mean comas?”
“The doctors say no. They’re asleep; we just can’t wake them up.”
“Do the docs have any clues?”
“The only thing close to this is those patients in the twenties who all went to sleep and never woke up.”
“Didn’t they make a movie years back about them waking up?”
“Yes, but it didn’t last, and they still don’t know why that form of sleeping sickness is different from the norm,” he said.
“Your whole team didn’t just catch this sleeping thing in the middle of a firefight.”
“You asked what the doctors said.”
“Now, I’m asking what you say.”
“One of our practitioners says it was magic.”
“Practitioners?” I made it a question.
“We’ve got psychics attached to our teams, but can’t call them our pet wizards.”
“So operators and practitioners,” I said.
“Yes.”
“So someone did a spell?”
“I don’t know, but apparently it all reeks of psychic shit, and when you run out of explanations that make sense, you go with what you got.”
“When you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” I said.
“Did you just quote Sherlock Holmes at me?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you still don’t get it, Blake. You just don’t.”
“Okay, let me be blunt here. Something about my reaction wasn’t what you expected, so you’re convinced that I don’t get the seriousness of the situation. You’re ex-special teams, which means to you, women are not going to measure up. You’ve called me a beautiful woman, and that, too, makes most cops and military underestimate women. But special teams, hell, you don’t think most other military men are up to your level, or most cops. So I’m a girl; get over it. I’m petite and I clean up well; get over that, too. I’m dating a vampire, the master of my city; so what? It has nothing to do with my job or why Vittorio invited me to come hunt him in Vegas.”
“Why did he run in St. Louis? Why didn’t he run here when he knew we were coming? Why did he ambush our men and not yours?”
“Maybe he couldn’t afford to lose that many of his vampires again, or maybe he’s just decided to make his last stand in your city.”
“Lucky fucking us.”
“Yeah.”
“I called around, talked to some of the other cops you’ve worked with, and some of the other vampire executioners, about you. You want to know why some of them thought this vampire ran in St. Louis?”
“I’m all ears.”
“You, they thought he ran from you. Our Master of the City told me that the vampires call you the Executioner-that they’ve called you that for years.”
“Yeah, that’s their pet name for me.”
“Why you? Why you, and not Gerald Mallory? He’s been around longer.”
“He’s been around years longer than me, but I’ve got the higher body count. Think about it.”
“How can you have the higher body count if he’s been doing this for at least ten years longer than you?”
“One, he’s a stake-and-hammer man. He refuses to go to silver ammo and guns. That means he has to totally incapacitate the vampires before he can kill them. Totally incapacitating a vampire is really hard to do. I can wound one, bring it down from a distance. Two, I think his hatred of vampires makes him less effective when hunting them. It makes him miss clues and not think things through.”
“So you just kill them better than anyone else.”
“Apparently.”
“I’ll be honest, Blake, I’d feel better if you were a guy. I’d feel even better if you had some military background. I’ve checked you out; other than a few hunting trips with your dad, you’d never handled a gun before you started killing monsters. You’d never owned a handgun at all.”
“We were all newbies once, Shaw. But trust me, the new is all worn off of me.”
“Our Master of the City is cooperating fully with us.”
“I’ll just bet he is.”
“He says bring you to Vegas, and you’ll sort it out.”
That stopped me. Maximillian, Max, had met me only once, when he came to town with some of his weretigers after an unfortunate metaphysical accident. The unfortunate accident had ended with me pretty much possessing one of his weretigers, Crispin. He’d taken Crispin back to Vegas with him, but it wasn’t because the tiger wanted to leave me. He was disturbingly devoted to me. It wasn’t my fault, honest, but the damage was still done. Lately, some of the powers I’d gained as Jean-Claude’s human servant seemed to translate into attracting metaphysical men. Vampires, wereanimals, so far just that, but it was enough. Some days it was too much. I didn’t remember doing anything that impressive when Max was visiting.
I’d spent most of his visit trying to be a good little human servant for Jean-Claude, and whatever became mine, like a weretiger, became my master’s, too. We’d done some fairly disturbing metaphysics, my master and I, for our guest’s benefit. We’d left him kind of creeped, unless he was way more bisexual than he’d ever admit.
“Blake, you still there?”
“I’m here, Shaw, just thinking about your Master of the City. I’m flattered that he thinks I can sort it out.”
“You should be. He’s old-time mob. Don’t take this wrong, but if you think my opinion of women is low, then old-time mobsters think worse.”
“Yeah, yeah, you just think women can’t cut it on the job. Mobsters think we’re just for making babies or fucking.”
He made another laugh sound. “You are one blunt son of a bitch.”
I took it for the compliment it was; he hadn’t called me a daughter of a bitch. If I could get him to treat me like one of the guys, I could do my job.
“I am probably one of the most blunt people you will ever meet, Shaw.”
“I’m beginning to believe that.”
“Believe it, warn the other guys. It’ll save time.”
“Warn them about what, that you’re blunt?”
“All of it-blunt, a girl, pretty, dates vampires, whatever. Get it out of their system before I hit the ground in Vegas. I don’t want to have to wade through macho bullshit to do my job.”
“Nothing I can do about that, Blake. You’ll have to prove yourself to them, just like any… officer.”
“Woman, you were going to say
“They’re motivated, Blake, but you’re still a beautiful woman and they’re still cops.”
