“No,” I said, “not with that look on your face, I don’t.”
He smiled then, and it was a smile to match the eyes. It wasn’t that different from the way a shapeshifter looked at you when they were wondering what you’d taste like, except Edward’s smile wasn’t as warm.
We were out in the neon-lit dark, but it was still too dark for the glasses… had my eyes turned back? I waited until we’d followed Olaf and Bernardo to the SUV. When we were all in our seats, I lowered the glasses enough so I could flash them at Edward. “How do I look?”
“Normal,” he said, and his voice was crawling back out of that Edward cold, to something that wouldn’t frighten small children if they heard it.
I handed the glasses back to him.
He shook his head. “Keep them, just in case.”
“What happened to mine?”
“Smashed.” He started the engine and followed the line of police cars that were trailing out, lights and sirens filling the night, as if we were trying to wake everyone up.
“How did my glasses get smashed, and what happened to the windbreaker you loaned me?”
“Bibiana and her tigers wanted to put another weretiger in the bed with you and Victor. I didn’t agree.”
Bernardo leaned forward over the backseat, holding on to the seat as Edward took a corner a little fast. “What happened in the hallway, Anita?”
“She did something to the detective,” Olaf said.
I glanced back at the big man, almost lost in the shadows of the car. “How do you know what I did?”
“I don’t know what you did to him, but I know you did something. I saw your eyes change.”
“You didn’t say anything,” Bernardo said.
“I didn’t think we wanted the other policeman to know.”
“Sorry that I blurted that out,” Bernardo said, giving Olaf a look, then back to me. “But what did you do to Morgan?”
I glanced at Edward.
“Tell them, if you want to.”
“You saw what I did.”
“You made him agree with you,” Olaf said.
“Yeah.”
“How did you do it?” Bernardo asked.
“If I said
Bernardo said no, and Olaf said yes.
Bernardo frowned at him again. “Why do you believe that?”
“The look on her face when she realized what she had done. It frightened her.”
Bernardo seemed to think about it, then frowned again. “She didn’t look scared; nervous, maybe.”
“It was fear.”
“And you’re sure of that?” Bernardo asked.
“Yes,” Olaf said.
“Because you know Anita so well.”
“No, because I know the look of fear on someone’s face, Bernardo, man or woman. I know fear when I see it.”
“Fine.” Bernardo turned back to me. “Are you a vampire?”
“No.” Then I thought about it. “Not in the traditional sense.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t feed on blood. I’m not dead. Holy objects and sunshine don’t bother me. I go to church most Sundays and nothing bursts into flame.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice on that last part.
“But you can cloud men’s minds and make them do what you want, like a vamp.”
“This was the first time for that.”
The cars had stopped ahead, smearing the bubble lights into the mix of neon from the buildings. We were just off the main Strip, so that the brighter lights of it peeked over the buildings around us like some artifical dawn pressing against the night.
“We’re here,” Edward said.
“Which is your way of saying,
“It is,” Edward said.
“I think we have a right to ask questions when we’re helping her cover up whatever she’s doing.”
I couldn’t really argue that.
“You’ve both volunteered to feed her with sex,” Edward said. “You might want to understand what you’re volunteering for before you open your mouth.” With that, Edward opened his door and got out. I didn’t wait for an invitation. I got out, too, and left our backseat drivers to scramble out and follow us. Okay, Bernardo scrambled. Olaf just seemed to pour himself out of the car and be walking behind us. Funny that Bernardo was all spooked, but Olaf seemed fine with it. Of course, if he wanted me to overlook the whole serial killer thing, he’d have to be a little more understanding with me. Living vampire, serial killer; po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
53
THE BODY LAY in a broken heap in an alley behind the club she worked at, as if when they dumped the body they’d brought her home. The last body dump in St. Louis had been just outside the club where the dancer worked, too. But that one had been clean compared to this, just vampire bites. Death by exsanguination. This woman hadn’t had time to bleed to death.
I realized that this one, like most of the body dumps in St. Louis, was in a place where shadows would hide some of the damage. Almost as if even the killer couldn’t face what he’d done in bright light.
The woman’s neck was at an angle so sharp that I could see spine poking against the skin of the neck, not quite through the skin, but close. The neck was ugly and wrong, but that was nothing compared to what he, or they, had done to the rest of the… body.
There were burns on half her face, and going down one side of the body. The skin was red and angry and blackened and peeling, and the other half of her body was perfect. Pale and young and beautiful, paired with the blackened ruin of the other half of her.
Bernardo took a sharp breath in and walked a little way down the alley. I forced myself to stay squatted by the body, and tried not to smell anything. The alley didn’t smell that good to begin with, but usually burned flesh overpowers everything else. This didn’t. The burns weren’t that fresh, or they would’ve smelled more.
I swallowed hard and stood up, letting myself look at the people around me instead of the body. I had to keep thinking of it, really hard, as the body, because to humanize it at all would be too much. It wouldn’t help me solve this crime to think about what this woman had gone through. Honest, it wouldn’t.
Shaw stood there, staring down at the body, with a look on his face that I could only describe as lost. Morgan had rejoined us, telling us that he had the subpoenas in the works. He now seemed to think it was his idea, and was back to not being all that friendly with me. I was actually relieved. Whatever I’d done to him seemed to be short acting. Detective Thurgood had joined us in her ill-fitting skirt suit, sensible high heels, and bad attitude. But no one’s attitude was particularly rosy, so it was okay.
I asked them, “Have the other bodies looked like this?”
“Not like this,” Shaw said.
“No,” Morgan said.
Thurgood just shook her head, lips in a line so thin that her mouth was almost invisble in her face. From the lips and the lack of talking, I was betting she was fighting off nausea.
“Were the other bodies burned?” I asked.
“The last two, but not nearly this bad,” Shaw said.
“Are you even sure it’s the same guy from St. Louis? He never did anything like this in your city,” Morgan said.
