of energy. They were gone, truly dead, but three others had flames burning above them, in them.
The ambulances were here, the emergency medical technicians coming with wheeled stretchers. I saw them hesitate, wondering where to start. I called out, “Start with the woman at the edge of the group, near you, she’s closest to dying.”
They exchanged glances, sort of shrugged, and started hooking the vampire up to plasma. They’d found that plasma, or a rush of blood transfusion, could “save” a vampire and give them a chance to heal on their own. It was about all they’d found to do for vampires in an emergency. I directed the second group of EMTs to the next vampire whose flame was wavering; that left us with two that were still alive, but hurt, but you can hook IVs up only so fast.
I touched the girl’s cold skin. Vampires that haven’t fed and are less than a hundred years are cold without our blood to make them live. I willed that flickering flame to burn steadier, brighter. It flared enough that I pulled back, as if it were real fire.
“You okay?” Smith asked.
“Yeah, just bring the other live one over here, so I can touch him, too.”
“You’ll explain why later,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Smith took me at my word and just went to help carry the vampire to me. I heard a gasp, and a stifled scream from someone. I looked over, and the fire wavered with my concentration. Shit. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“He’s awake,” Smith said. “It startled someone.” He gave one of the uniforms with him a look, but they carried the man’s body over to me in a cradle of their arms. They laid him down on the other side of me so I’d have a hand for each vampire.
The man blinked large dark eyes at me, his face grimacing in pain. His short hair was naturally black, to match the slight uptilt of his eyes. I wasn’t a good judge of Asian ethnicity. If I’d had to guess, I’d have said Japanese or Chinese, but he could have been Korean. I guess it didn’t matter. He was slender, and about my size, so he looked delicate for a man. Like everyone in this group he looked like a victim, or at least not dangerous. The bullet hole in his upper chest added to the whole not-dangerous thing. I reached out to touch his hand. He flinched and did his best to move it away from me.
“Let me help you,” I said. I lost concentration on the girl’s spark as I spoke, and had to put more energy into that, closing my eyes for a moment, so I could see her flame burning brighter. I could see his more with my eyes closed, too. It was burning better than hers, fueling itself. He was probably the least hurt of any of them.
“Get away from me,” he said.
I opened my eyes to see fear on his face. “I’m not touching you,” I said, and worked to keep my voice steady, even, so I could keep the girl’s energy steady.
“You know exactly what you’re doing,” he said, and there was anger with the fear now.
Actually, I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. I’d done the whole flame/energy hold only once before, and that had been on a vampire I knew really well, and had done energy work with before the emergency. I shouldn’t have been able to work this smoothly with strange vampires, and the moment I thought it, my hold on the girl’s energy wavered. Psychic ability is like magic; ya gotta believe. I pushed my doubts away and held on, helped her hold on.
The other vampire half sat up, trying to push farther away from me. He gasped and fell back on the bricks, his face contorted in pain. He was suddenly doing much less well.
“Shit,” I said, “bullet’s still in there, and he’s shifted it.” The girl vampire’s flame wavered as my emotions did, and her spark was a candle in a strong wind, almost out, but now his was guttering in the “wind.”
I yelled, “Medic!”
One of them was running our way with his case, leaving his partner to keep the IV going for another victim. Seconds, just seconds, minutes, and there’d be more help.
I grabbed the boy’s cold hand. I shoved power into him, and he yelled, “No! No, I won’t be another of your slaves!” I was so startled, I let go of him.
He settled back into the bricks, coughing blood the color of black syrup. The EMT hesitated between the two. “Girl, she’s fading faster.” He took my word for it, kneeling down, beginning to work on the girl. He got one of the uniforms to help hold things. I was left with the man, a boy physically, maybe seventeen when he had died the first time.
“Let me help you.”
“No.” He coughed harder, and it looked like it hurt.
I put more energy his way, but he screamed, “NO!”
I couldn’t concentrate on both of them, because my emotions were getting in the way. I fought to hold the girl’s spark steady as the IV went in, and they began to put something in her veins that would help more than my power. I offered my wrist toward his face. “Feed then, if you won’t take energy.”
“Then I’ll be bound to Jean-Claude.”
The police didn’t really understand how deeply tied I was to Jean-Claude with the whole human-servant thing, so I had to be careful what I said next. “Would you rather die?”
“Yes.” He coughed again, and writhed in pain as Smith tried to keep him still.
“Why?” I asked.
When he could speak past the pain, his voice came thick with the blood spilling from his lips, “Freedom; we don’t want to belong to a master. We want to be free, not belong to another council. They’re gone; let them stay gone.”
The girl’s spark clicked into place, the plasma keeping her “alive.” I sent all my energy into him. His flame flared so that I had to fight not to close my eyes against the brightness that was all inside my head.
“No.” He rolled on his side, and the blood drained faster from his mouth. “I refuse medical or metaphysical aid. I refuse.”
The EMT said, “I don’t know what you’re doing to him psychically, but you’ve got to stop now. He’s refused aid; legally you have to stop.”
“He’ll die,” I said.
“I’m already dead, I’m a vampire.”
“You’re not dead,” I said, “you’re undead; it’s not the same.”
“I die for the cause.” His voice sounded rough, almost painfully deep. A gout of black blood welled up and spilled from his mouth.
“What cause?” I asked.
“Freedom,” and it was the last thing he said before his eyes glazed over; his body gave one last convulsive movement and I watched his flame flicker and go out, as if some great breath had blown it away.
I grabbed his hand, and it was too late to save him, but not too late to feel him go. It didn’t feel the same as a human dying in my arms; there was a difference to what went out of a vampire when they died. Was it a difference of souls? Were they evil? Were they lost like the Church maintained? I didn’t know the answers to any of that. All I knew was he wasn’t much older than his physical body looked, and he’d forced us to kill him, and I didn’t understand why.
7
IT WAS AN ongoing police investigation, but these vampires had been willing to die rather than risk being in Jean-Claude’s power. If you’re willing to die to avoid being part of someone’s power structure, it’s only a small step to being willing to kill to destroy that power structure. I normally don’t share information on investigations with my boyfriends, but… if I didn’t share and something bad happened to Jean-Claude, or one of my other lovers, or friends, I’d never forgive myself. They could have my badge, if it was a choice between losing it or losing one of the people I loved.
Was I trying to justify what I was about to do? Yes. Was I going to do it anyway? Yes.
I moved to the side of the courtyard, out of the way of the crime scene techs and the dozens of extra cops that always seem to flock to a murder scene. I found a little piece of alley between two of the buildings. Admittedly the
