Kiss The Dead

Weiskopf. He was truly shaken by the news.

“They spoke of making bombs, but we told them no.”

“But you didn’t have any real authority over them, because you didn’t make them take your oath,” I said.

“They were better when we were with them.”

“Yeah, the pheromones,” I said.

He shook his head. “We worried that our very presence was affecting them, so we began to sleep elsewhere, away from them.”

“Fuck, Weiskopf, that lost you and your Benjamin what little control you had over these people.”

He looked at me, and there was real anguish in his face. “There has to be a way to be free. There has to be a way to be just human again.”

“You’re vampires, Weiskopf,” I said, and my voice was soft, because I heard the pain in his voice. “That can’t be changed, and that means that you need a master.”

He shook his head faster, as if trying to shake a thought out. “No, no, that would make everything we’ve done… useless.”

“What are the targets for the bombs?” I asked.

He looked at me. “The Church of Eternal Life; they feel that Malcolm betrayed them all by making them take oath to Jean-Claude. Jean-Claude’s clubs and businesses. You and Jean-Claude. There were many who felt if they could kill him, and you, that they would be free. We told them that wasn’t true, that you were the best and most modern prince that we had ever seen. That you gave us hope.”

My pulse had sped, but he wasn’t actually telling us anything we hadn’t suspected. The guards would triple- check everything. We had good people. I believed that, I did, but I was still scared. “Are there any other human servants in your group?” I asked.

“No.”

A little bit of the panic subsided. There was no one to use bombs during the day, and we’d killed their demolitions expert at the warehouse.

“Wait,” I said, “are there Renfields; two-biters?”

He made a face of distaste. “Two-biter is an insult to humans we are bringing over.”

“Renfields, then; do any of the vampires in your group have them?”

“A few,” he said.

My pulse was back in my throat. “What are their names?”

He hesitated.

“If the bombs are used, then you and your master will be just as guilty as the rest,” I said.

“You can stop this,” Dolph said.

“If anyone dies because you didn’t tell us, then you are as guilty as they are, and human servants are treated the same as vampires under the law if the vampires in question commit murder and the servants aid them in any way.”

“We would never forgive ourselves if more innocent lives are lost,” Weiskopf said, staring at his hands where they lay clenching each other on the table.

He told us the names. One of them wasn’t in the system at all, but one had a record for assault, and the other was in the system because he’d worked as a court officer before he became a vampire; then he’d lost his job. The government, not just the military branch, didn’t want vampires working for them. There was a case before the Supreme Court right now that might change that, but until it did, Clarence Bradley had lost his job, his pension, and over a decade of time in the system. That sounded like an excellent motive for all sorts of bitterness.

We put out an all-points bulletin on the one we had pictures for, and then started working to get the last picture we needed. My phone rang in the middle of it all, and I was only half-surprised when I heard Nicky’s voice, “We have a problem.”

“What?” I asked, and tried to keep my voice neutral just in case it was a problem that we wanted to handle without the other police.

“We have a Renfield with a bomb strapped to him, and a dead man’s switch, so if he dies it blows.”

“Where?” I whispered.

“Guilty Pleasures.”

“It’s closed right now,” I said.

“They were here rehearsing the new dance routine.”

My mouth was suddenly dry; my pulse couldn’t decide it if was going to beat too fast, or stop altogether. “Who’s they?”

“Our people took out two of them, but the last one, the one with the bomb, he grabbed…”

“Nicky, tell me.”

“Nathaniel, the bomber has his arms wrapped around Nathaniel. If we shoot the Renfield, the bomb goes off. If we don’t shoot him, eventually the bomb goes off.”

I had a sudden wave of nausea, and had to sit on the edge of a desk and put my head down. Claudia was there, “Anita, what’s wrong?”

So much for me being cool and hiding shit. “Why hasn’t he blown it already?” My voice sounded almost normal. I didn’t have enough brownie points to give myself for that.

“He wants you to come down. He says he’ll let Nathaniel go for you.”

“Okay,” I said. I gripped the edge of the desk, and lowered myself to the floor with Claudia’s help. I was still nauseous, and dizzy, and the room felt hot. Fuck.

“Anita, he may not let Nathaniel go. He may just blow it with both of you there. He’s your leopard to call; if he takes you both out, then the chances of you actually dying are better, you know that.”

“But he doesn’t,” I said.

“You don’t know that, and he may just blow it with both of you because he can, Anita. You can’t do this.”

“I can’t not do it,” I said. I added. “Don’t sacrifice Nathaniel to keep me safe, I’d never forgive you for it.”

There was a crowd gathered around me. Claudia, and Pride, who was kneeling by me. Zerbrowski was there, and Arnet, and Tammy, and Dolph, and… I didn’t care about any of them. In that moment I just cared about the one person who wasn’t there.

“I would never hurt Nathaniel,” he said.

“I thought you’d say, now that I told you you couldn’t, you couldn’t.”

“He means something to me, too, Anita. I’ve had a pride of werelions, but this is the first home I’ve had since the woman who raised me… It doesn’t matter. I want him safe, too.”

And in that moment I knew that Nicky wasn’t nearly as good a sociopath as I’d thought, or maybe as he’d thought.

“Keep him safe for both of us; I’m on my way.”

“I will.”

“Don’t get yourself killed either, okay?”

“I won’t on purpose.

“Nicky?”

But he’d hung up. I could have called him back, but what could I have said? Don’t die on me. Don’t any of you die on me. Yeah, I could have said that.

46

GUILTY PLEASURES IS in the Riverfront area of St. Louis. The streets are narrow, designed more for horses than cars, and most of them are still paved with bricks. It’s very historic, with very modern clubs in a line that draw in a hell of a lot of tourists. It is one of the hot spots on the weekend. There’s almost no parking. It sucks as a staging area for SWAT. But we made do, parking everything far enough away that we couldn’t see the daylight front of the club.

Lisandro stood by the main truck. His shoulder-length hair was back in a braid. He was still tall, dark,