Vampire$

Where his shoulder holster and gun were.

He looked at it a second, then abruptly reached down and dragged the Browning out of its holster and it slid — as had every decent goddamned gun he’d ever known — so easily, so smoothly, into his palm.

He knew, or at least had come to believe, that this feeling was very rare. That most people never felt this natural with a firearm. Some people hated them and some who didn’t couldn’t see them and most always felt just a little awkward and…

But not him. Not ever. The Browning felt just like…

Just like the end of his hand.

My Lord! he thought wearily, with at least some trace of wry humor, what if it’s all just as simple as that?

They were all being terribly cheerful when he got to the suite, but that was okay. Now that he had made the decision to go, nothing much bothered him anymore. He even liked it. Even liked them, sitting around that faded coffee table scarfing down take-out fried chicken, reeking of Team spirit and smartass remarks and just generally acting like the kind of people who got into this mess in the first place.

But… what the hell. They deserved a couple of grins. And Annabelle was there looking radiant as always. And she was there, dimpling and feeling safe. And, well, the chicken smelled good.

And then Father Adam’s mass, after the meal — that felt okay, too. Felix had never even seen a mass before these people and now… now it felt perfectly natural. Logical, maybe.

Felix’s good mood remained for another twenty minutes, until they started War Planning and Davette’s sketch of the basement in her Aunt Victoria’s house started to look too damn much like the Cleburne Jailhouse.

Seems vampire Ross had done quite a few renovations to keep sunlight and prying eyes away — looked like a bloody fort down there — and Davette hadn’t even seen it all.

“You’re going to have to blow it,” said Felix, standing over them as she drew. “Just like the jail.”

“Can’t,” replied Jack Crow calmly.

Felix stared at him. “What do you mean: ‘can’t’?”

Crow puffed on a cigarette and stared at him through the smoke.

“Blow up a mansion worth maybe four or five million dollars in the center of residential north Dallas? Shit, I’d have every Dallas police car, fire truck, and SWAT team and half the Texas Rangers on my ass in two minutes.”

Felix blinked. “Well, do what you always do — call ’em all up ahead of time. Have them there. Get authorization. I thought you knew people.”

“Not that many and not that well. They’d hang up on me if I told them I wanted to blow up a mansion in the middle of their city.”

“What did you do when you had one in a city before?”

“Never had one.”

“Huh?”

Crow grimaced, leaned back in his chair. “It’s true. We’ve never had one inside a city, a major city, before.”

Felix looked at the others.

“It’s true,” confirmed Cat.

Carl nodded. “Had ’em everywhere from upper New York State to Montana. But never inside a big city. Always in the country. Some little town. Or outside some little town, really.”

“They don’t like large cities,” offered Father Adam, the historian. “Or at least they never have until now.”

Felix hated this. “Never been organized before, either.”

“We don’t know how organized they are now,” objected Carl.

“They’re ‘organized’ enough to lay traps for you!” Felix sputtered. “How organized do they have to be?”

And it was quiet for a while while everyone thought about this.

“How ’bout,” offered Carl slyly, “if we just take out one wall?”

“Huh?” said Crow.

“I could even muffle the sound some. Here.”

And he leaned forward and pointed to one of the outer walls of Davette’s sketch. “It looks tough here. And it is, for a house. But you take out this one wall and all this structuring here, this support, these joists, will go. Hell, you could stand out in the garden and see the whole basement through sunlight…” And he turned and eyed the window. “If we get some sunlight.”

Felix followed his gaze to the window. The pane was covered in running sheets of rain. He hadn’t noticed it before. But it was really coming down.

“When you say ‘muffle,’” Crow asked slowly, “just how quiet do you mean?”

“Well, it ain’t gonna be what you’d call quiet, Jack. That can’t be done with explosives. I mean, people outside will look up when they hear it, but…” He turned to Davette. “The place has got a wall around it, right? Pretty high?”

“Nine feet high,” she told him.

“And lots of trees and stuff?”

She nodded. “You can’t see the house from the Street at all.”

Carl looked at Jack and Felix and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“Looks to me,” offered Cat, with one arm around the deputy’s shoulder, “like we have a Plan.”

“So we do,” pronounced Jack. “We go in there, set up the detectors and, if we get the readings, we let Carl blow the wall and we go in and get ’em. Questions?”

No one had any.

“All set?”

There were several nods.

But Felix was still staring at Davette’s sketch.

“Felix,” Crow growled, “am I gonna have to ask if you’re in or out every damned hour?”

Felix looked at him, started to get angry…

But Jack was right. In or out. Decide, dammit!

“In,” he said.

“All the way?” Jack wanted to know.

“On this one,” Felix replied, tapping the sketch with a fingernail, “all the way.”

“Well, thank you,” Jack growled with heavy sarcasm.

“You’re welcome, Jack,” replied Felix calmly.

And for some damned reason that made everyone, Felix and Crow included, break up into laughter.

And then they kept laughing and kept laughing and they couldn’t stop and Felix, tears running down his eyes and wondering what in the world was so goddamned funny, turned and caught Davette’s eyes and her laughter was so pure and healthy and warm…

“I guess we have our moments,” murmured Annabelle a few seconds later.

And Felix looked at her and thought: I guess you do.

An hour later they were on the road to Dallas, backed up in heavy interstate traffic snarled by a Texas thunderstorm leaning in from the north.

Chapter 23

The motorhome and Blazer were parked side by side at the cul-de-sac at the end of Davette’s beautifully sculptured street by three that afternoon. But without headlights, they couldn’t see one from the other.

“Look at it comin’ down!” whispered the deputy in amazement.