hapter 24

I was staring up into a face I didn't know. The face was holding a bloody handkerchief to its forehead. Short hair, pale eyes, freckles. "Hi, Larry," I said. My voice sounded distant and strange. I couldn't remember why.

It was still dark. Larry's face had been cleaned up a little, but the wound was still bleeding. I couldn't have been out that long. Out? Where had I been out to? All I could remember was eyes, black eyes. I sat up too fast. Larry caught my arm or I would have fallen.

"Where are the..."

"Vampires," he finished for me.

I leaned into his arm and whispered, "Yeah."

There were people all around us in the dark, huddled in little whispering groups. The lights of a police car strobed the darkness. Two uniforms were standing quietly next to the car, talking with a man whose name wouldn't come to me.

"Karl," I said.

"What?" Larry asked.

"Karl Inger, the tall man talking to the police."

Larry nodded. "That's right."

A small, dark man knelt beside us. Jeremy Ruebens of Humans First, who last I knew had been shooting at us. What the hell was going on?

Jeremy smiled at me. It looked genuine.

"What makes you my friend all of a sudden?"

His smile broadened. "We saved you."

I pushed away from Larry to sit on my own. A moment of dizziness and I was fine. Yeah, right. "Talk to me, Larry."

He glanced at Jeremy Ruebens, then back to me. "They saved us."

"How?"

"They threw holy water on the one who bit me." He touched his throat with his free hand, an unconscious gesture, but he noticed me watching. "Is she going to have control over me?"

"Did she enter your mind at the same time as she bit you?"

"I don't know," he said. "How can you tell?"

I opened my mouth to explain, then closed it. How to explain the unexplainable? "If Alejandro, the master vampire, had bitten me at the same time he rolled my mind, I'd be under his power now."

"Alejandro?"

"That's what the other vampires called the master."

I shook my head, but the world swam in black waves and I had to swallow hard not to vomit. What had he done to me? I'd had mind games played on me before, but I'd never had a reaction like this.

"There's an ambulance coming," Larry said.

"I don't need one."

"You've been unconscious for over an hour, Ms. Blake," Ruebens said. "We had the police call an ambulance when we couldn't wake you."

Ruebens was close enough for me to reach out and touch him. He looked friendly, positively radiant, like a bride on her big day. Why was I suddenly his favorite person? "So they threw holy water on the vamp that bit you; what then?" I asked Larry.

"They drove the rest of them off with crosses and charms."

"Charms?"

Ruebens pulled out a chain with two miniature metal-faced books hanging on it. Both books would have fit in the palm of my hand with room to spare. "They aren't charms, Larry. They're tiny Jewish Holy Books."

"I thought a Star of David."

"The star doesn't work, because it's a racial symbol, not really a religious symbol."

"So it's like miniature Bibles?"

I raised my eyebrows. "The Torah contains the Old Testament, so yeah, it's like miniature Bibles."

"Would the Bible work for us Christians?"

"I don't know. Probably, I've just never been attacked by vampires while carrying a Bible." That was probably my fault. In fact, when was the last time I'd read the Bible? Was I becoming a Sunday Christian? I'd worry about my soul later, after my body felt a little better.

"Cancel the ambulance; I'm fine."

"You are not fine," Ruebens said. He reached out as if to touch me. I looked at him. He stopped in mid-motion. "Let us help you, Ms. Blake. We share common enemies."

The police were walking towards us over the dark grass. Karl Inger was coming, too, talking softly to the police as they moved.

"Do the police know you were shooting at us first?"

Something passed over Ruebens's face.

"They don't know, do they?"

"We saved you, Ms. Blake, from a fate worse than death. I was wrong to try and hurt you. You raise the dead, but if you are truly enemies with the vampires, then we are allies."

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend, huh?"

He nodded.

The police were almost here, almost within earshot. "All right, but you ever point a gun at me again and I'll forget you saved me."

"It will never happen again, Ms. Blake; you have my word."

I wanted to say something disparaging, but the police were there. They'd hear. I wasn't going to tell on Ruebens and Humans First, so I had to save my smart alec comebacks for later use. Knowing Ruebens, I'd get another chance.

I lied to the police about what Humans First had done, and I lied about what Alejandro had wanted from me. It was just another of those mindless attacks that had happened twice already. Later, to Dolph and Zerbrowski, I'd tell the truth, but right now I just didn't feel like explaining the entire mess to strangers. I wasn't even sure Dolph would get the whole story. Like the fact that I was almost assuredly Jean-Claude's human servant.

Nope, no need to mention that.

Chapter 25

Larry's car was a late-model Mazda. The vampires had kept Humans First so busy they hadn't had time to trash the car. Lucky for us, since my car was totaled. Oh, I'd have to go through the insurance company and let them tell me the car was totaled, but there was something large broken underneath the car; fluids darker than blood were leaking out. The front end looked like we'd hit an elephant. I knew totaled when I saw it.

We'd spent the last several hours at the emergency room. The ambulance attendants insisted I see a doctor, and Larry needed three small stitches in his forehead. His orangey hair fell forward and hid the wound. His first scar. The first of many if he stayed in this business and hung around me.

"You've been on the job, what, fourteen hours? What do you think so far?" I asked.

He glanced at me sideways, then back to the road. He smiled, but it didn't look funny. "I don't know."

"Do you want to be an animator when you graduate?"

"I thought I did," he said.

Honesty; a rare talent. "Not sure now?"

"Not really."

I let it rest there. My instinct was to talk him out of it. To tell him to go into some sane, normal business. But I knew that raising the dead wasn't just a job choice. If your "talent" was strong enough, you had to raise the dead or risk the power coming out at odd moments. Does the term roadkill mean anything to you? It meant something to my stepmother Judith. Of course, she wasn't pleased with my job. She thought it was gruesome. What could I say? She was right.

"There are other job choices for a preternatural biology degree."

"What? A zoo, exterminator?"

"Teacher," I said, "park ranger, naturalist, field biologist, researcher."

"And which of those jobs can make you this kind of money?" he asked.

"Is money the only reason you want to be an animator?" I was disappointed.

"I want to do something to help people. What better than using my specialized skills to rid the world of dangerous undead?"

I stared at him. All I could see was his profile in the darkened car, face underlit from the dashboard. "You want to be a vampire executioner, not an animator." I didn't try to keep the surprise out of my voice.

"My ultimate goal, yes."

"Why?"

"Why do you do it?"

I shook my head. "Answer the question, Larry."

"I want to help people."

"Then be a policeman; they need people on the force who know preternatural creatures."

"I thought I did pretty good tonight."

"You did."

"Then what's wrong?"

I tried to think how to phrase it in fifty convincing words or less. "What happened tonight was awful, but it gets worse."

"Olive's coming up; which way do I turn?"

"Left."

The car took the exit and slid into the turning lane. We sat at the light with the turn signal blinking in the dark.

"You don't know what you're getting into," I said.

"Then tell me," he said.

"I'll do better than that. I'll show you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Turn right at the third light."

We rolled into the parking lot. "First building on the right."

Larry slid into the only open space he could find. My parking space. My poor little Nova wouldn't be coming back to it.

I took off my jacket in the darkness of the car. "Hit the overhead light," I said.

He did as he was told. He was better at following orders than I was. Which, since he'd be following my orders, was fine.

I showed him the scars on my arms. "The cross-shaped burn is from human servants who thought it was funny. The mound of scar tissue at the bend of my arm is where a vampire tore my arm to pieces. Physical therapist says it's a miracle that I got full use of my arm back. Fourteen stitches from a human servant, and that's just my arms."

"There's more?" His face looked pale and strange in the dome light.

"A vampire shoved the broken end of a stake in my back."

He winced.

"And my collarbone was broken at the same time my arm got chewed up."

"You're trying to scare me."

"You bet," I said.

"I won't be scared off."

Tonight should have scared him off without my showing him my scars. But it hadn't. Dammit, he'd stick, if he didn't get killed first. "All right, you're staying for the rest of the semester, great, but promise me you won't go hunting vampires without me."

"But Mr. Burke..."

"He helps execute vampires, but he doesn't hunt them alone."

"What's the difference between an execution and a hunt?"

"An execution just means a body that needs staking, or a vampire that's all nice and chained up waiting for the final stroke."

"Then what's a hunt?" he asked.

"When I go back out after the vampires that nearly killed us tonight, that's a hunt."

"And you don't trust Mr. Burke to teach me to hunt?"

"I don't trust Mr. Burke to keep you alive."

Larry's eyes widened.

"I don't mean he'd deliberately hurt you. I mean I don't trust anybody but me with your life."

"You think it'll come down to that?"

"It damn near did."

He was quiet for a handful of minutes. He stared down at his hands that were smoothing back and forth over the steering wheel. "I promise not to go vampire hunting with anybody but you." He stared at me, blue, blue eyes studying my face. "Not even Mr. Rodriguez? Mr. Vaughn said he taught you."

"Manny did teach me, but he doesn't hunt vampires anymore."

"Why not?"

I met his true-blue eyes and said, "His wife's too afraid, and he's got four kids."

"You and Mr. Burke aren't married and don't have kids."

"That's right."

"Neither do I," he said.

I had to smile. Had I ever been this eager? Naw. "No one likes a smart alec, Larry."

He grinned, and it made him look about thirteen. Jesus, why wasn't he running for cover after tonight? Why wasn't I? No answers, at least none that made sense. Why did I do it? Because I was good at it, came the answer. Maybe Larry could be good at it, too. Maybe, or maybe he'd just get dead.

I got out of the car and leaned back in the open door. "Go straight home, and if you don't have an extra cross, buy one tomorrow."

"Okay," he said.

I shut the door on his solemn, earnest face. I walked up the stairs and didn't look back. I didn't watch him drive away, still alive, still eager after his first brush with the monsters. I was only four years older than he was. Four years. It felt like centuries. I had never been that green. My mother's death when I was eight saw to that. It takes the edge off the shiny brightness to lose a parent early.

I was still going to try to talk Larry out of being a vampire executioner, but if all else failed, I'd work with him. There are only two kinds of vampire hunters: good ones and dead ones. Maybe I could make Larry one of the good ones. It beat the hell out of the alternative.