6

The Sapphire Club is a low, wide building and doesn't look that nice from the outside. It doesn't look that different from many of the rest of the bars and clubs in the area, so why is it a gentlemen's club and the others are just titty bars? Security, decor, and a dress code for the dancers, for starters. Tonight the VIP parking area was so full of official and semiofficial vehicles that you could barely see the front of the club through the flashing lights and milling people. There was even a big fire truck and a rescue truck alongside the regular ambulance. I had no idea why we needed the big truck, but murder scenes always attract more people than you really need, more cops, and more civvies, more everything.

There was a crowd pressed against the police tape and sawhorse barriers. Some of the women looked barely dressed for the October cold, so it had to be people from the nearby clubs. Most of the dancers arrived at work in street clothes then changed there. So at least some of the women shivering in the cold had left work elsewhere to join the gawkers.

I actually had to park in the lot of the nearest club, the Jazz Baby, live music, and live entertainment. What could be better? Sleep, maybe. It was nearly four in the morning. My shower had beaten the record for speed, but it was still quite a drive from the Riverfront. We'd managed to get blood on the front of my shirt, so I was wearing a T-shirt that Jean-Claude had found for me somewhere. It was white, so the black bra showed through, or would have if I hadn't been wearing Byron's leather jacket again. Maybe I could just keep the jacket on. No, it'd be warm inside. Oh, well. If the worst thing that happened tonight was that someone noticed I was wearing a black bra under a white shirt, we'd count ourselves lucky.

Jean-Claude had also found underwear, again it was thong, but it was actually comfortable, because it was made of soft T-shirt material, even the bit that went between your cheeks. Most of the girl thongs I'd looked at had had elastic or lace running up your ass, and that just didn't look comfy at all.

I had to flash the badge just to get through the crowd. When I got up to the line, the officer closest to me didn't really look at me. He saw a woman in boots and a short skirt and a leather jacket and said, "Club's closed for the night, you won't be working."

I shoved my badge into his face, and he had to back up to focus on it. "Actually, Officer," and I read his name tag in the bright lights, "Douglas, I think I will be working tonight."

He looked down at me, because he was taller than me. I watched his face try to wrap around the look of me and the badge in one package. He wasn't the first police officer to have a problem putting it all together, and he wouldn't be the last. I might think like a cop, but I don't really look like one. Especially not tonight.

"I'm Marshal Anita Blake, Sergeant Zerbrowski called me." Always good to remind people that I hadn't invited myself into their party. I had the authority to do it, but I tried to do as little uninvited butting in as I could. No cop, no matter what the flavor, likes someone horning in on their case. Especially not a big one.

Officer Douglas stared at my badge like he didn't believe it was real. "No one told me that the feds were coming."

"Ya know, it's four in the morning. I asked your permission to cross this line as a courtesy, but this badge is a federal badge and it gives me the right to cross this line, enter this crime scene, and do my fucking job. If you stop me, Officer Douglas, I will charge you with obstructing a federal officer in the performance of her duty."

He looked like he'd swallowed something sour, but he waved another officer over. He had him take his place at the barrier and held the tape for me. "I'll walk you through, ma'am."

I guess I couldn't blame him. I mean what if the badge wasn't real, or wasn't mine? Of course, if I'd been a big, strapping guy, he wouldn't have had a problem with it. You can always tell a new cop from a veteran. New ones still judge a lot on appearance, once you've been on the cop for a few years, you stop doing that. Because by then you've learned that what's on the outside doesn't tell you that much about what's on the inside. A cute little old lady can pull a trigger just as well as a big scary looking guy. Rookies don't know that yet. They haven't learned the lesson that you can't tell by looking.

Officer Douglas didn't shorten his stride for me, and he didn't need to. I was used to walking scenes with Dolph, who made Douglas look petite. I kept up with him even in the high-heeled boots. He looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn't. Probably just as well.

Some of the police on this side of the river don't know me on sight. They thought what Douglas had thought, that I worked here, because they catcalled after us, "Hey, Dougie, going to get a piece. No lap dances on company time, Douglas." And worse. I ignored it all. It was four in the morning, and I hadn't been to bed yet, I didn't care. Besides, I'd learned the hard way that the more attention you pay to shit like that, the more you have to shovel. Ignore it, and it usually goes away, because it just isn't any fun if they don't get a rise out of you. Besides, they were teasing Douglas more than me. I was just the nameless girl who gave them an excuse.

He ignored it, but his face was blazing by the time we got to the main doors. He actually held the door for me, and I let him. There'd been a point in my life when I would not have let him hold the door. But with his face already burning with embarrassment, I wasn't going to arm wrestle him for the door. I might have to work with him again, so screw it, he could hold the door. Besides, if I put him on the spot about the door, it would have given his coworkers more to tease him about, and I didn't want that.

We went through the glass doors into a little entry area that reminded me of the front of a nice restaurant, complete with a little desk and a maître d'. Though that probably wasn't the tall guy's official title. But hey, he was wearing a white suit jacket with a tie, he did look like a maître d'. When I'd seen him last, he was tall and self-assured and had taken my name and Asher's and called on a phone to have a "hostess" escort us in. Now he leaned on his counter, head in his hands, looking ill.

There were bathrooms off to the left, and a short hallway that led into the club. From the door you really couldn't see into the club. It gave them a last chance to keep out the undesirables, or the underagers, before someone saw breasts. The color scheme was muted blues and purples, and if they hadn't had silhouettes of naked women on the walls, it would have looked like a restaurant, oh, and the poster advertising that Wednesday was amateur night.

I couldn't remember the big guy's name, just couldn't remember it. But it didn't matter, because Douglas took me past him without a word. Up the little ramp, and the club spilled out around us. There was a good solid bar area to the left that would have done any club proud, but the rest of the room was all strip club. I mean, what else do you use little round stages for? The room was mostly blues and purples, and maybe other colors. I couldn't tell for sure, because most of the big room was lit by black light, or other odd lighting, so that the room was lit, but it was still terribly dark. I'd been surprised the first time I was here, it was as if light could be dark, so that though there was no actual shadowed area, the whole room seemed like it was in a shadow.

It was a weekend night, the place was packed, but quiet. They'd had to turn off the music, and the DJ's endless prattle was mercifully absent. In fact, the room seemed wrong this quiet, as if the noise was part of the decor. There were men, and more women than you'd think in the audience, huddled now all together like mourners at an unexpected funeral. The dancers were all in one corner with a plainclothes detective that I didn't recognize. A big man in a uniform that matched Officer Douglas's strode toward us, with a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other. He still had his hat on, as if his round face would have been incomplete without it.

"Douglas, what the fuck are you bringing me another stripper for? We got all the girls that were in the club tonight over there." He motioned with his thumb over his shoulder. He had small, beady eyes, or maybe I was just tired of being called a stripper, and discounted like I didn't matter, just because I happened to be a girl and not in uniform. "Unless, you saw somethin' outside. Did you, girlie, see anything?"

I raised my badge so he could see it, and stepped around Douglas so I was facing what had to be his boss. "Federal Marshal Anita Blake, and you are?"

I could see his face darken even in the odd lighting. "Sheriff Christopher, Melvin Christopher." He looked me up and down, not the way a man will if he thinks a woman is pretty, but like he was sizing me up, and wasn't impressed. "You know, if you don't want people thinking you're a stripper, you should dress better, miss."

"That's Marshal Blake to you, Sheriff, and in the big city, this is called date clothes. Dresses down to your knees went out of style a few decades back."

His face got a little darker, his eyes went from unfriendly to hostile. "You think you're funny?"

"No," I said, and I took a deep breath in and let it out slow. "Look, you stop calling me a stripper, and I'll stop making cute remarks at you. Let's both pretend we're here to solve a crime, and just do our jobs."

"We don't need federal help here."

I sighed. I looked around the room and didn't see anyone I knew. "Fine, you want to do it this way, we can do it this way. If you prevent me from questioning all the vampires before dawn comes, I will charge you with obstructing a federal officer in the performance of her duties."

"Some of them your friends, that it? I heard you were coffin bait."

I shook my head and walked wide around Douglas, which put me out of reach for the sheriff.

"Where the hell are you going?"

"To question the witnesses," I said, and I kept a little bit of an eye on the sheriff, because I wasn't sure what he would do.

"How do you know where they are?"

"They aren't out here, or out in the parking lot, so they've got to be in the Sapphire Room." I was almost to the little raised platform in front of a pair of nice wooden doors. There was another uniformed officer in front of the doors. I had been in there before, so I knew the sound was muffled inside the room. That's why I hadn't yelled for Zerbrowski already.

I unzipped the leather jacket as I went up the steps. I had my badge in my left hand, held where the uniform on the door could see it clearly. I wasn't really sure what I was going to do if the sheriff told his man not to let me in. I'd learned that just because I had the legal right to be somewhere, didn't mean the local police would make it easy. They wouldn't actually lay hands on me, or boot my ass out, but if they wanted to be uncooperative, they could be.

"Please move aside, Officer."

He actually started to step to the side, but the sheriff said, "You don't work for her. You move when I say you move."

I sighed and thought, Well, shit. Then I had an idea. I reached into the pocket of the leather coat.

"Be careful what you reach for," the sheriff said from far too close behind me.

I turned so I could see him and the other officer. I held up my cell phone. "No need to get excited, Sheriff. Just going to make a phone call."

He had his hands on his hips above his Sam Brown belt. He hadn't unsnapped his gun, so he wasn't serious. He was just trying to see if I'd spook. If he thought this kind of shit could intimidate me, he'd been playing in the shallow end of the pool for too fucking long.

I hit the buttons, keeping an eye on the officers in the room. A lot of them had stopped questioning or guarding or whatever they were doing, to watch our little show. Zerbrowski answered on the second ring. "I'm in the club, just outside the doors."

"And why aren't you inside the doors?" he asked, sounding puzzled.

"The sheriff has ordered his man not to move away from the doors."

"Not true," the sheriff yelled, "but you sure as hell can't order my man to do shit."

I sighed loud enough so Zerbrowski could hear it. "A little help here."

Zerbrowski opened the door with the phone still in his hand. "Thanks, Sheriff Christopher, I think Marshal Blake and I have it from here." He clicked the phone shut, smiled at everybody, and moved aside enough for me to pass through, but not enough for the sheriff, who stood at the bottom of the steps glaring at him. I finally realized that the pissing contest had started before I got there, and I'd just gotten caught in it.

Zerbrowski shut the door behind us, and leaned against it shaking his head. He's 5'9", with short black hair going more and more gray every year. When his wife makes him get it cut, the hair is short and neat. When he forgets, or she's busy, it's curly and wavy, and as untidy as the rest of him. His suit was brown, his tie was pale yellow, and so was his shirt. I think it was the first time I'd seen all his clothes match in all the years I'd known him. Okay, match and not have food stains on them.

His glasses were silver and helped hide that his eyes were tired, but not that he was pissed. He took me off to one side by the fountain with a once-real-live stuffed lion crouching beside it. The Sapphire Room is a cross between a hunting lodge, a safari room, and other things people think men think is masculine. Most of the room was carpeted in leopard print, so that my first thought was, always, Oh, no, a leopard blew up and plastered itself all over everything, but hey, animal prints are in this year. People pay hundreds of dollars a night to be back here, so they must like it.

Zerbrowski turned his back on the room and motioned for me to move in front of him so that no one would see us talking. "Welcome to the party."

"Why are you keeping out all of the sheriff's men?"

"When we pulled up, they had the vampires in here and were using crosses on them. They didn't touch them, just made the crosses glow like hell, and basically said, you talk, or we keep crosses out."

"Shit, use of a holy item on a vampire for questioning was ruled assault, what, three months ago in federal court?"

"Yeah," he said, and he raised his glasses up and rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

"Every vamp here could press charges," I whispered.

He nodded and readjusted his glasses. "Like I said, welcome to the party."

Before the ruling, a lot of police departments had holy items as part of their uniform, like lapel pins or tietacks, but now they were back to carrying them undercover somewhere on their bodies. Holy items were now considered weapons when dealing with vampires. Which meant what the sheriff had done constituted assault with a deadly weapon.

"Was it just him, or his men, too?"

"Some of his men. Before we got here, they were all wearing little cross-shaped lapel pins. I got them to remove them, but only after I threatened to call the closest FBI office."

I looked at him, because no cop likes to call in what they so affectionately call the Feebies.

"I'd rather let the FBI take this entire case away from us than let crap like this go down. The vampires are scared shitless now. If there are any guilty ones here, I can't tell it, because they're all either royally pissed, or scared. Most of them won't even talk to us, and legally they don't have to." It didn't really show in his voice, but he was as angry as I'd seen him. I could see it in the tightness around his eyes, the way his hands kept stiffening up. Zerbrowski was usually one laid back guy, but everybody has their limits. "We got a hit from New Orleans and Pittsburgh. Very similar crimes. Two in Pittsburgh, five in New Orleans, then they moved here."

"Lucky us," I said.

"Yeah," he said, "but that means we have at least three more bodies to look forward to. We need these nice citizen vamps to talk to us."

"I'll see what I can do. Do you have anyone you want me to start with? I mean it's 4:30, we've got about three hours or less until dawn. They've got to be allowed to go home before dawn, unless you can charge them with something."

"We've got a woman dead in the side lot here, multiple vampire bites, and they're vampires. I could probably get a judge to agree to holding them as material witnesses. I know a judge that hates vampires enough to give me a court order."

I shook my head. "We're trying to smooth this over, not make it worse. Right now they can only sue this city, let's not give them a reason to sue us, too."

He nodded then stepped aside and made a sweeping gesture with his hand. "They are all yours, good luck."

There was a group of vampires around the big fireplace in the center of the main room. None of them belonged to Jean-Claude. Some of them were clustered around a table set in front of it the fireplace, in huge thronelike chairs, some on a cushioned seat near the fireplace. One of the vampires was clutching an animal print cushion while he sat in front of the fire. His eyes were wide, and he looked shell-shocked. The other five were scared, or angry, or a mixture of both, but they were holding it together better than the cushion-hugger.

I showed them my badge and explained who I was. But it wasn't the badge that made the cushion-hugger whimper, "Oh, God, they're going to kill us."

"Shut up, Roger," a tall vampire with sleek black hair and angry hazel eyes said. "Why are you here, Ms. Blake? We are being held against our wills, and we are guilty of nothing except being vampires."

"And you are?" I asked.

He stood and straightened a rather nice, conservative suit. "I am Charles Moffat."

"I know that name," I said.

He looked nervous, just for a moment, then he tried to swallow it. He wasn't twenty-years dead, a baby.

"You're one of Malcolm's deacons for the Church of Eternal Life," I said.

He opened his mouth, then closed it, and stood very tall, and said, "Yes, I am, and I'm not ashamed of it."

"No, but Malcolm has forbidden any of his church members to frequent this side of the river for nefarious purposes."

"How do you know what our master dictates?" He was trying to bluff, and it wasn't going to work.

"Because Malcolm talked to the Master of the City and got him to agree to tell Malcolm if any of the church's members frequented his clubs. You guys aren't allowed to be anywhere this naughty. You must, and I quote, be absolutely above reproach."

One of the vamps who was balding and wore glasses, started rocking in his chair. "I knew we shouldn't have come. If Malcolm finds out..."

"She is Jean-Claude's servant, and she must tell him, and he will tell Malcolm."

"Actually, the agreement was just to tattle about you coming to our clubs. Malcolm didn't ask us to keep an eye this side of the river."

The bald vampire looked up at me as if I'd offered him salvation. "You won't tell?"

"If you guys tell me everything you know about this, I don't see a reason to."

The bald vampire touched Charles Moffat's arm. Charles jerked away from him. "How can we trust you?"

"Look, I'm not the one who signed a morals clause with my master and has just been caught in a titty bar--you guys have. So if anyone is questioning someone's word, shouldn't it be me? I mean a vampire that goes against the express orders of his master, what good is he either to his master or his kiss?"

"We of the church do not use the word kiss for a group of vampires. Malcolm feels that it is too sensuous a word."

"Fine, but my point stands. You've betrayed your master, your church, and your oath, or don't you in the church take blood oath, either?"

"A barbaric practice," Charles said, "we of the church are held by our own moral standards not some magical oath."

I smiled and motioned around the room. "Hmm, nice standards."

Charles blushed, which isn't easy for a vamp, but it let me know he'd fed tonight, fed a lot. "Who was your feed for tonight?"

He just glared at me. "Look, guys, it's 4:30 in the morning. We have less than three hours to get your asses back to your homes. We want you all out of here before dawn, alright?"

They all nodded. "Then answer my questions. I can tell which one of you has fed and which hasn't. I need to know what dancers, or donors, you fed on. If they're in the other room, I need to talk to them. If they aren't, I need names, and a way to contact them tonight."

"The relationship between a vampire and their partner is sacred."

"Look, Charles, you've got enough blood in you to blush. You want me to start speculating where you got that much blood to waste?"

"We have already been threatened and abused. You can do no more to us."

I turned to the rest. "Who wants to answer my questions and get an I-won't-tell-Malcolm card?"

The bald vamp stood up. Charles yelled at him. But Baldie shook his head. "No, you aren't my master, Charles. We are all free beings in the church, it's one of the reasons we joined. I'm going to answer her questions, because it's within my rights to do so."

"Let's find a private room," I said, and motioned for him to follow me. There was a truly beautiful saltwater aquarium in a little area that was probably meant to be a smoking room, but there were smaller rooms off of it, where normally you could take one of the dancers and get a private dance.

I took Baldie into the first room. It was actually nice, not tacky in the least, with a small couch, a chair, a coffee table, and area lighting. The room still pulled off that leather and manly den theme, without being obnoxious about it. "Have a seat," I said.

He sat, rubbing his hands over his knees, nervous. He was a little plump, and soft. He looked like an accountant, except that when he licked his lips, he flashed a little fang. The new ones do that. "How long have you been in the church?"

"Two years." He was shaking his head. "I thought it would be sexy, you know, vampires, the clothes, the romance." He clasped his plump hands together. "But it's not like that at all. I'm still a law clerk, just at a different office where they let me work nights. I can't drink, can't eat a steak, and dying didn't make me sexier." He spread his hands wide. "Look at me, I'm just paler."

"I thought the church required six months minimum of study before they let you take the last step?"

He nodded. "They do, but they made all the moral stuff seem high-minded, you know, we're better than those other vampires. We aren't perverts like Jean-Claude and his vamps." He looked up and was scared, and it showed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean..."

"I know what the church says about normal vampire society."

"It sounded so noble."

"Let me guess, there was this woman that happened to be a vampire."

He looked up, startled. "How did you know?"

"Lucky guess, and after you made the change, what happened?"

"She was my partner for the first few months, but after that, she had other duties."

That was interesting, and I filed it away for later. If the church deacons were seducing members, that might be called illegal, at the very least questionably moral. "Who'd you feed off of tonight?"

The question threw him, and he blinked at me like a rabbit in headlights. "Sasha, her name was Sasha."

"And you brought her back here?"

He nodded.

"You're a club member?"

He nodded again.

"Charles is, too?"

Nod.

"Most of the people at the table are members?"

Nod, then, "It was Clarke's first time here."

"And Clarke is the one with the pillow?"

"How did you know?"

I shook my head, smiled, and said, "Do you remember any other girls that people fed off of, names or descriptions." He remembered a lot. I ended up with four names, two descriptions, and only poor Clarke had not fed. Of course, I'd known that last part, but it's always nice to have things confirmed.

With Zerbrowski as my guard, we ventured out into the club and fetched the women in question. We matched up every vamp with at least one girl. Charles had fed on three, and he was a big tipper. Two of the girls were his regulars. Pretty naughty for a church deacon.

It took me a little more than two hours to match up those who had fed with whom they'd fed on. It didn't mean they hadn't snuck out and fed again, but it made it less likely. I suggested that we could compare bite radiuses on the dead girl with the vamps later, if we needed to. We knew their names, and knew how to find them.

The most interesting bit of information I found out was given up only by the first vamp I talked to and by Clarke, who was so scared he'd have given up his mother. There had been three other church members here earlier in the evening, and they were also part of the crowd that liked to frequent the stripper bars. But none of them were members of the Sapphire Room VIP club. I had their names and an address for the most newly dead of them. Maybe they'd had something to do with the murder, or maybe they just gotten bored and went home early. It wasn't a crime to leave a place.

Zerbrowski had actually called in state troopers to back us up, as we escorted the vampires to their cars. None of them was powerful enough, or old enough to be able to fly home. When we'd gotten the last of the undead safely off in their minivans and compact cars, Zerbrowski took me to one side and said, "Did I hear you right? The vamp church makes their members sign a morals clause?"

I nodded. "Other vamps call them nightshirt Mormons."

He grinned. "Nightshirt Mormons, really."

"Honest."

"Oh, I will have to remember that one, that's good." He looked behind us at the waiting ambulance, fire truck, and all the personnel. "Now that you've helped save the vamps, how about looking at the actual crime scene?"

"Thought you'd never ask."

He grinned, and it almost pushed the tiredness out of his eyes. "I get to go first down the ladder," he said.

I frowned at him. "What ladder?"

"Our murder scene and body dump are in a hole left by some overzealous construction workers. According to the club manager, they broke ground, but didn't have all their permits in line, so it's just a big hole. That's why we need the firemen to help us get the body up out of the hole when you're done with it."

"You are not going ahead of me down the ladder, Zerbrowski."

"What are you wearing under that little bitty skirt?"

"None of your damn business, and if you don't let me go first down the ladder, I'll tell your wife on you."

He laughed, and a few people looked our way. They were colder than we were, and just as tired. I don't think they saw anything to laugh about. "Katie knows I'm a lech."

I shook my head. "How messy is it down in the hole?"

"Let's see, it's rained, it's frozen, it's thawed, and it's rained some more."

"Shit," I said.

"Where are those overalls you used to wear to all the crime scenes?"

"It's against company policy to wear crime scene gear to a zombie raising now." What I didn't say out loud was that I'd forgotten and worn overalls that had blood on them to a zombie raising. The client's wife had fainted. Was it my fault that she had a fragile constitution? It wasn't Bert who said no more, it was a majority vote at Animator's Inc. So I actually had to pay attention to the rule. "I didn't plan on climbing into holes and looking at bodies tonight."

The grin faded from his face. "Me neither, let's get this done. I want to go home and hug my wife and kids before they go off to school and work."

I didn't point out that it was 6:30 in the morning, and his chances of making it home in time to see Katie and his kids before they rushed off to their days were slim to none. Everybody needs a little hope, who am I to take it away?

47

The woman in the hole was beyond hope, or fear, or whatever had happened to her. Her face looked empty, the way the dead always do. You get an occasional one that looks scared, but it's just happenstance. The way their face muscles worked at the moment of death. But mostly, the dead look empty, like something essential is missing, something beyond just no breath, no heartbeat. I'd seen enough eyes do that last glaze, to say that something more precious than breath goes with death. Or maybe I was just tired and didn't want to be standing ankle-deep in mud, staring down at a woman that was probably younger than I was, and now always would be. I get more morbid the closer to dawn it gets, if I haven't been to bed.

There were a lot of similarities to the first body. This one was lying on her back, just like the last one. They'd both been strippers. They were both killed just outside the clubs that they worked in. This one was a blonde, and white, which was the same as the first one. There were a set of bite marks on either side of the neck, and one in the bend of her left arm, right wrist, and chest. To see if she had thigh bites I was going to have to kneel in the mud, and I didn't want to. Simple as that, I didn't want to. I promised myself I would never again be caught out, anywhere, without a pair of coveralls, and mud boots. I'd had to borrow gloves from Zerbrowski. I'd been thinking about my date, not about my job when I packed the Jeep earlier. Stupid me.

I stood up and debated on whether I could get away without crawling around in the mud and looking at all the bites. "She's taller, by almost a foot than the last one. Blond hair but very short, the last one had long hair. Other than that, it looks damn similar."

"The bite radiuses are the same."

"Who took the measurements?" I asked.

He told me, and the name meant nothing to me. I was across the river, and I didn't actually do a lot of crime scenes here. I killed vamps for Illinois, but I didn't do much actual investigative work. I couldn't let someone else do it, not if I didn't know them. If even one bite radius was off, it would mean a change of players in our vampire group. We needed to know if we were looking for five, or six, or more.

I sighed and fetched my little tape measure out of the jacket pocket. That I'd started keeping in the glove compartment with the baby wipes. I measured the easy-to-get-to bites first and had Zerbrowski take notes. Then I planted my knee carefully in the mud, between her knees. The mud was cold. I spread her legs and found the inner thigh bites. I measured everything I could find. The bite radiuses matched, or ballparked. I was using a different instrument to do the measuring, which I shouldn't have done. I shouldn't have let the CSU technician let me use something I wouldn't have with me next time. What you measured with could make a difference in the field. The field was not a laboratory.

I got up from the ground carefully, my goal was still not to slide on my ass in the mud. High-heeled boots were not the best thing to wear to guarantee that. So I was careful. "The Sapphire has security people walking their lot. At least one security guy at any given time. It's the weekend, there should have been two. Did they see or hear anything?"

"One of them saw the girl come out with her coat on. She was headed home, done for the night. He saw her go toward her car"--he riffled back through his notebook--"then, she wasn't there."

I looked at him. "What did you say?"

"He said, she was walking toward her car, he waved at her, then something attracted his attention to the other side of the lot. He's a little vague on what attracted his attention, but he swears he only glanced away, then when he looked back, she was gone."

"Gone."

"Yeah, why do you have that look on your face, like that means something?"

"Did he check her car right away?"

He nodded. "Yes, and when he didn't find her at the car, he went back into the club to see if she'd gone back inside. When he couldn't find her inside, he got the other security guy, and they started searching the area. They found her."

"How long does he think he looked away for?"

"He says a few seconds."

"Has anyone checked with anyone else inside, who might have seen her leave? I'd like to know what time she left the building, and how long he was really staring off in the other direction."

"Let's just get out of the hole and find someone who saw her leave and actually looked at a clock."

He was riffling through his notebook again. The lights that they had directed down into the pit illuminated everything, in fact made it all a little stark, and pitiless, as if she needed to be covered up and not stared at anymore. Maudlin, I was getting positively maudlin.

"Actually, one of the ladies inside, a customer, had liked the blonde a lot, she and her husband. So she noticed the time when she left."

"And how does it tally with the security guy's statement?"

He checked the times back and forth. "Ten minutes."

"Ten minutes is an awfully long time to stare at something he isn't even sure he saw."

"You think he lied?"

I shook my head. "No, I think he told what he thinks is the truth."

"I'm lost. What are you getting at?" Zerbrowski asked.

I smiled at him, but not like I was happy. "One of the vamps has to be a master, we figured that, but they also have to be able to cloud men's minds enough to pull something like this off."

"I thought all vamps could cloud men's minds."

I shook my head. "They can mesmerize one person with their gaze, and if they bite them, then they can blank their memory. If they're powerful enough, they can mesmerize with the eyes and blank most of the memory. But the vic will usually have this vague memory of eyes, or sometimes an animal with blazing eyes, or car headlights that were very bright. The mind tries to make mundane sense of what's happened."

"Okay, so one of the vamps zapped him with its gaze."

"No, Zerbrowski, I'm betting it wasn't eyes. I'm betting it was from a distance with no direct gaze. I'll talk to him, see what he remembers, but if he's bite-free and doesn't have some weird memory, then it was done from a nice safe distance, with no direct contact."

"So what?" he asked, and he sounded irritated and tired.

I didn't take it personally. "It means that one of the vamps is old, Zerbrowski. Old, and a master vampire. We're talking fairly major talent here. It's a limited list."

"Names?"

I shook my head. "Let's talk to the security guy and get him to strip down for us."

He looked at me over the rims of his glasses, before he pushed them back up his nose. "Did you just say what I think you just said?"

"We've got to check him for vamp bites. If he's clean, then we're looking for a major player, vampirically speaking. If he's got a bite, then not so major. Trust me, it'll make a difference in who we talk to."

"Is this Jean-Claude's people?" Zerbrowski asked.

"No," I said.

"How can you be sure?" he asked.

How could I be sure? I was tired enough that I let that be a question in my head, let me wonder what Jean-Claude would say. Would he guarantee that this couldn't have been his people? The thought was enough, he was suddenly in my head. Shit.

He was seeing what I was seeing, not good at a murder investigation when the vic had been done in by vamps. I started to shield, to kick him out, but I suddenly knew the answer to my question. "My blood oath will hold them from this, because it is against my express orders to bring us to the negative attention of the human police."

I thought, Liv broke your oath once, and he heard me. "I was not le sourdre de sang then. My oath is not so lightly shaken off now, ma petite."

I'd been quiet too long. Zerbrowski said, "You okay?"

"Just thinking," I said. I'd known about blood oaths, but I hadn't actually understood how important they were, or what they were supposed to mean. "Because all of Jean-Claude's people have to take a blood oath. It binds them mystically to the Master of the City. He's forbidden his vampires to do shit like this."

"You're saying the blood oath makes this impossible?"

"Not impossible, but harder. It depends on how strong the master is that they make the oath to."

"How strong is Jean-Claude?"

I thought about a way to explain it and finally settled for, "Strong enough that I'd bet good money this wasn't his people."

"But you wouldn't guarantee it."

"Guarantees are for major appliances, not for murder."

He grinned. "That's cute, I may just have to use that one sometime."

"Knock yourself out."

The grin faded round the edges. "I still don't really understand this whole blood oath thing. Maybe I'm just too tired for metaphysics, explain it to me again later."

"Let me simplify it."

"That'd be nice," he said.

"I just learned tonight from the vamps I questioned that Malcolm has abolished the blood oath for the church. It's too barbaric."

Jean-Claude was still in my head and heard what I said. I got a rush of fear from him, fear bordering on panic.

"Okay, and that means what exactly?" Zerbrowski asked.

I had to take a deep breath to talk around Jean-Claude's fear. His voice in my head said, "Are you certain of this, ma petite?"

I let my out loud voice for Zerbrowski answer Jean-Claude's question, too. "It means, Zerbrowski, that you have hundreds of vampires in this area that have nothing to keep them from doing shit like this, except their own consciences, and a morals clause they all sign."

Jean-Claude was cursing in my head in French, and though I caught a word here and there, most of it was too fast for me.

Zerbrowski smiled, and the smile broadened until it was a grin. "You're saying that the church trusts its members to be good little citizens, and your boyfriend isn't that trusting."

"I'll look at the new masters that have come to town at Jean-Claude's invitation, but my money is on the Church of Eternal Life."

"Dolph would say it's because you don't want it to be Jean-Claude's people."

"Yeah, he would, but I'll tell you this, Zerbrowski, the thought that all these new little vampires have only their human morals to make them be good, makes me almost agree with Dolph."

"Agree on what?"

"Kill them all."

Jean-Claude said, "Do not say this out loud to the police, ma petite. It may come to that, and you do not wish your friend to remember this conversation." He was right.

"Shit, Anita, some of your best friends are bloodsuckers."

"Yeah, but there are rules to being a vampire, and Malcolm is trying to treat them like they're just people with fangs. They aren't, Zerbrowski, they really aren't. Even if this turns out to be a bunch of rogues that somehow slipped through everyone's radar. Mine, Jean-Claude's, and Malcolm's, we are so going to have to talk to him about his new policy."

"Why I do I think when you said, we, just now, you weren't including me, or any of the cops?" He was looking at me, and the joking, lecherous comments were gone. I was seeing a very intelligent pair of cop eyes.

I sighed and took a step toward the ladder. I'd said too much, way too much. Jean-Claude's voice in my head, "You must say something to take the sting out of your words, ma petite."

Out loud, to Zerbrowski, I thought of something to say. "I'm tired Zerbrowski, please don't tell Dolph that I think all the vamps in the church should be done in. I don't mean it, not really."

"I won't tell anyone, especially not Dolph. He'd probably start with his new daughter-in-law, and wouldn't that be a shit."

I nodded. "But if we had hundreds of vamps go bad, all at once, I'm still who gets the call. I so don't want to ever have to try to take on that many of them. I'm good, but not that good."

"For a few hundred, even you'd need help," he said. He let out a long breath. "I can see where the thought would piss you off, and make you tired. Hell, it makes me tired, and nervous."

"I'll try to find out how long this no-blood-oath policy has been in effect," I said.

"And then what?"

I had my hands on the ladder. "I'll deal with it."

"Ma petite, you are being uncautious again."

I whispered, "Get out of my head."

"What does that mean, Anita? You're a federal marshal, you can't do the Lone Ranger shit anymore. You got a badge."

I leaned my forehead on the ladder, got mud on my face, and jerked back. I told him as much of the truth as I could. "We'll give Malcolm a choice, either he blood oaths everybody, or Jean-Claude does." Jean-Claude was suddenly louder than ever in my head. "Stop there, ma petite, I beg you, do not say it out loud."

What I didn't say out loud was that any vampire that didn't want to take the ceremony was probably dead. I had Jean-Claude's memory of it now, and I knew the blood oath was one of their most strenuously observed laws. I'd seen what could happen if the oath wasn't strong enough, what would happen if it wasn't there at all.

I was actually on the ladder, when Zerbrowski said, "And what if the vamps don't want to take the oath?"

I stayed frozen on the ladder for a second, then lied, "I'm not sure. I'm hoping that it's just Malcolm and not every church of their's across the country that's doing this. You're talking about something that's never been done before, Zerbrowski. As far as I know, no master vamp has ever just allowed vamps to breed like this without securing himself as their leader in more than just name. It's never been done before. Vamps aren't big on new ideas."

"Are you talking about killing the ones that won't take the oath? Anita, they've got rights."

"I know that, Zerbrowski, better than most." I was cursing Malcolm, cursing him for the mess he'd started. Even if the murderers weren't his people, it was only a matter of time. Vampires are not people, they don't think like people. I realized that Malcolm was trying to do with the Church of Eternal Life what Richard had tried to do with the Thronnos Rokke Clan. Both of them were trying to treat the monsters like they were just people. They weren't. God help us, but they weren't.

Jean-Claude whispered, "We will need to send envoys to the church and see how bad it truly is."

I didn't answer, because I was pretty sure who one of the envoys would be. Me.

I started up the ladder, and only when Zerbrowski whistled did I remember what I was wearing under the skirt. "Blake, you have a very nice..."

"Don't say it, Zerbrowski."

"Why not?"

"Because if you say it, I'll put you on the ground."

"Ass," he said.

"I warned you," I said.

He laughed.

When we were both on solid ground, I footswept him into a convenient patch of mud. He cursed me, everyone laughed. He said, "I'll tell Katie you were mean to me."

"She'll be on my side." And she would be. In fact, I knew Katie Zerbrowski well enough to know that her husband wouldn't tell her he'd told me I had a nice ass. She'd consider it rude.

Jean-Claude's echo in my head was, but you do. I told him to shut up, too, and this time he listened. "Dawn is near, and I must rest. We will speak again when I wake."

"Pleasant dreams," I whispered.

"The dead do not dream, ma petite." And he was gone.