Burnt Offerings

42

The two-biter, as Dolph so poetically put it, was a small woman in her thirties. Her brown hair was back in a tight ponytail leaving her neck and the vampire bites painfully visible. Vampire freaks, people who just liked vamps for sexual turn-ons, hid their fang marks unless at one of their hangouts. Human members of the Church of Eternal Life almost always made sure the bites were visible. Hair worn just right, short sleeves if the marks were at wrist or elbow bend. They were proud of the bites, saw them as signs of salvation.

The upper set of fang marks were larger, the skin redder and more torn. Someone hadn't been neat with their food. The second mark was almost dainty, surgically neat. The two-biter's name was Caroline, and she stood hugging herself as if she were cold. Since you could probably fry eggs on the sidewalk, I didn't think she was cold, or at least not that kind of cold.

"You wanted to see me, Caroline?"

She nodded, head bobbing up and down like one of those dogs you used to see in the backs of cars. "Yes," she said, voice breathy. She stared at Dolph and McKinnon, then back at me. The look was enough. She wanted privacy.

"I'm going to take Caroline for a little walk. If that's okay?"

Dolph nodded. McKinnon said, "The Red Cross have coffee and soft drinks." He pointed to a small truck with a camper shell. Red Cross volunteers giving coffee and comfort to the cops and firemen. You didn't see them at every crime scene, but they hit their share.

Dolph caught my gaze and gave a very small nod. He was trusting me to question her without him, trusting me to bring him back any info that pertained to the crime. The fact that he still trusted me that much made the day a little brighter. Nice that something did.

It was also nice to be doing something useful. Dolph had been hot to get me to the scene. Now everything was stalled. Fulton just wasn't eager to risk his people for corpses. But that wasn't it. If there'd been six humans down there, we'd have already been suited up and going in. But they weren't human, and no matter what the law said, it made a difference. Dolph was right, before Addisonv. Clark, they'd have gotten a fire crew in here to make sure it didn't spread to the other houses, but they'd have let it burn. Standard operating procedure.

But that was four years ago, and the world had changed. Or so we told ourselves. If the vamps weren't in coffins and the roof collapsed, they would be exposed to sunlight, and that would be it. The firemen had used an axe on the wall next to the stairs so I could see the second vamp corpse. It was crispy-crittered but not dust. I had no explanation for why the body had remained so intact. I wasn't even a hundred percent sure that come nightfall it wouldn't heal. It¨Ceven I still did it. But the body was so badly burned, like black sticks and brown leather, the muscles in the face had pulled away leaving the teeth, complete with fangs, in a grimace that looked like pain. Firemen Wren had explained to me that the muscles contract with the heat enough to break bones sometimes. Just when you think you know every awful thing about death, you find out you're wrong.

I had to think of the body as an "it" or I couldn't look at it. Caroline had known the vampire. I think she was having a lot more trouble thinking of the body as an it.

She got a soft drink from the nice Red Cross lady. Even I got a Coke, which meant it was pretty damn hot for me to pass on the coffee.

I led her to the front yard of a neighboring house where no one had come out to check the scene. The drapes were all closed, driveway empty. Everyone gone for the day. The only sign of life was a triangular rose bed and a black swallowtail butterfly floating over it. Peaceful. For a moment I wondered if the butterfly was one of Warrick's pets, but there was no feel of power. It was just a butterfly floating like a tiny tissue-paper kite over the yard. I sat down on the grass. Caroline joined me, smoothing her pale blue shorts down in back as if she was more accustomed to wearing skirts. She took a drink of soda. Now that she had me to herself, she didn't seem to know how to start.

It might have worked better if I'd waited for her to begin, but my patience had been used up long ago. It wasn't one of my cardinal virtues to begin with. "What did you want to tell me?" I asked.

She sat her can of soda carefully on the grass, thin hands smoothing along the hem of her shorts. She had pale pink nail polish on her short nails that matched the pink stripes in her tank top. Better than pale blue, I guess.

"Can I trust you?" she asked in a voice as fragile and pale as she seemed.

I hate being asked questions like that. I wasn't in the mood to lie. "Maybe. It depends on what you want to trust me with."

Caroline looked a little startled, as if she'd expected me to just say, sure. "That was very honest of you. Most people lie without thinking about it." Something in the way she said it made me think that Caroline had been lied to often, by people she'd trusted.

"I try not to lie, Caroline, but if you have information that'll help us here, you need to tell me." I took a drink of my own soda and tried to appear casual, forced my body not to tense up, not to show how much I wanted to simply scream at her until she told me whatever it was. Short of torture, you can't make people talk, not really. Caroline wanted to tell me her secrets. I just had to be calm and let her do it. If I was overeager or abusive, she'd either fold and tell all, or clam up and let us rot. You never knew which way it would go, so you try patience first. You can always browbeat them later.

"I've been the human liaison for this halfway house for three months now. The guardian who oversaw the younger ones was Giles. He was strong and powerful, but he was trapped in his coffin until true darkness. Then two nights ago he woke in the middle of the day. The first time for him. The one on the stairs has to be one of the younger vampires."

She looked at me, brown eyes wide. She leaned into me, lowering her soft voice even further. I had to lean into her just to catch her voice, close enough that my hair brushed her shoulder.

"None of the younger ones has been dead two years. Do you understand what that means?"

"It means that they shouldn't have risen during daylight hours. It means that the one on the stairs should have been burnt to ashes."

"Exactly," she said. She sounded relieved to finally find someone who understood.

"Was this early waking restricted to your halfway house?"

She shook her head, whispering now. We had our heads together like first-graders talking in class. I was close enough to see the fine red lines in her eyes. Caroline had been losing sleep over something. "Every house and all the churches were suddenly having vampires rise early. The hunger seemed worse on the young ones." Her hand went to her neck and the messy wound. "They were harder to control, even by the guardians."

"Anyone have any theories as to why this was happening?" I asked.

"Malcolm thought someone was interfering with them."

I had several candidates for who might be interfering with the vamps, but we weren't here to get my answers. We were here to get Caroline's answers. "He have any ideas about who?"

"You know about our illustrious visitors?" she asked, voice even lower, as if she were afraid to say the last.

"If you mean the Vampire Council, I've met them."

She jerked back from me then, shocked. "Met them," she said. "But Malcolm has not met them yet."

I shrugged. "They paid their... respects to the Master of the City first."

"Malcolm said they would contact us when they were ready. He saw their coming as a sign that the rest of vampirekind was ready to embrace the true faith."

I wasn't about to sit there and tell her why the council had really come to town. If the Church didn't know, they didn't need to know. "I don't think the council thinks much about religion, Caroline."

"Why else would they come?"

I shrugged. "The council has its reasons." See, not a lie, cryptic as hell, but not a lie.

She seemed to accept the statement. Maybe she was used to cryptic bullshit. "Why would the council want to hurt us?"

"Maybe they don't see it as hurting."

"If the firemen go down in there to save the young ones and they wake without a guardian..." She drew her knees to her chest, hugging her legs. "They'll rise like revenants, mindless beasts, until they've fed. People could be dead before they come to themselves."

I touched her shoulder. "You're scared of them, aren't you?" I'd never met a human church member who was scared of vampires, especially not one that was donating blood as a human liaison.

She lowered the neckline of her tank top until I could see the tops of her small breasts. There was a bite mark on the pale flesh of one breast that looked more like a dog bite than one made by a vampire. The flesh had bruised badly, as if the vamp had been pulled off her almost as soon as he'd started sucking.

"Giles had to pull him off of me. He had to restrain him. Looking into his face, I knew that if Giles hadn't been there, he'd have killed me. Not to bring me over or embrace me, but just because I was food." She let her top slide back over the wound, hugging herself tight, shivering in the hot July sunshine.

"How long have you been with the Church, Caroline?"

"Two years."

"And this is the first time you've been scared?"

She nodded.

"They've been very careful around you, then."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

I unbent my left arm, showing the scars. "The mound of scar tissue at the crook is where a vamp gnawed on me. He broke the arm. I was lucky not to lose the use of it."

"What about that?" She touched the claw marks that trailed down the lower part of the arm.

"Shapeshifted witch."

"How did the cross get burned into your arm?"

"Humans with a few bites like you thought it was amusing to brand me with the cross. Just amusing themselves until their master rose for the night."

Her eyes were wide. "But the vampires in the Church aren't like that. We aren't like that."

"All vamps are like that, Caroline. Some of them control it better than others, but they still have to feed off humans. You can't really respect something that you see as food."

"But you are with the Master of the City. Do you believe that of him?"

I thought about that and answered truthfully. "Sometimes."

She shook her head. "I thought I knew what I wanted. What I was going to do for all eternity. Now I don't know anything. I feel so... lost." Tears trailed out of her wide eyes.

I put my arm across her shoulders, and she leaned into me, clinging to me with her small, carefully painted hands. She cried soundlessly, only the shakiness of her breathing betraying her.

I held her and let her cry. If I took the nice firemen down into the darkness and six newly dead vampires rose as revenants, either the firemen were dead or I'd be forced to kill the vampires. Either way, not a win-win situation.

We needed to find out if the vamps were alive, needed some control over them. If the council was causing the problems, maybe they could help fix it. When big bad vampires come to town to kill me, I don't generally turn to them for help. But we were trying to save vampires lives here, not just human. Maybe they'd help. Maybe they wouldn't, but it couldn't hurt to ask. All right, it could hurt to ask, and probably would.

43

Even over the phone, I could tell Jean-Claude was shocked at my idea of turning to the council for help. Call it a guess. He was literally speechless. It was nearly a first.

"Why not ask for their help?"

"They are the council, ma petite," he said, voice almost breathy with emotion.

"Exactly," I said. "They are the leaders of your people. Leadership doesn't just mean privileges. It has a price tag."

"Tell that to your politicians in Washington in their three-thousand-dollar suits," he said.

"I didn't say that we did any better. That's beside the point. They've helped make this problem. They can, by God, help fix it." I had a bad thought. "Unless they're doing it on purpose," I said.

He gave a long sigh. "No, ma petite, it is not on purpose. I did not realize that it was happening to the others."

"Why isn't it happening to our vampires?"

I think he laughed. "Our vampires, ma petite?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yes, ma petite, I know what you mean. I have been protecting our people."

"Don't take this wrong, but I'm surprised you had the juice to keep the council from messing with your people."

"In truth, ma petite, so am I."

"So you're more powerful than Malcolm now?"

"It would appear so," he said quietly.

I thought about that for a minute. "But why the early rising? Why the increased hunger? Why would the council want that to be happening?"

"They do not want it, ma petite. It is merely a side effect of their proximity."

"Explain," I said.

"Their very presence will give unprotected vampires extra power: early rising, perhaps other gifts. The more voracious appetite and lack of control of the younger ones could mean that the council has decided not to feed while in my territory. I know the Traveler can take energy through lesser vampires without possessing them."

"So he takes part of the blood they drink?"

"Oui, ma petite."

"Are the others feeding?" I asked.

"If all of the Church's members are experiencing this difficulty, I would think not. I think the Traveler has found a way to drain energy for all of them, though I cannot imagine Yvette going for even a night without causing pain to someone."

"She has Warrick to pick on." The moment I said it, I realized I hadn't had a chance to tell Jean-Claude about Warrick's little daytime excursion, or his warning. Jean-Claude had woken from his sleep while I was at the hospital surrounded by wereanimals. Since then I'd been moving from one emergency to another.

"Warrick came to visit me while you were out for the day," I said.

"What do you mean, ma petite?"

I told him. All of it.

He was silent. Only his soft breathing let me know he was still there. Finally, he spoke. "I knew that Yvette gained power through her master, but I did not realize he was dampening Warrick's abilities." He laughed suddenly. "Perhaps that is why I did not realize I was a master vampire while I was with the council that first time. Perhaps my master, too, was preventing my powers from blossoming."

"Does Warrick's warning change our plans?" I asked.

"We are committed to a formal entertainment, ma petite. If we refuse to pay the price for your wereleopards, then we will give Padma and Yvette the very excuse they need to challenge us. Breaking faith once your word is given is an almost unforgivable sin among us."

"I've endangered us," I said.

"Oui, but being who you are, you could not do less. Warrick a master vampire, who would have thought it? He has been Yvette's plaything for so very long."

"How long?" I asked.

Jean-Claude was quiet for a heartbeat or two, then, "He was a knight of the Crusades, ma petite."

"Which crusade? There were several," I said.

"So nice to talk to someone who knows their history, ma petite. But you have been near him. What age is he?"

I thought about it. "Nine hundred, give or take."

"Which would mean?"

"I don't like being quizzed, Jean-Claude. The First Crusade in the late 1000s."

"Exactement."

"So Yvette was old even then," I said.

"Do you not know her age?"

"She's a thousand years old. But it's a soft one thousand. I've met vamps her age that scared the hell out of me. She doesn't."

"Yes, Yvette is terrifying but not because of her age, or her power. She can live until the end of the world and she will never be a master among us."

"And that gripes her ass," I said.

"Crudely but accurately put, ma petite."

"I'm going to ask the Traveler for help."

"We have bargained for all the aid we will ever get from them, ma petite. Do not put yourself further in their debt. I beg this of you."

"You've never begged anything of me," I said.

"Then heed me now, ma petite. Do not do this."

"I'm not going to bargain," I said.

He let out a breath as if he'd been holding it. "Good, ma petite, very good."

"I'm just going to ask."

"Ma petite, ma petite, what have I just told you?"

"Look, we're trying to save vampire lives here, not just human. Vampires are legal in this country. It doesn't just mean you get privileges. It comes with a price. Or it should."

"You are going to appeal to the council's sense of justice?" He didn't bother to keep the incredulity out of his voice. In fact, he played on it.

Put that way it sounded silly, but... "The council is partially to blame for what's happening. They've endangered their own people. Good leaders don't do that."

"No one has ever accused them of being good leaders, ma petite. They just are. It is not a question of good or bad. We fear them, and that is enough."

"Bullshit. That isn't enough. It isn't even close to enough."

He sighed. "Promise me only that you will not bargain with them. Make your request but do not offer them anything for their aid. You must swear this to me, ma petite. Please."

It was the "please" that did it, and the fear in his voice. "I promise. It's their job to do this. You don't bargain to get someone to do what they're supposed to do in the first place."

"You are a wondrous combination of cynicism and naivete, ma petite."

"You think it's naive to expect the council to help the vampires of this city?"

"They will ask what is in it for them, ma petite. What will you say?"

"I'll tell them it's their duty, and call them honorless bastards if they don't do it."

He did laugh then. "I would pay to hear this conversation."

"Would it help for you to listen in?"

"No. If they suspect it is my idea, they will demand a price. Only you, ma petite, could be this naive before them and hope to be believed."

I didn't think of myself as naive, and it bugged me that he did. Of course, he was nearly three centuries older than I was. Madonna probably seemed naive to him. "I'll let you know how it goes."

"Oh, the Traveler will make very certain that I know the outcome."

"Am I about to get you in trouble?"

"We are already in trouble, ma petite. It cannot get much deeper."

"Was that meant to be comforting?" I asked.

"Un peu," he said.

"That meant 'a little,' right?"

"Oui, ma petite. Vous dispose a apprendre."

"Stop it," I said.

"As you like." He lowered his voice to a seductive whisper, as if it wasn't already the voice of wet dreams. "What were you doing when I awoke today?"

I'd almost forgotten about my little hospital adventure. Now it came rushing back hard enough to bring heat to my face. "Nothing."

"No, no, ma petite, that is not correct. You were most certainly doing something."

"Did Stephen and Nathaniel arrive at the house?"

"They did."

"Great. I'll talk to you later."

"You refuse to answer my question?"

"No, I just don't know a short version that doesn't make me feel like a slut. I don't have time for a longer version right now. So, can you wait?"

"I will wait for all eternity, if my lady asks it."

"Can the crap, Jean-Claude."

"If I wish you luck with the council, would that please you more?"

"Yeah, yeah."

"It is all right to be a lady, Anita. It is not a bad thing being a woman."

"You try being one, then talk to me," I said. I hung up. "My lady" sounded like my dog. Ownership. I was his human servant. Short of killing him, I couldn't change that. But I didn't belong to him. If I belonged to anybody, I belonged to me. And that was how I was going to approach the council, as me: Anita Blake, vampire executioner, police liaison for the monsters. They wouldn't listen to Jean-Claude's human servant, but they might listen to me.