Chapter 7

I’M FAST. ALL vampires are fast, but I’m fast even for a dead guy. But Rabbit? Well, he didn’t get his nickname because he gets laid a lot, let’s put it that way. I took off after him, ducking and weaving through the streets of Morlocktown as best I could, but he was steadily pulling away. The little bastard was faster than me. He knew the layout of the shantytown better than I did, and he was a lot less put off by the stink of the sewers than I was. In short, I was losing him.

So I did the counter-intuitive thing; I stopped chasing him. I stopped short, pulled out my Glock, and steadied my arm against a nearby shack. Shooting a pistol at a target moving away from you is no easy feat and made even tougher when the target moves as fast as Rabbit. Lucky for me I wasn’t panting from the run. Score one for the guy who doesn’t breathe. I squeezed off two shots and saw the bullets ping harmlessly off the tunnel walls. Rabbit froze, then turned to stare back at me.

“You’re shooting at me?” he yelled. “I thought we were friends!”

“We’re not friends, Rabbit,” I yelled back. He made a lot better target standing still, so this time when I pulled the trigger, three 9mm rounds slammed into his chest and knocked him to the ground.

I was on him in seconds, with Greg just a hair behind me. “Nice of you to join us,” I said with a grin.

“We all have talents in different arenas, Jimmy,” he replied. “Mine lie more in the area of keeping the giant security vampire from breaking you in half.” He jerked his head back the way we came.

“Bishop?” I asked.

“Yeah. He was about half a step behind you when I got out of Rabbit’s throne room. I persuaded him that chasing us would be a bad decision.” Greg picked Rabbit up off the ground and tossed him over one shoulder, eliciting a groan from the perforated vampire “king.”

“Hey! I’m wounded over here,” Rabbit croaked.

I slapped him upside the head. “Shut up, asshat. Bullets won’t kill you. Those aren’t even silver. A couple pints of blood and you’ll be fine. Unless I don’t like what you’ve got to say about Julia O’Connell, of course. Then you won’t be anywhere close to fine.”

Rabbit lifted his head to look at me as I walked behind Greg back to the house where we first found the little Morlock leader. “Dude, I ain’t done nothing to Jules. She’s my girl! I love that chick, man.”

“Love her so much she’s gone missing? What did you do, Rabbit? If you tell me, I’ll make it quick. If I have to work for it, I’m going to hurt you. Bad.”

Rabbit’s eyes went wider, if that was even possible.

“Man, you done got cold since you killed Tiram. You used to be fun.”

“And you used to not kill human teenagers,” I shot back.

Greg pushed through the door, ignoring the crowd of grumbling Morlocks gathering just outside. I stopped short when I saw the heap of Bishop moaning on the floor. “Shit,” I breathed. “You weren’t screwing around, were you?”

“I just got my best friend back, and now this asshole is trying to hurt you? Not happening,” Greg said. “Anybody kicks your ass, it’s gonna be me.”

Bishop would heal, and in just a matter of hours, but it wasn’t going to feel good. Greg left him in a sorry shape. His arms and legs were broken. His feet were twisted around to point in a direction nature most certainly did not intend, and from what I could tell, both shoulders and elbows were dislocated. He also had a busted lip and the previously- and-newly crushed nose, but those were minor compared to the broken bones and dislocated kneecaps. I made a mental note not to get in any more fistfights with my best friend. The last one broke most of me, and from the looks of things, he’d been practicing.

Greg deposited Rabbit onto a battered conference table, and I pulled out my pocketknife. Rabbit tried to scoot off the table, but Greg held him fast. I shoved my wallet in the little vampire’s mouth while I dug the bullets out of his wounds. I wasn’t very delicate about it, and the wallet didn’t quite muffle the screams, but it did a pretty good job all in all. A couple of minutes later, I folded up my knife, put my tooth-dented wallet back in my pocket, and pulled a chair over to the table.

Rabbit rolled off the table and staggered to a small blue-and-white plastic cooler. He pulled out two bags of blood and sucked them dry, then walked back over to the throne. He looked at it, looked at me, and limped over to the chair. “It probably looks better if I don’t try to sit on the throne right now, huh?”

“Let’s replace ‘right now’ with ‘ever’ and I think you’re getting there, Rabbit,” I said. I pulled a chair over and sat in front of him, so close our knees almost touched. Greg stood behind him, his arms folded. He wasn’t the most imposing figure, more like a grumpy Patton Oswalt, but given the destruction he’d wrought upon Bishop, I didn’t think Rabbit wanted to cross my partner.

“Now,” I said, leaning forward. “Why did you run, Rabbit? I know it’s in your nature, but what did you do to that poor girl?”

Rabbit rocked back and forth, his knee bouncing so fast it almost vibrated. “I didn’t hurt Jules, man. Like I told you, she’s my girl!”

“Then why run?” I asked.

“’Cause I figured you didn’t want me seeing her. I mean, I’m a couple years older than her, and I figured you wouldn’t want me dating a human.”

“Rabbit,” I said, leaning back. “I don’t give a rat’s ass who you date. If you can find a human with enough poor taste to go out with you, then go for it. As long as you aren’t compelling her to do anything, or letting her know about me or anything about the vampires in town, I could care less. Is that something Tiram worried about? Who vampires were dating?”

“Man, you bastards get weird when you get a little power. Master Gordon never cared, but I didn’t know if you had some kind of hangups about dating humans. How’m I supposed to know that?”

“Rabbit.” I leaned forward. “You’ve met my girlfriend. The human police detective?”

“Oh yeah.” He relaxed a little. “I guess you ain’t gonna beat me for dating a human, then. So then what are you doing down here? Jules ain’t been down here in a couple weeks. She doesn’t like it here. Says the place smells bad. I told her, she should smell it with my nose. Am I right?”

“You told her you’re a vampire?” I asked, dropping any hint of mirth from my face.

“Nah, nah, nothing like that,” he said, holding up his hands. “I swear to God, I didn’t tell her that. I just told her I had a real sensitive nose.”

“What reason did you give for living in a sewer?” Greg asked.

Rabbit twisted around to look up at him. “I just told her I ran into some trouble with the IRS and had to go underground.”

“So she took you literally,” I said with a shake of my head.

“Yeah, sure, that works,” Rabbit agreed, nodding so hard I thought his head might fall off. He was into a third bag of blood now and looking a lot better. “Can I go give this last one to Bish? You kinda broke him.”

“I’ll do it. I should probably apologize,” Greg said. “I didn’t need to break both legs. One would have been sufficient.” He took the bag from Rabbit, looked at it, then walked over and picked up the cooler. “I’ll just take all of these. He’s pretty busted.” He walked to the door, and I turned back to Rabbit.

“You’re not going to run again, are you? Because I’m not going to wait this time; I’ll just shoot you.”

“Nah,” he said. “Long as you ain’t here to kick my ass for banging a human, I got nothing to worry about.”

“I’m going to just skip the fact that she’s in high school for a moment, because we’ve got bigger fish to fry than your statutory rape charges.”

“Hey, she’s eighteen! She’s a senior, and I think she said she got held back in elementary school or something. Measles, maybe,” Rabbit protested.

“Rabbit, you’re over thirty.”

“I got turned at seventeen.”

“Twenty years ago.”

He finally had the good grace to look embarrassed. “I got nothing.”

“Yeah, that’s a pretty good description of your morals,” I said.

“You know you’re a leech when the crime boss is slagging on your moral fiber,” Greg chimed in from the doorway.

I shot him a look. “Not helpful.”

“But true.”

I didn’t argue, just turned back to Rabbit. “When was the last time you saw Julia?”

“Why? Did something happen? Holy shit, is Jules okay? What happened?” Rabbit was out of his chair like a shot and right up in my face. I stood up and put a hand on his shoulder.

“We don’t know if anything’s happened,” I said, “but her brother is worried. She didn’t come home from work a couple of nights ago, and he says that’s not like her.”

“Shit,” Rabbit said, sitting back in the chair and putting his head in his hands. “Was it Monday night?”

“It was,” Greg said, coming fully into the room. “Why? Is Monday important?”

“We were supposed to meet up after she got out of school Tuesday. She was . . . helping me with a project.” Rabbit suddenly became very interested in the grain of the faux wood of the conference table.

I leaned forward, putting an elbow on that same table. “What project?” I asked.

Rabbit mumbled something almost unintelligible.

I grabbed his shoulder and turned him to face me. “Now is not the time to mumble, Rabbit. What was she helping you with?”

“I’m going to night school, okay?” he said, then leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest. “I dropped out before I got my diploma, so I found a night school and I been working on my GED.”

“Why? You got a job interview?” Greg said with a smirk.

Rabbit rubbed his hands over his face, then flipped Greg off. “One, screw you, fatass. Two, I’m the closest thing the Morlocks got to a leader, and I figured if I knew a little more book stuff, like philosophy and stuff, maybe it’d help me do better.” He leaned forward and looked me in the eye. “Almost everybody I know is dead. Not vamp-dead. Real dead. Squirrel got eaten in the sewer by that stupid rag monster last year. Alexis got offed by Tiram. His goons killed a shitload of the other Morlocks, and most of the rest died fighting Lilith and her guys. There’s not that many of us left, and I’m the best option we got for a boss. I want to get smarter, so the rest of my family doesn’t get killed. I know you think I’m stupid, and maybe I am. But I’m all we got, so Jules is helping me go to night school so I can get better. And if I can graduate in May, then she’ll help me take some classes at CPCC or something.”

I had to admit, that confession was more than I expected out of Rabbit. He’d always struck me as a petty little shithead crook, but it looked like the near extermination of the Morlocks had changed him. Losing almost everything that ever meant anything to you could do that. I should know.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Greg’s cell phone chirped like R2-D2 and we all turned to look. He pulled it out of his pocket, tapped the screen, and looked up at me. “We gotta go. Sabrina caught a case, and it looks like something we want to see.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Is it Jules?” Rabbit said, almost overlapping me.

“It’s a girl, and she’s been drained. She was killed by a vampire.”

“Completely drained?” I asked.

“Is it Jules?” Rabbit asked, louder now, and on his feet.

“We don’t know yet,” Greg said. “But it was a vampire kill, and that makes it our problem.”

“Does Sabrina have any idea of the time of death?” I asked.

“No. The coroner isn’t there yet,” Greg said, “but we’d better move.”

Rabbit looked at me, fear in his eyes. “Are you gonna . . .”

“Yeah. I’ve got to, Rabbit. You know this life isn’t for everybody. Hell, it’s not even for most of us. I can’t have a new kid vampire running around, especially since she’s going to wake up starving and kill anybody that’s close. That happens, and any hope of secrecy goes out the window.”

“But if it’s Jules? I mean . . . couldn’t you, I don’t know, bring her here or something?” he asked, pinkish tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.

“If it is Julia, do you want to do that to her? Do you want to trap her down here, with you? Everything she’s ever had has been taken from her. Do you want to tell her she has to live without it forever?”

“Would you want the choice? Would you want the chance to decide, or would you want somebody to stake you before you even woke up?” Rabbit almost spat the words.

I opened my mouth to reply, but Greg cut me off. “The stake. I’d take the stake every time. And you would, too.”

Rabbit just stood there, for a long moment before nodding at me. I stepped out of his “office” into Morlocktown and moved toward the main tunnels.

Greg was right beside me as we jogged, then ran through the sewers. “Call Bobby,” I said. “Tell him we need him to expedite removal, and to secure the body with the silver-plated cuffs I gave him. We’ll deal with the body when we get there.”

“Deal with?” Greg asked. He knew full well what we were going there to do, but he wanted me to say it, to make it real to myself.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice flat. I ran through the sewers toward a murder scene, knowing that whoever this girl was, I was going to have to kill her all over again.