I’D STOOD BESIDE a lot of dead bodies with Dolph by my side towering over me at six foot eight. Captain Dolph Storr towered over most people, but since I was five foot three I was used to being the smallest person in the room, so it had never bothered me. His hair was still dark, cut close to his head so that it didn’t touch his ears. His suits always looked fresh from the closet no matter what time of day or night it was, and he was still built bulky but trim like a football player or a wrestler. We stood with the plastic booties over our shoes, his shiny loafers and my trainers. The fancier my upcoming wedding got the more casual I was dressing, like a throwback to when Jean-Claude and I first met, when I wouldn’t have known fashion if it bit me on the ass. I did realize it was a way of rebelling against the expectations of the upcoming wedding, but sometimes you gotta go with the coping mechanisms that work for you.
The body was really just black bones with the skull opened in one last soundless scream that highlighted the fangs in the middle of all the human teeth. I knew the body had been inert, dead when it burned so there’d been no screaming, but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head as I stared down at the open mouth trapped in the burned remains. It lay twisted in the ruin of a nearly oval hole burned into the carpet. One side of the open drapes was barely singed at the bottom, just starting to catch fire when the fast-thinking maid had come in with a fire extinguisher and saved the rest of the room. In fact, extraordinarily little of the room was burned.
“Vampires burn too fast and hot for the room to be this untouched; the maid was very quick on the draw with the fire extinguisher,” I said.
“She was, we got very lucky that so much of the room is still intact.”
“I don’t want to see another scene like the New York hotel,” Pete McKinnon said from behind us. We glanced back as he joined us, and I was suddenly the very little middle to a very big male sandwich. McKinnon was as broad through the shoulders as Dolph, and over six feet tall, just not as over as Dolph. They’d played football together in college, but where Dolph’s hair was still the nearly black it had always been, McKinnon’s was gray with more white in it than when I’d met him six years ago. Dolph looked almost unchanged, but Pete looked older and more tired, just like he had when I met him. He’d put on a little more weight around the middle, but not much.
I offered him my hand before I realized we were both wearing the crime scene gloves and that meant touch nothing, not even each other. “Hello, and congratulations on the promotion to the big committee appointment,” I said.
“Thanks, if I’d known the job came with a permanent move to Washington, DC, I might have hesitated. Wife isn’t too pleased being that far away from the kids and grandkids.”
“I’m glad for your expertise, Pete,” Dolph said, “but how did you get on the ground this fast?”
“Let’s just say that St. Louis is of special interest for certain DC task forces right now.”
“You’re going to have to elaborate on that if you want access to my crime scene,” Dolph said.
I was glad Dolph had said it first.
McKinnon gave him a look, then glanced at me. “Okay, but can we clear the room?”
“We can,” Dolph said, and proceeded to tell everyone to get out and give us the space. No one argued, they just moved and closed the door respectfully behind them. The smell of the burned carpet and the crisped drapes was stronger, but it didn’t smell as much like burned meat as a regular human corpse would have; vampire flesh burns very differently from ours, cleaner. Less like cooking meat and more like something else. What that else was, the experts in a lot of fields are still trying to figure out.
“Why is St. Louis getting special treatment from the Oversight Committee on Supernatural Affairs?” Dolph asked.
“When the first Sunshine Murder happened, the powers that be were afraid it would spread here.”
“I hate that name, by the way; ‘Sunshine Murders’ sounds so upbeat. It makes it seem like the vampire didn’t die a gruesome death,” I said.
“We can call them something else while we’re alone,” McKinnon said.
“Did I offend you on the phone using the phrase?” Dolph asked.
“No, Dolph, it’s just . . . it seems like the press is downplaying it.”
“The Sunshine Murders are starting to be the leading story on every news site,” McKinnon said.
“I stay off the news,” I said.
“Because of the wedding speculations?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Why are you here, Pete? Why this fast?” Dolph asked.
“The big wedding is why.”
I looked at him then; his face gave nothing away. He was a firefighter and arson investigator specialist, but he had always given blank face like a cop. Maybe it was specializing in arson investigations?
“You mean my wedding to Jean-Claude?”
“Yes.”
“Why should my nuptials have one of the top-ranking officials from the Supernatural Oversight Committee here in St. Louis for one suspicious death?” I studied his face for a clue, but he kept looking at the remains at our feet and not meeting my eyes. Was he afraid of what I’d see in them, or was he treating me like a vampire and that was why he’d stopped looking me in the eyes? I hoped not, because it would make me sad for Pete McKinnon to believe the rumors.
“It’s not just one suspicious death, Blake, it’s hundreds.”
“You mean the hotel fire in New York,” I said.
He nodded.
“I heard the death toll was over a hundred,” I said.
“One hundred and eighty-eight,” he said. The fact that he knew the exact number was not a good sign. It probably meant it would haunt him. Years from now when he was closer to eighty than fifty he’d probably still be able to quote the number of dead from the New York fire.
“Has anyone claimed credit for it yet?” I asked.
“No, in fact I’ve never seen all the hate groups deny anything so hard and so often.”
“Usually they’re clamoring to take credit for killing a vampire,” I said.
“That’s when all that dies is the vampire, but whoever opened the drapes in New York trapped hundreds of regular people. They opened them just after dawn, almost everybody still asleep in their rooms.” He stared at the slightly singed window, but his eyes had that look that let me know he was seeing the other arson scene, far away from this one.
“So, Humans First and HAV are both denying involvement with the New York case?” I asked.
“Humans Against Vampires stated that they do not condone violence to further their cause, which they usually don’t,” he said.
“Humans First does violence; they were the ones that firebombed the Church of Eternal Life here about six, seven years ago,” I said.
“Didn’t they try to shoot you, too?” McKinnon asked.
“Yeah, HAV mostly hates vampires and sees shapeshifters as victims of a disease, but Humans First hates all supernaturals including necromancers like me.”
“HAV says that they would never be that careless of other human beings,” Dolph said.
“Are you saying they haven’t claimed responsibility for any of the other murders?” I asked.
“Not that I’ve heard,” Dolph said.
McKinnon said, “Humans First says that just opening the drapes and letting the sunlight do the job is too passive for them. The vampire should suffer instead of sleep through it.”
“They said that publicly?” I asked.
He gave a small smile that never reached his tired eyes. “No, they’re better at handling the press than when they first started, but privately in interviews they think it’s a coward’s way of slaying vampires.”
“Because the vampire doesn’t suffer enough?” I asked.
“Something like that.”
“So, what does Anita’s impending marriage have to do with the Sunshine Murders?” Dolph asked.
“I didn’t say it was connected to the murders.”
“So why did St. Louis having its first of these murders bring you on the jump and mentioning my upcoming nuptials in the same breath?”
“Ah, okay, I handled this badly. My bosses back in DC would not be happy.”
“You don’t make mistakes like that, Pete,” Dolph said.
“The first time I met you, you had brought me the files on an arson that you thought was a pyrokinetic. You risked your job to bring me on before you got permission because you didn’t want people to get caught in the next fire,” I said.
“I remember,” he said. He gave me those tired eyes, then looked back down at the body.
“What do you need us to know now, today, that your bosses wanted you to wait to tell us?” I asked.
He smiled at me, then said, “That they’re afraid that your wedding will be targeted by the hate groups.”
“We’re aware that the hate groups are hating us even more because of how popular Jean-Claude has become in the media. It’s too much positive press for the hate groups to stomach.”
He shook his head and the smile faded. “I don’t mean the regular hate groups and the regular shit I’m sure you and your intended have to deal with, I mean that whoever is behind these murders is aiming at you and Jean-Claude specifically. They want to hurt people close to you.” I frowned at him, then looked back at Dolph. “You said this vampire was new to town, not one of ours.”
“He’s never been to St. Louis as far as we know.”
I looked back at McKinnon. “How is the death of a vampire new to our town a blow aimed at Jean-Claude and me?”
“I’m not sure it is, maybe it was just a convenient target, but the intel we got recently says that the group behind the”—he hesitated—“murders wants to kill Jean-Claude and anyone close to him.”
“All the hate groups say that, and you can call them the Sunshine Murders if you want, I don’t have a better name for it,” I said.
He shook his head. “I can’t give you details, but we have a credible threat against Jean-Claude and you that’s connected to whoever is doing the Sunshine Murders.”
“How credible?” Dolph asked.
“Credible enough that I got on a plane to visit family in St. Louis to tell you about it before this murder happened.”
“You mean you came to visit family just so you could tell Dolph and me about the threats to Jean-Claude?”
“Jean-Claude and you, Blake, don’t discount that. Whoever this group is, it’s using the internet to connect, and some of our intel looking for other terrorist activity caught it. They want Jean-Claude and his queen dead, and they want you dead before the wedding. It seems very important to them to prevent the wedding.”
“Why? Is it just the publicity being so good?” I asked.
“We’re not sure, but I told my wife we’d go visit family and I told my bosses that my wife wanted to visit family here in St. Louis so I could tell you this.”
“Thank you for that, Pete,” Dolph said.
“I know Anita’s like family to you, and yeah I know you had a falling-out a few years back, but what family doesn’t fight among themselves? I didn’t want to know this and have something happen and have to face you at the next reunion, and”—he looked at me—“you’re a good cop, and you do your best to be one of the good guys, good people, whatever term won’t offend people nowadays.”
“ ‘Good guys’ is fine with me,” I said.
He smiled. “Good to know, but you are one of the good guys, Blake, and no matter what the rumor mill says about you, you do your best to keep people safe on both sides of the divide between human and supernatural. You needed to know.”
“We were planning to up our security around the wedding, but thanks for giving me the heads-up.”
“No, Blake, you still don’t get it; you need to up your security now, as in right now.”
Dolph looked at the other man. “Did the online chatter mention a time frame?”
McKinnon nodded. “They’re planning something this week.”
I stared at him. “This week, like now this week?”
“Yes.”
“Shit.” I was already reaching for my phone.
“Who you going to call?” he asked.
“Jean-Claude to start with, then . . . everyone, I guess.” I thought about it. “Ted Forrester is in town getting his fitting as my best man, so him, too.”
“Forrester is in town this week?” Dolph asked.
“He and his son were only planning to stay for a couple of days. In fact, I left him being fitted to come here.”
“U.S. Marshal Ted Forrester?” McKinnon asked.
I said, “Yes.”
Dolph said, “Is there another one?”
“I know his reputation; if he could stay over for a few days that would be good.”
“You could have picked up a phone and told me. I’d have told Anita,” Dolph said.
“I could have, but then I wouldn’t be here on the ground to help catch the bastards. The Sunshine Murders are set up online; the main part of the group doesn’t have to be in the city where the murder happens, but for what they’re planning to do here in St. Louis they’ll need to have boots on the ground. It’s our best chance to catch the leaders.”
“With me and Jean-Claude as bait.”
“Not just the two of you, they want to take down your whole power structure, before the wedding.”
“Define power structure,” I said.
“All Jean-Claude’s businesses, Micah Callahan and his Coalition for Better Understanding between the Human and Lycanthrope Communities, Rafael and all the wererats, any shapeshifter seen as your ally or romantic partner.”
“They can’t kill shapeshifters by letting in some sunlight,” I said.
“No, and they know that, Blake.”
“Do you know specifics?” Dolph asked for me.
“They’re being cautious even online, but they keep talking about the one thing that kills all monsters. They keep saying that sunlight isn’t the only thing that burns.”
“Fire kills everything,” I said, and lifted my phone again.
“If you could contact everyone without using a phone or computer, that would be appreciated,” McKinnon said.
“Are your analysts monitoring my phone calls?” I asked.
“That would be illegal to spy on American citizens,” McKinnon said.
“But if I make this phone call your bosses will know you told me without their permission.”
“Not just our people, but potentially the bad guys will know you know. They’re too computer- and tech-savvy to not be trying to hack into their targets’ electronic devices.”
“How do you think I can contact everyone without a phone?” I asked, narrowing my eyes as I studied his face.
He spread his hands a little like, I’m not a threat. “Ease down, Blake, I’m on your side.”
“Then stop pussyfooting around and just say shit, patience is never my best virtue, and subtle is not my skill set, talk like you know that.”
He almost smiled. “I wasn’t sure Dolph knew about all of your skills.”
Dolph said, “It’s okay, Pete, Anita and I worked out our differences about the supernatural stuff. She and Jean-Claude had dinner with Lucille and me explaining things and then another meal at the house with Darren and his wife. It’s why he’s still alive to donate sperm for in vitro.”
“I thought vampires couldn’t carry a pregnancy,” McKinnon said.
I said, “They can’t, but we’ve got a surrogate lined up. If it works it will be the first surrogate for a vampire couple in the world.”
“And you’re good with all this?” he asked Dolph.
He nodded. “I am. Erica is only twenty years dead, she can talk all the same memories that Lucille and I have. Would I have chosen differently, yes, but I’ve never seen my son happier, and that’s gotta count for something.”
“That’s great, but last we talked in detail you said that you suspected that damn vampire had more of a hold on Anita than she let on, and if you learned he could see through her eyes at a crime scene you’d yank her badge if you could.”
I stared up at Dolph. “Really?” I said.
He looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t rational about vampires and shapeshifters back then, you know that. I’ll never be able to apologize enough for some of what I did while I was working through my grief about what I thought my son’s life would be versus the reality. You could have had my badge for some of what I did to you and your werewolf friend.”
“We worked it out,” I said.
“We did.” He looked at the other man. “I know she can contact her people mind to mind. She did it in front of me, Zerbrowski, and the SWAT people she works with most often. Not sure any of us shared that information with the other cops.”
“You’re all that loyal to her?”
“She’s earned it.”
“Even from the SWAT officers?”
“Apparently so, or more of the other cops would have talked by now,” Dolph said.
“How do you know?” I asked.
McKinnon looked away from me again, hiding his eyes. He did worry I could use Jean-Claude’s powers to read him or maybe even bespell him. I filed it away for another day.
“Does it matter?”
“It does, but right this second nothing matters as much as contacting my people, but put a pin in it, McKinnon, because I will ask again.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
I didn’t have to reach out to Jean-Claude, just focus on him more. He breathed through me, letting me know he’d heard most of it. He was incredibly careful when I was with the police, because there were a surprising number of them that had at least low-level psychic ability. It was their gut instinct that kept them from going down that dark alley, though they didn’t know why, and later they’d find the bad guy waiting for them. “Magic” could make their skin creep, or it spiked through them in a rush of adrenaline like an attack. Either way, Jean-Claude had learned to work around it more than anyone else I was metaphysically connected to, but then he’d had centuries more practice except for Damian. The redheaded vampire was over five hundred years older than Jean-Claude, but he’d never be a master vampire like Jean-Claude or even like Asher. Damian had no animal to call and had never even tried to make a human servant like I was for Jean-Claude. Who’s best at something isn’t always about age and experience, sometimes it’s about ability. Jean-Claude had it, Damian didn’t.
Out loud I said, “You can be louder in my head than this, the room is all friendlies.”
Jean-Claude just opened the link, and I was suddenly inside his head. It was disorienting enough that I reached out to steady myself but wasn’t standing close enough to anything. I felt a hand on my arm and wasn’t sure if it was Dolph or McKinnon, because my “eyes” were somewhere else. I saw the dressing table in front of him and had a sense of the mirror surrounded by lights. He was backstage at Guilty Pleasures; I’d almost forgotten he was going to do one of his rare stage appearances, which explained the array of eye shadows and other makeup scattered in front of him. He usually just introduced the acts and spoke with the crowd in between the other dancers taking the stage, but once a month he took center stage. It had been about every three to four months, but some of the older vampires had complained he was their king and kings shouldn’t shake their booty onstage, but since they bitched, he did it once a month instead of four times a year. There was more than one reason we worked as a couple; a shared finger in the eye to other people’s expectations was one of them.
“You okay, Blake?” McKinnon’s voice.
Dolph’s voice was closer. “She’s okay.”
Knowing it was Dolph being such a good sport about the vampire powers helped me draw back enough to let Jean-Claude know what I’d learned in the last few minutes without being so far into his head that I couldn’t tell where he and I were separate. The ability to share this deeply, almost a body swap, had been one of the things that terrified me in the beginning. It still wasn’t my favorite part, but because we could do it, Jean-Claude knew the danger that he and all our people were in like magic, or maybe by magic. The line between psychic abilities and magic was thin and getting thinner, or maybe my ability to call my abilities psychic as opposed to magic was just the lady protesting too much.
My hands touched the makeup on my . . . his hands touched his makeup table, and he drew me out far enough that I was hovering like an invisible camera just above him. It was always the visual if we stayed separate from each other, like we hovered in the air and gazed down. Jean-Claude had done dramatic stage makeup around his eyes; something in all the blues, blacks, grays, and silver coaxed his eyes from a blue so dark it was almost black to something lighter, if you could call cobalt blue light. It was as if he’d taken his eyes from the blue just before the last light fades into night to twilight, when the sky hovers between cerulean and sapphire. It took me a few seconds to take in the perfect black curls that fell around his shoulders, or that he was wearing a shirt I’d never seen on him. The thought came through my head that it was a costume that went with the makeup.
“Anita, you okay?” Dolph said.
I closed my eyes for real, which didn’t do a damn thing to make me not see Jean-Claude inside my head. Sweet Jesus, and I was about to marry him. I was in love with him, had cohabitated with him for years and still there were moments like this when his beauty undid me. No wonder I’d fought so long and hard not to fall under his spell.
“I’ll see you at the club tonight,” I said. I knew it sounded abrupt, but it was one way to fight through the reaction I was having. Hell, I had used being cranky and unimpressed as a way to fight off my reactions to Jean-Claude for years.
“Is she still talking to someone else?” McKinnon asked.
“Yes,” Dolph said.
Jean-Claude whispered, “I cannot wait to see you in your new dress and shoes tonight, ma petite.”
“I can’t wait to see what you’re wearing, or not wearing,” I said, and just by thinking of him out of his clothes I fell into his eyes again. If Dolph hadn’t been holding my arm I would have fallen for real, as if his eyes were a dark pool of water that I could drown in and I would enjoy every compromised breath until I died. That fear had been what helped me fight my attraction to Jean-Claude for so long. His own vampire marks combined with my natural ability with the dead should have kept me safer than this. What the hell was wrong?
“Ma petite, have I suddenly become irresistible?” I heard the smile in his voice; it helped me push back so that I could see his face and that smile most seductive. I could see all that exotic makeup again. He was breathtaking. My chest felt tight at the sight of him. I started to fall into his eyes again like I was iron and he was a magnet that I could not resist. When we’d first met I’d driven my fingernails into my hand so the pain would help me resist his charms, but I had other options now. I shoved power into that beautiful face, against that irresistible force, and Jean-Claude lashed back as if I’d tried to slice him with a blade and he’d had to use his own blade to keep me from drawing blood. I think it caught us both off guard and we just reacted. We both lashed out with near pure power. Jean-Claude cut our link so we couldn’t hurt each other anymore, but the rush was so powerful I damn near convulsed with Dolph’s hand on my arm. The movement was sudden enough that I jerked free of Dolph, then started to fall. Jean-Claude had tried to protect us both by shutting down the link, but it was McKinnon and Dolph who kept me from falling into the burned remains of our victim.
“What the hell was that?” McKinnon asked.
“I’ve never seen her like this,” Dolph said.
I stayed on all fours with my gloves and booties the only thing touching the crime scene’s carpet. Maybe if the men’s knees hadn’t been in the way I would have knelt, but part of me remembered where I was, even if most of me didn’t. I’d never had a reaction to Jean-Claude like that, not just from mind-to-mind contact. I stayed down until I didn’t feel shaky anymore, then pushed myself upward with my fingertips and the balls of my feet. I had a moment where I just wanted to run from the crime scene to see Jean-Claude dance. The urge was so great that I started to turn toward the door and caught myself.
“I’ve never seen me like this,” I said.
“What did you say?” Dolph asked.
I repeated myself.
“Seriously?” McKinnon asked.
I nodded. “Very seriously. Jean-Claude and I will be having a little talk later.”
“You don’t sound happy,” McKinnon said.
I looked at him and it must have been a good look, because he held his hands up. “Sorry, Blake, just commenting.”
“Maybe you should hold the comments until later.”
Jean-Claude’s “voice” was in my head again. I started to slam all my shields in place, but he said, “It is not me.”
I hesitated, too stressed to form a silent what in my head, but Jean-Claude got the point, because he said, “Whatever lowered your resistance to me is not me, or you. It is something outside of us.”
“Shit,” I said with real feeling and a wash of fear that left my skin cold.
“What’s wrong?” Dolph asked.
“We’re under attack,” I said.
“Where?” Dolph said. “We’ll send backup.”
I promised I’d hug him later for that being his first thought. Right now, I shook my head. “Not that kind of attack, not physical, magical.”
“What do you mean?” McKinnon asked.
I shook my head again. “I mean that something or someone interfered with me when I contacted Jean-Claude right now. They messed with me bad. I was like mesmerized by him. I haven’t been like that in years; hell, no vampire has been able to roll me that badly in ages.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t Jean-Claude getting carried away?” McKinnon asked.
“No, one of the reasons it took so long for him to win me over was my fear of this kind of shit. He wouldn’t do it by accident, or casually, not with the wedding so close.”
“Wait,” McKinnon said, “are you saying this would be enough for you to call off the wedding?”
“Damn straight it would be; if he’s fucking with my head like this on purpose, then I want nothing to do with him. It’s like metaphysical rape, except it’s a real aphrodisiac that ignites real lust, and worse, love. If he did that to me like this from a distance I’d never want to be in the same room with him again. It would be too dangerous, which means no wedding.”
“Okay, but you’re not really calling off the wedding, right?” McKinnon said.
“No, but if it wasn’t Jean-Claude overstepping then it was another vampire or witch, something that was so freaking powerful it mind-fucked me without me knowing it, from a distance.” My stomach clenched tight with the thought. I reached for the chain around my neck and drew my cross into sight, so I could hold it in my hand. Usually I let it dangle around my neck when I wanted it in sight, but tonight I needed more reassurance.
“How powerful would someone have to be to roll you like this when they aren’t even in the room with you?” Dolph asked.
“Powerful, like ancient vampire powerful. Shit, my father just called. He and the rest of my family are flying in next week.”
“I’m glad your father decided to walk you down the aisle after all,” Dolph said.
“No, it’s not like that. He’s finally willing to meet Jean-Claude, but he still wants me to give him up and definitely not marry a vampire.”
“Then why come at all?” he asked.
“Because if he doesn’t get fitted for the bespoke clothes now, the suit will never be ready in time. I told Dad that if he didn’t come for the early fitting then he’d made his choice and I’d find someone else to give me away. He’s coming to be fitted, and he’s agreed to meet Jean-Claude, but everything else is up in the air. I honestly don’t think my very Catholic father is going to come around to attending the wedding let alone walking me down the aisle.”
“Lucille and I can meet with him while he’s here, tell him about how we’ve worked things out with Darren and Erica.”
“Thanks, Dolph, if Dad gets to come to town before the wedding that would be great.”
“What do you mean, if?” McKinnon asked.
“I can’t let my very human, very non-cop family come to town if we are under major vampire attack. If this master vamp can roll me my family won’t have a chance; hell, most of the people I love who are supernatural won’t have a chance. I have more natural immunity to vampire powers than most of them.”
“Don’t cancel your family coming in, Blake.”
“I have no choice, McKinnon.”
“You do, actually.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The oversight committee is experimenting with some magical protection protocols.”
“Pete,” Dolph said, “did you just do something to one of my officers?”
“I didn’t mean to affect Blake with it. I was told to try it out in the field gently if the chance arose.”
Dolph suddenly loomed over the other man, as if the extra inches had grown. He asked with each word enunciated almost painfully, as if losing control of his voice would be the precursor to losing control of other things. “What-did-you-do-to-Anita?”
McKinnon spread his hands out like he was showing himself unarmed. Neither Dolph nor I was buying it. “What the fuck did you do to me, McKinnon?”
“We have a coven of witches working with us. It’s supposed to be a spell to strip a vampire of its control over us, so it can’t work mind tricks. It wasn’t supposed to strip you of your control and make the vampire more powerful.”
“That was damn near gibberish,” I said.
“Agreed,” Dolph said.
“Try again, slowly and clearly,” I said.
McKinnon looked from one to the other of us, his arms a little more raised as if we’d asked to see his hands; that worked for me right now. “The witches said that the charm, or spell, I’m honestly not sure which is the correct term and since Blake does more magic than I do, I just want to be clear up front that I’m not up on the latest and greatest magical vocabulary.”
“Fine, the spell, or charm, is supposed to do what exactly?”
“Protect whoever is wearing it from vampires.”
“So will a holy item,” I said.
“Only if you’re a believer; you’d be surprised how many agnostics and atheists go into government work.”
“Not surprised,” I said.
“Keep talking, Pete.”
He looked up at one of his oldest friends as if he hadn’t expected Dolph to be on my side. Pete should have double-checked that before he invited himself to Dolph’s crime scene. “It was supposed to strip the vampire of their powers.”
“Strip them of what powers, exactly?” I asked.
McKinnon blinked at me like the question was hard. “Mind powers.”
“More specific,” I said.
“How specific?”
“No single spell or charm or whatever the fuck it is could cover every vampire power possible.”
“We know it won’t help with super strength or hearing or anything physical,” he said.
“I’m not even counting the physical stuff, so let me ask you one more time. What kind of powers is that damn thing you’re wearing supposed to strip away from a vampire?”
“Mind powers, like bespelling us with their eyes.”
“I damn near fell into Jean-Claude’s eyes just now like a newbie, so that didn’t work.”
“Sorry about that, and I did not mean to throw a monkey wrench in the wedding plans.”
“Thanks for telling the truth,” I said.
“If you’d canceled the wedding and lost the chance to make up with your dad, I’d never be able to look myself in the mirror again, Blake.”
“Good to know,” I said.
“What other vampire powers is the spell supposed to stop?” Dolph asked.
“The witches said . . .”
“Don’t throw the witches under the bus, McKinnon; you’re the one who tricked me into contacting Jean-Claude via mind like he and I were your guinea pigs when you just admitted you don’t understand the magic in the damn charm. This is on you.”
“Okay, okay, you’re right.”
Dolph said, “So what else is the charm supposed to do?”
“Vampire gaze protection, strip a vampire of its special power abilities.”
“What does that last part mean?” Dolph asked.
“Some vampires can cause panic in a crowd, or lust, or some secondary emotion, or even plant thoughts in a person’s head,” McKinnon said.
“Like a vampire telling a cop to shoot another cop and protect the vampire,” Dolph said.
“Yes.”
“We’ve all seen that happen,” Dolph said.
I nodded. We had.
“So why did it make Jean-Claude’s hold on Anita stronger?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why did it make me less able to fight off vampire powers?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I’d say this is a spectacular failure of a field test,” McKinnon said.
“Ya think?” I said, glaring at him.
“So, you lied to Anita and me when you said if she used her phone to warn her people that your bosses would overhear it and get you in trouble?”
“No, that wasn’t a lie, I swear, but it’s the hate group’s online presence that I’d be more worried about. They have some serious hacker skills. We’ve found them places we . . . I can’t tell either of you but let’s just say unless your phone is encrypted as well as top-secret government lines, the hate group’s hackers will be able to listen in on any or all of the people in your network.”
I almost told them that actually we had some of the highest security that money could buy, thanks to finding out we’d been bugged a few years back. I didn’t know how it all worked, but I knew that people that Jean-Claude and Rafael paid to know this shit had assured us that within reason we were safe. The within reason was because hacking was a lot like torture; eventually every system and every person breaks. But the fact that we paid for that kind of specialty encryption and protection to our phones and everything else was not something to share with a government worker, especially not someone working for a committee that was spending our tax dollars on spells to use against vampires.
“Vampires are legal citizens; isn’t researching how to harm them illegal somehow?”
McKinnon snorted. “You don’t even want to know what our government is funding. It’s not just magic to use against supernatural citizens, Blake.”
“Are you admitting that the committee is researching how to use magic against all of us?” I asked.
McKinnon looked less than happy for a second, before he found a smile from somewhere to try and fake his way through. “Would our government do that?”
“Pete,” Dolph said, just that, but it was enough between them.
“I’m sorry, Dolph, I’ve said more than I should already.”
“Fine,” I said, “let’s go back to the spell that you used against me.”
“Against vampires.”
“Oh, against my fiancé and the man that I love, that makes it so much better.”
He had the grace to look embarrassed. “When you say it like that, it sounds pretty rotten.”
“There is no good way to say this,” I said.
“Tell her what else the spell is supposed to do, Pete.”
“I told you, protection against vampire gaze, being taken over and forced to fight on their side, any emotions that the vampire has the ability to raise in humans.”
“Nope, that’s not how the witches presented it. They didn’t go into a room of government men with backgrounds in firefighting, cops, military, et cetera . . . and say it’ll stop emotions.”
Pete smiled. “You’re right, they said the spell, or charm, would stop secondary vampire abilities, whatever they might be.”
“That’s pretty damn broad,” I said.
“That’s why they’ve given the prototype to a few people to test in the field under nonthreatening conditions.”
“Like today with me and Jean-Claude.”
“Yes.”
“If you’d have told me ahead of time I’d have been glad to help you test the damn thing, but don’t ever spring shit like this on me again.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Your word,” Dolph said.
“My word,” McKinnon said.
“I have to tell our security that they need to up our alert level, and I’m not risking metaphysics while you’re wearing the charm.”
“I can leave the room.”
“What’s the range on the spell?”
He looked embarrassed again. “We’re not certain.”
“Do you know what effects it has on normal psychics?” I asked.
“There was no impact on normal human psychics.”
“It just impacts vampires?” I asked.
“We had one voodoo practitioner that had issues with it, but since he can raise the dead like you do, we discounted it.”
I stared at him. Dolph asked for me like he’d read my mind. “Why discount that?”
“I’m not at liberty to share that information.”
“Jesus, McKinnon, is this a charm aimed at people who deal with death magic?”
“We were looking for something that would work against all undead,” he said, as if that was as much as he was allowed to share.
“I used to think you were smart, McKinnon,” I said.
“She’s a necromancer, Pete.”
“I realize that now, I mean I knew that before, but I don’t think of Blake like that. She’s one of us, not one of . . .” He just stopped talking as Dolph and I stared at him. Whatever he saw in our faces made him look at the floor again like he’d been called on the carpet.
“Not one of them? Was that what you were going to say?” I asked, voice quiet because I couldn’t decide if I was angry or just massively disappointed.
“I’m sorry, Blake, I came here to help, not hurt.”
“I’m going to call my people now, but when I’m done I want to see this charm.”
“I don’t think you touching it is a good idea after what just happened,” McKinnon said.
“I agree, that’s why I said see it, not touch it.” I started to make the call, then debated on if I wanted to do it in front of McKinnon or Dolph, but especially McKinnon. If he was telling the truth and I thought he was, he’d have tapes or whatever with the conversation on it later, but that would just be voices. If he watched me make the call he’d have body language, facial expressions, and just personal observation to put with the words.
“Let’s give the room back to the rest of the crime scene crew. I’ll call from down the hallway.”
They agreed that giving the room back to everyone was a good idea, so Dolph opened the door and everyone who had been cooling their heels in the hallway came back inside and I went out. Though as I exited, I said, “I want to finish our talk before you leave here, McKinnon.”
“I’ll be here when you’re ready,” he said.
I wanted to say You better be, but out loud I just said, “Good.” McKinnon had helped us with his warning; he was on our side sort of, I didn’t need to threaten him. I just really wanted to because I was pissed at him about the charm. I had some ideas about what the magic in it was, but it was more important to let everyone know the security risk than to play tough guy with McKinnon. Besides, my ego was secure, so I didn’t have to play.