Obsidian Butterfly (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 9)

36

I'D PULLED INTO a deserted parking lot about two blocks down and around the corner from the bar. Ramirez had pulled in beside me, and he and the uniform, Officer Rigby, walked over to us. Rigby was medium height, well built, and moved like he worked out. He had an easy confidence, and a ready smile that went all the way to his eyes. He was entirely too comfortable in his own skin, as if nothing really bad had ever touched him. He lacked entirely that air that most policemen have of having been ridden hard and put up wet. He looked older than I was, but his eyes were younger, and I resented that.

Ramirez had spent his drive time checking out Nicandro Baco, alias Nicky Baco. He was suspected of murders, but witnesses had a strange way of disappearing or forgetting what they'd seen. He was associated with a local biker gang, ah, club. Biker gangs now preferred the more politically correct term of club, according to Ramirez. The local "club" was called Los Lobos. "Not to be confused with the music group," Ramirez said.

I'd blinked at him. Then I got the joke. "Oh, yeah, Los Lobos, the music group."

He looked at me. "Are you all right?"

I nodded. Even two blocks away I could feel a touch of Baco's magic. I was betting if someone took the time, they'd find spells, charms, wards, set up here and there in the surrounding area. I didn't think he was aware of me yet. I think the only reason I'd sensed him so strongly was he was in the middle of a spell. The charms were scattered around the neighborhood to give off a certain unease. He might have literally driven the other businesses out of business. Illegal, as well as unethical. Of course, why he'd want to destroy the entire economy of the area surrounding his bar was a mystery to me. I'd worry about it later. Murder and mayhem first. Possible real estate scam later. Some days you just have to prioritize.

"The Lobos are small and local, but they've got a bad rep," Ramirez said.

"How bad?" I asked.

"Drug running, murder, murder for hire, assault, assault with a deadly, attempted murder, rape, kidnapping."

Bernardo said, "Kidnapping?" As if the other crimes were to be expected but not the last.

Ramirez looked at him, and his eyes went from friendly to cool. He didn't like Bernardo for some reason. "We think they abducted a teenage girl, but nobody ever surfaced, and the only witness just saw her being dragged into a van that looked like one that their leader, Roland Sanchez, owned at the time. But a lot of people own gray vans."

"Have you had a lot of disappearing teenage girls?" I asked.

"Our share, but no, we haven't noticed a pattern of young women being abducted by the gang. I'm not saying they won't do it, but they're not making a habit of it."

"Glad to hear it," I said.

Ramirez smiled. "You're armed, and ... " He handed me a slender cellphone. "Press this button and it'll call this phone." He held up a matching phone. "Rigby and I will come running with backup."

My eyes flicked to Rigby, who actually tipped his hat at me. "At your service, ma'am."

Ma'am? Either he was five years younger than he looked, or he used ma'am for all women. I turned from his peaceful eyes to Ramirez. His eyes were kind but they weren't peaceful. He'd seen too much of life for true tranquility. I liked his eyes better. "You're not going to try and argue me out of just Bernardo and I walking into the bar?"

"We suspect Baco of using magic to kill people. That is an automatic death sentence. If he gets a whiff of police, then he'll clam up and start asking for a lawyer. If you want information from him, you'll have to play ordinary citizen. Now, if you planned to go in there alone without Bernardo or some man with you, then I'd argue."

I frowned at him. "I can take care of myself."

He shook his head. "In the world that this gang runs in, women do not exist except through men."

My frown deepened. "You've lost me."

"All women are either someone's mother, daughter, wife, sister, girlfriend, lover. They would not know what the hell to do with you, Anita. Go in as Bernardo's girlfriend." He had his hand up, stopping me from interrupting before I could even open my mouth and try. "Trust me on this. You need to have some sort of status that they can grasp quickly and easily. Flashing your animator's license is too close to a badge. No woman in her right mind would just wander in there for a drink. You have to be something." He glanced at Bernardo not like he was happy. "I'd go in with you as your boyfriend, but like it or not, I look like a cop, or so I've been told."

I looked at him. I wasn't sure what it was about most policemen, but after a while they really did look like cops, even off duty sometimes. It was partially the clothes, partially some indefinable air of authority or bad attitude or something. Whatever "it" was, Ramirez had it. Rigby was in uniform, and I wouldn't have taken him as backup anyway. He made me nervous with his air of contentment. Policemen should never be that well pleased with themselves. It means they haven't had much experience yet.

I looked at Bernardo's smirking face. "Agreed, under protest."

"Good," Ramirez said, but he was looking at Bernardo, too, like he didn't like the look on his face. He held a finger up near the taller man's face. "You get out of line in there with Anita, and I will personally make you sorry for it."

Bernardo's eyes drifted from amused to cool. It reminded me of the way Edward's eyes lost emotion until they were empty and somehow harsh.

I stepped between them, enough to get both of them looking at me. "I can take care of myself when it comes to Bernardo, Detective Ramirez. Thanks anyway." I'd used his title to remind Bernardo who and what he was. Even Edward treaded soft around the cops.

Ramirez's face had closed down, empty. "Suit yourself, Ms. Blake."

I realized that he thought I'd used his title because I was angry with him. Shit. Why was I always ass deep in male egos in the middle of any given crisis?

"It's okay, Hernando. I just like to remind everyone that I'm a big girl." I touched his arm lightly.

He looked at me, and his eyes softened. "Okay." That was male short hand for apology and apology accepted. Though truthfully if one of the parties involved hadn't been female, the short hand would have been shorter.

I stepped away from both of them and changed the subject. "Amazing how many bad guys and monsters will talk to me and not the police."

He nodded, face still serious. "Amazing. That's one word for it." The look he gave me was so studied, so searching, that I wondered if he'd been checking me out as well as Baco.

I didn't ask. I didn't really want to know. But he was right about Baco. If he was what people said, then he wouldn't want the police anywhere near his homes or his work area. They were not kidding about the automatic death penalty. The last execution in this country of a spell caster had been two months ago. It had been in California, which is not a death penalty state for any other crime.

They'd tried and convicted a sorcerer, or would that be sorceress, of trafficking with the demonic. She'd used a demon to kill her sister so she'd inherit the parents' estate. They suspected she'd also killed her parents, but they couldn't prove that. And who cared? They could only kill her once. I'd read some of the trial transcript. She'd been guilty. I had no doubt on that point. But it had been three months from arrest, to conviction, to the carrying out of the sentence. It was unheard of in the American justice system. Hell, it usually takes longer than that to get a hearing date, let alone a full-blown trial. But even California had learned its lesson a few years back. They'd arrested a sorcerer for very similar crimes. They'd tried to give the sorcerer the usual wait for a trial because some congressman or other was arguing that the death penalty shouldn't be allowed even in cases of magical assassination.

That sorcerer had called a greater demon in his cell. It killed every guard on the cellblock, and some of the prisoners. He'd finally been tracked down with the help of a coven of white wiccans. The death total had been forty-two, forty-three, something like that. He was killed during the capture attempt. He took thirty slugs, which meant people had emptied their clips into his body once it went down. For none of the police to get caught in the crossfire, they must have been standing over him, pointing down. Overkill, you bet, but I didn't blame them. They never did find all the body parts of the guards at the prison.

New Mexico was a death penalty state. I was betting that they would be able to beat California's three months turn-around from arrest to completion of sentence. I mean, after all, in this state they might actually put you to death for a good old-fashioned murder. Add magic to it, and they'd be scattering your ashes to the wind faster than you could say Beelzebub.

The actual method of execution is the same for everyone. America does not allow burning at the stake for any crime. But after you're dead, they burn the body to ash if you were convicted of a crime involving magic. Then they scatter the ashes, usually into running water. Very traditional.

There are parts of Europe where it's still legal to burn a "witch" at the stake. There's more than one reason that I don't travel outside the country much.

"Anita, are you still with us?" Ramirez asked.

I blinked. "Sorry, just thinking about the last execution in California. I don't blame Baco for being worried."

Ramirez shook his head. "Me, either. Be very careful. These are bad people."

"Anita knows about bad people," Bernardo said.

The two men looked at each other, and again I got that hint that Ramirez didn't like him. Bernardo seemed to be teasing him. Did they know each other?

I decided to ask. "Do you guys know each other?"

They both shook their heads. "Why?" Bernardo asked.

"You guys seem to have some sort of personal shit going on."

Bernardo smiled then, and Ramirez looked uncomfortable. "It's not personal with me," Bernardo said.

Rigby turned away, coughing. If I hadn't known better, I'd have said he was covering a laugh.

Ramirez ignored him, all attention for Bernardo. "I know Anita knows how to handle herself around the bad guys, but a knife blade in the back doesn't care how good you are. The Lobos pride themselves on using blades instead of guns."

"Guns are for sissies," I said.

"Something like that."

I had the black suit jacket on over the navy blue polo shirt. If I buttoned two buttons, the jacket hid the Firestar in front and still left me plenty of room to reach for it, and the Browning. In fact the slender cell phone swinging in the right side pocket was more noticeable than the guns. "I just love taking a gun to a knife fight."

Bernardo had thrown a black short-sleeved dress shirt over his white T-shirt. It fanned in back and covered the Beretta 10 mil on his hip. "Me, too," he said and smiled. It was a fierce smile, and I realized that this may have been the first time in weeks that he was going up against something flesh and blood and killable.

"We're going in for information, not to do the OK Corral. You do understand that?" I said.

"You're the boss," he said, but I didn't like the way his eyes looked. They were anticipatory, eager.

I'd felt paranoid this morning when I slipped the knife in its spine sheath. Now I moved my head a little back and forth feeling the handle against my neck. It was comforting. I almost always carried the wrist sheaths and their matching knives, but the spine sheath was optional. One minute you're paranoid and packing too much hardware, the next you're scared, and under-armed. Life's like that, or my life's like that.

"Do you know what los duendos are?" Ramirez asked.

"Bernardo said it meant the dwarves."

Ramirez nodded. "But around here it's folklore. They're small beings that live in caves and steal things. But they're supposed to be angels that got left suspended between Heaven and Hell during Lucifer's revolt. So many angels were leaving Heaven that God slammed the gates shut and los duendos got trapped outside of Heaven. They were suspended in limbo."

"Why didn't they just go to Hell?" Bernardo asked, It was a good question.

Ramirez shrugged. "The story doesn't say."

I glanced at Rigby standing behind Ramirez. He was standing so easy, ready, prepared like a grown-up Boy Scout. He didn't seem worried about anything, It made me nervous. We were about to go into a bar that was thick with bikers, bad guys. There was a necromancer inside so powerful that it made my skin crawl from blocks away. The rest of us looked confident, but it was confidence born of having been there and done that and survived. Rigby's confidence struck me as false, not false confidence, but based on a false assumption. I couldn't know for sure without asking, but I was betting Rigby had never really been in any situation where he thought he might not come out the other side. There was a softness to him despite the lean muscles. I'd take a few less muscles and more depth to the eyes any day. I hoped that Ramirez didn't have to come in with Rigby as his only backup. But I didn't say it out loud. Everyone loses their cherry sometime, somewhere. If things went wrong, tonight might be Rigby's night.

"Did you tell us that little story for a reason, Hernando? I mean you don't think that Baco or this biker gang are los Duendos?"

He shook his head. "No, I just thought you might want to know. It says something about Baco to name his bar after fallen angels."

I opened the driver's side door of the Hummer. Bernardo took the hint and went for the passenger side door. "Not fallen angels, Hernando, just caught in limbo."

Hernando leaned into the open window of the car. "But they're not in Heaven anymore, are they?" With that last cryptic comment he stepped back and let me raise the window. He and Rigby watched us drive off. They looked sort of forlorn standing there in the abandoned, broken parking lot. Or maybe it was just me feeling forlorn.

I looked at Bernardo. "Don't kill anyone, okay?"

He slid back in his seat, snuggling against the leather. He looked more relaxed than I'd seen him in hours. "If they try to kill us?" I sighed.

"Then we defend ourselves," I said. "See, I knew you'd see things my way."

"Don't start the fight," I said.

He looked at me with eager brown eyes. "Can I finish it?" I looked back at the road searching for a parking space. Whatever spell Baco had been working was over. The atmosphere was a little easier to breathe. But there was still something in the air like close lightning waiting to strike. "Yeah, we can finish it."

He started humming under his breath. I think it was the theme from "The Magnificent Seven." To quote an overused movie line, I had a bad feeling about this.