Crimson Death (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 25)

"Please, pretty please," Edward said in a serious voice. He wanted Logan to take a swing at him. What the hell had happened in Ireland to make Edward as Ted fish that hard for a fight? It wasn't like him to mess around on the job like that. I was the one who usually mouthed off.

I did the only thing I could think of to help; I swiped to the next picture he'd sent me. There was another dainty bite on a neck, but on the opposite side of the same neck was the bigger set of bite marks, not the one that was messy, but the first one that I'd thought had degraded in the tearing-out of throats.

"Does this next victim have two bite marks on it from both of our first vampires?" I asked. No one answered me, so I raised my voice. "Ted, talk to me!"

"Yes, the first two vamps seem to be working together."

"Did that victim die?"

"No," Sheridan answered. "He wandered into a hospital because his neck was bleeding, but he couldn't remember how he got injured."

"They're starting to figure out how to work together," I said.

Logan's voice was strident. "Some expert you are, Blake. You were wrong about the second vampire. It's not the one tearing out throats."

"You've got at least three vampires on your hands," I said.

"Did you hear me, Blake? You were wrong!"

"I heard you, Logan. I'm okay with being wrong if it gets us better information to catch the vampires that are doing this."

"Two of them haven't hurt anyone too badly," Sheridan said.

"Have any of the victims been attacked a second time?"

"No," Pearson said.

"I told them to put protection details on the earlier victims," Edward said.

"Did they do it?"

"They're having a little trouble convincing their bosses to approve the overtime."

"Jesus, don't they realize that the vampires can call their one-bite victims out again?"

"I explained it to them."

"What we have a hard time understanding is, if this is true, then why isn't America overrun with vampires? If one bite enslaves a person, then you should all be slaves by now. You yourself are engaged to a vampire, Marshal Blake. If it were that easy to be enslaved, I don't think you would still be trusted as a police officer," Pearson said.

"If you donate blood willingly without being completely bespelled by the vampire's gaze, then he can't enslave your mind and call you at his whim. Done willingly with the minimum of mind tricks, it's not much more than a hickey or a love bite."

"Do you donate blood to your fiance?"

"I'll answer your question if you'll answer one of mine about your sex life," I said.

"I'm not asking about your sex life, Marshal."

"Yeah, you are."

Micah squeezed my hand and looked a caution at me. He was right; if I wasn't careful I'd be telling them more about my love life with Jean-Claude than I'd shared with my friends on the force here. Sometimes avoiding a question reveals more than just answering. I was sort of screwed on this one, very damned if you do and damned if you don't.

"They call it coffin bait in the States," Logan said.

"Coffin bait is the equivalent to a badge bunny, someone who will fuck any cop just because they're a cop. I'm actually only dating one vampire currently, so I don't qualify as coffin bait."

"How insulting a term is that considered to be in your country?" Pearson asked.

"He's basically called me a whore who will let any vampire both fuck me and bleed me, so pretty damned insulting."

Micah had let go of my hand so he could stand up and start massaging my shoulders through the robe, because I'd suddenly become very tense. Imagine that.

"I'll apologize on Logan's behalf and on behalf of all the Dublin Gardai."

"Gardai?" I made it a question with an uplift of the word.

"That's what the Irish police call themselves," Edward said. "Gardai is plural. Garda Siochana, literally Guardians of the Peace. Only between twenty and thirty percent of them are even trained with weapons."

"You're joking."

"No, I'm not."

"Wow, that's different from here."

"It only went over twenty percent because they had some foreign lycanthropes get out of hand about two years ago."

"It made the international news," I said. "Wasn't there a sorcerer involved, too? It was like a gang of preternatural criminals, right?"

"Not like, Marshal. It was," Pearson said.

"The sorcerer was homegrown, but the shapeshifters were immigrants, if I remember correctly."

"You remember correctly."

"And now you've got your first vampires. What's changed about your country in the last few years?"

"Nothing that I'm aware of," he said.

"Then why does Ireland suddenly have supernatural crime?"

"I don't know, but it's a good question."

"Do you have a good answer?" I asked.

"Not yet, but I may know who to ask for one now."

"We've all been trying to figure out why we have our first vampires," Logan said. "She hasn't told us anything that we didn't already know."

"She asked the question differently from anyone else; didn't you hear it?" Pearson asked.

"It's hard to hear anything when you have your head shoved that far up your own ass," Edward said.

"You won't always have other cops around you, Forrester."

"Is that a threat?"

"That would be illegal and I could jeopardize my career, so of course it's not a threat."

"Let's pretend it is a threat, because you need to understand that the other officers aren't keeping me safe from you; they're keeping you safe from me." His voice had started in Ted mode but had sunk all the way down to that cooler, slightly deeper Edward mode. What was it about Logan that made it so hard for him to stay in character? I'd been insulted worse than this before, and we'd both worked with bigger pains in the ass, so what had Logan done to get on Edward's serious shit list? Usually you had to be a bad guy to piss Edward off this badly.

"Enough out of both of you," Pearson said.

"I'll play nice if he does," Edward said.

"We're not playing here, Forrester. We're trying to catch these vampires before they kill more people. That's not a game."

"What good is playing if the stakes aren't high, Logan?"

"What does that even mean, Forrester?"

"It means that life and death are the ultimate stakes to play for."

"Ted, you might want to tone down the big-and-bad routine a little." It was the best I could do to warn him that he was being all too much Edward and not enough Ted. It was like Superman putting on Clark Kent's glasses but showing up to the Daily Planet in his super suit. If you're dressed up like Superman, the glasses aren't going to hide who you are.

"Yeah, Ted, tone it down for your girlfriend," Logan said.

"What are your rules on sexual harassment, Superintendent Pearson?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Logan just seems like he's going to keep pushing on this until it falls down around his ears."

"Nothing's going to be falling on me, Blake. This little problem goes one way, and that's your way."

"I'm glad we agree on something, Logan."

"What are you talking about?"

"You just said the problem is going to go my way; that means I win."

"That is not what I meant."

"Your language is imprecise, Logan. It has been the entire time I've been here," Edward said.

"Fuck you, Forrester."

"No, thanks."

"That is not what I meant, damn it, and you know that."

"I don't know anything about you, Logan, except you are an incredible pain in the ass," Edward said.

"If you can't work civilly with Marshal Forrester, then you may need off this case," Pearson said.

"I've been on this case from the beginning."

"We want the Americans to help us find and contain our vampires."

"We don't need some cowboy cop from the States to help us do our jobs," Logan said.

"I'll take all the help we can get. These vampires are killing innocent people, Logan, and all you can do is pick at Ted," Sheridan said.

"So it's Ted now, is it?"

I suddenly had a clue: Logan liked Sheridan, God help us and her. She had reacted to Edward in such a way that Logan thought Sheridan liked Ted. We never really leave junior high and that he-likes-the-girl-who-likes-someone-else game, or reverse the sexes and get the same story. I wasn't a hundred percent sure I was right, but it was worth a try.

"How long have you been in Ireland?" I asked.

"A week."

"Donna and the kids must be missing you."

"I'm missing them, too."

"She must be frantic having you gone in the middle of all the wedding planning."

"Our wedding is just about finalized. It's your wedding that's taking forever to plan."

"The wedding has gotten huge," I said, and felt that familiar tightening of my stomach whenever I let myself think too hard about the size of the guest list.

"Looks like you'll be my best man before I get to be yours, at this rate."

"Wait. Did you say that Blake is going to be your best man?"

"Yep," Edward said, trying to get back into Ted-space, and failing worse than I'd ever seen him before. He was usually the master of disguise, but something about Logan just threw the hell out of his usual suave self.

"And your fiancee isn't bothered by Blake being in your wedding?"

"Donna encouraged it."

"Well, you know what they say: all the good ones are taken," Sheridan said, which meant she hadn't been subtle about being attracted to Edward. He was five-eight, blond, blue-eyed, naturally slender but in great shape, and if you went by the reaction from other women, very attractive. I didn't see it, but then he'd threatened to torture or kill me, which put a real damper on me seeing him as cute. Now we were so close as friends that it was almost an incest taboo.