Circus of the Damned (Vampire Hunter 3)

"Hey, don't get defensive. I just wanted to know if you would be in any personal danger." His voice was indignant.

"Fine. I've got to go."

"What about the costumes? Do you want me call my friend?"

"Sure."

"Will you trust me to pick your costume?" he asked.

I thought about that for a few heartbeats. Did I trust him to get me a costume? No. Did I have time to hunt up a costume on my own? Probably not. "Why not?" I said. "Beggars can't be choosers."

"We'll survive the party and then next week we'll go crawl in the mud."

"I can't wait," I said.

He laughed. "Neither can I."

"I've got to go, Richard."

"I'll have the costumes at your apartment for inspection. I'll need directions."

I gave him directions.

"I hope you like your costume."

"Me too. Talk to you later." I hung the receiver on the pay phone's cradle and stared at it. That had been too easy. Too smooth. He'd probably pick out a terrible costume for me. We'd both have a miserable time and be trapped into a second date with each other. Eek!

Ronnie handed me a can of fruit juice and took a sip of her own. She had cranberry and I had ruby red grapefruit. I couldn't stand cranberry.

"What'd cutesie pie say?"

"Please don't call him that," I said.

She shrugged. "Sorry, it just sort of slipped out." She had the grace to look embarrassed.

"I forgive you, this once."

She grinned, and I knew she wasn't repentant. But I'd ribbed her often enough about her dates. Turnabout is fair play. Payback is a bitch.

Chapter 14

The sun was sinking in a slash of crimson like a fresh, bleeding wound. Purple clouds were piling up to the west. The wind was strong and smelled like rain.

Ruffo Lane was a narrow gravel road. Barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other. The reddish gravel crunched underfoot. Wind rustled the tall, dry weeds in the ditch. The road disappeared over the rise of a hill. Police cars, marked and plain, were lined up along one side of the road as far as I could see. The road disappeared over the rise of a hill. There were a lot of hills in Jefferson County.

I was already dressed in a clean pair of overalls, black Nikes, and surgical gloves when my beeper went off. I had to scramble at the zipper and drag the damn thing out into the dying light. I didn't have to see the number. I knew it was Bert. It was only a half hour until full dark, if that. My boss was wondering where I was, and why I wasn't at work. I wondered if Bert would really fire me. I stared down at the corpse and wasn't sure I cared.

The woman was curled on her side, arms shielding her na**d br**sts, as if even in death she was modest. Violent death is the ultimate invasion. She would be photographed, videotaped, measured, cut open, sewn back up. No part of her, inside or out, would be left untouched. It was wrong. We should have been able to toss a blanket over her and leave her in peace, but that wouldn't help us prevent the next killing. And there would be a next one; the second body was proof of that.

I glanced around at the police and the ambulance team, waiting to take the body away. Except for the body, I was the only woman. I usually was, but tonight, for some reason, it bothered me. Her waist-length hair spilled out into the weeds in a pale flood. Another blonde. Was that coincidence? Or not? Two was a pretty small sample. If the next victim was blond, then we'd have a trend.

If all the victims were caucasian, blond, and members of Humans Against Vampires, we'd have our pattern. Patterns helped solve the crime. I was hoping for a pattern.

I held a penlight in my mouth and measured the bite marks. There were no bite marks on the wrists this time. There were rope burns instead. They'd tied her up, maybe hung her from the ceiling like a side of beef. There is no such thing as a good vampire who feeds off humans. Never believe that a vampire will only take a little. That it won't hurt. That's like believing your date will pull out in time. Just trust him. Yeah, right.

There was a neat puncture wound on either side of the neck. There was a bit of flesh missing from her left breast, as if something had taken a bite out of her just above the heart. The bend of her right arm was torn apart. The ball joint was na**d in the thin beam of light. Pinkish ligaments strained to hold the arm together.

The last serial murderer that I'd worked on had torn the victims into pieces. I had walked on carpet so drenched with blood that it squelched underfoot. I had held pieces of intestine in my hand, looking for clues. It was the new worst-thing-I'd-ever-seen.

I stared down at the dead woman and was glad she hadn't been torn apart. And it wasn't because I figured it had been an easier death, though I hoped it had. And it wasn't because there were more clues, because there weren't. It was just that I didn't want to see any more slaughtered people. I'd had my quota for the year.

There is an art to holding a penlight in your mouth and measuring wounds without drooling on yourself. I managed. The secret was sucking on the end of the flashlight from time to time.

The thin beam of the flashlight shone on her thighs. I wanted to see if she had a groin wound like the man. I wanted to be sure this was the work of the same killers. It would be a hell of a coincidence if there were two vampire packs hunting separately, but it was possible. I needed to be as sure as I could that we had just one rogue pack. One was plenty, two was a screaming nightmare. Surely, God would not be that unkind, but just in case... I wanted to see if she had a groin wound. The man's hands had shown no rope marks. Either the vampires were getting more organized, or it was a different group.

Her arms had been glued over her chest, tied in place by rigor mortis. Nothing short of an axe was going to move her legs, not until final rigor went away, which would be forty-eight hours or so. I couldn't wait two days, but I didn't want to chop the body into pieces either.

I got down on all fours in front of the corpse. I apologized for what I was about to do, but couldn't think of anything better.

The flashlight's thin beam trembled over her thighs, like a tiny spotlight. I touched the line that separated her legs and pushed my fingers in that line, trying to feel by fingertip if there was a wound there.

It must have looked like I was groping the corpse, but I couldn't think of a more dignified way to do it. I glanced up, trying not to feel the solid rubberiness of her skin. The sun was just a splash of crimson in the west like dying coals. True darkness slipped over the sky like a flood of ink. And the woman's legs moved under my hands.

I jumped. Nearly swallowing the flashlight. Nervous, me? The woman's flesh was soft. It hadn't been a moment ago. The woman's lips were halfparted. Hadn't they been closed before?

This was crazy. Even if she had been a vampire, she wouldn't rise until the third night after death. And she'd died from multiple vampire bites in one massive blood feast. She was dead, just dead.

Her skin shimmered white in the darkness. The sky was black; if the moon was up in those black-purple clouds, I couldn't see it. Yet her skin shimmered as if touched by moonlight. She wasn't exactly glowing, but it was close. Her hair glimmered like spider silk spread over the grass. She'd just been dead a minute ago; now she was... beautiful.

Dolph loomed over me. At six-nine he loomed even when I was standing up; with me kneeling he was gigantic. I stood up, peeled off one surgical glove, and took the penlight out of my mouth. Never touch anything you're likely to put in your mouth after touching the open wounds of a stranger. AIDS, you know. I shoved the penlight into the breast pocket of the coveralls. I took off the other glove and crumpled them both into a side pocket.

"Well?" Dolph said.

"Does she look different to you?" I asked.

He frowned. "What?"

"The corpse; does it look different to you?"

He stared down at the pale body. "Now that you mention it. It looks like she's asleep." He shook his head. "We're going to have to call an ambulance and have a doctor pronounce her dead."

"She's not breathing."

"Would you want the fact that you weren't breathing to be the only criterion?"

I thought about that for a minute. "No, I guess not."

Dolph leafed through his notebook. "You said a person who dies of multiple vampire bites can't rise from the dead as a vampire." He was reading my own words back at me. I was hoist on my petard.

"That's true in most cases."

He stared down at the woman. "But not in this one."