Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [443]
“Are you talking about killing the ones that won’t take the oath? Anita, they’ve got rights.”
“I know that, Zerbrowski, better than most.” I was cursing Malcolm, cursing him for the mess he’d started. Even if the murderers weren’t his people, it was only a matter of time. Vampires are not people, they don’t think like people. I realized that Malcolm was trying to do with the Church of Eternal Life what Richard had tried to do with the Thronnos Rokke Clan. Both of them were trying to treat the monsters like they were just people. They weren’t. God help us, but they weren’t.
Jean-Claude whispered, “We will need to send envoys to the church and see how bad it truly is.”
I didn’t answer, because I was pretty sure who one of the envoys would be. Me.
I started up the ladder, and only when Zerbrowski whistled did I remember what I was wearing under the skirt. “Blake, you have a very nice . . .”
“Don’t say it, Zerbrowski.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you say it, I’ll put you on the ground.”
“Ass,” he said.
“I warned you,” I said.
He laughed.
When we were both on solid ground, I footswept him into a convenient patch of mud. He cursed me, everyone laughed. He said, “I’ll tell Katie you were mean to me.”
“She’ll be on my side.” And she would be. In fact, I knew Katie Zerbrowski well enough to know that her husband wouldn’t tell her he’d told me I had a nice ass. She’d consider it rude.
Jean-Claude’s echo in my head was, but you do. I told him to shut up, too, and this time he listened. “Dawn is near, and I must rest. We will speak again when I wake.”
“Pleasant dreams,” I whispered.
“The dead do not dream, ma petite.” And he was gone.
48
THE SECURITY GUY hadn’t liked stripping. I told him he could do it in privacy with just me and the nice officers watching, or he could do it on one of the stages. His choice. He’d looked like he didn’t believe me, but wasn’t willing to risk it. He was clean, no vamp bites. On the one hand, shit, because a master vamp is harder to catch, harder to keep, and harder to kill. On the other hand, great, because the list of vamps that could do this was pretty small. Or it was if I understood the deal between Malcolm and Jean-Claude. Okay, technically it had been a deal struck between Malcolm and Nikolaos, the old Master of the City. Having met her, hell, having killed her, I’d sympathized with vamps flocking to the church and not wanting to owe her a damn thing. But Jean-Claude had honored her treaty with the church, on a few conditions. One, no master-level vamps allowed in town without running it by Jean-Claude. So either Malcolm had reneged on the deal, or he didn’t know that he had someone that powerful in his community. Or neither Malcolm nor Jean-Claude had felt someone that powerful enter their territory. If that last were true, we were in deep, deep trouble, because that would raise the power level to something none of us would want to deal with.
Or had Jean-Claude approved a master for Malcolm without understanding that there would be no blood oath to keep control of it? I had so many questions that my head hurt, and no way of getting them answered until Jean-Claude woke for the day. I drove back to St. Louis in dawn’s early light, happy I had sunglasses with me. Happy that I wasn’t driving directly east. The indirect brightness was bad enough.
The Circus was closer than my own house, so that’s where I went. I bunked there sometimes to have a date with Jean-Claude, but often just because it was closer to crash. My eyes were so tired they burned, and my body had that achiness that feels almost like you’re sick, but is just your body using up all its reserves to keep you awake and moving.
I