Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 6-10 - Laurell K. Hamilton [312]
“I’ll go in because it’s my job, but I don’t have to like it,” Fulton said.
“Fine, but if we do have a cave-in, we better get dug out before nightfall, because without the vamp chaperone we’ll be facing a basement full of new vamps that may not have perfect control over their hunger.”
His eyes widened, showing too much white. I would have bet money that Fulton had had a close encounter of the fanged kind once upon a time. There were no scars on his neck, but that didn’t prove anything. Vamps didn’t always go for the neck, no matter what the movies say. Blood flows near the surface in lots of places.
I touched his arm lightly. Tension sang down his muscles like a string pulled too tight. “Who’d you lose?”
“What?” He seemed to be having trouble focusing on me.
“Who did the vampires take away from you?”
He stared at me, dark eyes focusing on me. Whatever horrible image was floating behind his eyes retreated. His face was almost normal when he said, “Wife, daughter.”
I waited for him to say more, but the silence gathered round us in a still, deep pool made up of all the horror in those two whispered words. Wife, daughter. Both lost. No—taken.
“And now you have to go into the dark and save some bloodsuckers and risk yourself and your people. That really sucks.”
He took a deep breath through his nose and let it out slowly. I watched him gain control of himself, watched him build his defenses back piece by piece. “I wanted to let it burn when I found out what was inside.”
“But you didn’t,” I said. “You did your job.”
“But the job’s not done,” he said softly.
“Life’s a bitch,” I said.
“And then you die,” Larry finished for me.
I turned and frowned at him, but it was hard to argue. Today, he was right.
42
THE TWO-BITER, AS Dolph so poetically put it, was a small woman in her thirties. Her brown hair was back in a tight ponytail leaving her neck and the vampire bites painfully visible. Vampire freaks, people who just liked vamps for sexual turn-ons, hid their fang marks unless at one of their hangouts. Human members of the Church of Eternal Life almost always made sure the bites were visible. Hair worn just right, short sleeves if the marks were at wrist or elbow bend. They were proud of the bites, saw them as signs of salvation.
The upper set of fang marks were larger, the skin redder and more torn. Someone hadn’t been neat with their food. The second mark was almost dainty, surgically neat. The two-biter’s name was Caroline, and she stood hugging herself as if she were cold. Since you could probably fry eggs on the sidewalk, I didn’t think she was cold, or at least not that kind of cold.
“You wanted to see me, Caroline?”
She nodded, head bobbing up and down like one of those dogs you used to see in the backs of cars. “Yes,” she said, voice breathy. She stared at Dolph and McKinnon, then back at me. The look was enough. She wanted privacy.
“I’m going to take Caroline for a little walk. If that’s okay?”
Dolph nodded. McKinnon said, “The Red Cross have coffee and soft drinks.” He pointed to a small truck with a camper shell. Red Cross volunteers giving coffee and comfort to the cops and firemen. You didn’t see them at every crime scene, but they hit their share.
Dolph caught my gaze and gave a very small nod. He was trusting me to question her without him, trusting me to bring him back any info that pertained to the crime. The fact that he still trusted me that much made the day a little brighter. Nice that something did.
It was also nice to be doing something useful. Dolph had been hot to get me to the scene. Now everything was stalled. Fulton just wasn’t eager to risk his people for corpses. But that wasn’t it. If there’d been six humans down there, we’d have already been suited up and going in. But they weren’t human, and no matter what the law said, it made a difference. Dolph was right, before Addison v. Clark, they