Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [314]
“Sit him in a chair. If he tries anything funny, shoot him.”
“Where are you going?” Zerbrowski asked.
“The knives are silver.”
“So?”
“So, our good Samaritan vampire may be dead, or dying.” I was already moving for the door. “If he’s going to survive, we’ve got minutes to save him.”
“Save him how?” Zerbrowski asked.
I just shook my head and went for the door.
“Go with her, Smith.”
Smith just changed his grip on his gun so it was pointed two-handed at the floor. “I got your back.”
I didn’t argue with Smith coming along. Zerbrowski and I were partnering tonight. We trusted each other to watch the bad vamp, but I had to check on the wounded vamp, so Zerbrowski stayed on the suspect and gave me backup. Because neither of us trusted anyone else to cover Jonah the vampire. Zerbrowski got the murderer, and I got the hero. Life had been so much simpler when vampires didn’t come in hero-flavor.
68
I COULDN’T SEE our hero for the broad back of his friend. The blond was still kneeling there, holding his hand. The blond’s shoulders were slumped, and he turned a tear-stained face up to me. Faint reddish-pink tracks down his face where the blood in his own tears had marked him. The tears made me fear the worst, until I moved around the feet of the other vamp. The hero lay on his back, but he blinked wide gray eyes up at me. The eyes were the only thing pale about him. Longish dark hair, and the beginnings of a beard around a wide mouth. I almost said out loud what I was thinking, Oh, good, you’re not dead, but I managed not to. Point for me.
I knelt on the other side of him, across from his friend. The knife was sticking out of his chest like an exclamation point. I’d stabbed my share of vamps in my time, and I knew a heart blow when I saw one. Blood welled out around the blade, soaking into the dark-haired one’s clothing. It was bleeding a lot. Which meant either he’d fed tonight, or it was a bad injury, or both.
“I didn’t realize the knife was silver until we disarmed him. I’d have come back sooner.”
Smith said, “We got company.”
“Sooner or later,” a voice said behind us, “it matters not.” Malcolm was behind us. Other church members were behind him. You always get gawkers, I guess.
“It matters,” I said.
“He is dying, Anita, and nothing we can do will save him.”
I looked back at the hurt man and caught the look in his friend’s blue eyes. Blue eyes framed by the blue of his shirt collar. “I’ve seen vampires survive worse.”
“You have seen master vampires survive worse. He is not a master.”
“He gets power from his line, his master,” I said, “it isn’t always about personal power.”
“Truth and Wicked have no masters, do you?”
The blond looked at Malcolm, and there was such hopelessness in his face. I couldn’t even make remarks about the names. I mean, who gets named Truth and Wicked? But in the face of such raw pain, I couldn’t do anything but say, “If you have something important to say, Malcolm, say it.”
“They are masterless, Anita. The master that made them died, and the sourdre de sang that created their line was destroyed, too. They survived the destruction of their line, but it weakened them.”
I looked up at the blond’s face, Truth or Wicked, I didn’t know which he was. He was staring at Malcolm, but the look in his eyes said it was the truth. “If you had blood-oathed them, they’d have a master right now.”
“I allowed them into my church. Most masters would kill them.”
“Why?”
The vampire on the ground answered, “They fear us,” in a strangled voice.
The blond said, “Don’t talk, brother, I will talk for you. They fear that if other vampires knew we survived the slaying of our entire bloodline, then others might wonder if they could kill those that enslave them, too, and survive.”
“Brother?” I said.
The