Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [320]
“You’re Jonah Cooper. I got interviewed about how I felt that one of my fellow vampire hunters had been slain by the vampires. What was that, nearly two years ago now, three?”
His look, which had been neutral, went to hostile. “Four.” He said that last word like it was a bad one.
“They’re legal now, Cooper, why didn’t you come out of the closet and tell people you didn’t die in that fire?”
He looked down, then up, and his eyes had gone dark, sparkling with anger and vampire powers. I leaned into him with a smile. I knew what smile I was giving him, it was the cold one that left my eyes dead. My gun was pressed, not too hard to his chest, just over his heart. “Or is it that you let, what was it, six policemen die in the fire?”
“Anita, what’s going on?” Zerbrowski asked.
I told him. I didn’t have to look up to know that Zerbrowski’s face wouldn’t be friendly. Nothing pisses off the cops like someone who kills one of their own. “How’d you survive, Cooper?” I asked.
He glared up at me. “You know how.”
“You sold them to the vampires you were hunting, didn’t you?”
He just looked at me, but he didn’t deny it. That was enough.
“He took money to betray cops?” Marconi asked.
“No,” I said, “not money.”
“No,” Cooper said, “not money.”
“What then?” Smith asked.
“Immortality,” I said, “right, Cooper?”
“Not just that.”
“What then?” I said.
“You’re the Master of the City’s human servant, you know what else.”
I blinked at him, not sure what to say, but I leaned back enough so that I wasn’t pressing a gun into his chest. I knew what it was like to finally be seduced by the thing you hunted. Mine just happened to be a more traditional seduction. Okay, at least I was still among the living.
“What does he mean?” Smith asked.
Malcolm’s rich voice filled the parish hall with its tables and punch bowl. Everything was all set out for cookies and punch, though the punch looked a little red for my tastes, a little thick. “Power, Officer, power and sex, that is what Jean-Claude offers.”
“Be careful about the stones you throw, Malcolm, sometimes they get thrown back.”
“Is that a threat?”
“No, just a friendly warning that only the pure of motive should cast stones.”
“Ask your friend there. Ask him, was it sex with one of us that lured him. I have watched mortals come to this life for centuries for the sake of sex.”
“First,” I said, “he’s not my friend. Second, it doesn’t matter why, only that he did it.” I’d touched Cooper while I searched him for weapons, and I’d gotten no flashes of information. No images. I hadn’t acquired Malcolm’s ability to see through touch, I’d only borrowed it. I wanted to borrow it again.
I guess I should at least pretend to try to do it the normal way. I turned to Cooper. “Where is your master? Where is he now?”
“Feeding, most likely.”
“Where is the daytime lair?”
He shook his head, with something like a smile on his face. “I won’t tell you anything, Anita Blake. I would no more betray my master than you would yours.”
“But see, my master doesn’t ask me to butcher helpless unarmed women, like yours does.”
He shook his head again. “I will not betray him.”
Now, technically the vampire had no more rights. I could have put a bullet in his brain now, legally. The warrant read that I could use the force I deemed necessary. No one talked about it much, but I knew, and the rest of us legal hunters knew, that some of us used that part of the warrant to justify torture. I didn’t like torture, not on either side of the chains. Besides, Cooper had had