Obsidian Butterfly - Laurell K. Hamilton [116]
27
IT WAS STILL DARK as Edward drove us homeward. Still night, true dark, the vampires still roamed, but that soft edge in the air let you know the light was coming. If we hurried, we’d make it into bed before true dawn. If we dawdled, we’d get to see the sun come up. None of us seemed to be dawdling. We sat in the car in a silence that no one seemed willing to break.
We left the club behind and drove out into the hills beyond, towards Santa Fe. Stars spread like a blanket of cold fire across the soft black silk of the sky. The sky had that larger than life, empty quality it gets over large bodies of water or in the desert.
Olaf’s voice came out of the darkness, low and strangely intimate the way voices can be in a car at night. “If we’d accepted their hospitality, do you think I could have had the vampire they whipped?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Define have?” I said.
“Have, to do with as I liked.”
“What would you have done with him if they had?” Bernardo said.
“You don’t want to know, and I don’t want to hear it,” Edward said. He sounded tired.
“I thought you liked women, Olaf.” Bernardo said it. I didn’t say it, honest.
“For sex I like women, but so much blood. It shouldn’t have gone to waste.” He sounded wistful.
I turned in my seat and tried to see his face in the dark. “So it’s not just women who have to be careful around you, is that it? Does it just have to bleed to be attractive?”
“Leave him alone, Anita. About this, leave him the fuck alone.”
I turned to look at Edward. He rarely cussed, and he rarely sounded as tired and almost overwhelmed as he did now. “Okay, I mean, sure.”
Edward glanced in the rearview mirror. There wasn’t a car in either direction for miles. I think he was looking at Olaf. He stared into the mirror a long time. I think they had some major eye contact going.
He finally blinked and went back to staring at the road, but he didn’t seem happy.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“Us,” Bernardo said. “What isn’t he telling us?”
“All right, what aren’t you telling us?”
“It’s not my secret to tell,” Edward said, and that was all he’d say. He and Olaf had a secret, and they weren’t willing to share.
We finished the rest of the drive in silence. The sky was still black, but it was a paler black, the stars dim in it. Dawn was tremblingly close when we went into the house. I was so tired, my eyes burned. But Edward took me by the arm and led me down the small hallway away from the bedrooms. He kept his voice low. “Be very careful of Olaf.”
“He’s big and bad. I get it.”
He dropped his hand from my arm, shaking his head. “I don’t think you do.”
“Look, I know he’s a convicted rapist. I saw the way he looked at Professor Dallas tonight, and I saw his reaction to the blood and torture. I don’t know what you’re not telling me, but I know that Olaf would hurt me if he could. I know that.”
“You’re afraid of him?”
I took a breath. “Yeah, I’m afraid of him.”
“Good,” Edward said. He hesitated, then said, “You fit his vic profile.”
“Excuse me?”
“His favorite victims are petite women, usually Caucasian, but always with long dark hair. I told you I would never have brought him in on this case if I’d known you were coming down, too. It isn’t just because you’re a woman. You’re his physical ideal for a victim.”
I stared at him for a few seconds, mouth opened, then closed it, and tried to think what to say. “Thanks for telling me, Edward. Shit. You should have told me this up front.”
“I was hoping he could hold his act together, but I saw him tonight, too. I’m worried that he’ll snap. I just don’t want you to be the one in the way when it happens.”
“Send him back to wherever he came from, Edward. We don’t need him if he adds to the problem.”
He shook