Death Blows: The Bloodhound Files-2 (14 page)

“Enough of that,” she says. “I’ll ruin all the hard work I just put into my makeup. Come on—I’ll buy you another drink.”

“I think I’ve had enough for now, thanks.”

“Suit yourself. I know I always do.”

The food is reasonable—they serve me a meatless lasagna that Cassius must have ordered ahead of time. I stop drinking scotch and start drinking coffee, but regret it before too long; the speeches are boring and surreal at the same time, like some kind of performance art piece I don’t quite get. Brian and Sherry don’t stay until the end, and I don’t blame them. Sherry gives me a wink as they leave.

“Well,” I say. “Alone at last.”

“I’m glad you came, Jace. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Uh-oh. “I’m listening.”

“It’s about Gretchen.”

Not what I was expecting, but that’s probably a good thing. “How’s she doing?”

“Not very well, I’m afraid.”

“Oh? The last time I talked to her she seemed fine.”

“She’s good at putting up a brave front. But this pregnancy . . .” He trails off. “I don’t know if you understand just how enormous this is. Gretchen was turned when she was thirty-seven; she’s been that way for over a century. Even if she cancels her time-debt to her child when he’s eighteen, she’ll have aged to a subjective fifty-five. And she’ll have done it without a partner.”

“Yeah, I get that. It’s tough, but so is Gretch; if anybody can handle the single-mom thing, she can. And her job is secure, right?”

“Of course. But there’s something else, something I don’t think she’s told you.”

Now I’m starting to get a little worried. “Which is?”

“She and Aquitaine opted for a shorter pregnancy, condensing it to four and a half months. With his death, the process has continued to accelerate.”

“So how long?”

He shakes his head, looking grim. “Her doctor believes it could be as little as a few weeks, or even less. It’s putting a tremendous strain on her body, but she refuses to take any time off from work. I was hoping maybe you could talk to her.”

“I’ll do what I can, but I doubt if I can change her mind. Gretch makes a mule look easygoing.”

“I’d appreciate that.”

We leave before the sun starts coming up, which I’m grateful for; I’d like to get in a few hours of sleep before heading back to the office. Plus, I’m feeling kind of depressed—there’s nothing like an evening of charity to really drive home the fact that you’re a member of an endangered species. Every time somebody tells you how much they “admire” you, what they’re really saying is,
Congratulations on not
being extinct yet
!

Which reminds me—there’s something I have to take care of before I leave. I visit the restroom, then find the pire in the ruby dress that cornered me before. “Here,” I say, slipping her a small plastic vial that contained antacids a minute ago. “Some of my latest work. Very new, very edgy—I’m using a
liquid
medium.”

“Ooooh,” she says. “It’s warm. Are you using
blood
?”

“Not exactly,” I say.

Hey, she pissed me off. I thought I’d return the favor.

Once Cassius and I are back in the limo, he says, “I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“For dragging you out to this event. You look a little overwhelmed.”

“No, just outnumbered. One to ninety-nine, remember? And frankly, tonight’s representative sample didn’t give me a lot of hope for the survival of the species.”

He blinks. It takes me a second to realize I’ve actually shocked him.

“Oh, I get it,” I say. “Human beings are a little bit of a sacred cow. Once you’ve wiped out their population you have to elevate the cultural status of the survivors—we’re Noble Savages now, right?

Who knew vampires and were-wolves had political correctness?”

He shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “We can get a little sanctimonious, especially at events like this. At least our hearts are in the right place—even if they’re not beating.”

“I applaud the intent, okay? And I actually had a pretty good time. I like Brian and Sherry.”

“Good. I was hoping you’d get along with them.”

And then there’s one of those pauses. You know, the loud kind where you can hear the question hanging in the air that neither of you is willing to actually spit out. If I were to do so, it would probably sound something like this: “So, Brian’s a drunk and an artist—good for him, there’s at least two things he excels at. Oh, and stealing women from powerful immortal pires with movie-star good looks—the pire, I mean, not Brian. He looks more like the kind of guy you’d find working the bar at a really good Irish pub and how the
hell
did you lose a woman like Sherry to him?”

Yeah, I said it out loud. What a surprise.

“He’s human,” Cassius says. “I’m not.” His voice is carefully neutral—not sad, not angry, not anything.

I slide over on the seat. He turns to look at me. I put one hand on his chest, hesitantly. “No heartbeat,” I say. “No pulse, no breath. You don’t excrete sweat or used food. Your hair doesn’t grow, and neither do your fingernails. You don’t shed dead skin cells. Anything else?”

“Only a few centuries’ worth.”

“That’s a lot of living. Which I think makes you more human, not less.” I move my hand from his chest to his hand. “All the things you don’t have are just biology. All that living you’ve done, that’s what makes you human—that’s what makes you a
person
. You didn’t spend all that time sleeping in a coffin and hunting nubile villagers at three AM, did you?”

“Only on long weekends.”

“Well, everyone needs to party now and then.” I squeeze his hand. “Look, I wasn’t sure what to expect from tonight—but I get the feeling you’re deliberately putting some of your cards on the table. I can tell you genuinely care about the welfare of human beings, and it’s more than just guilt over what you’ve done in the past. Sherry gave me a little glimpse of your past, and . . . and my possible future. Right?”

“I wasn’t trying to manipulate you, Jace.”

I take a deep breath. “No, you weren’t. You knew I was smart enough to figure it out and once I did we’d have this conversation and now we’re having it. Up to speed?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

I can feel another one of those pauses building up in the air, but this time it’s not about what to say next and I don’t think I’m quite ready for that, so I say, “Tell me about Sherry.” Maybe it’s not the smartest thing to say, but I’m a cop; when in doubt, ask for more information.

“Sherry. We were together for eight years. I never quite got over thinking of her as a fling.”

From any other guy, that would sound immature. But this is an immortal I’m talking to, and he’s being honest; to him, eight years is a summer romance. “So it wasn’t serious?”

“I wouldn’t say that—it was fairly intense. But toward the end, she was starting to think about . . . joining me. I wasn’t ready for that, and I don’t think she was, either. I was the one who introduced her to Brian.”

“Ah. Think you did the right thing?”

“I don’t know. Ask me in fifty years, after she’s dead.”

There’s anger in his voice. Not at me, though. “Why put yourself through this if it hurts so much?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I’m an addict, Jace.” He still sounds angry, but there’s a trace of black amusement in there, too. “There’s a great deal of power in firsts. The very first time I loved a human woman as a pire, it consumed me. We were together for seventy years. I think that at the end, I hated her as much for dying as I loved her. I swore I would never put myself through such a thing again. I lasted nearly a decade before I broke my word.”

He’s got that faraway look in his eyes, memories who-knows-how-old playing inside his head. “Love and death, Jace. The most powerful cocktail in the world, and the most dangerous. And it seems to have become my drink of choice.”

For once, I don’t have a wise-assed reply. I know what he means, actually; what he’s describing happens to more than just vampires. It can affect doctors, soldiers, nurses, cops, EMTs, firefighters . . . anyone who deals with death and hormones on a daily basis. Nothing makes love stronger than the knowledge it could be taken away from you at any moment—that’s what a pire in a relationship with a human has to deal with, and the longer-lived the pire, the more pressing that knowledge becomes.

“I’ll make you a promise right now,” I say. “You’re never going to see me in a coffin. I’m either going to do my job and go home, or I’ll outlive you. Deal?”

“And if you can’t? If you wind up stuck here?”

“If that happens, I guess I’ll join your little club and turn all bitey. Beats sprouting hair every month and going back to eating meat.”

“I can’t imagine you—”

“Deal?”

He hesitates, then smiles. “Deal.”

“Okay, then. Now drop me off at home, will you? I’ve got work in the morning.”

The limo drops me off at my front door. I should get some sleep, but I’m still wired from caffeine, the aftereffects of the booze, and what just happened—so I hit the Net and do some surfing instead. I want to learn a little more about the golem manufacturing process and the specific type of animist magic used; Dr. Pete and I need to talk, and I want to be prepared.

The spells themselves deal with transferring the life essence of animals to a malleable mineral receptacle—usually clay or sand, but with variations that range from peat to iron filings. I’m reading an entry on animating early clay golems when I run into a paragraph that stops me dead:

The enchantment that brings life to earth is a simple one. It has been endlessly refined since it was first
cast, but the elegance of the original spell has never been surpassed. Its format has been adapted to
many other uses in almost every area of magic, including energy enhancement, food production, and
computation. Some theorists predict that it could even be adapted for such far-flung uses as
dimensional travel—though most admit that would require a knowledge of the underpinnings of the
spell that only the original caster would have. Of course, some people believe he’s still alive . . .

I stare at the screen. It’s telling me that the person who used golem-related magic to whisk me here can only be one man.

Ahasuerus.

EIGHT

My talk with Gretch will have to wait. Charlie calls me at 3:00 PM, waking me out of a sound sleep, and tells me he’ll pick me up in fifteen minutes. Another Bravo has turned up dead.

By the time he arrives I’m more or less awake, dressed, and mobile. I climb into the passenger side of the car and say, “I don’t care if we’re on our way to look at the dismembered corpse of the pope, I want coffee.”

Charlie hands me a paper bag. Inside are a large coffee and a lemon Danish. “You’re welcome,” he growls.

When I’ve got enough down my throat to feel human again, I ask him where we’re going.

“Docks. Body was found in a boathouse. Cassius says this one makes the last one look normal.”

“Great,” I mutter. “Wonder if there’s any point in eating the rest of this Danish.”

“You better. I spent a buck eighty-five on it.”

“Really? Guess I should start calling you Rockefeller.”

“I buy you breakfast and that’s how you repay me? Bad puns?”

“Thanks, Rockefeller.”

“Next time you get decaf.”

“Oh, that’s a decision you’ll regret.”

It’s a typical Seattle day, overcast with chances of increasing grayness. The boathouse is down in Shilshole Bay, an area that’s mostly private marinas. We pull into the parking lot of one that seems more low-rent than the others, the slips crowded with live-aboards and older boats. The boat house is at the far end, behind a dry-dock area fenced off with chainlink. Two thrope officers are guarding the gate, sipping coffee from paper cups and looking bored. We flash them our IDs and they let us past.

The boathouse is made from weathered gray wood, but the door is steel-cored and has an almost brandnew frame and hinges. It’s ajar, so we can enter without touching anything.

Inside, the floor becomes a dock, ending about halfway down the building’s length. The walls extend into the water another fifty feet or so, the structure opening at the far end into the bay. There’s a wiremesh gate on a track across the opening, currently closed.

Cassius is standing over the body, wearing the same suit he had on last night, with a London Fog overcoat on top of it. He looks up as we enter but doesn’t say anything.

The vic is a woman. Her body is wrapped in bandages, like a mummy, up to her neckline. She’s sitting upright in a wheelchair, her hands on the arms.

What skin is exposed is a gleaming metallic orange in color. In fact, it appears to be made of metal—

bronze, I’d say. What tells me that this is a corpse and not simply a detailed sculpture is the head—the top of the skull has been neatly removed, and placed in her lap.

Above her forehead, her brain has been cross-sectioned, sliced both horizontally and vertically into little cubes that someone separated from one another by an inch or so by impaling them with thin wooden skewers, producing a three-dimensional grid—an exploded diagram of thought itself.

“Her name is Lucy Barbarossa,” Cassius says. “Otherwise known as the Sword of Midnight.”

I nod. “No sword, though.”

“No. We’re still searching her ship, but I think the killer took it.”

I glance at the edge of the dock and notice for the first time that there’s something riding very, very low in the water. “Ship?”

“Submersible. Barbarossa was a smuggler.”

“Not surprising,” Charlie says. “In the comic she was a pirate.”

I take a closer look at the gridwork brain. “Sixty-four sections.”

“Any idea what it means?” Cassius asks.

“The answer to
What is eight times eight
?” I shrug. “I’m more interested in the transformation of the body. First copper, now this. And the wheelchair is obviously significant, too.”

“How about the bandages?”

I can’t help thinking of the wrappers, though none of them would be so boring as to use plain strips of white gauze. Still, it’s a little unsettling—and not something I’m ready to mention to Cassius yet. “No idea. Who found the body?’