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Chapter 2

The man&039;s body lay on its back, pale and naked in the weak ood, a lot of weights, reen lawn The s ht arm was pierced at the bend of the elbohere a doctor draws blood The skin of the left wrist was shredded, like an aniht

I had measured the bite marks with my trusty tape measure They were different sizes At least three different va I owned that it was five different vampires A master and his pack, or flock, or whatever the hell you call a group of va h the knees of the coveralls I had put on to protect loves completed my crime-scene kit I used to hite Nikes, but they showed blood too easily

I said a silent apology for what I had to do, then spread the corpse&039;s legs apart The legsthat he hadn&039;t been dead eight hours, not enough tior mortis to set in Semen had dried on his shriveled privates One last joy before dying The vah, close to the groin, were e as the wrist wound, but they weren&039;t neat either

There was no blood on the skin around the wounds, not even the wrist wound Had they cleaned the blood off? Wherever he was killed, there was a lot of blood They&039;d never be able to clean it all up If we could find where he died, we&039;d have all sorts of clues But in the neatly clipped lawn in the hborhood, there were no clues I was betting on that They&039;d dumped the body in a place as sterile and unhelpful as the dark side of the moon

Mist floated over the shosts The h sheets of drizzling rain Tiny beads ofto the body where the mist had condensed Beads collected in my hair like silver pearls

I stood in the front yard of a sreen house hite tri a rooreen The top of a sugar maple looey-yellow that is peculiar to sugar maples, as if their leaves were carved from flame The mist helped the illusion, and the colors seemed to bleed on the wet air

All down the street were other sreen lawns It was still early enough that one to work yet, or school, or wherever There was quite a crowd being held back by the uniforround to hold the yellow Do-Not-Cross tape The crowd pressed as close to the tape as they dared A boy of about twelve had ed to push his way to the front He stared at the dead e brown eyes, his mouth open in a little "" of excite at the corpse, too

The corpse was paper-white Blood always pools to the lowest point of the body In this case dark, purplish bruising should have set in at buttocks, ars, the entire back of his body There were no h blood in him to cause lividity marks Whoever had murdered hiht the urge to s at corpses, you get a peculiar sense of hu mad

"What&039;s so funny?" a voice asked

I jumped and whirled "God, Zerbrowski, don&039;t sneak up onvarinned at me His unruly brown hair stuck up in three separate tufts like he&039;d forgotten to comb it His tie was at half-mast over a pale blue shirt that looked suspiciously like a pajama top The brown suit jacket and pants clashed with the top

"Nice pajaot a pair with little choo-choos on theot a thing for trains?" I asked

His grin widened "If I&039; &039;em"

I shook my head "I knew you were perverted, Zerbrowski, but little kids&039; jalanced down at the body, still s The smile faded "What do you think of this?" He nodded towards the dead man

"Where&039;s Dolph?"

"In the house with the lady who found the body" He plunged his hands into the pockets of his pants and rocked on his heels "She&039;s taking it pretty hard Probably the first corpse she&039;s seen outside of a funeral"

"That&039;s the way most normal folks see dead people, Zerbrowski"

He rocked forward hard on the balls of his feet, co to a standstill "Wouldn&039;t it be nice to be norrinned "Yeah, I knohat you ot a notebook out of his jacket pocket that looked as if someone had crumbled it in their fist

"Geez, Zerbrowski"

"Hey, it&039;s still paper" He tried save up He posed, pen over the wrinkled paper "Enlightento have to repeat this to Dolph? I&039;d like to just do this once and go home to bed"

"Hey,fashion statement" He looked at me "Mm-huh"

Dolph walked out of the house The door looked too small to hold him He&039;s six-nine and built bulky like a wrestler His black hair was buzzed close to his head, leaving his ears stranded on either side of his face But Dolph didn&039;t care ainst the collar of his white dress shirt He had to have been pulled out of bed just like Zerbrowski, but he looked neat and tidy and businesslike It never mattered what hour you called Dolph, he was always ready to do his job A professional cop down to his socks

So as Dolph heading up the most unpopular special task force in St Louis? Punish, that much I was sure of, but I&039;d never asked what I probably never would It was his business If he wanted inally been a pacifier for the liberals See, we&039;re doing so about supernatural crime But Dolph had taken his job and his men seriously They had solved roup of policeive talks to other police forces They had even been loaned out to neighboring states twice

"Well, Anita, let&039;s have it"

That&039;s Dolph; no preliminaries "Gee, Dolph, it&039;s nice to see you too"

He just looked at me

"Okay, okay" I knelt on the far side of the body so I could point as I talked Nothing like a visual aid to get your point across "Justshows that at least three different vampires fed on the man"

"But?" Dolph said

He&039;s quick "But I think that every wound is a different vampire"

"Vampires don&039;t hunt in packs"

"Usually they are solitary hunters, but not always"

"What causes them to hunt in packs?" he asked

"Only two reasons that I&039;ve ever come across: first, one is the new dead and an older va the ropes, but that&039;s just two pairs of fangs, not five; second, a ue"

"Explain"

"A master vampire has nearly absolute control over his or her flock Soroup kill to solidify the pack, but they wouldn&039;t dump the body here They&039;d hide it where the police would never find it"

"But the body&039;s here," Zerbrowski said, "out in plain sight"

"Exactly; only a one crazy would dump a body like this Most ally alive wouldn&039;t flaunt a kill like this It attracts attention, usually attention with a stake in one hand and a cross in the other Even now, if we could trace the kill to the vaet a warrant and kill thehter like this is bad for business, and whatever else vampires are, they&039;re practical You don&039;t stay alive and hidden for centuries unless you&039;re discreet and ruthless"

"Why ruthless?" Dolph said

I stared up at him "It&039;s utterly practical Someone discovers your secret, you kill them, or make them one of your children Good business practices, Dolph, nothing more"

"Like the mob," Zerbrowski said

"Yeah"

"What if they panicked?" Zerbrowski asked "It was almost dawn"

"When did the woman find the body?"

Dolph checked his notebook "Five-thirty"

"It&039;s still hours until dawn They didn&039;t panic"

"If we&039;ve got a crazy master vampire, what exactly does that mean?"

"It means they&039;ll kill ht to support five vaht?" Zerbrowski made it a question

I just nodded

"Jesus," he said

"Yeah"

Dolph was silent, staring down at the dead man "What can we do?"

"I should be able to raise the corpse as a zoht you couldn&039;t raise a vampire victioing to rise as a vaed "The whatever thatI can&039;t raise a body that is already set to rise as a vamp"

"But this one won&039;t rise," Dolph said, "so you can raise it"

I nodded

"Why won&039;t this vampire victim rise?"

"He was killed byFor a corpse to rise as a va over a space of several days Three bites ending with death, and you get a vampire If every vampire victim could come back, we&039;d be up to our butts in bloodsuckers"

"But this victim can come back as a zombie?" Dolph said

I nodded

"When can you do the aniht, or really two Tonight counts as one night"

"What time?"

"I&039;ll have to check my schedule at work I&039;ll call you with a time"

"Just raise the murder victim and ask who killed him I like it," Zerbrowski said

"It&039;s not that easy," I said "You kno confused witnesses to violent criet three different heights, different hair colors"

"Yeah, yeah, witness testimony is a bitch," Zerbrowski said

"Go on, Anita," Dolph said It was his way of saying, "Zerbrowski, shut up" Zerbrowski shut up

"A person who died as the victim of a violent crime is more confused Scared shitless, so that sometimes they don&039;t remember very clearly"

"But they were there," Zerbrowski said He looked outraged

"Zerbrowski, let her finish"

Zerbrowski panto the key away Dolph frowned I coughed into e Zerbrowski

"What I&039; is that I can raise the victiet as et will be confused, painful, but it ht narrow the field down as to which roup"

"Explain," Dolph said

"There are only supposed to be two ht now Malcolm, the undead Billy Graham, and the Master of the City There&039;s always the possibility we&039;ve got someone new in town, but the Master of the City should be able to police that"

"We&039;ll take the head of the Church of Eternal Life," Dolph said

"I&039;ll take the Master," I said

"Take one of us with you for backup"

I shook my head "Can&039;t; if he knew I let the cops knoho he was, he&039;d kill us both"

"How dangerous is it for you to do this?" Dolph asked

What was I supposed to say? Very? Or did I tell them the Master had the hots for me, so I&039;d probably be okay? Neither "I&039;ll be all right"

He stared at me, eyes very serious

"Besides, what choice do we have?" I ht until we find the vampires responsible One of us has to talk to the Master He won&039;t talk to police, but he will talk to me"

Dolph took a deep breath and let it out He nodded He kneas right "When can you do it?"

"To my zombie appointments to someone else"

"You&039;re that sure the Master will talk to you?"

"Yeah" The proble hiht have insisted on going with otten us both killed

"Do it," he said "Let me knohat you find out"

"Will do," I said I stood up, facing him over the bloodless corpse

"Watch your back," he said

"Always"

"If the Master eats you, can I have your nifty coveralls?" Zerbrowski asked

"Buy your own, you cheap bastard"