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The two-story building Jodi led us to was large enough to support two or three businesses on the ground floor, and on the second floor, allery, enclosed with decorative wrought iron Holding up the gallery, ht-iron polesthe lower floor protection fro, thejalousie s above each, and on the second floor there were key-design s and doors Over it all was a fancy brickwork soldier course I thought therea third floor a final residential area or artist’s atelier, butwas stuccoed or plastered, hard to tell in the strobing lights The s and doors were all shut, and I could hear the hu

The srabbedIt to You

Inside the main entrance, which was located on the corner, beneath an elaborate curlicued door header, Jodi handed us each a stack of paper clothing and pointed us through a narrow space along one wall The inside of the building was hidden from our eyes, but the smellsthey told the tale Alcohol of every kind, old toilets, fried food--the scents of a bar and grill And over it all rode the stink of bowels, urine, the sweet reek of blood starting to go bad

Eli glanced atand a question in his expression I shookan answer to whatever he needed to know Sitting on a long bench, we pulled on the paper booties, long white paper jackets, and white hats, which looked like poofs of dough on our heads Lastly, we snapped on nitrile gloves, the medium blue the county preferred

Jodi stuck her head around the corner and motioned us out She was similarly dressed, in paper and nitrile, and e made our way around the partition into theAll the living, that is

My eyes tried to take it in as my nose went on overload with death-death-death The dead earing colorful party clothes, jeans, skirts, boots, ballerina shoes, gold chains, T-shirts, button-downs, running shoes, capri pants, sandals, peasant blouses, tank tops, wifebeaters; every manner of casual dress seen at a New Orleans bar in a summer heat as represented The dead were slu on the dance floor, crumpled behind the bar, two prone halfway in the men’s roo the cancan and then lay down to sleep, her dress still thrown high, over her head Sons of multiple puncture marks, the way victims look when several vamps have been at them but didn’t feel the need to rip and tear Fastidious, deadly vamps Others were slumped so that I couldn’t see their throats, and still others’ heads were turned around on their spines, facing the wrong way When the vamps were done, they had broken the humans’ necks It was roundthem with my hands The pain that had hidden, subdued, inoff at the pressure of ling hot alongI should have killed Joses Bar-Judas, taken his head where he hung on the wall I had known in ut that he was evil incarnate I could see it in his eyes, even without proof of any wrongdoing And I had done nothing Worse, et free To do this This horror

Hunched intoin the roo with their instruuy with a tru as if she fell asleep across her base druht pink stripes painted in Her dress was hiked up around her waist, as if--

I didn’t finish that thought But my blood heated and my heart rate sped as I forced myself away from my own shock and back to the crime scene To that moe of proble fifty-two humans meant 286 quarts of blood How many humans had been drained? How e?

"Tell me," Jodi said, the words too caluilt that accoh in the dark places of my soul "You already know vamps did this What do you ith me? Why am I in the middle of this?"

"I’ll file your sympathy away for later consideration," Jodi said evenly

I started to reply and cla my eyes, I said, "I’m sorry I’m so sorry about all this" I swept ripped my injured arm When I took a breath, it stuttered on a sob that I sed down

"Okay I wanted you to know exactly what this city is dealing with So that you will tell nize the vampire who did this" Her tone was mild, so placid, so carefully bland, her words so precise "Va into the two syllables, contained under pressure, as if she was close to explosion "Singular"

"The ain at the humans who showed no bloody throats and realized that the humans who appeared to have deformities had no other injuries Their heads had been twisted around until their necks broke, but there were no fang , and none had the pale-pale flesh of the drained Not all fifty-two had been taken for feeding Most of them had been killed without blood loss Vaht bleed their dinners dry, but they didn’t kill the and found the security cameras, two of them, one pointed at the bar, the other at the dance floor and the cash register One vah to have that kind of power The words like the ashes of death in my mouth, I said, "Show me"

She led the way out of the bar and back to the place where we’d dressed She had us remove our personal protective equip In a crione over with a fine-tooth coht have picked up and carried out by accident

Jodi led the way outside, into the ht la there, not yet But soon the table and the board would be filled with evidence and notes and comments that would later be put into computerized records Few police departments could afford the kind of fancy co the poor law enforcement departoing investigation In the distance, a generator roared, a huge one, to provide power for the evidence gathering