Anita Blake 24 - Dead Ice (78 page)

I weighed the rules against sharing ongoing investigations against getting Manny’s voodoo expertise, and you know what I decided. He was my friend, and this man had already traumatized Manny’s family. I told him what I knew.

“So he has to kill the women and take their souls, and their hair represents that, or is it just their deaths that feed the magic?” Manny asked.

“I don’t know, you’re better at voodoo than I am, you tell me.”

“There is always one thing you must never do, or it breaks the magic of a gris-gris like this,” he said.

“I know. The last time I encountered a gris-gris like this, one kind of blood fed it, and another kind of blood broke the spell. There was no blood on this one, only the hair woven around a leather band.”

“Women’s hair?”

“Yes.”

“And he was going to use a knife on Connie, but he never used the blade on Tomas.”

“Yeah.” I frowned at him, not following his logic, but letting him think it out.

“I wonder if a man’s hair would be enough to break the spell?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Wrap a man’s hair around the band, not a woman’s, or maybe just something that has a man’s DNA on it.”

“Maybe, but if we know that would break the spell and potentially kill him, we still can’t do it legally. It would be the same as putting a bullet in his head tonight.”

“I suppose so, but for later, once it’s removed from him, you still have to break the spell to free the last zombie.”

“Okay, so boy parts, like boy cooties,” I said, smiling.

He didn’t smile back. “They don’t know if Tomas will ever walk right again, let alone run.”

“I’m so sorry, Manny.”

He nodded, looking as grim as I’d ever seen him. “You brought my children home alive. Connie will still be getting married and Tomas will be in the wedding even if we have to push him down the aisle in a wheelchair. We are all alive, Anita, thanks to you.” He grasped my hand in his and then hugged me again. I hugged him back, and then the surgeon was there to tell them some good news. The bullet had been an abdominal wound, so he’d lost a lot of blood internally, but he was going to make it. The orthopedic surgeon thought he’d be able to set Tomas’s leg, and with a lot of physical therapy and rehab he’d be able to walk. He was young and in good shape; there was even hope that he’d run again.

There was a lot of crying and hugging again, and I got to leave them on a good note. I visited Estrella’s room then, and she was calm, peaceful, but still trapped aware. Maximiliano so needed to die for what he’d done to her, not to mention everything else.

“I’m not afraid anymore,” the zombie told me. “Thank you.”

“
De nada
,” I said, and though it’s Spanish for “you’re welcome,” it literally means, “of nothing.” This time it was how I felt. I couldn’t free her soul. I couldn’t make her forget everything. I couldn’t put her peacefully in her grave. All I could do was keep her calm and unafraid while we fought in court to free her from Max’s slavery.

Her eyes grew wide, and she reached out. I took her hand without thinking, and I felt her “die.” One minute she was in there and the next she was gone. What the hell?

My phone rang, and made me jump. “Blake here,” I said.

“Where are you?” It was Hudson.

“In the zombie’s room, Estrella’s room. She just went . . . dead. She’s gone. I don’t know what happened.”

“I just got a call from the hospital, Maximiliano is dead. He died of his wounds.”

“He couldn’t die of his wounds,” I said.

“I know.”

“Shit, I’ll check it out.”

“Make sure you have witnesses when you’re with the body, Blake. You have a personal connection, don’t give them room to blame you for this.”

“I haven’t done a damn thing.”

“Just be cautious, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Fine, I’ll keep a nurse or someone with me.”

“Make sure you do.” He hung up, and I went in search of our dead bad guy.

There was a nurse and a doctor with me. “One minute he was fine,” Nurse O’Reily said. “I stepped out of the room for just a minute and then his monitors sounded and he was dead.”

I put on a pair of surgical gloves. “I got a call that he’d died of his wounds, is that true?”

“He took three large-caliber rounds to the chest cavity, so yes, I’d say it’s a safe bet that they’ll list cause of death as gunshot,” Dr. Pendleton said, frowning at me.

“I need to check one thing on him.”

“What?” Pendleton asked.

“Magic,” I said, and used my gloved hands to slip the sleeve of his hospital gown away from his left upper arm. I expected the gris-gris to be gone, but it was still there. Estrella’s thick black hair was still woven tight around his arm. The colored hairs of his other victims were still there, too.

“It looks fine,” I said.

“I read the notes, and you thought that was helping him heal the bullet wounds.”

“Yes,” I said.

“The notes said it wasn’t to be removed under any circumstances, and none of us even touched it,” Nurse O’Reily said.

“You’d have to cut it off, and it’s whole,” I said.

“Did it just stop working for him?” she asked.

“I honestly don’t know, I’m not an expert on this type of charm.”

“I always hate the paperwork when magic gets in my hospital,” the doctor said.

“Magic complicates everything,” the nurse said.

“It can,” I said. I stripped off my gloves and started to put them in the wastebasket, and there on the floor was a longish white and gray hair. It was curly, and I was betting if I touched it, the texture would be coarse, because Manny’s hair was coarse, and white and gray.

“Motherfucker,” I whispered.

“Did you say something, Marshal?” the doctor asked.

I shook my head. “No, just muttering to myself.” I left the room. I did not try to pick up the hair. Maybe it wasn’t Manny’s. I mean, there were lots of other people whose dark hair was going gray and white. It didn’t have to be his, but he was the one who had said that maybe a man’s hair would undo the magic. Had he come down here? I didn’t know, and as I walked down the hospital corridor I decided I wasn’t going to ask him. Estrella was free. Max couldn’t hurt anyone else, ever again. Manny and his family, and me and mine, were safe from him, too. He wouldn’t be sending killer zombies after me the way his mother had. Maximiliano was not a loss to humanity; in fact we might be a few points ahead with him dead. So why did it bother me that Manny might have crept down here and done it? Did he look down at his grown son and wonder about what might have been, if he’d known and been a father to this one, too? Or had he only seen the man who tried to kill two of his children, and may have crippled one?

B
Y THE TIME
of Connie’s wedding Tomas was on crutches, and able to walk himself down the aisle to stand with his new brother-in-law. Tomas spent most of the reception in the wheelchair Connie bullied him into, but everyone was alive and there for the wedding. That counted; that counted for a lot. No one came knocking on Manny’s door to ask about Maximiliano’s death. “It’s magic; who knows why it stops working?” seemed to be the general consensus.

But since he died of complications from the bullet wounds I finally got a full-blown Internal Affairs review just like Sergeant Hudson, who had been the other shooter. I’m barred from working with SWAT here in St. Louis until I get cleared. I think if Estrella the zombie had been “alive” to talk to they would have been more upset with me, but zombies have no rights under the law, so she couldn’t even be counted against me—legally. I’d seen these two IA detectives before and they weren’t fans of my working with SWAT. It’s made me value my fringe status with regular police procedures even more. Let’s hear it for orders of execution and being fucking assassins with badges. It makes shooting people amazingly simpler.

I’ve started using smaller blood sacrifices for raising zombies, so I haven’t gotten another one like Thomas Warrington, which is great. But even without a large blood sacrifice my zombies are getting better, more “alive.” Until Warrington, and the zombies that Max made, I wasn’t worried about my zombies being so good, but now I’m beginning to wonder what’s happening with my powers. How lifelike are my zombies going to get? I don’t have an answer, but I’m beginning to think I’m going to need one someday.

Asher is still on our shit list. Even Jean-Claude has abandoned his bed for a few weeks, so Asher is getting all the couple time with Kane that he wanted, or that Kane wanted. The werehyena is happy to be monogamous, but it’s obvious this wasn’t what Asher had in mind. He’s chasing everyone he took for granted, even Dev, who I think is enjoying turning him down.

Dev is getting along well with everyone else in our group. In fact one of his serious pluses is how easygoing he is compared to Asher. Dev is still wanting to be the tiger we put a ring on, but we’re seeing how the domestic bliss goes before committing. We’re being cautious about adding the three women, as well, mainly because the first woman who ever entered my life, Jade, is throwing a fit. She is incredibly hurt and Domino is asking me to consider her feelings. I’m giving her feelings a little time, but not much longer. She’s requested a chance to meet the other women and try to understand why I think they’re a better idea than she is, and the fact that she doesn’t understand why I want women who like men, too, proves one of Jade’s great weaknesses. Anyone who’s been around me intimately, even briefly, knows I’m probably never going to be a woman just for other women. As Fortune said one night at dinner, “You like dick too much to give it up.”

The fact that Fortune, Echo, and Magda could all understand that without sleeping with any of us, and Jade can’t after over two years of being in my bed, says a lot about why Jade isn’t making much progress in therapy. You have to be honest in therapy, with your counselor and with yourself. I know Jade isn’t being honest with herself, which probably means her therapist isn’t faring much better.

So, we still have no tiger for the commitment ceremony, though I’ve accepted that Cynric, Sin, is part of our domestic arrangement. Jean-Claude sees him more as a beloved nephew so he doesn’t want to “marry” him in a group, which is fair, so unless Dev works out we are back to not knowing who to choose. I think we’re all still hoping that Fortune may help in that area, but Jade stands in the way of that happy experiment. I’m about ready to throw both Domino and Jade off my dating list, because honestly they’re both too high maintenance for too little return for me. I’d pretty much broken up with Domino as anything but food anyway. Jade may not even be food for the
ardeur
if she keeps hitting all the wrong relationship buttons with me. Hell, if she could only see that I hit the wrong buttons for her, too. Whatever love means to both of us, it’s not the same thing, and I don’t think that’s fixable. I think it just is.

Narcissus is back with his hyenas for now, but he’s screwed the pooch with most of them, and there is talk of a palace coup. Jean-Claude has let it be known that we won’t interfere in the power shakeup, if it goes that way. Narcissus is trying to win back his people’s loyalty, because he finally understands that a king without followers is not a king.

Dev is still able to transform into a lion and his golden tiger. Micah is still black tiger and leopard. I know now that Micah needs that extra power display to help him avoid the worst of the out-of-town battles. I worry about him more now. He seems able to call flesh and heal tigers, as well as leopards, now. It doesn’t seem to matter what kind of tiger it is, so we’re all wondering if more new tiger forms will come. Since clan tiger is a “born” type of lycanthrope and not a contagious form, it’s raised a lot of metaphysical questions. So far we have more questions than answers, but the weretigers are researching that prophecy of theirs for clues.

Dev has joined Nicky with the werelions and he’s formed a very friendly coalition with him and Travis. Dev is perfectly willing for Travis to continue to be the emotionally intelligent one of the three of them; as he said, “If I was brilliant with interpersonal stuff I wouldn’t have loved Asher.” He might have a point.

We’re still working on the wedding band designs for Jean-Claude and me, but we’ve moved on to wedding dresses and bridesmaid dresses, and tuxes for the men. How many people are standing up with us? Asher was going to be Jean-Claude’s best man, but now he’s got to earn that privilege back. Jean-Claude wants a spectacular designer wedding dress for me. I just want one I can actually dance in at the reception without being a hazard to the other dancers. I am not doing a hoop skirt.

The designs for the crowns are actually coming along faster than the rings. I tried to protest them again, but Jean-Claude said, “You are queen to my king.”

“I thought I was your general.”

“That, too, and if you wish I can have a uniform tailored for you and you can play general to my oh-so-grateful nobleman.”

I told him I didn’t need a uniform, but thanks.

“I’ve never had a woman in uniform before,” he said, and I watched the thought fill his eyes. Why do I think that when I get measurements for the wedding gown, there’ll be plans for some uniforms, too? I don’t really mind; after all, he dresses up for me.