Necromancing Nim (25 page)

I stood on the sidewalk, taking in the surroundings as thoroughly as I could so I would recognize them when I saw them again. The vampire on the front porch watched for a time, then finally got up and went inside. Around me, the dreamscape faded, and I drifted into a quieter sleep.

Allegations that this office has discriminated against vampires, whether as victims or perpetrators, is unfounded. We treat all citizens with equal respect and consideration.
—Statement from the Denver Police Department, 1982

Chapter Fifteen

I woke to the sound of voices. One of them was familiar—Colin’s grumpy rumble. The other one was familiar too, but not a voice I wanted to hear in my house. I got up, wrapped my bathrobe around me and headed for the living room to see what the hell was going on.

What was going on was weird enough I wondered if I was still asleep. My living room had been straightened, almost as if it hadn’t been torn apart by annoyed vampires. Even the couch appeared relatively normal, although it was now covered with artfully draped afghans. Even weirder, Detective Eric Harrison sat in my living room, legs crossed almost daintily, enjoying a cup of tea with Colin.

I stopped in the doorway and blinked, bemused. If Eric opened his mouth and started talking in an English accent, I was going back to bed, because obviously I was still asleep. Or I’d lost my mind. Or something.

Colin grinned. “There she is.”

Eric set his teacup on an end table. “Hello, Ms. Taylor.”

His toothy smile was far too charming. I still hadn’t figured out how a guy with eyes and lips that feminine could be so ruggedly handsome. It was the kind of anomaly that caused universes to collapse on themselves.

“Hi,” I said. “Is there coffee, or are we all sissified tea drinkers this evening?”

“Tea and milk,” Eric offered.

“Even worse,” I said. “To what do I owe the dubious pleasure of your company?”

Eric leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap, smug already. That couldn’t be a good sign. “You’re trying to find Pieter.”

“Yeah…” I trailed off, at a loss. He really shouldn’t know about Pieter. Then again, he was a cop in a city everybody knew was lousy with vampires. “How’d you know?” I finally finished lamely.

“You were on the vamp boards last night.”

He was completely smug now. Shit. “Yeah? So?” I switched into defensive mode, complete with witty dialogue.

“You’re MerlinsGirl,” he said. I’d thought he couldn’t get any smugger. I’d been wrong. My mouth started to gape. I made it stop.

“How could you know that?”

“I’m liam27.” His smirk turned into a cheeky grin. I really wanted to smack it off his face. With a waffle iron.

“Nice. So, you got any decent info, or are you just here to amaze us with your powers of discernment?”

“I’ve got some info.” He sobered, crossing his arms over his chest. “I also think you might want to cool it on the boards. You’ve been pushing things, and I don’t think there’s anybody left on the boards who really thinks you’re a vampire.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He had a lot of nerve, coming in here and dissing my awesome undercover skills.

Eric had his cop face on, which wasn’t that much different from his regular face, but he tended to clench his jaw more. “I’ve got an address that I think is a pretty solid lead, and I don’t want amateurs coming in and messing up everything.”

“Is it a little house set back from the sidewalk? Next door to a house with purple shutters?”

Eric blinked. “Um…I don’t know. I guess it could be.”

I gave him a placid smile. “Give me the address, and I’ll find out.”

The smug cop face returned. “Now, I’m not authorized to just hand over evidence.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To request that you stay away from the vamp boards until our investigation is concluded. You’re making things a little uneasy for us.”

Colin frowned at Eric. It was a contemplative frown. Like he was contemplating whether to rip Eric’s head off and treat his aorta like a water fountain.

God, that was a disturbing image. I really needed to stop hanging out with vampires.

“Poking around the vamp boards is part of my job. And I seriously doubt anybody knows who I am.”

“I figured it out.”

“Yeah, you and special cop hacking software or something.” He couldn’t have just figured it out on his own. I’d been poking around those boards for a while now, and nobody had ever suspected a thing.

“It doesn’t take special cop hacking software to track down an IP address.”

He had a point there. “Oh, whatever.”

“Do you have an address?” Colin’s contribution came so abruptly it made me jump. I started to tell him that of course I had an IP address, then he clarified. “For the house?” Oh. He wasn’t talking to me.

Eric seemed startled too, his attention jerking to the formerly quiet vampire. “Of course I do.” His hand lifted, then lowered. Colin’s gaze caught the movement, then his eyes tracked up, and he grinned that thin, feral grin that made me wish I wore turtlenecks on a regular basis.

Colin became a blur. A moment later, Eric lay on his back on the floor, out cold, while Colin retrieved a notebook from his breast pocket. It was the kind of little notebook cops carry to jot things down in at crime scenes.

My heart had jumped into my throat at Colin’s sudden movement. I swallowed, trying to quiet it.

“Dude. You just knocked out a cop.”

Colin straightened, unperturbed, and perused the notebook. “I did.”

“They tend to frown on that.”

“True.” He waved the notebook at me. “I got our address. What do you want to bet it’s a house set back from the sidewalk, next to a house with purple shutters?”

I shook my head. I didn’t even want to think about it.

I thought maybe we’d make a plan, but Colin scoffed at the suggestion. This time, at least.

“If we wait too long, it’ll be too late. We’ll have no chance of taking them out or getting the stone back.”

“Do we have a chance, anyway?” I didn’t want to be the voice of doom, but I was still worried about Sebastian. He was getting ready to go, as was Colin, but he still seemed pale and wan. Maybe even more so than before. It was always hard to tell with vampires. I was certain, though, that he was in far from peak condition.

“We have to try,” said Sebastian. “The consequences are too high if we don’t.”

I sighed and scrubbed my face with my hands. I was sitting on the couch. Colin had hog-tied Eric, and he lay at my feet, still unconscious. Under other circumstances, having a guy that attractive hog-tied at my feet would have been vastly entertaining, but the fact he was a cop who’d been knocked unconscious by my boss in my living room kind of took the fun out of it.

“And if they, you know, kill us all?” I protested. “What do you think about your consequences then?”

“Pretty much the same,” Colin put in. “Except for us being dead and much less able to stop Pieter from taking over the world.”

“You think that’s what he’s after? To take over the world?” The specter of a world filled with vampire zombies suddenly overtook my imagination, and it wasn’t pretty.

“I’d say that’s a slight exaggeration,” said Sebastian. He slid into his leather jacket, straightening the collar neatly against his neck. “He doesn’t want to take over the world—just the part with vampires in it.”

I frowned. “Isn’t that, like, pretty much everywhere?”

“Well, yes…” Sebastian mulled, realizing his summation hadn’t been very satisfactory. Or accurate. “I mean he only wants to be in charge of the vampires.”

“You two are pathetic,” Colin put in. “If he’s got the stone, he’s indestructible; he takes control of every cadre between here and New York City. He has enough power he can do whatever he wants—at that point, world domination starts to be a possibility.”

“So we move to the West Coast,” I said dryly. Colin leveled a glare at me and shook his head.

“Like I said. Pathetic.” He pulled his own coat on and headed for the door. “Let’s go find this place. I want Pieter’s head on a plate. Literally.”

I wasn’t surprised when the address led us to a house set back from the sidewalk next to a house with purple shutters, but it still creeped me out. Having weird, precognitive dreams was hard to get used to, especially when there was more than a passing chance the ability had come from being chomped on by a vampire and almost turned into a zombie. But perhaps I harp on that too much.

Sitting in the car in the road across from the house, we scoped the place out.

“This place is crap,” Colin declared in his usual subtle manner. “Why is he headquartering in such a crap house?”

“Maybe it was cheap,” I suggested.

Sebastian leaned forward from the backseat to speak to me. “Can you sense anything from them?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Seems like the only time I get any kind of information or anything from them is when I’m asleep.”

“Damn unhandy,” Colin grumped.

“Well, I’m sorry my precognitive flashes don’t happen on your schedule.”

“It’d be a hell of a lot easier if they did.” He glanced at Sebastian so quickly I barely caught it. “Safer too.”

Okay, so he was grumpy because he was worried about Sebastian. Fair enough. I was worried about Sebastian too. The only one who wasn’t worried about Sebastian was, apparently, Sebastian.

I nodded, wishing I could be more help. “So what do we do? Charge in and hope we still have surprise on our side?”

Colin opened his mouth to speak, and a violent spear of pain smashed into my chest.

Everything went black for a moment. When I came to, Colin’s usual scowl was tempered by the concern creasing his forehead.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded. He had a unique way of expressing his concern.

“I don’t know. I just…” I pressed against my chest with the flat of my hand. It still hurt like hell, like somebody had split open my breastbone.

Sebastian, who’d also been watching me worriedly, suddenly lurched up in the car so abruptly his head smashed into the ceiling. His eyes widened.

“We have to go in. Now.”

“What…?” Colin started, then broke off, his eyes going wide as well. “They’re doing it now?”

“They have to be.” Sebastian scrabbled with the door, finally pushing it open. He half fell onto the sidewalk. “Nim, if you can make it, we could use you.”

I rubbed my chest again. The pain had eased to a dull yet excruciating throb. “I think so.” I straightened in my seat and didn’t quite pass out, so I figured it was a good bet I could make it at least a few feet up the sidewalk. What good I’d be once we got there, I wasn’t sure, especially if the pain didn’t ease up. “What’s the hurry?”

“I think we can safely say you’ve got a bond of some kind with Pieter, and it works outside the dreamscape,” Sebastian said. “He’s implanted the stone.”

Oh, great
. As we got out of the car, the pain began to weaken, though it still burned down my breastbone.

Implanted. Implanted in his chest? Maybe I did have that bond, because I was hit with a sudden flash of Pieter with his chest opened up, internal organs shiny with blood but strangely unmoving. Not to mention a weird color—gray-blue and sickly. And the stone lay there amidst his shiny-slick, dead organs, sinking into the muscle of his heart.

God, that was gross. I closed my eyes to shut out the vision, but since the vision was in my head and didn’t really involve my eyes at all, that didn’t help. Thankfully, it faded before my queasy reaction could morph into genuine nausea.

“If we can get to him before they’re done putting it in, we’ve got half a chance,” Colin stated.

“I think it’s too late.” I heard myself speak the words, but I wasn’t sure why I’d said them or why I felt so certain they were true.

“Then it’s too late, and we’re all fucked.” Colin squared his already very square shoulders and stalked for the little, squat, crappy house.

The vampire uses its ability to glamour its victims in order to make its job as predator that much easier. A vampire can easily make an individual believe that what it is doing is pleasant.
—
The Vampire: A Primer
, excerpt from the Preserve Humanity website

Chapter Sixteen

Colin burst through the front door of the house in that focused, square-shouldered, square-jawed, glary way only Colin can. I might have been turned on by the procedure if my chest hadn’t still felt like somebody had shoved a spreader into it and was practicing some kind of Rolfing on my heart muscle. Okay, so I was a little turned on anyway. A big guy kicking in a door is always hot.

Inside, the crappy little house wasn’t so much a crappy little house as a fully decked-out surgical theater. The small foyer was set up as a staging area, with sinks and places to store equipment, gloves and surgical gowns. Glass doors led through the opposite wall into a room beyond, but the glass was covered with cheap blinds, obscuring what lay beyond. Sebastian took the place in with raised eyebrows. Colin scowled.