30

SOME OF THE other shapeshifters took Jamil and Shang-Da to a back room to lie down. Jamil wouldn't look at me. Shang-Da did, but it wasn't a good look. It was more as if he were considering how he would kill me if he had to, and considering for the first time that he might not be able to. One of them dealt with his fear by being afraid, the other by estimating his chances. Either way, I'd damaged what relationship I had with the two werewolves. I could have pointed out that they'd volunteered, and that it did save Richard's life, but I wasn't comfortable enough with what I'd just done to be that logical.

I let them be led away like children lost in the mall when security finally finds them and takes them back to Mommy and Daddy.

The black-star vision did what it had last time: It helped me see things more clearly, as if everything were sharp-edged like it can be in an emergency. You see everything, and you notice things you might not have noticed otherwise - like I knew that Nicky had a knife tucked into his boot on the right side, because his jeans didn't lie quite right. It was a small knife; normally I wouldn't have noticed the slight rise along the seam of his pants.

I rose up to look at his face, and he wasn't afraid now. His face wasn't calm, though; it was considering. "What?" I asked him.

"The energy rush you shared felt amazing. Did it feel even better to you?"

"I don't know."

"Yeah, you do. It felt good the way killing something with teeth and claws feels good. It feels good to feed."

Jean-Claude stepped between us, took me by the shoulders, and made me look at him. "Ma petite, you have saved our Ulfric. You saved Richard's life. You have done no lasting harm to the other wolves."

I looked up at him, wondering if I'd see through some illusion with the new vision. He looked the same as he always did; amazing. "You really don't use any vampire wiles to make yourself this beautiful," I said.

He smiled. "I told you long ago, ma petite, that I do not try to appear to you as other than I am."

I nodded.

Damian came to stand beside us. The black eyes looked even more startling in his face, I think because he didn't have black hair to balance it. It was just pools of darkness in all that white skin and red hair.

"It was almost better than blood," he said, and his voice was distant. That was the real danger to some of these powers; it wasn't that it felt bad. It felt so good, good enough that if you weren't careful you might crave that power rush. If I craved it and gave in to it, I would be the monster. I didn't want to be the monster. I didn't want Jamil and Shang-Da to be afraid of me, not like that. But if the choice had been Richard dead or them afraid, I chose them afraid. Was that monstrous? No, not yet, but I was beginning to understand that the only difference between being the monster and being powerful was choosing not to be the monster. Not today. But there would always be tomorrow, and another chance to choose.

My cell phone rang. This time it was the peal of church bells, so I knew it wasn't a regular caller, or Nathaniel would have figured out a ring tone for them. I reached for it without thinking. Jean-Claude and Damian just watched me reach for it. I think they were being cautious, and I just needed something ordinary. "Blake here."

"Is this Marshal Anita Blake?" a man's voice asked.

"Yes, and you are?"

"Marshal Finnegan."

I stood up a little straighter. Shit, please don't let the Marshals Service need me now. Black glowy eyes and hit men out to get me, how would I explain it? "What can I do for you, Marshal Finnegan?" My voice sounded even and unemotional, business as usual. Good for me.

"I'd like you to take a look at some crime scene video."

There was a little spurt of relief. Usually I could do that sort of thing from a distance. Distance was good right now. "Be glad to. You want to email it to me, or give me an address and password for a site?"

"Got pen and paper?" he asked. Which meant it was going to be a password and one use of his site.

"Not on me. Hang on a minute." I pantomimed writing in the air, and Nicky handed me his iPhone with the screen set to notebook. I kept forgetting it did that. I used my shoulder to hold my phone and had my fingers poised to hit the itty-bitty keyboard. "Ready when you are."

He gave me a web address and a password. "This will let you view it for today. We'll change the password later today. Just standard protocol."

"It's okay, Finnegan. I wouldn't want someone I didn't know personally having full access to my stuff, either."

"Yeah, but I'm asking for your help, not the other way around."

He had a point. "Fine, I'll stop trying to play well with others."

"Rumor has it that all you preternatural branch marshals aren't team players."

"Being the Lone Ranger doesn't teach you good group skills," I said.

"He was a Texas Ranger actually, not a U.S. Marshal," he said.

"I know, just trying to make my point that being on our own didn't teach us to play well with others."

"Point taken," he said.

"When do you need me to get back to you?" I asked.

"ASAP," he said.

"Look, Finnegan, everyone says that. I need some kind of time frame."

"Watch the video, then you decide how quick you need to get back to me. I think you'll be calling ASAP."

"That bad?" I asked.

"Yeah, actually."

"I'll watch it and get back to you as soon as I can," I said.

"Ben Carter says good things about you."

"I only looked at some surveillance tapes for Marshal Carter."

"Yeah, but he says that you saw things on it that none of their people caught."

"Actually, I saw what everyone else saw; I just understood what it meant."

"None of the rest of us knew enough about vampires to catch it."

"But I'd suck on a forgery case. We all have our expertise."

"You know, Blake, I think you play just fine with others."

"Thanks, Finnegan, but you haven't told me what I'm supposed to be looking for."

"We're looking for reasons, Blake."

"Reasons? Reasons for what?" I asked.

"When you see the video you'll understand. We just want to know what the fuck happened, excuse my language."

"It's okay, Finnegan, I cuss like a sailor."

"I heard that about you, but my mother raised me that you don't curse in front of a lady."

I was both flattered that he'd called me a lady, and wondering if it would make him treat me as less of a marshal because of it. You had problems if they thought women were ladies, or whores; it was just different problems. "I appreciate that, but just wanted you to know it's not necessary."

"I think it is, but I'll try not to apologize to you again."

"Hey, I'm okay either way." Then I had a thought, and something about the weirdness of the day made me say it out loud. "You know, it's never occurred to me that my cussing could offend other women. Elderly women, yes, but, huh, I never thought about it."

He laughed. "I don't know if women are offended when other women cuss."

"Me, either, but it's worth a thought."

"That it is, Blake, that it is."

"I'll look at the video and get back to you."

"We'll be looking forward to any insights you can give us."

"Finnegan, I just realized, I didn't ask where you were? I mean, what city did this crime happen in?"

"Sorry, Blake, I thought I said. Atlanta. Atlanta, Georgia."

"Okay, I'll get to a computer and look at it."

"I'm on a landline, but here's my cell. You'll get me any time."

I wrote the number down on Nicky's iPhone. "Got it."

"I hope you come up with something."

"Me, too."

We hung up. I held the phone out to Nicky. "Make those notes appear on my phone and delete them from your phone."

He took it and began to do what I'd asked. Jean-Claude touched my arm, turned me to him and Damian. "Are you truly going to take the time to look at this video, ma petite?"

"I am."

"Our guests from Las Vegas have been very patient."

"Look, I don't want to see them while our eyes are still all black sky and stars."

"Why not?" Damian asked.

I thought about a lot of things but finally said the truth. "It felt good to feed on Jamil and Shang-Da, didn't it?"

Damian nodded.

"I don't want to be around wereanimals that I'm attracted to while this power is still riding me."

"You are afraid your hungers will not stop at the ardeur," Jean-Claude said.

I looked up at him, and his eyes were still a swimming sea of night. "Yeah."

"I believe your control is better than that, ma petite," he said.

"Maybe, but let me look at the video, and by that time I should be ready to meet our visitors."

He studied my face, and I wondered if he saw me differently with the power riding him. I almost asked, and then I thought better of it. I'd had enough shocks to the system for one day. I wasn't going to fish for any more.

"I need someone to help me get on the computer and then leave me alone to watch."

"I do not want any of us in the triumvirates to be alone, ma petite."

"You're afraid that the council or Mommie Dearest will try something else."

"Aren't you?" he asked.

I thought about it and could only nod. He smiled and touched my face. "Then I will watch with you."

I shook my head. "No, it's an ongoing police investigation. I can't share it with civilians."

He gave me a look. "I hardly think I qualify as a civilian."

"But you aren't a cop, either."

"I can spell our so-helpful Micah with the weretigers, but you can't be alone. If the council tried for you when you had no one to touch, I am not sure what would happen."

We debated, not quite argued, but in the end we compromised. Nicky stayed with me, because if I ordered him not to tell anyone what he saw, he'd have to do what I said. Damian got to stay with me for the same reason. Something about him being a vampire servant made it almost impossible for him to refuse a direct order from me. I tried not to give him orders much, but I seemed to have a lot more control over him than I did over Nathaniel, and for that matter a lot more control over Damian than  Jean-Claude did over either Richard or me. Since I was the first necromancer in vampire history to have a vampire servant, none of us knew why Damian had to obey me when the rest of us didn't have to obey anyone. It was just another mystery. Anyone who might know the answer to it was trying to kill us right now, or on the run from the Mother of All Darkness. We'd figure it out later, but right now I had a crime scene to look at.

I realized that I was glad to have something else to concentrate on besides our personal or metaphysical problems. Police work wasn't always simple, but it had clear-cut goals. You figured out who did it, or what did it, and you caught them, or killed them. Problem solved. When crime busting is easier than your personal life, something has gone seriously wrong.

The fact that the underground of the Circus of the Damned had a computer room still seemed weird to me. Most vampires weren't big on technology, or modern inventions that hadn't been around when they were "alive," but Jean-Claude was an early adapter and he was insisting that all his people know the basics. Hell, he had some of the dancers taking turns with online blogs. They were on Facebook, MySpace, and even Twitter, whatever that was. It was getting to where I was the least tech-savvy person we had. That seemed weird, too. I was the human being, sort of; wasn't I supposed to be better with this kind of stuff than the vampires?

The only light in the computer room was the soft glow of monitors. Valentina was at one of the terminals with the chair cranked as high as it would go, so her five-year-old body could reach the keyboard. She was dressed in a pink dress that was all lace and bows down to white tights and patent leather shoes. No one made her dress like the proverbial little girl. It was actually a step forward from the centuries-old clothing that she'd come to us with. The delicate triangle of her face was painted ghostly by the monitor's glow. She was staring at something on the screen so intently that she didn't seem to hear us.

I had a horrible thought. She and Bartolome, who was stuck at twelve, had both been in the underground when the ardeur hit everyone. What had happened to them?

"Valentina," I said.

She startled visibly and hit some buttons. The screen flickered, and then there were pictures of little cartoon animals floating over it. She began to move the mouse as if she were concentrating on the children's  game. She might actually enjoy the game, but whatever she'd been doing moments before hadn't been a screen full of big-eyed cartoons. She only looked five. In reality she was older than Jean-Claude. Actually both she and Bartolome were two of the oldest vampires in St. Louis. They were trapped in children's bodies, but they weren't children.

She glanced behind her, smiling, the intensity that I'd seen on her face when I first came through the door gone. She turned a perfectly good little girl's face to me. She could even make her eyes fill with that naïve light, but it was a lie. She'd been turned into a vampire too young for sex, but she had some of the drives of an adult. Those urges had been translated into pain. She was a sexual sadist and had been a professional torturer for centuries. It had been both a calling and a hobby. I wondered if that was what the ardeur would translate into for her.

She smiled sweetly at me. "Anita, do you want to play a game with me?"

"Sorry, I have police work to do."

She pouted at me. "No one ever wants to play."

I didn't want to ask the question, but the very thought that I had forgotten her in all this made me have to ask. "What happened to you and Bartolome last night?"

She crossed her arms over her thin child's chest and pouted harder. There was an edge of anger to it now. "He locked me in my coffin for hours."

I let out a breath I hadn't known I was holding. I fought not to look as relieved as I felt. But she noticed. She'd had centuries to watch adults and to manipulate them.

"I'm sorry for that," I said.

"No, you're not."

"I'm not sorry you were locked away while the ardeur went through us, no," I said.

"At Belle Morte's court, when the ardeur was unleashed they'd give me someone to play with while they had sex."

I blinked at her, not sure what to say to that.

"She doesn't mean play, Anita," Damian said.

I turned to him. "What does she mean?"

"They would give her someone to torture in a private area where no one could reach her, or her victim."

"I thought you only visited the courts once," I said.

"Once was enough," he said. He was looking at the little vampire, and even through the black eyes and the blankness of the very old vampires there was still something.

"You weren't her victim," I said.

"No, I wasn't."

"His friend was, though," Valentina said. "I heard your master shoved him into sunlight and burned him all up later."

Damian stiffened beside me, and I touched his hand. The death of his best friend and brother in arms was one of his worst memories.

"We need to use the room, Valentina."

She hopped off the chair, fluffing out the skirt of her pink dress. She came to us, her dark curls framing that forever face. She stopped looking up at Damian. "I liked your friend. It was a waste to kill him like that. I would have kept him safer than that."

Damian's hand tightened in mine. I said, "What did Bartolome do after he locked you in your coffin?"

She looked at me, narrowing her eyes. "Why are your eyes all dark?"

"New power," I said.

Either that satisfied her or she didn't really care. "Bartolome did what he always used to do. He went to find a woman." She rolled her eyes, which was more teenager than the rest of the act. "He's with her now. She seems quite besotted with him."

"Who is it?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't know her name, and I don't care. She won't play with me." She wrapped her tiny hand around one of Nicky's fingers. "You don't play with me anymore, either."

"That's because you cheated," he said.

"But we could have such fun," she said, pulling on his hand and swinging a little the way children will.

"Did I miss something?" I asked.

"You knew the rules, and you broke them." He held her shoulder so he could take his hand out of hers without her falling.

She stomped her little foot, hands on hips; it might have been cute, except that her eyes drowned in brown fire like any vampire's when their power comes on them or they lose their control. "There are plenty of wereanimals that enjoy pain. You could help me do it."

"They enjoy pain for pleasure, but you don't get off on that. You need them to really hurt before you're satisfied."

I looked from one to the other of them. It must have shown on my face, because she said, "If I'd known you hadn't tattled to Mommie, I wouldn't have said anything."

"Now I will have to tell her," he said.

"Someone tell me," I said.

"You know she was Belle Morte's torturer," Nicky said.

"I know," I said.

"She found out that I was an interrogator before I came here. She wanted to compare notes."

"Interrogator is a euphemism for torturer, right?"

"Right, but I saw it as more of a job. For Little V here, it's a passion. Her only passion." Just saying it showed that he understood her more than most people did. He got the true brokenness of her.

"Yeah," I said.

"She wanted me to help her by seducing some of the other wereanimals into some bondage sex and then she'd help me play with them, but her idea of play is something that even a pain slut wouldn't be able to enjoy."

"They'll heal, Nicky. They'll heal if I don't use silver metal," she said, hands still on her waist, face in that perfect little-girl scowl.

"When she found out I wouldn't help her lure the wereanimals in for torture, she tried to mind-fuck me."

"I take it that she couldn't roll you."

"There's too much of you in him," Valentina said. She stamped her foot again. "There's no room for anyone else in his mind, or in most of their minds. You're like Belle Morte was, Anita. You fill them up so that they think of only you, but she would give them to me when they disobeyed her or made her mad. I had more fun there."

"I didn't make you stay here," I said.

"No, we have to help Stephen and Gregory. We have to make up for scaring them." Her face went from pouting to serious. She and Bartolome had tried to take blood from the twins, but feeding for Belle's line is a kind of sex, and the thought of the child vampires feeding on them had terrified Stephen and Gregory. It had been too close to their past with their sexually abusive father. When they'd discovered why the twins were so frightened of them, they'd stopped tormenting them and stayed in St. Louis to make it up to the men somehow. We were going on two years and the child vampires were still trying to find a way to cleanse their honor with  the brothers. Now, of course, they couldn't go back to Belle's court, because she was on the run with her court.

"If you would just let us kill their father," she said.

"Stephen's therapist says that he needs to handle his father personally. That you killing him might actually cause more damage."

"I know" - she sighed - "and so we are trapped here. At least Bartolome will have a lover now and I still have nothing."

"I never know what to say to you, Valentina. I can't give you people to torture."

"You could, but you won't," she said. She threw her tiny hands in the air in a gesture years beyond her size and stomped to the door. Her hands were a little small for the door handle, but she opened it hard enough for it to slam the wall.

"Nicky, find out what she was hiding on the computer."

He walked over and started hitting keys as the fat cartoon sheep bobbed around the screen.

Damian hugged me, burying his face in my hair. I hugged him back, my face pressed against chest. Nicky made a soft whistle. I turned in Damian's arms so I could see the screen.

"What is that?" I asked.

"Just keep looking at it, your eyes will make sense of it."

Damian put his hand in front of my face so I couldn't see. "And then you'll never be able to not see it."

"Damian, move your hand."

"I have to do it, because you ordered me, but don't look, Anita." He moved his hand, and I looked.

Nicky was right, my mind did see it eventually, and Damian was right, too. It was one of those images that once you see it you'll remember it. I'd seen cut-up bodies in person, but it was still gruesome even by my standards.

"Does she have a file of this kind of thing?" I asked.

He hit more buttons. He started opening files and all the pictures were like that. Images from actual war casualties, crime scene photos that had made it onto the World Wide Web, bondage images, but only ones that were serial-killer bad. Image after image flickered across the screen.

"It's all like this," Nicky said. "Even I have pictures of other things; women, weapons, online cartoons. There's nothing but this on here."

"You should kill her," Damian said.

We were both standing behind Nicky, staring at the screen. I noticed that Damian's eyes had gone back to their normal green. Mine felt back to normal, too.

"She hasn't done anything here to earn an execution, Damian."

"I didn't say execute her, I said kill her. The baby vampires always go mad, Anita. I don't know any as young as her that didn't have to be put down."

"Put down? You make her sound like a rabid dog. She's not an animal."

He motioned at the screen. "Yes, she is. She looks like a little girl, but that's what's inside her head. That's all that's inside her head. Eventually, she's going to find a way to make what's inside her come outside, and then people are going to get hurt."

"I like Little V, but he's right, Anita. The fact that she's been able to control herself this long is impressive, but the pressure is building up. Eventually, she won't be able to stop herself."

"So you agree with Damian we should kill her?"

He nodded. "You can do it now, or you can do it after she's cut someone up, but eventually one of us will have to do it. She talked to me about what she wanted to do to someone, and trust me, it's all she really thinks about. I think the longer she can't act on the urge in smaller ways, the bigger the urge gets, the more it's going to take to quench her . . . bloodlust."

"I can't kill her for something she hasn't done," I said.

"Like you couldn't let me kill Haven for you, because you felt sorry for mind-fucking me and not fucking Haven enough."

I glared at him. "Thanks, that makes me feel so much better."

"Either you need to send Little V to another master who will let her hurt people, or you need to kill her to make sure she doesn't hurt any of your people. But either with permission or without, eventually she's going to do this to someone."

"I saw what she could do to people, Anita," Damian said.

"We can't kill her for what she might do," I said.

Nicky hit some more buttons and the images began to cycle on the screen one bloody mess, one frightened tied-up person after another. "She was sitting in the dark looking at this, Anita. The only real question is, was she just watching, or was she masturbating to it?"

I stared at him instead of the computer. "That's . . . that's sick. That's . . . I did not want to think that, or know that. Fuck, Nicky, why . . ."

"I want you to understand, Anita, this is her passion. I wasn't joking. This is either sex for her, or as close as she comes."

"Turn it off," I said.

"You're not going to kill her because you feel sorry for her. Nathaniel talks to her, too, Anita. They don't talk about the same things. He's a bottom to her top, but he lets her talk about hurting him. He lets her talk some of her fantasies out with him, because he understands that she only looks like a kid. What would you do if she got Nathaniel alone? What would you do if she did that to him?"

"Don't do this," I said.

"I like Nathaniel, and it would kill you if something happened to him. Regrets are about decisions that you know you should have done different. Don't make this one of them."

"I can't kill her for what she might do, Nicky."

"I could," he said.

"You like her," I said.

"Yeah, and I understand her better than you do. Anita, if you hadn't mind-fucked me into a Bride I wouldn't be trustworthy around your people, either. I'm not a sexual sadist. I don't need pain or fear to enjoy sex, but I enjoyed having power over people. The hurting was more about taking pride in my skill at it and getting information out of people. I got off on breaking the strong until they were weak. That was my kick, but everyone breaks, Anita. If you have the skills and enough time there's no such thing as someone who won't break."

"And you had the skills," I said.

He shrugged as much as the muscles of his upper body would let him. "Yeah, I did, but she's better. Do you understand me, Anita? Little V is better, because she's spent the last eight hundred years practicing."

"Anita," Damian said, and he touched my shoulders, making me look at him, as Jean-Claude had earlier, "you know how they say practice makes perfect?"

"Yes," I said, but that one word was barely a whisper.

"Valentina is perfect."