Charming (7 page)

Sig didn’t move. She didn’t seem frightened. It was more like she was fascinated. “You’ll have to stick around Clayburg if you want to find out.”

That snapped me out of it. It almost made me snort. It was going to be a pain setting up a new identity again, but there was no way I could stay in Clayburg now.

She sensed my change in mood.

“Go ahead, get out of here,” Sig said. She also seemed to be recalling who she was and what she was about. At any rate, she was doing that pushy thing again. “And leave the vampires’ possessions.”

“Just like that?” I asked suspiciously.

She grinned suddenly. “Why not? You’ve already been debriefed.”

I grimaced but didn’t delay further, crouching to pull my smoldering shoes back on. There was still glass about, and no point creating new blood trails. I carefully wiped select parts of the cell phone and keys and weapons down with what was
left of my jeans, noting that Steve Ellison’s wallet was still in the tattered back pocket. I didn’t actually have to do this; the knights had burned off my fingerprints with a mild acid long before I became a creature who regenerated, but there was no point in letting Sig know that. My lack of fingerprints was a clue in itself.

Now that Sig and I were no longer making eye contact, it felt ridiculous instead of erotic, walking around wearing nothing but sneakers and a semi. Dignity and I have never really had what you’d call a close working relationship, though. I made a detour to pick up the neck of the vodka bottle as I made my way toward my car. There was a gym bag with some clothes in it in my trunk.

Sig gave me a moment to compose myself, then walked up to join me while I was pulling on a gray T-shirt over some black sweat pants.

We stared at each other uncomfortably. It seemed like there was nothing left to say but the thing I really wanted to say, and I wasn’t good at that kind of thing.

“You’re fascinating,” I told her. See what I mean?

She smiled, and I don’t think I was imagining traces of interest and regret and a lurking what-the-hell element of challenge that she was trying to repress in the expression. That didn’t change her words, though. “I’m involved with somebody else.”

Of course she was. All the good Valkyries are taken.

“OK, but you maybe saved my life, and you’ve seen me naked,” I said. “In some countries we just got married. Can I at least know what name you go by?”

“What do you mean
maybe
saved your life?” she demanded.

“Is that a no?” I asked.

She sighed. “My name is Sig.”

“Like Sigrid?” I persisted. “Sigourney? Signe?”

“Like the gun.” She smiled slightly and patted the sidearm in her hip holster. It was only then that I realized it was a SIG Sauer.

I thought she was carrying the whole Norse battle maiden thing a little far, but I had to admit she carried it well.

6

I
didn’t go home. I was hungry and tired and sore, but I was also paranoid and devious and used to ignoring bodily discomfort, so I parked my car behind a closed tattoo parlor and went back to the bar. A quick sprint and three jumps took me from the top of a Dumpster to a window ledge to a series of rooftops that I slid over like a shadow.

I wanted to know more about these “friends” Sig was going to discuss me with.

Unfortunately I had to stop and hide behind a parapet about three buildings farther from the bar than I’d intended. On the roof to my right, two men were climbing from a drainpipe to the top of a dance studio whose upper floor had been converted to public housing. One of them had a sniper rifle slung over his back, and the other was shouldering a nylon backpack. Both wore headsets. If they had been vampires, I would have taken them right there while I still had the element of surprise, but an errant breeze whispered that they were human. Both men were short and stocky and not ideally built for climbing, but
they were also young and fit and seemed to know a little about parkour. It took me a moment to realize that they were twins.

Once on the roof of the dance studio, the sniper moved to the opposite side and positioned himself so that he was sighting down on the alley below. His partner took several foot-tall crosses with small standing platforms out of his backpack and began to set them up around himself and the other man so that the crosses formed a barricade, saying what I assume was a silent prayer before setting each one on the ground. When he was done, he removed two Desert Eagles, handguns with a whole lot of stopping power, out of his backpack. I was willing to bet that both men had special ammo. Soft-nosed high-explosive rounds or something to that effect. Rather than helping his partner sight, the second man faced in the opposite direction and guarded his back.

The sniper said something into his headset. Whatever language he was using was vaguely Germanic but had Russian inflections. Sig’s voice came back in stereo from his headset and from the alley below, speaking the same language.

I was not in an ideal position. There were three sleeping kids on the roof with me, two males in their late teens or early twenties and a girl who was too young to be with them. All three were nestled together under a blanket for warmth and probably dozing with a little help from the George Dickel whiskey bottle and the cold medicine whose empty packages were all around them. A lot more cold medicine than any recommended dosage would account for. If their breathing had been any deeper, I would have felt obligated to administer CPR.

But the parapet offered me cover, and the adjacent building on the side away from the firing team was of a lower elevation. If I wanted to get out of their line of sight, all I had to do was stay
low and dart around a stairwell entrance and jump over a ledge, and I could do that fast. If one of the firing team heard anything and came over to investigate, he would probably see the three kids and just think one of them had shifted in their sleep.

It was a choice between keeping a clear exit strategy or taking some risks to get a better view, and I wouldn’t be able to see well anyway. Sunlight was still a promise waiting to be kept, and I don’t have a wolf’s night vision. I stayed where I was.

A white van with its headlights off pulled into the alley where Sig was still waiting. Three people got out, but I could see little more than their outlines. One of them was of average height and build in an overcoat, one of them was chunky and dark-skinned in some kind of tan jumpsuit, and one of them was short and maybe female beneath a bulky sweater and large round glasses.

They spoke in low voices as they walked the perimeter of the alley. A human couldn’t have made out what they were saying, but I could hear them clearly.

“How many bodies are there?” This was from the brownish-haired guy with the average build, and he was definitely the cop Sig had mentioned. He had that way of talking, a brusque manner overlying an innate assumption that he was going to take control of the situation. The way he spoke was half threat and half reassurance.

“Three human, four vampires,” Sig answered tersely. His attitude annoyed her, but she was used to it. “Don’t use any names. Someone with really good hearing might be hanging around.”

I smiled. Was she talking about vampires or me? Make what jokes you want about blondes, this one wasn’t dumb.

“Why didn’t you call us earlier?” the cop demanded. “We’re supposed to be your partners, not your janitors.”

“Back off,” Sig snapped. “I didn’t do this.”

The cop froze.

“Who did?” he asked pointedly. “Was it…”

“No, he still hasn’t recovered from… doing his thing.” Sig chose her words carefully. Something about her protective manner reminded me of the way she had cautiously talked about being led to the bar by a psychic friend. If this “he” was one of the cunning folk or something, his being out of it for a while would make sense. Any kind of scrying can take a lot out of you, but peering into the future is supposed to be the most demanding kind of clairvoyance there is.

“Then who?” the cop persisted.

“Some guy I met tonight who works at this bar,” Sig said. “He claims to be a half werewolf, though that might be to make him seem less dangerous.”

“What is a half werewolf?” This was from the dark-skinned man in the jumpsuit. He had been rummaging around in the back of the van while the cop interrogated Sig, but now he was carrying two bulky instruments that looked like dismantled headlights.

“No clue,” Sig admitted. “I’ve never heard of one before. He says his mother was bitten by a werewolf while she was pregnant, and she delivered him before the full moon. It might be true. He’s definitely faster and stronger than a normal human.”

“So he’s all hurry and no furry?” the black man asked. “All bang and no fang?”

“That’s what he says,” Sig agreed. “But he’s keeping secrets.”

“I thought you said werewolves were weaker than vampires,” the cop observed in that neutral way that cops have when they’re interrogating a witness without being overt about it.

“He knows how to fight,” Sig said.

“I guess so,” the cop said, looking around.

“I’m going to bless the bodies now,” the short one said. She
was definitely female, her voice smooth and sweet and kind, the way a kindergarten teacher’s should be and rarely is.

“We have more important things to take care of first,” the cop said testily.

“No,” the woman said, and her voice was soft and calm but there was real steel in it. “We don’t.”

The cop heard what I heard. He backed off. He didn’t even tell her to hurry. “Yeah, OK.”

She had already walked away. The priest, if that’s what she was, bent over the nearest body and began to chant softly in Latin. “While she’s doing that, I’m going to smoke what’s left of these bloodsuckers,” the black man said. That was when I realized what he was carrying: portable UV lamps. Battery-operated artificial sunlight. “You already took their pictures and fingerprints, right?”

“I’ve got their fingerprints on the weapons they used,” Sig acknowledged. “But the vampires were already dissolving by the time the magic settled down enough for my cell phone camera to start working again.”

“So does our big bad wolf have a name?” the cop continued quietly as if no one had interrupted him. He and Sig were conferring privately off to the side now.

“The waitress said his name was Trevor Barnes.” I don’t think I was imagining a certain reluctance when Sig spoke. “But his real name is John.”

Every nerve end in my body jolted. How the hell did she know my first name? Psychics shouldn’t be able to get a read on me for the same reason that vampires can’t hypnotize me. The geas should have kept her from establishing any kind of psychic connection.

I almost didn’t hear what the cop said next.

“How do we know this wolf guy isn’t the one ripping out women’s throats?”

“He’s not,” Sig said.

“How do we know?” the cop repeated.

“I know the same way I know that his name is John,” Sig told him. Yeah, thanks for clearing that up, Blondie.

The cop accepted her words at face value, though. “So what happened here?”

“I came here to do a little recon on the wolf guy, and I saw the vampires attack him,” Sig said. “That pile of putrid right there is one of the ones that’s been raping and sucking women dry, but I don’t know if this is the whole hive or not. How do you want to clean up the bodies?”

It was the first time I’d seen Sig defer to anyone, but then I realized that this was the cop’s area of expertise: crime scenes. What the hell kind of monster-hunting team was this anyway? They weren’t like a military unit. The snipers could have been knights—they were quiet and fit and moved like men with martial arts training—but the three down in the alley with Sig were soft. They had excess flesh and moved slowly. The cop’s eyes periodically scanned his environment and his right hand stayed near his hip, but the other two hadn’t even looked up yet.

So Sig had a psychic I hadn’t seen yet, some kind of priest, an Eastern European sniper team, a cop, and a man with a van full of monster-disposal goodies on her speed dial? Where had she found these people? Craigslist?

I suddenly remembered that in the old stories, Valkyries existed to gather war bands together from disparate armies and regions and tribes. Could that sort of thing be instinctive? Sig had seemed interested in getting me to stay in Clayburg after she saw what I could do.