Charlaine Harris: Crimes by Moonlight

“You haven’t read a detective novel since Agatha Christie quit writing,” Dahlia said. “Don’t whine.”

“She’s quit writing?” Taffy was really put out. “When did that happen?”

“She died. Probably fifty years ago.”

“And why should I know that?”

“There have been plenty of novels since then. You should read some of them,” said Dahlia, who seldom read herself. “We’ve got the address. Let’s pay them a visit.” In Taffy’s Trans Am, they drove west into the old part of Rhodes.

They left the Trans Am on Trask, which ran a block south of Field Street, the location of the modest storefront housing the Fellowship headquarters. The small businesses in the area had already closed for the night. The occasional pedestrian hurried along, since the evening was chilly. The three approached Field through a filthy alley two blocks west of their goal. Since they could all remember times when filth and debris were the norm, this didn’t bother them. The two vampires and the half demon hung in the shadows of a trash bin while they evaluated the Fellowship headquarters.

“Cameras,” Melponeus murmured.

“I see them,” Dahlia said. There were cameras all around the building. After a low-voiced discussion, Dalia returned to Trask Street and ran silently east until she was pretty sure she was in line with the Fellowship building. She slid into the next alleyway and headed north. About halfway down the alley, Dahlia found a nice dark patch she didn’t believe human eyes could penetrate. She crouched and gathered herself. She launched herself upward, landing neatly on the roof. Dahlia was confident that even the Fellowship wouldn’t think of pointing a camera upward. She was right.

After a quick smile of self-congratulation, she took off her designer heels and made a great leap, landing across the street on the roof of the two-story building housing the Fellowship. She swung her legs over. Her fingers and toes clamped into the little spaces between the lines of brick, and she worked her way to the first camera. With a quick twist, she removed it from its mounting. She pitched the camera onto the roof, then did the same with all the others. Then she put on her shoes again.

She waved at Taffy and Melponeus, who began trotting toward the Fellowship. Dahlia leaped down from the roof to join them, landing on the sidewalk as lightly as a feather, though she was wearing three-inch heels.

“Good job,” said Taffy, and Dahlia inclined her head.

“I’m impressed,” Melponeus said, looking at Dahlia’s legs. “Taffy, let’s see who’s minding the store.”

Taffy knocked on the door, which bore the distinctive Fellowship symbol-a sun, represented by a circle with wavy rays leading outward. Within the circle was a pyramid.

“What does the pyramid mean?” Taffy asked.

“Earth for Humans, Eradication of Vampires, Eternal Victory,” Melponeus said. “Kind of ironic that the hotel was the same shape. Maybe that sparked the plan.”

A young man came to the door. Through the thick glass (bullet-proof?) the three could see he was a reedy Asian guy in his twenties with a soul patch.

Taffy gave him her best smile and said, “Young man, I want to come in.”

If she hadn’t called him “young man,” he might have unlocked the door, because Taffy had a great no-fangs smile, and her tight leather pants added a powerful incentive. But the “young” roused his suspicion, since Taffy looked (at most) twenty-five. He began punching numbers on a cell phone.

“Look at me,” Dahlia said in a voice that managed to compel, even through the glass. And he did, no matter what he’d been taught.

“Open the door,” she said. And her voice was so reasonable that the young man did just that.

Melponeus immediately set to work looking at the Fellowship computers. Dahlia sat opposite Asian Soul Patch at a table covered with coffee stains and notepads.

She said, “What is your name?”

“Jeffrey Tan.”

“You’re Fellowship?”

“I hate vampires. I killed one myself.”

“Did you really?”

“Yes, I did.”

While Taffy searched the office building and Melponeus began copying files onto a disc, Dahlia asked a few more questions. Jeffrey Tan had been dating a vampire, a girl he’d known before she went over. They’d been going at it hot and heavy one night, and she’d bitten him. Terrified, he’d stabbed her with a handy wooden chopstick. (Unfortunately for the young vampire, Jeffrey’s mother had brought him a traditional meal that day.)

In a flash, Jeffrey’s lover had been shriveling and flaking on his bed.

He had to live with himself, and the easiest way to do that was to find other people who thought he’d been perfectly justified.

Dahlia, who’d heard this sort of story many times before, had a fleeting moment of sympathy for Jeffrey, since she’d become reacquainted with panic the night before. But she squelched the moment ruthlessly. She asked, “Did you help bomb the Pyramid?”

“No, but I applaud the courage and determination of our soldiers,” he said unconvincingly.

“Yes, slaughtering people who are asleep is brave. Do you know who planned and executed this action?”

“They’re hiding, getting ready,” he said, his eyelids flickering furiously. “The vamp lovers in the police department and the fire department who rescued vampires, they’ll die next.”

“Where are these heroes hiding?” Dahlia asked.

Melponeus, who’d been looking at the screen of one of the office computers, said, “I think I may have the membership list,” at nearly the same moment as Taffy pulled a large file out of the filing cabinet.

“Here’s a list of the properties they lease or own,” Taffy said, as Melponeus began downloading the list. “Oh, I checked out the basement. No one there.”

A phone began ringing. Jeffrey Tan reached for it, but Dahlia stayed his hand. “What does the phone call mean?” she asked.

“I told them the cameras went out. They’re calling to check on me,” he said, and he seemed to be coming out of his trance. His gaze began flickering from Taffy to Dahlia to Melponeus.

“You said the Fellowship was going after firefighters?” Dahlia had a sudden misgiving.

“We have pictures of every traitor who worked the rescue at the Pyramid.”

Melponeus said, “We’d better hustle.”

“Shall I kill him?” Taffy asked.

“No, that would be too much of a red flag,” Dahlia said. “Though I’d enjoy it very much. Look at me, Jeffrey!”

He couldn’t disobey, but he was struggling.

“We were here to check for your leaders,” Dahlia said, gripping his chin to force his attention on her. “They weren’t here, so we left full of frustration.”

“Yes,” he said, his face slack again.

The three left the building as quickly and quietly as they’d entered. In silent accord, Dahlia and Taffy flanked Melponeus and held him, leaping to the top of the building. The three made their getaway across the roofs. By the time they’d gone two blocks, cars were parking in front of the Fellowship office.

“That was almost too easy,” Dahlia said, on their return to the mansion. She and Taffy were drinking Red Stuff, and Melponeus was sipping coffee, very strong and very black. Cedric had come to the common room to listen to their report. “They left one human, and such a puppy, to guard the office? When they’d have to figure we’d be looking?”

“Humans do underestimate us,” Taffy said. “Their thinking’s limited.”

“And we underestimate them,” Dahlia snapped. “Look who wiped out over fifty vampires at once. Even that puppy killed his girlfriend with a chopstick.”

“I’m half-human,” Melponeus said. “Some of us are honorable.”