Charlaine Harris: Crimes by Moonlight

Though Taffy and Cedric looked in another direction, embarrassed, Dahlia met his snowmelt eyes and inclined her head regally.

Cedric said, “What do you suggest we do, Dahlia?”

“This list of properties has to be checked out, as does the membership list,” Dahlia said. “We’ll be spread very thin, but I think we can do it. After all…” She didn’t have to emphasize their responsibility.

“You’re in charge, Dahlia,” Cedric said. “Melponeus, if you will come with me, Lakeisha will write a check.”

“How will we do this?” Taffy asked when they had left.

“Divide into teams. Give each team a short list of properties to search,” Dahlia said. “Each place must be searched very thoroughly but very discreetly. One special team has to kidnap a Fellowship officer, a person without family. This team can’t be averse to forceful persuasion. We need to know if there’s some place not on this list, perhaps a place belonging to one member, that’s large enough to hide ten to fifteen people. The newspaper said that’s roughly how many Fellowship fanatics are missing. We’ll check the people we can find against the list to get a better count.”

Cedric returned in time to hear. He nodded. “This seems sound,” he said. “Especially the torture part.” He smiled.

“Thank you, Sheriff.” Dahlia braced herself. “Someone must be detailed to warn the humans involved in the rescue. They saved lives that night; not just human lives.”

“Some of them were not pleased to rescue vampires,” Cedric said. “I read that in the newspapers, too.”

“However they felt, they did it. We can’t abandon those who’ve done us a service.”

“Are you telling me my duty, Dahlia?”

“Sorry, Sheriff.” Dahlia looked away to compose her face.

“This is very unlike you.”

“I’ve never been hauled out of a pit before.”

“The half demon-the half human-would take no money for his service,” Cedric said. “He told me we were on the same side.” Dahlia tried not to look self-conscious. She mostly succeeded.

Cedric nodded to Dahlia. “All right, go.”

THAT was how Dahlia came to be walking into the firehouse of the Thirty-four Company at the corner of Almond and Lincoln. Though the night was chilly, the door to the firehouse was open. The men and women inside were washing the fire trucks under floodlights. None of them whistled when Dahlia approached, though she was the center of attention in her black belted coat and black high heels.

“A cold one,” said the biggest firefighter of all, a burly guy over six feet tall. “Whatcha want, vampie?”

To rip your impudent throat out, Dahlia thought. But she recognized his high voice; he had helped the captain haul her up out of hell. “I need to speak to Captain Fortescue,” she said.

That brought a chorus of whistles and comments about Ted’s wife and her reaction to his extracurricular pastimes.

If Dahlia had been a breather, she’d have sighed.

Ted Fortescue came out, wiping his hands on a towel. His men and women fell silent when the captain looked around to meet their eyes. He recognized Dahlia immediately, somewhat to her surprise. “Evening. Have you recovered from your broken leg?”

“I have,” Dahlia replied. Her back was stiff as a poker. “I have come to warn you. The people of the Fellowship of the Sun have said they’ll take vengeance on those who rescued vampires.”

“They’re going to target first responders?” Fortescue was appalled.

“Yes,” Dahlia said.

“They’ll lose all public sympathy for their cause,” he said slowly, “aside from the obvious point, they believe in killing vampires and recruiting humans.”

“I don’t pretend to make sense of what humans do,” she said. “You saved my life. Now I am doing my best to save yours.”

“Well… thanks,” he said. The firefighters looked from the captain to the vampire, obviously thinking he should say something else. “You were human, once,” Fortescue said.

Dahlia was taken aback. She fumbled for a response. “I was a human for eighteen years. I have been a vampire for…” She shook her head. “Nine hundred years, perhaps.”

There was a little moment of total silence.

“Good luck to you, Ted Fortescue, and to all of you who helped us,” Dahlia said. She looked at each face around her. She would remember each one. “I’ll dispose of them all if I can,” she promised the firefighters, and then she walked away.

“Commando Barbie,” one of the women muttered, but Dahlia heard her. In fact, she smiled a little, all to herself.

WORRY was not a familiar pastime for Dahlia, who was more of a direct action person. During the bit of dark remaining, Dahlia and Taffy visited two Fellowship locations, a “church” on the south side and a “meeting hall” on the east. Both buildings were easy to break into, and the two vampires searched both very thoroughly. They were straightforward modern constructions: no hidden passages, secret rooms, or false floors.

The next night similar results were reported by the other search teams.

The Rhodes vampires felt the pressure. By the time they had to retreat to day sleep lairs, they’d only learned where the Fellowship plotters weren’t. Their shame was mounting.

Even the abduction-and-torture team reported failure. True, they managed to find a family-free Fellowship official, and true, they managed to snatch her unobserved, but to their immense irritation, the woman had a weak heart. She died too early in the proceedings to offer any useful information. In fact, the team simply restored her body to her house, and no one was the wiser.

Taffy arrived at the mansion the next night radiating excitement. She made a beeline for the common room. Dahlia was sitting at the table, lost in unhappy thought. “Don says we should look in the tunnels!” Taffy said, seizing her friend.

Dahlia said, “If you shake me again, I’ll break both your arms.”

Taffy let her go with alacrity. “Sorry! I’m just so excited!”

“That’s a very good idea,” Dahlia said. “We should have thought of the tunnels earlier.”

The tunnel system lying below the original city center of Rhodes was extensive, and it had once connected all the major buildings in the area. The tunnels had seen much use in the years before and during Prohibition. In the decades since, some passages had been blocked up as part of new construction. Vampires seldom used the tunnels anymore… but they had in years past, along with all kinds of other creatures, including regular humans.

“Do the tunnels run under Field Street?” Dahlia asked Taffy.

“Don’s faxing us a map.”

Don, Taffy’s werewolf husband, had a friend who was a historian at Rhodes’s City University. Don’s friend faxed the map to the little office where Lakeisha took care of Cedric’s correspondence. Lakeisha had been an executive assistant in life, and Cedric had brought her over expressly to be his executive assistant in death. Lakeisha knew her office machinery and had a thorough grounding in modern communications, skills most of the older vampires found baffling.

Lakeisha had had the advantage of knowing she was going to be brought over, so she’d had her hair washed, cut, and styled before her death. She was perpetually cute. “I don’t think you’ve ever gotten a fax before, Dahlia,” Lakeisha said.

“I hope I never get another one.”

“Grumpy, grumpy!” Lakeisha chided. Dahlia snarled at her.

“Did we get up on the wrong side of the coffin tonight?” Lakeisha said.

“It’s annoying that you’re not frightened of me, and it’s a mistake.”