Charlaine Harris: Crimes by Moonlight

“You don’t want to make Cedric mad,” the young vampire said calmly.

Dahlia snatched up the tunnel map, and she and Taffy retreated to the common room to study it.

“Yes! We gotcha, assholes!” Taffy said, after the two had found Field Street and examined it.

“I’ll give Don something nice,” Dahlia said.

“Not a groomer’s brush, like you sent last time? That shit gets old,” Taffy said.

“No, something really nice.”

“Not another bag of doggie treats!”

“I’m serious; it’ll be very appropriate. Lakeisha, we need you,” Dahlia called. Normally, Lakeisha would have insisted the request come through Cedric, but circumstances were hardly ordinary.

Lakeisha used the copying machine and then the intercom. When everyone had assembled in the common room, she passed out copies of the map.

Dahlia stood up on the hearth, so they could all see her. She was wearing her black leather jumpsuit and was happily aware she was being admired. Melponeus was there; she could see his curls and reddish face in the corner. Good.

“Thanks to Taffy, we’ve gotten a map of the tunnels,” Dahlia said when the silence was complete. “They run under the Fellowship headquarters, and if the leaders entered the tunnels after their attack against us, they may still be there. Has anyone here been down below the city in the last twenty years?”

“I have,” said Melponeus. “I was in the tunnels five years ago, chasing an imp because… well, it’s not relevant. There are more dead ends in the tunnels now than your map shows. The Fullmore Street tunnel is blocked with rubble at the intersection with Gill.” Pens moved over paper. “The Banner Street tunnel is divided in the middle. Someone built a bank aboveground, and in the process they made the tunnel impassable-though I’ve heard someone’s cut a hole in that wall.” Melponeus went on to list two more closed or abbreviated tunnels.

“Thanks, Melponeus,” Dahlia said. “We owe you.”

“Oh, I’ll collect,” he said, a gleam in his eye.

It was a measure of Dahlia’s reputation that no one sniggered.

Cedric strolled through, carrying a pipe and wearing a smoking jacket. Taffy rolled her eyes at Dahlia.

“Do you have a plan of action, then?” he said.

“Yes, my sheriff.”

“Good luck. Oh, by the way.”

Every vampire froze.

“You must bring them back alive,” Cedric said. “I know you want to have fun with them. In fact, I’d planned to ask you to bring me one to play with. But I’ve gotten a phone call from the chief of police, who said… and I think this is interesting… that some of his officers told him they’d been running across vampires in unexpected places, asking unexpected questions, and he certainly hoped we weren’t taking any vigilante action of our own, since the whole Rhodes police department is anxious to bring the Fellowship terrorists to justice.”

None of the vampires cast guilty looks at each other-they were all much too seasoned for that.

“Of course we were planning to kill them,” Dahlia said. “What else?”

“I’m afraid you must alter your plan,” Cedric told her, using his “sympathetic but firm” voice that carried so well. “Think of how wonderful it will look, a picture of you handing over the culprits to the police. Think of how people will say that we’ve honored our commitment to refrain from taking human blood-even the blood of our enemies.”

Dahlia looked mutinous. “Cedric, we’d anticipated…”

“Having a good old-fashioned party,” he said. “I regret that, too. But when you find these murderers, they go to police headquarters. Undrained and intact.”

And, in turn, every head nodded.

Five teams of two vamps each had been dispatched to the five tunnel accesses closest to Fellowship headquarters. Dahlia thought it possible the bombers had blasted or cut through some of the more recent walls. She would have done so if she’d been planning on using the tunnels as a refuge.

These teams were armed with shotguns. None of them were happy about it. Most vampires (especially the older ones) thought carrying a gun implied a certain lack of confidence in one’s own lethality.

Dahlia divided the rest of the Rhodes vamps into two parties. Each would enter the tunnels about a mile away from Fellowship headquarters, one from the east and one from the west. That way, the hunting party could descend without alerting their prey. A couple of cars took Dahlia’s party (Taffy headed the other one) to the east entrance she’d selected. This access happened to lie below a restaurant that had opened before World War I.

The Cappelini’s Ristorante staff was used to parties trailing through on the “Old Rhodes” tour, but they were taken aback when the eight o’clock tour party consisted wholly of bloodsuckers. Dahlia hung back. Though she was tiny and pretty, she was also unmistakably menacing. Lakeisha beamed her perky smile, tipped heavily, and the atmosphere relaxed.

The party, which consisted of Dahlia, Lakeisha, and three male vamps (Roscoe, Parnell, and Jonathan) all passed through a door the teenage tour guide had unlocked. They descended the stairs into the Cappelini basement. The very nervous young woman pointed out how various things were stored, talked about when the building had been erected, and revealed how many pounds of pasta the restaurant had served since it had opened its doors. Though the vampires gave her polite attention, she was visibly nervous as she prepared to enter the old tunnels.

She unlocked yet another door, this one a very old wooden slab. Greeted by a rush of cool air, the party descended a very narrow flight of stairs, then a steep and twisting ramp, and came to yet another door, much lower than modern doors and heavily locked. Their guide unlocked the last door, keeping up her patter the whole time, though with an effort. She flipped a light switch, and the tunnel appeared, running straight for about ten yards before turning to veer right.

Lakeisha said, “Let me ask you a question.” Relieved, the girl looked at the cute dark-skinned vampire inquiringly. Lakeisha said, “See how big my eyes are?” The next minute, the girl was under. “Sit on the floor here and wait until we come back,” Lakeisha said, and the girl smiled and nodded agreeably.

The vampires were all used to enclosed spaces, and they all had excellent vision. Dahlia barely seemed to touch the ground as she began to move forward. At first, two of them could walk abreast. After the jog to the right, the old tunnel narrowed.

The walls were brick, plastered here and there. Every now and then the narrow space widened into a storeroom, littered with old signs, broken chairs, all sorts of debris discarded from the businesses above. From time to time a ghostly door, sometimes with glass panels still intact, offered access to an underground saloon or whorehouse that hadn’t seen a customer in seventy years.

“This is great,” Roscoe said. Though Dahlia didn’t reply, she agreed completely.

They didn’t meet any other tours, because Cedric had booked them all. For two hours, the vampires owned the tunnels below old Rhodes.

Dahlia brought the party to a halt when she figured they were two blocks away from Field Street. She whispered: “You heard Cedric. No killing. If they resist, you can break a bone.” Despite the embargo, they were all tense with anticipation. It had been a long time since a worthy battle had come their way. This was a good moment to be a vampire. With a sharp nod, Dahlia turned and raced down the last section of tunnel.

IN the end, the conquering of the Fellowship bombers was almost anticlimactic. There were only seven conspirators below the Fellowship headquarters. Of those, two had been too close to their own handiwork and had been injured by flying debris from the Pyramid. Only three men resisted with any determination, and Taffy, who got to the group seconds before Dahlia, had subdued the largest of these with no trouble at all by kicking him in the ribs. Jonathan and Roscoe took care of the others.