Laurell Hamilton - Kiss The Dead

“What exactly has it come to, Mr. Weiskopf?” I said, as I sat down. Dolph actually pushed my chair in for me, which I’d have preferred he not do, because I still hadn’t figured out the timing on that. I sat down too early, as usual, and got the chair shoved into the back of my knees, which sort of hurt. At least Dolph, like most of the men who insisted on the chair thing in my life, was strong enough to push me into place at the table.

Dolph stayed standing at my side, looming over both me and the man at the table. He was trying to be intimidating, and if you weren’t used to someone his height, it usually worked.

Weiskopf rolled his eyes upward as if looking all the way to the top of Dolph’s head, then back to me. He smiled, hands still clasped on top of the table. “My master does not approve of the violence done in the name of our cause.”

“And what cause is that?” I asked. I couldn’t think how a crackpot human could have gotten the name Benjamin from our interrogation of Barney the vampire, but I’d learned to never underestimate the crazy. Crazy didn’t mean dumb; some insane people were incredibly smart. Sometimes I wondered if you had to be a certain level of intelligent just to go crazy in style.

He smiled at me, his brown eyes filled with a gentle chiding. “Now, Anita, may I call you Anita?”

“If I have a first name to call you?” I smiled back at him. I even made it fill my eyes. The days when I couldn’t lie with the best of them were long past.

His smile broadened. “I’ve been Mr. Weiskopf, or just Weiskopf, for so long that it will do.”

“Weiskopf, just that?” I asked.

He nodded, smiling.

“Then you can call me Blake. Last name for last name.”

“You think if I give you a first name that you will be able to trace it, and by finding me, you may find my master.”

I shrugged. “It’s my job to figure things out.”

“No,” he said, and the smile slipped, “it’s your job to kill vampires.”

“If they’ve broken the law, yes.”

He shook his head, and he wasn’t smiling now. “No, Anita, I mean, Blake, you’ve killed vampires for petty crimes. Things that humans would never have been executed for.”

I nodded. “Three-strikes rules for vampires were very harsh.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “Harsh, is that the best you can say?”

“Unfair, inhuman, monstrous, barbaric; stop when you like one of them.”

“All of those, and more, but monstrous, I like that one. The human laws against vampires were monstrous; they made the humans into monsters. You became the bogeyman of all little vampires everywhere, Ms. Blake.”

“Marshal Blake,” I said.

He nodded. “Then I am Mr. Weiskopf.”

“I didn’t use your name, or title, Mr. Weiskopf.”

“No, I suppose you didn’t.” He seemed to get a handle on himself, smoothing the lapels of his black suit; I could see that it was black, not navy, now. He tried to go back to smiling at me, but it didn’t quite fill his eyes now. He was angry, and he didn’t like me, or my job.

“My master and I do not believe in an eye for an eye. We advocated nonviolence, though you offered only violence.”

“I helped get the three-strikes rule for vamps changed. Petty crimes don’t add to the three strikes anymore. A vampire has to harm people to get a warrant of execution now.”

“We do appreciate that your testimony in Washington was instrumental in getting the law modified, Marshal Blake. It gave us hope that Jean-Claude would be different from all the ones that have come before him.”

Dolph interrupted, “All the what that have gone before Jean-Claude?”

Weiskopf looked up at Dolph, all the way up. “Leaders of the Vampire Council, of course. It’s been in the news, Captain Storr; surely you don’t want me to believe you are ignorant that there is talk of the first American head of our council.”

“I’ve heard the rumors,” Dolph said.

“They are not rumors. They are fact.”

I sat there, trying to be very still, trying not to show in any movement, or lack of it, or facial expression that Weiskopf might know things that weren’t in the news and that I might not want my fellow police officers to know.

“The fact that Jean-Claude tolerated the Church of Eternal Life, and did not insist they all take oath to him, gave us great hope.”

I fought not to relax, because he could have said blood-oathed , and I really didn’t want to go into details on that with Dolph. He might know, but he might not understand, what it meant for a vampire to take oath to the Master of the City.

“But then, Jean-Claude did demand it, and we lost hope.”

“So, you decided to try to kill him,” I said.

“No,” Weiskopf said, and he looked serious, and shocked. “No, we never advocated violence. On my honor, and the honor of my master, we never encouraged anyone to do violence to anyone. We were most aggrieved to see the dead police officers on the news.”

“You chose vampires that looked like children, or the elderly,” I said. “You meant to appeal to the media.”

“We suggested that we show the media that vampires are not all beautiful and sexy like your vampires. We wanted to show that vampires are truly people in many shapes and sizes, so yes, we chose a group, but we never meant for them to be used in such a vile way.”

“Your master, Benjamin, was their master; he had control of them while they did this vile shit.”

“No, my master is not theirs. We have purposefully not tried to control any other vampires except through speech and the persuasion that any normal human could use.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

He let me see that flash of anger again. “I have given you my word of honor.”

“He’s a master vampire, and they didn’t belong to any other master; it means that a powerful enough vampire exerts more control over them than any human ever will.”

“Only if the master wills it so, and my Benjamin has been most careful for centuries to control no one but himself.”

“Vampires are all about the food chain, the hierarchy; everyone owes allegiance to someone. Your master didn’t just spring into being, he came from a bloodline of some vampire, so he owes allegiance to that line, and whoever created him.”

“His master was killed by one of the long-ago vampire hunters, the predecessor of you, the Executioner. We were told that if the master of our bloodline died, then we would die with him, but we woke the next night. It had been a lie to keep us from attacking the head of our order.”

“I only know one line that had its head wiped out, and only two vampires that survived it.”

“Your Wicked and Truth, yes, they survived as my master survived, but our bloodline sprang into being and fled into the wilderness. He did not want to be part of the hierarchy of blood and depravity, but of course, by being a master and acquiring followers he began to value the growing power over his own good intentions, and they were good intentions once. He meant us to live as holy a life as the cursed could.”

He was talking of some unknown bloodline that had basically tried to run a monastery in some isolated area. “A vampire monastery?” I made it a question, but couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice entirely.

“Exactly; as much as the head of my master’s bloodline could make it. He was devout, so his very faith made holy objects work around him; it was most distressing to all of us.”

I fought not to show surprise, because he was basically saying the vampire had not lost his faith, and his very faith had made holy objects flare around him. I tried to wrap my head around the idea of a vampire that made holy objects work against him, due to his own faith. It was just too weird.