Лорел Гамильтон - Incubus Dreams

Trust me, I’ve been the only teetotaler at a lot of parties. There is nothing charming about a drunk, except maybe to another drunk.”

He was shaking his head. “Maybe, but all I know is that I’m reduced to feeding off the church. The church makes taking blood as tame as it can. Something that should be better than sex, and they make you feel like you’re at one of those places where you only get your food after you’ve listened to the sermon. It makes the food taste bad.” He picked up his lighter again turning it over and over in his hands, until the gold of it swirled in the dim light, shining.

“Nothing tastes good when you have to swallow your pride with it.”

“Are you saying that Moffat, a deacon of the church, misrepresented what life would be like after you became a vampire?” I tried for as casual a question as I could make it.

“Misrepresented, not exactly. More like he let me come in believing all the stuff in the books and movies, and when I talked about it like it would be that way, he didn’t tell me different. But it is different, real different.”

If you were Belle Morte’s line you spent eternity with people lining up to donate. If you were from some of the bloodlines that gave power, but not beauty or sex appeal, then in a country where using vampire tricks was illegal, you were screwed. The only vamp I knew well that was descended from a line like that was Willie McCoy. I had never wondered what Willie, with his ugly suits and uglier ties and slicked back hair, did for food. Maybe I should have.

The Church of Eternal Life didn’t promise much more than most churches promised, but you could join the Lutherans, and if you didn’t like it, you could quit. Joining the Church of Eternal Life as a full member meant never being able to do anything about regrets you might have.

Zerbrowski got us back on track. “You didn’t see anyone in the parking lot who could confirm when you left the Sapphire?”

He shook his head.

“Did you smell anything?”

Those washed out eyes flicked up to me. He frowned. “What?”

“You didn’t see anything, or anyone, but sight isn’t the only sensory input you’ve got.”

He frowned harder.

I bent down so I could meet him eye-to-eye. I would have knelt, but I didn’t want to touch the carpet with anything but my shoes.

“You’re a vampire, Benchely, a bloodsucker, a predator. If you were human I’d just say what did you see, or hear, but you’re not human. If you didn’t see or hear anything, what did you smell? What did you sense?”

He was looking positively perplexed. “What do you mean?”

I shook my head. “What did they do, make you a vampire, then not teach you anything about what you are?”

“We’re the eternal children of God,” he said.

“Bullshit, bull-fucking-shit! You don’t know what you are, or what you could be.” I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. He was five years dead. I didn’t think he was involved, but he’d walked through that parking lot damn close to the time of the killing. If he hadn’t been such a pitiful excuse for the undead, he might have been able to help us catch the bad guys.

“I don’t understand,” he said, and I believed him.

I shook my head. “I need air.” I went for the door, leaving Zerbrowski to mutter, “Thanks for your help, Mr. Benchely, and if you think of anything, call us. I was on the cement walkway, breathing in all the night air I could, when Zerbrowski came to find me.

“What the hell was that?” he asked. “You just decide we stop questioning a suspect?”

“He didn’t do it, Zerbrowski. He’s too damn pitiful to have done it.”

“Anita, listen to yourself. That doesn’t even make sense. You know as well I do that murderers can make you feel sorry for them. Some of them specialize in pity.”

“I don’t mean I felt pity for him, I mean he’s too damn pitiful a vampire to have pulled it off.”

Zerbrowski frowned at me. “You’ve lost me.”

I wasn’t sure how to explain it, but I tried. “It’s bad enough that they let him believe that becoming a vampire would fix everything that was wrong with his miserable life, but then they killed him. They took his mortal life, but they’ve done everything they can to cripple him as a vampire.”

“Cripple him, how?”

“Any vampire that I know would have noticed things, Zerbrowski.

They’re like this hyperfocus predator. Predators notice things.

Benchely may have fangs, but he still thinks like he’s a sheep, not a wolf.”

“Would you really want every member of the church to be a good predator?”

I leaned my back against the railing. “It’s not that. It’s that they took his life and didn’t give him another one. He’s not better off than he was before.”

“He’s not getting arrested for drunk and disorderlies anymore.”

“And how long will it be before he can’t take it anymore and he uses his gaze on somebody, drinks their blood, and blows it? They wake up and decide they were abused. He’s not a good enough vampire for them not to wake up and regret it.”

“What do you mean he’s not a good enough vampire? Anita, you’re not making sense.”

“I don’t know if it’ll make sense to you, Zerbrowski, but I’ve seen the real deal. They’re terrible, or can be, but they’re like watching a tiger at the zoo. They’re dangerous, but they have a beauty to them, even the ones that aren’t from a bloodline that makes them prettier after death, even those have a sort of power to them. A certain mystique, or an aura of confidence, or something. They have something that every member of the church that we’ve talked to since last night lacks.”

“I say, again, would we want them to be powerful and mysterious? Wouldn’t that be bad?”

“For stopping crime and keeping the peace, yes, but Zerbrowski, the church talked these people into letting themselves be killed. Killed for what? I’ve tried to talk people out of joining the church for years, but I’ve not really talked to many of the members once I can’t save them.”

He was looking at me funny. I guess I couldn’t blame him. “You still think that vamps are dead. You’re dating one, and you still think they’re dead.”

“Jean-Claude hasn’t made a new vampire since he became Master of the City, Zerbrowski.”

“Why not? I mean, it’s considered legal now, not murder.”

“I think he agrees with me, Zerbrowski.”

He frowned harder at me, took off his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, put them back on, and shook his head. “I am just a simple cop, and you are making my head hurt.”

“Simple my ass. Katie told me you double majored in law enforcement and philosophy. What kind of cop has a degree in philosophy?”

He looked at me kind of sideways. “If you tell anyone else I’ll deny it, say sleeping with the undead has made you hallucinate.”

“Trust me, Zerbrowski, if I hallucinated, it wouldn’t be about you.”

“That is a low blow, Blake, I wasn’t even picking on you.” His cell phone rang. He flipped it open, still smiling about my low blow.

“Zerbrow-” He never even got to finish his name, before his smile vanished. “Say again, Arnet, slower. Shit. We’re on our way. Holy items out. They’ll glow if the vamp is close.” He started to run, as he flipped the phone closed. I ran with him.

“What happened?” I asked.

We clattered onto the stairs before he answered. “Woman dead at the scene. Vamp missing. Apartment appears empty.”

“Appears?” I said.

“Vampires are tricky bastards,” he said.

I would have argued, if I could have. But since I couldn’t, I saved my breath for running and beat Zerbrowski to his car. If we hadn’t both been afraid of what we’d find when we got to the scene, I would have teased him about it.