Лорел Гамильтон - The Laughing Corpse

"How do you know what compromises my soul? You don't have one anymore. You traded your immortal soul for earthly eternity. But I know that vampires can die, Jean-Claude. What happens when you die? Where do you go? Do you just go poof? No, you go to hell where you belong."

"And you think by being my human servant you will go with me?"

"I don't know, and I don't want to find out."

"By fighting me, you make me appear weak. I cannot afford that, ma petite. One way or another, we must resolve this."

"Just leave me alone."

"I cannot. You are my human servant, and you must begin to act like one."

"Don't press me on this, Jean-Claude."

"Or what, will you kill me? Could you kill me?"

I stared at his beautiful face and said, "Yes."

"I feel your desire for me, ma petite, as I desire you."

I shrugged. What could I say? "It's just a little lust, Jean-Claude, nothing special." That was a lie. I knew it even as I said it.

"No, ma petite, I mean more to you than that."

We were attracting a crowd, at a safe distance. "Do you really want to discuss this in the street?"

He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "Very true. You make me forget myself, ma petite."

Great. "I really am late, Jean-Claude. The police are waiting for me."

"We must finish this discussion, ma petite," he said.

I nodded. He was right. I'd been trying to ignore it, and him. Master vampires are not easy to ignore. "Tomorrow night."

"Where?" he asked.

Polite of him not to order me to his lair. I thought about where best to do it. I wanted Charles to go down to the Tenderloin with me. Charles was going to be checking the zombie working conditions at a new comedy club. Good a place as any. "Do you know The Laughing Corpse?"

He smiled, a glimpse of fang touching his lips. A woman in the small crowd gasped. "Yes."

"Meet me there at, say, eleven o'clock."

"My pleasure." The words caressed my skin like a promise. Shit.

"I will await you in my office, tomorrow night."

"Wait a minute. What do you mean, your office?" I had a bad feeling about this.

His smile widened into a grin, fangs glistening in the streetlights. "Why, I own The Laughing Corpse. I thought you knew."

"The hell you did."

"I will await you."

I'd picked the place. I'd stand by it. Dammit. "Come on, Irving."

"No, let the reporter stay. He has not had his interview."

"Leave him alone, Jean-Claude, please."

"I will give him what he desires, nothing more."

I didn't like the way he said desires. "What are you up to?"

"Me, ma petite, up to something?" He smiled.

"Anita, I want to stay," Irving said.

I turned to him. "You don't know what you're saying."

"I'm a reporter. I'm doing my job."

"Swear to me, swear to me you won't harm him."

"You have my word," Jean-Claude said.

"That you will not harm him in any way."

"That I will not harm him in any way." His face was expressionless, as if all the smiles had been illusions. His face had that immobility of the long dead. Lovely to look at, but empty of life as a painting.

I looked into his blank eyes and shivered. Shit. "Are you sure you want to stay here?"

Irving nodded. "I want the interview."

I shook my head. "You're a fool."

"I'm a good reporter," he said.

"You're still a fool."

"I can take care of myself, Anita."

We looked at each other for a space of heartbeats. "Fine, have fun. May I have the file?"

He looked down at his arms as if he had forgotten he was holding it. "Drop it by tomorrow morning or Madeline is going to have a fit."

"Sure. No problem." I tucked the bulky file under my left arm as loosely as I could manage it. It hampered my being able to draw my gun, but life's imperfect.

I had information on Gaynor. I had the name of a recent ex-girlfriend. A woman scorned. Maybe she'd talk to me. Maybe she'd help me find clues. Maybe she'd tell me to go to hell. Wouldn't be the first time.

Jean-Claude was watching me with his still eyes. I took a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth. Enough for one night. "See you both tomorrow." I turned and walked away. There was a group of tourists with cameras. One was sort of tentatively raised in my direction.

"If you snap my picture, I will take the camera away from you and break it." I smiled while I said it.

The man lowered his camera uncertainly. "Geez, just a little picture."

"You've seen enough," I said. "Move on, the show's over." The tourists drifted away like smoke when the wind blows through it. I walked down the street towards the parking garage. I glanced back and found the tourists had drifted back to surround Jean-Claude and Irving. The tourists were right. The show wasn't over yet.

Irving was a big boy. He wanted the interview. Who was I to play nursemaid on a grown werewolf? Would Jean-Claude find out Irving's secret? If he did, would it make a difference? Not my problem. My problem was Harold Gaynor, Dominga Salvador, and a monster that was eating the good citizens of St. Louis, Missouri. Let Irving take care of his own problems. I had enough of my own.

The night sky was a curving bowl of liquid black. Stars like pinprick diamonds gave a cold, hard fight. The moon was a glowing patchwork of greys and goldish-silver. The city makes you forget how dark the night, how bright the moon, how very many stars.

Burrell Cemetery didn't have any streetlights. There was nothing but the distant yellow gleam of a house's windows. I stood at the top of the hill in my coveralls and Nikes, sweating.

The boy's body was gone. It was in the morgue waiting for the coroner's attentions. I was finished with it. Never had to look at it again. Except in my dreams.

Dolph stood beside me. He didn't say a word, just looked out over the grass and broken tombstones, waiting. Waiting for me to do my magic. To pull the rabbit out of the hat. The best that could happen was the rabbit to be in and to destroy it. Next best thing was finding the hole it had come from. That could tell us something. And something was better than what we had right now.

The exterminators followed a few paces behind. The man was short, beefy, grey hair cut in a butch. He looked like a retired football coach, but he handled the flamethrower strapped to his back like it was something alive. Thick hands caressing it.

The woman was young, no more than twenty. Thin blond hair tied back in a ponytail. She was a little taller than me, small. Wisps of hair trailed across her face. Her eyes were wide and searched the tall grass, side to side. Like a gunner on point.

I hoped she didn't have an itchy trigger finger. I didn't want to be eaten by a killer zombie, but I didn't want to be plastered with napalm either. Burned alive or eaten alive? Is there anything else on the menu?

The grass rustled and whispered like dry autumn leaves. If we did use the flamethrowers in here, it'd be a grass fire. We'd be lucky to outrun it. But fire was the only thing that could stop a zombie. If it was a zombie and not something else altogether.

I shook my head and started walking. Doubts would get us nowhere. Act like you know what you're doing; it was a rule I lived by.

I am sure that Seсora Salvador would have had a specific rite or sacrifice to find a zombie's grave. Her way of doing all this had more rules than my way. Of course her way enabled her to trap souls in rotting corpses. I had never hated anyone enough to do that to them. Kill them, yes, but entrap their soul and make it sit and wait and feel its body rotting. No, that was worse than wicked. It was evil. She needed to be stopped, and only death would do that. I sighed. Another problem for another night.

It bothered me to hear Dolph's footsteps echoing mine. I glanced back at the two exterminators. They killed everything from termites to ghouls, but ghouls are cowards, scavengers mostly. Whatever we were after wasn't a scavenger.