Лорел Гамильтон - Dead Ice

© Stefan Hester

Laurell K. Hamilton is the bestselling author of the acclaimed Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, Novels. She lives near St Louis with her husband, her daughter, two dogs and an ever-fluctuating number of fish. She invites you to visit her website at www.laurellkhamilton.org.

‘Hamilton remains one of the most inventive and exciting writers in the paranormal field’ Charlaine Harris

‘Anita Blake is one of the most fascinating fictional heroines since Scarlett O’Hara’ Publishers Weekly

‘What The Da Vinci Code did for the religious thriller, the Anita Blake series has done for the vampire novel’ USA Today

‘Wildly popular’ Entertainment Weekly

‘Hamilton’s complex, enthralling world is utterly absorbing’ Booklist

‘A hardcore guilty pleasure’ The Times

‘Always very, very sexy and exciting’ Dreamwatch

‘This fast-paced, tough-edged supernatural thriller is mesmerizing reading indeed’ Locus

‘The action never stops’ The New York Review of Science Fiction

‘Supernatural bad guys beware, night-prowling Anita Blake is savvy, sassy and tough’ P N Elrod

‘I was enthralled by a departure from the usual type of vampire tale’ Andre Norton

‘A real rush . . . a heady mix of romance and horror’ Jayne Ann Krentz

I could not be with someone who did not understand my darkness

as deeply as they understand my light,

for one without the other is only half of me,

and if you love me, love all of me, or love me not at all.

To Jonathon, my husband,

who loves all of me, as I love all of him.

To Genevieve, our lady love, and her husband, Spike,

two other walkers in the darkness of the light,

who have joined us on this journey

to find ourselves and each other.

To Shawn, who has been a constant in my life, as I have been in his—friendship forged in fire, loss, and laughter. To Jessica, who taught me competency is a superpower! Will, who helps with research, and answers odd questions without thinking them odd. They saw a book from inception to completion for the first time. Welcome to the literary salt mines. Sherry who feels she has allies at last in the battle to organize a house full of artists. Mary, my mother-in-law, whom we love. To the Word Posse—my writer’s groups new venture. I hope it makes all your dreams come true! And last, but not least, to Sasquatch, who sits by my side as I write, and has sat with me through many a long night for fourteen years. To Keiko and Mordor, who have been sitting at my side for only a couple of years, new furry muses to help me write.

Thanks to Peter Orca for the title Dead Ice , and to Isis Maria Hess for naming the jewelry store creating Anita and Jean-Claude’s rings: Étoile du Soir, or “Evening Star.”

And for Susan Allison, my editor for over a decade. She was able to retire early and I’m happy for her, but sad that this is the last book she will be ferrying through for me. Enjoy the horses, dog(s), your husband, and yourself, as you embark on the next great adventure.

“SO, YOU’RE ENGAGED,” Special Agent Brenda Manning said. She wore a black pantsuit with a heavy belt that could wrap around her waist and hold the gun at her side. She was FBI and didn’t have to worry about concealed carry, so the fact that her gun flashed when her suit jacket flared out, which was every time she moved, wasn’t an issue. The gun looked very stark against her white button-down shirt.

“Yep,” I said. My own gun was at the small of my back, underneath a suit jacket made to hide the gun from the clients at my other job. I’d also started getting belt loops added to my skirts so I could wear a belt that could stand up to the weight of a gun and holster. I’d come straight from Animators Inc., where the motto was “Where the Living Raise the Dead for a Killing.” Bert, our business manager, didn’t believe in hiding the fact that raising the dead was a rare talent, and you paid for talent. But lately my job as a U.S. Marshal for the Preternatural Branch had been taking more and more of my time. Like today.

The other very special agent, Mark Brent, tall, thin, and looking barely old enough to be out of college, was bent over the portable computer they’d brought with them, which was sitting on the room’s only desk. He was dressed in a suit almost identical to Manning’s except his was brown to match his holster, but his gun was still a black bump, stark against his white shirt. We were in the office of our head honcho, Lieutenant Rudolph Storr. Dolph was currently somewhere else, which left me alone with the FBI and Sergeant Zerbrowski. I wasn’t sure which was more dangerous to my peace of mind, but I knew Zerbrowski would mouth off more. He was my partner, my friend; he was entitled. I’d just met Special Agent Manning, and I didn’t owe her my life story.

“The article I read made the proposal sound amazing, like something out of a fairy tale,” Manning said. She smoothed her shoulder-length hair back behind one ear and it stayed put, because it was straight as a board. My own curls would never have behaved that well.

I fought the urge to sigh. If you’re a cop and a woman, never date a celebrity; it ruins your reputation for being a hardass. I was a U.S. Marshal, but ever since we’d gone public with our engagement I’d become Jean-Claude’s fiancée, not Marshal Blake, to most of the women I met, and a lot of the men. I’d really had hopes that the FBI would be above such things in the middle of crime-fighting, but apparently not.

The real problem for me was that the story we told publicly was both true and a lie. Jean-Claude had done the big gesture, but only after he’d proposed in the middle of shower sex. It had been spontaneous and wonderful and messy, and very real. I’d said yes, which had surprised him, and me. I’d figured I just wasn’t the marrying kind of girl. He’d told me then that we’d need to do something to live up to his reputation for the media and the other vampires. They expected their king/president to have a certain flair, and the real proposal was too mundane. I hadn’t understood that flair would include a horse-drawn carriage—yeah, you heard me; he’d actually picked me up in a freaking horse-drawn carriage. If I hadn’t already said yes, and loved him to pieces, I’d have told him not only no, but hell no. Only true love had gotten me to play along with a proposal so grand that trying to imagine a wedding that topped it sort of scared me.

“Oh, yeah, Anita is all into that princess stuff, aren’t you, Anita?” Zerbrowski called from the chair he was half-tipping against the wall. He looked like he’d slept in his suit, complete with a stain on his crooked tie. I knew he’d left his home freshly washed and tidy, but he was like Pig-Pen from the Peanuts comic: Dirt and mess just seemed to be attracted to him within minutes of his walking out of his house. His salt-and-pepper hair was getting more salt and less pepper, and had grown out enough to be all messy curls, which he kept running his hands through. Only his silver-framed glasses were clean, square and gleaming around his brown eyes.