Hit List ab-20 Read online

  “We have badges now.”

  “Yeah, and officially we’re cops, but make no mistake, Karlton, we are still executioners. A policeman’s main job is to prevent harm to others. Most of them go twenty years and never draw their gun in the line of duty, not matter what you see on television.” I laid shirts on top of bras and underwear in the drawer. “Our main job is to kill people; that’s not what cops do.”

  “We don’t kill people, we kill monsters.”

  I smiled, but knew it was bitter. “Pretty to think so.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four, why?”

  I smiled, and it still didn’t feel happy. “When I was your age I believed they were monsters, too.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty.”

  “You’re only six years older than me, Blake.”

  “Cop years are like dog years, Karlton, multiply by seven.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “I may only be six years older than you chronologically, but in dog years I’m forty-two years older.”

  She frowned at me. “What the hell is that even supposed to mean?”

  “It means, how many vampires have you executed?”

  “Four,” she said, and it was a little defensive.

  “Hunted them down and killed them, or morgue stakings where they’re chained to a gurney and unconscious while you do it?”

  “Morgue, why?”

  “Talk to me after you’ve killed some of them awake, while they’re begging for their lives.”

  “They beg for their lives? I thought they’d just attack.”

  “Not always; sometimes they’re scared and they beg, just like anybody else.”

  “But they’re vampires, they’re monsters.”

  “According to the law we uphold they’re legal citizens of this country, not monsters.”

  She studied my face. I don’t know what she saw there, or wanted to see, but she finally frowned. I think a blank face wasn’t what she’d been hoping to see. “So you really do believe that they’re people.”

  I nodded.

  “You believe they’re people, but you still kill them.”

  I nodded again.

  “If you really believe that, then it would be like me killing Joe Blow down the block. It would be like me putting a stake through a regular person’s heart.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  She frowned and turned back to unpacking. “I don’t know if I could do my job if I thought of them as people.”

  “It does seem a conflict of interest,” I said. I began debating on where to put the weapons I’d want easy access to, just in case. Knowing that the Harlequin might be planning to try to kidnap or kill me made me more than normally interested in being well armed.

  “Can I say something without you taking it wrong?” she asked, and sat on the edge of her bed.

  I stopped with one gun and two knives laid out on the bed. “Probably not, but say it anyway.”

  She frowned again, putting that little pucker between her eyes. If she didn’t stop frowning so much she’d have lines there before too many years. “I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with you.”

  I sighed. “What I mean, Karlton, is anytime someone asks me, ‘Can I say something without you taking it wrong?’ it usually means it will be something insulting. So say it, but I can’t guarantee how I’ll take it.”

  She thought about that a minute, serious as a small child on the first day of school. “Okay, I guess that was a stupid thing to say, but I want to know the answer enough to be stupid.”

  “Then ask,” I said.

  “We had some of the other vampire executioners come and give lectures. One of them said you’d been one of the best before you got seduced by the master vampire of your city. He says that women are more likely to be seduced by vampires than men, and you’re proof of that.”

  “It was Gerald Mallory, the vampire hunter assigned to Washington, DC, wasn’t it?” I said.

  “How did you know?”

  “Mallory thinks I’m the whore of Babylon because I’m sleeping with vampires. He might forgive shapeshifters, but he hates vampires with a depth and breadth of hate that’s frightening.”

  “Frightening?” She made it a question with a upward lilt of her voice.

  “I’ve seen him kill. He gets off on it. He’s like a racist who has permission to hate and kill.”

  “You say race because I’m black.”

  “No, I say racist because it’s the closest thing I can imagine to his attitude toward vampires. I’m not joking when I say after seeing him stake vampires that he scares me. He hates them so much, Karlton. He hates them without reason, or thought, or any room in his mind for a reason not to hate them. It consumes him, and people consumed by hate are crazy. It blinds them to the truth, and makes them hate anyone who doesn’t agree with them.”

  “He also says that you should always stake a vampire. He doesn’t approve of using silver ammunition.”

  “He’s a stake and hammer man.” I knelt by my backpack and came up with the Mossberg 500 Bantam shotgun. “This is my favorite for shooting them in their coffins. All you need to do is destroy the brain and the heart, but don’t just shoot them in the head and chest and think you’ve got the job done. You need to make sure the brain is leaking out on the floor, or the head is completely detached from the body, and then you need to see some daylight through the chest. The older the vampire, the more completely you need to destroy the heart and head.”

  “He said just staking the heart was enough.”

  “If I see daylight through the chest and the heart is completely destroyed, you’re probably okay, but if I have time I destroy the brain, too, just to be safe, and I want you to know that’s safer in the field. I’d still go back and shoot them in the head after the heart was taken out in a field situation.”

  “You mean on a hunt,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “This is my first hunt.”

  In my head, I thought, Well, fuck. “You mean you have never participated in a hunt?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I know you said you’d only done morgue stakings, but I thought you’d gone on at least one hunt as the junior marshal. You’ve never even seen a vampire hunted and killed in the field?”

  “I can handle myself.”

  I shook my head. “Now I need to ask you something without you getting insulted,” I said.

  She sat on the side of her bed. “That’s fair; what do you want to know?”

  “This is a bad case, Karlton. It’s not a hunt for a first-time field agent.”

  “I know it’s a bad one,” she said.

  “No, you don’t, not yet.” I sat on my bed and faced her. “I want you to sign the warrant over to me, please.”

  She was angry and didn’t try to hide it. “I can’t. I’m the girl, and if I back down on this the other marshals will never trust me again.”

  “It’s not about being a girl, Karlton, it’s about being new and inexperienced.”

  “I’ll have your back, Blake.”

  “I’m not worried that you’ll get me killed.”

  She frowned again. “Then what are you worried about?”

  I looked into those dark brown eyes, that earnest face and said, “I’m worried you’ll get yourself killed.”

  There was no more girl talk after that. We just got ready for bed. I went into the bathroom to get dressed. I had packed my weapons, but not my clothes. Nathaniel, one of my live-in sweeties, a wereleopard and my leopard to call, had. He was the most domestic of us all, and I was fine with the jeans, T-shirts, boots, and jogging shoes, but the pajamas, well, I’d be talking to him about the pajamas. It was a camisole and boy shorts except they were both black lace and stretchy fabric that fit like a second skin. There was enough lift to the fabric that the camisole actually supported my breasts enough for it to fit right. The sk
impy pj’s looked great on me, but were so not appropriate marshal jammies. But they were the most appropriate of what he’d packed. Soooo going to talk to him about that.

  When I came out, Karlton said, “Nice pajamas. Sorry to disappoint that you’re not bunking with the boys.”

  I didn’t bother to glare at her. “My boyfriend packed my clothes while I packed the weapons.”

  “You let a man pack your clothes?”

  “He’s usually pretty good at it, but I think he picked the pajamas for what he wanted to see.”

  She snorted. “That’s a man.”

  I sighed. “I guess so.”

  The oversized T-shirt she was wearing had someone I didn’t recognize singing into a microphone stand. I slid between the covers, and the sheets were the cheap cotton that had been in every hotel or motel on this trip. I missed the silk sheets of Jean-Claude’s bed, and the highthread-count cotton of the bed that Micah and Nathaniel and I shared. I was sheet spoiled.

  “Do you always sleep with that many weapons?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t entirely true. I always slept with a gun close at hand, but I didn’t normally sleep in the wrist sheaths with their slender silver-edged blades. They weren’t that comfortable for sleeping in, but if the Harlequin were faster than normal vampires and shapeshifters, then there might not be time to reach under my pillow for a gun. The knife draw from the wrist sheaths was quicker, because any gun under my pillow either had the safety on or stayed in a holster, so either way it was a few seconds slower than just drawing the knives. I put the big knife that usually rode along my spine beside the bed, on top of the backpack, so that I could reach it if I had to, though honestly if the two knives on me and the gun under my pillow didn’t take care of the problem I’d be dead before I got the third blade, or the other guns. With that cheerful thought, I turned off the light on my side of the room.

  The room was suddenly very dark, only a thin line of artificial light sliding between the slightly crooked curtains that led to the balcony, which was just a sort of walkway with a railing. The door led directly out into the night. Vampires couldn’t come into the room without permission, but wereanimals could, and bespelled humans could, and . . . I was less than happy with the room, but it was cheap and I’d learned that if you were traveling on the government’s dime they pinched their dimes; pennies didn’t even figure into the equation.

  Her voice came out of the less-than-perfect dark. “Is Gerald Mallory right—are women more likely to be seduced by vampires than men?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you the only marshal who’s living with them?”

  “Have you ever been in love?” I asked.

  I couldn’t see her face, but I felt her go still, and then the sheets rustled. “Yes.”

  “Did you plan on falling in love with him?”

  The sheets moved again, and then she said, “You don’t plan love, it just happens.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Sheets sighed in the dark as she turned over. “I get it. I have seen pictures of your Master of the City; he’s pretty if you like white boys.” And she laughed.

  It made me laugh, too. “I guess so. Good night, Karlton.”

  “Call me Laila; all the guys call me Karlton. I’d like to hear my name sometimes.”

  “Okay. Good night, Laila.”

  “Good night, Anita.”

  I heard her roll over a couple more times, the sheets stretching and moving with her, and then her breathing evened out and she slept. Edward and I would play by the book until they consolidated the warrants, and then we’d try to take over the hunt; until then, we waited for a warrant to be reassigned. The trouble was, the only way it got reassigned was if one of the other marshals was too injured, or too dead, to finish the hunt. I lay awake in the dark, and thought, Please, God, don’t let her get killed.

  5

  THE DREAM CAME as it had most nights for a month. The details changed but the theme didn’t. The theme was Haven, not as in a place of rest and peace, but as in the lover I’d killed. Some nights he died in my arms. Some nights we made love and then he bled to death on top of me. Some nights it was like a movie replay of how he’d actually died. Tonight’s version was new, but after the other nightmares new didn’t seem bad.

  I was in a maze formed of black walls. They were slick and almost shiny, almost stone, almost mirrors, so that the ghost of myself wavered in the black surfaces. I had hopes that this was just a regular nightmare until I heard his voice. Haven called me somewhere in the maze: “Anita, I’m coming, Anita.” Great, he was hunting me tonight. Sometimes turnabout is so not fair play.

  I was dressed in jeans with a belt and buckle, T-shirt, jogging shoes, but no weapons. This just got better and better.

  “I can smell you, Anita. I can smell all that sweet skin.”

  I started moving in the black maze, away from his voice. I thought about needing a weapon. I thought about my Browning BDM and it was in my hand. This was a dream. I could change some of it—normally I could break free of dreams, but something about the ones with Haven seemed to trap me. I think guilt made me stay to see the horrors.

  I started moving faster, taking left turns only. All mazes had the same premise: One direction would lead out and one would lead to the center of the maze. I don’t know why I chose left; why not? I just prayed that it led out and not deeper into the blackness. But it was a nightmare, and you never really win in nightmares. No, they’re all about losing over and over again.

  The center of the maze was a huge square space with a fountain in the middle of it. The fountain was all black squares and quietly pulsing water; as the center of a scary night-dark maze it wasn’t bad. It could have been worse; and then, of course, worse stepped out of an opening on the other side. Worse was six feet and a little more of slender, muscled handsome. Haven’s hair was still short, gelled into spikes on top of his head, all of it done in shades of blue as if some artful hairdresser had pretended that blue could be a real hair color and have highlights. The hair made his pale blue eyes look more blue than they actually were, I think; it was hard to tell since the hair was always so close to his eyes. The hair and the Sesame Street tattoos on his shoulders were what had made me nickname him “Cookie Monster.”

  “What do you want, Haven?”

  “What I always wanted: you,” he said.

  “You can’t have me.”

  “Here I can. Here there’s just me.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Let’s.”

  “You’re dead. You’re dead. I killed you.”

  “I remember.”

  “You’re dead, you don’t remember. You’re just my guilt visiting every night.”

  “Am I?” he asked, and something about the way he said it made me ask, “What else could you be?”

  Other figures stepped from the entrances around the square. Figures in white masks and black cloaks: Harlequin. I raised the gun and pointed it vaguely; there were too many of them, and I wasn’t that fast, not even in dreams.

  Movement made me glance at Haven; he was wearing a black cloak and held a white mask in his hand. “We’re coming,” he said, “wake up.”

  I woke staring at the dark ceiling, pulse thudding, throat almost closed around it, and then I heard it. The door, not the knob, but the brush of someone against it, like the first tentative touch. I drew my gun from underneath the pillow and tried to think how to warn Laila without them hearing me. They were either vampires or wereanimals; they’d hear any whisper. Then I realized they’d heard the change in my heartbeat; they knew I was awake.

  I had time to say, “Laila, they’re here!” The door opened as she sat up in bed but didn’t reach for a weapon. Shit. There was no one in the doorway. It stretched pale and empty, filled with night and the artificial lights of the parking lot beyond. Then I heard it, a creak of board, and knew something was crawling on the floor, hidden from me by Laila’s bed.

  She had her gun in her ha
nd now, and whispered, “What is it? Why is the door open?”

  I started to say, “It’s by you, on the floor,” but one minute she was on the bed with her gun and the next a black shape whirled over her and she was gone. I’d seen the speed of lycanthropes and vampires, but all I saw was the cloak like a black sheet and it dragged her over on the other side of the bed with it. It wasn’t just fast, it was as if the thing, whatever it was, was formed of the blackness of the cloth and nothing more. Fuck, that couldn’t be real. Had it mind-fucked me? If the answer was yes, I was about to lose in real life and not just in nightmare.

  “Yell for help and we kill her,” a voice said on the other side of the bed. It was male and growly; I was betting shapeshifter of some kind.

  “How do I know she’s still alive?”

  “Do you think I could kill her that quickly?” the voice asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  He laughed. “Say something, girl.”

  There was a moment of silence, then a small pain sound, and Laila said, “I’m alive.”

  “Are you hurt?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Oh, I’m sad that you think I haven’t hurt you yet. The next thing I do to you, you won’t doubt that you’re hurt.”

  “Leave her alone.”

  “We will if you give us what we want.”

  “What do you want?” I asked. I had the gun pointed in the direction of the voice, but there was nothing to shoot at. If I was patient maybe there would be; nothing is faster than a bullet.

  “You,” and it was such a direct echo from my dream that it startled me.

  “What do you mean, you want me? How? Why?”

  “Does it matter? If you don’t come with us, I’ll kill your friend.”

  “Don’t do it . . . ,” Laila said, and was cut off abruptly, and this time the pain sound was a little louder.