Hit List ab-20 Read online

  “Will he be ready?” I asked.

  He pursed his lips and then nodded. “I think so.”

  “You sound sad about that.”

  He nodded again. “You know how it is on hunts like that, Anita. Being good isn’t enough.”

  “You have to be lucky, too,” I said.

  “I’m afraid that I’ll be so worried about him I won’t be careful enough.”

  “You’re afraid if you take him that you’ll get yourself killed protecting him and once you die, he’ll die, too,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said, and turned in the seat to look at me. His face was very serious, not blank, not angry, not threatening, just serious.

  “Don’t take him,” I said.

  “I can’t back out on him now, Anita. It would destroy him.”

  I frowned at him, sipped my Coke, and tried to think. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I’m about to ask a favor, one that I don’t have the right to ask.”

  That surprised me, and it must have shown on my face. “What could you possibly ask that you don’t have the right to ask?”

  “Come with me on Peter’s first hunt.”

  I blinked at him. I thought about a lot of things, but finally said, “When?”

  “Next year, probably fall.”

  I nodded. “Just like deer season,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  I nodded again. “I’ll probably have to bring some of the bodyguards for me, and you know that I don’t approve of what you’re doing with Peter.”

  “But you’ll still come,” he said.

  “Yes, I’ll still come.”

  “I know that if you die, you risk pulling everyone you’re metaphysically tied to down to the grave with you, everyone you love, and you’ll still come.”

  I sighed. “I should talk to them first, to be honest, and I will, but we can’t keep each other from living our lives; then we become prisoners, and none of us want that.” I started putting all the trash in the little bag. “Besides, I think Jean-Claude is powerful enough to keep everyone alive. But if I’m going to risk all that out of the country, then we have to defeat the Mother of All Darkness and the Harlequin before next fall. I can’t risk dying and letting her win.”

  He nodded. “Okay, I help you solve your problem first and then you help me with mine.”

  “Agreed.”

  He smiled, and it was a mixture of Edward’s fierceness and Ted’s good ol’ boy. “I get to help you kill the oldest vampire on the planet who is just spirit, so we’ll need magic to kill her.”

  “She may not be killable. We may only be able to trap her magically, but honestly no one’s come up with anything that will work.”

  “So I help you do the impossible, and then you come on a much more mundane kill with me and Peter.”

  “I know you’ll pick something tame for Peter’s first hunt, so yeah, that about sums it up. You help me kill the unkillable, hunt and slaughter the most fearsome warriors and assassins known to either vampire or shapeshifter, and then I’ll help you do something much easier.” I smiled, I couldn’t help it.

  He shook his head. “It isn’t the killing that will be hard with Peter, it’s the emotional stuff.”

  “How’s he doing?” I asked.

  “He’s my son,” he said, but he didn’t sound happy about it.

  “You mean he’s a ruthless, cold-blooded killer?”

  “No, I mean he wants to be.”

  “Worse,” I said.

  “Much worse,” he said.

  “He’s killed before when he needed to. He’s saved my life and risked his own. He’s a good man.”

  “He’s a boy.”

  “Anyone who can stand shoulder to shoulder with me when the monsters are trying to kill us, and not flinch, isn’t a boy, Edward. He’s just young, and time will fix that.”

  “I hope so,” Edward said.

  I realized then what the real problem was. “You don’t want to see him die.”

  “I don’t want to get him killed.”

  “You won’t get him killed, Edward.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I know that you won’t take him unless you think his skills are up to the job. I know how good you are at training people for this; you helped train me. He’s got good instincts and he’s a shooter. He doesn’t hesitate. He’s brave as hell.”

  He looked at me. “You like him.”

  “We talk on the phone at least once a month, sometimes twice. He’s a good kid.”

  “You called him a man earlier.”

  I smiled. “When he’s shooting, he’s a man; on the phone, he still sounds like a kid.”

  “He still has a crush on you.”

  I nodded. “I’ve noticed.”

  “It used to bother you that he liked you.”

  “A little, but he needs a friend he can talk to about the stuff that the two of you are doing to train him up.”

  “I didn’t know he talked to you about that.”

  “I decided I’d rather know what you’re doing with Peter than have to guess.”

  He looked at me. I looked back. We had one of those guy moments. He knew I didn’t approve, but I’d still support him and Peter. The silence said it for us, all that and more. “What do you think of his training?”

  “I think that you’re a scary son of a bitch, and he’s lucky to have you in his life.”

  Edward looked down at the steering wheel, his hands sliding over it, as if he just needed something to do with them. “Thank you for that.”

  “It’s just the truth,” I said.

  He looked up, that serious, almost sorrowful look still in his blue eyes. “Let’s get out and find Newman and try to reason with him.”

  “Reason how?” I asked.

  Edward gave me Ted’s grin, but it was his own words, “I’m a scary son of a bitch, let’s see if I can spook him.”

  I grinned. “I like it. Scare him into giving up the lead.”

  “Tilford will listen to us; Newman won’t.”

  “Let’s go scare the rookie,” I said.

  He grinned. “Let’s.”

  10

  NEWMAN WAS TALL, as in over six feet tall, but slender, in that way that’s all genetics. He was probably one of those men who had trouble putting muscle over an otherwise athletic frame. He ran his fingers through his short brown hair and put his hat back on, setting it on his head like he wasn’t used to it yet. I wasn’t sure if he thought the cowboy hat made him look older, or if it had been a gift. Either way, it was new and hadn’t been broken in yet. It wasn’t like Edward’s hat that was creased and loved by his hands and head. This was a new, white hat. At least Edward’s was sort of off-white.

  “I appreciate the concern, really, I do, but I think I have a plan,” Newman said.

  “We’re just trying to help out,” Edward said in his best Ted voice. He’d quickly realized that he’d get further with charm than scare tactics. Since I didn’t really have a lot of charm that worked with men I wasn’t trying to date, I let Edward do the talking. I rarely got in trouble letting Edward do the persuading.

  “I do appreciate that,” Newman said, but he somehow implied in his down-home tone that he knew exactly what we’d been trying to do and he was having none of it. He was young, but he wasn’t stupid, and there was a quiet toughness to him that it was hard not to like. But the Harlequin wouldn’t care about his toughness, or his down-home charm, or the fact that he reminded me of a younger version of Ted. Not a younger version of Edward, but of Ted, if Ted had been really who Edward was, which was sort of weird, and made my head hurt just a little.

  “What’s your plan?” I asked.

  His brown eyes flicked to me, then back to Edward, then back to me. It was almost like he didn’t quite know what to do with me. He struck me as someone who’d been raised that women were to be taken care of, and here I stood all petite and feminine looking, but decked out in guns, knives, and a badge. Would I h
ave puzzled him less if I’d been taller?

  “Dogs. We’re going to track ’em.”

  It was a good idea, but . . . Edward and I exchanged a look. Newman frowned, because he’d caught the look. “What? What did I miss?”

  I gave a small nod, and Edward said in his pleasant Ted voice, “Well, now, Newman, did you find dogs that are trained to trail shapeshifters?”

  Newman frowned harder. “They just have to follow the scent,” he said.

  “Most dogs won’t track shapeshifters,” I said.

  He frowned harder, which made him look even younger, like a serious five-year-old who just happened to tower over me. “Why not?”

  “They’re afraid of them,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  Edward smiled, and it was a good smile, not condescending at all, just cheerful and sharing information. “Dogs get a whiff of a shapeshifter, especially one that’s partially or completely form shifted, and they’re afraid of ’em.”

  I explained, “Dogs can be around humans who shift form, but there’s something about once the change takes place that freaks out most dogs unless they’ve been trained to it.”

  “Why would that make a difference to a hound? They track any scent.”

  I glanced at Edward, but he just kept smiling at Newman. “The dogs are afraid, Newman. They’re just afraid of them, that’s all.”

  “But why?” he asked.

  “Have you ever seen a shapeshifter in animal or half-man form?” I asked.

  “I’ve seen pictures, film.”

  I sighed, and said, “They didn’t even bring in a shapeshifter to shift in front of your class?”

  “It’s too dangerous,” he said.

  “Okay, why is it too dangerous?” I asked, and I had his full eye contact now. He wasn’t worried about me being petite or a woman, he just wanted to understand.

  “Because once they shift they have to eat living flesh. They’ll kill anything near them.”

  I shook my head. “Not true, not even close to true of most shapeshifters.”

  “The books and instructors say it is.”

  “It’s true of the newly infected shapeshifters. They can wake as ravening beasts and have complete blackouts as people for the first few full moons, but after that almost all of them regain themselves. They just happen to turn furry once a month, but they become the people they were.”

  He shook his head, frowning and so serious. “Not what we saw on the films.”

  “I’ll bet money they were newbies, the newly turned lycanthropes. They can be just animals.”

  “You’re telling me that what I saw in class isn’t what they are, that they’re more people than monsters?”

  “Newman, I live with two shapeshifters. Do you really think I could do that if they tried to kill me every time they changed form?”

  He frowned harder. “So that rumor is true?”

  “Some of the rumors are true, most aren’t, but that’s true. Trust me, the men that I love have never tried to hurt me in any form.”

  “So this shapeshifter from last night should be like a person in a fur suit,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Not what I said.”

  “You’re saying on one hand they’re just furry people and on the other that the dogs are so afraid of them they won’t track them. You can’t have it both ways, Marshal Blake; either they’re monsters or they’re people.”

  “Tell that to the BTK killer,” I said. “He was a churchgoer, raised two kids, married, and resisted the urge to kill for decades. He was a person, but he was a monster, too.”

  “But dogs will track a serial killer,” Newman said.

  Edward tried. “Newman, it’s a good idea, but if he was even partially shapeshifted, and he had to be to hurt Marshal Karlton, then the dogs will be too afraid to track him. Did you ask for dogs trained on tracking shapeshifters?”

  “I asked for the best dog we had nearby.”

  I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter; the chance of having a shifter-trained dog is almost nil. It’s a seriously specialized training.”

  “Why?” Newman asked.

  I was already tired of him asking that. “Because, Newman, shapeshifters, even the nice legal citizens, don’t like training dogs designed to be able to hunt them down so people can kill them on sight.”

  Newman blinked at me. “I don’t understand.”

  I was tired of it, and him. “I know you don’t.”

  “Explain it to me, then.”

  “I don’t think I can. Some things you just have to learn in the field.”

  “I’m a fast learner,” he said, and he sounded a little defiant.

  “I hope so, Newman, I really hope so.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Great, I’d behaved myself and he was still getting upset with me. “It means that I had to watch last night while this shifter tortured and sliced up Marshal Karlton. He used her as a human shield so I couldn’t shoot him, and then he moved faster than any shapeshifter I’ve ever seen. All I could do was hold pressure on her wounds and try to keep her from bleeding to death and pray that moving her so I could keep her from bleeding out hadn’t just injured her spine and crippled her for life. It didn’t, thank God, but I didn’t know that last night, and a whole spine does no damn good if you bleed to death first.” I was up in his face as I finished, and though the closest to glaring into his face I could get was the middle of his chest, he flinched and backed away from me.

  I just turned and walked away. My anger crawled over me and through me. The beasts in their hidden place inside me swirled so that I had a moment where things twisted, a hint of the claws to come pawing at my gut. It made me hesitate as I walked.

  Edward called, “You okay?”

  “Sure, yeah, fine.” I kept walking, but I needed to feed the ardeur. I probably needed to feed before we started tracking the shapeshifter, but since the dog wasn’t going to track it, I had time. I also had an idea. I’d go visit the local weretigers and see if they’d tell me things they wouldn’t tell the other marshals. They probably would, and I knew one of them would. Alex was the son of the local clan queen, my lover, and my red tiger to call. I’d tell the other marshals I was trying to gather information, and I would, but it was a booty call. A booty call to keep me from being torn apart by my beasts.

  11

  RABORN STOPPED US on the way to the car. “Where are you two going?”

  “To see if I can find a clue,” I said.

  “So you’ll miss the hunt just because they wouldn’t give you the warrant ?” he said.

  “We’ll be back for the hunt,” Edward said, and went around to the driver’s side of the car, which left me with Raborn. Perfect.

  “I heard a lot of rumors about you, Blake, but I never heard that you’d leave before the monster was dead. Everyone said you were tough.”

  “I am tough,” I said. “You let the dogs do their best, but they won’t find these things, not today, not just with dogs.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  Edward leaned over and pushed the door open as a sort of hint that I needed to get in now. “Call it experience,” I said, and climbed in the open door. He was still frowning at us as we drove off.

  I had Alex Pinn’s cell number and I’d called it, but he didn’t answer it. A man I didn’t know answered it. “Alex’s phone, whom may I say is calling?” It sounded way too formal, and I was betting an assistant of some kind.

  “This is Anita Blake, to whom am I speaking?”

  Edward glanced at me as he pulled out onto the highway, but he didn’t ask questions he knew I’d explain later.

  “Then, this is the phone of Li Da of the Red Clan, son of Queen Cho Chun. Why are you calling our prince?”

  “I think that’s private between Alex and me.”

  “You are not alone?” He made it a question.

  “No.”

  “Can the person with you not be trusted?�
��

  “He can be, but I share as few secrets of the clan with outsiders as I can.”

  The man was silent for a moment, then said, “That is wise.”

  “I do my best. What is your name?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m talking to you and it’s polite to know someone’s name when you address them.”

  He hesitated and then said, “You can call me Donny.”

  “Call you Donny,” I said.

  “It will do until we see how much you can be trusted.”

  “Okay, Donny, where’s Alex and why are you answering his phone?”

  “Li Da is with our queen. She knew you would call him.”

  “She did, did she?”

  “Queen Cho Chun said you would not be able to resist the call of each other, and she was correct.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I was trying to feed the ardeur, basically a metaphysical booty call, but from the moment I’d accidentally tied Alex to me, his mother had been pushing for it to be more. She’d have preferred he settle down with a nice little weretigress, but she wanted me to choose among the clans and make Alex my official tiger king, which would make the red clan the top cat in the world of weretigers. I had no intention of doing that for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones was that neither Alex nor I wanted it. Not to mention that Jean-Claude and all the other men in my life would probably get pissy if I ever actually married anyone, especially if that one wasn’t any of them. But I’d found that all the clan queens were pushy bitches, and serious as a heart attack about bloodlines, power, and marriage.

  “Look, Donny, Alex is your clan prince, that’s true, but he’s also my tiger to call.”

  “Come to our meeting place, and if you can call him away from our queen’s side then he is yours, but if you cannot then you are not the Mistress of Tigers.”

  I swore softly under my breath. “Are you all aware that I’m in your city trying to solve murders? I’m trying to save the lives of other weretigers.”

  “None of the dead are clan tigers; they are all survivors of an attack. Their deaths are unfortunate, but not clan business.”

  “Do you understand that if they finish up the lone tigers that aren’t part of a clan, they may turn on the clans themselves?”