Incubus Dreams

“Don’t take it personally, Malcolm, some of my best friends are monsters.” I folded the warrant up and tucked it away.

“How can you make jokes, when you have come here to kill one of us?”

The congregation stirred and started to stand. There were hundreds of them and only a handful of us. This could get out of hand, and I didn’t want that. Legally, if anyone interfered, then I could kill them, too. The last thing I wanted on my hands was a church full of martyrs.

It was as if Malcolm read my mind, or I read his, because he moved toward the door. Marconi stopped him with a hand up, not quite touching.

“We don’t want any trouble,” Zerbrowski said, “and you don’t either, Malcolm.”

“Am I supposed to simply let you escort one of my congregation out of here, knowing that you could make him kneel in the parking lot and execute him? What kind of person would I be to simply stand by and let that happen?”

Shit, I thought.

“Who are you here for?” Avery said, and his voice was like the rest of him-soft, uncertain. Was it an act?

“You for starters,” I said.

His brown eyes went wide. “Why?”

“If you try to take him, we will stand in front of the door. You will have to climb over our bodies to take him with you.”

I glanced at Malcolm, and I knew that he didn’t mean it. He was gambling. Gambling that we wouldn’t be willing to climb over the bodies of church members to execute this warrant here and now.

Gambling that we’d go away and get Avery some other time. Usually I like having the warrant fast, but tonight it would have worked better to get it later, and not in front of the undead Billy Graham and his flock.

Zerbrowski looked at me. “You’re the vampire hunter, Anita, it has to be your call.”

“Thanks,” I said, but I had an idea. I could still taste Avery. He hit my radar as i

Suddenly it wasn’t such a bad thought.

I leaned into Zerbrowski and whispered, “I can feel him in my head. I think I can find out what he saw last night.”

“How?”

I shrugged. “Weird necromancy stuff, metaphysics, magic, whatever you want to call it.”

“The warrant does not allow you to use magic on my people.”

I looked at Malcolm; it was begi

“I am allowed to use whatever force or abilities I deem necessary. So, yeah, I can do magic, if it gets the job done.”

“I will not allow you to bespell him.”

“Has it occurred to you that I don’t want to kill him if he didn’t do it? If I take his heart and his head, then we find out he’s i

Malcolm looked at me, and it was a look I hadn’t seen before. He was trying to decide if I was lying. “I feel your regret, Anita. You grow tired of the killing, just as I did.”

See, that’s the problem with vampires, you let them into your head an inch, and they take a metaphysical mile. I didn’t like that he could read me like that, especially not with my shields up. Of course, I wasn’t sure how far up my shields were. Had I dropped them to taste the vampires? I thought about my shields, and yeah, they’d dropped, or had been breached under a wave of smells and tastes and blood flowing in sluggish veins. I started to raise the shields back up, but I had something to do first.

I looked at Malcolm. “I’m going to touch Avery. I’m going to look inside him and see what I can see. I am not going to hurt him, not on purpose. I want the truth, Malcolm, that’s all. Give me your word that if he’s guilty, you’ll let me take him.”

“How will I know what you discover from him?”

I smiled, and again it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “When I tell you to, if I tell you to, touch me, and you’ll know what I know.”

He looked at me, and I looked at him. We had one of those moments of unspoken questions. I knew that he’d tried to get information about a vampire murder when he shook my hand. There were states where that alone would get him put on a short list, a list of vampires that were getting dangerous. I knew what he’d done, and I had a warrant that allowed me enough leeway that I could pretend he was trying to hide his own involvement with the killings. I mean, there’d never be a trial. I would never have to prove my suspicions in court.

Malcolm took a breath deep enough to make his shoulders rock up and down. He nodded, once, short, curt, and almost awkwardly, as if he wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but he was going to do it anyway. “You may touch Avery, if he wishes you to touch him. You may use your marks with Jean-Claude to try and find the truth.”

I didn’t correct him that it was my own necromancy more than Jean-Claude’s powers that I was about to use. Everyone needed a few illusions, even master vampires.

I turned to Avery. “Do you agree to what I’m about to do?”

He frowned and looked puzzled. I was begi

“Touch you,” I said.

His lips curved upward, the barest of smiles, but it filled his eyes with more laughter than showed on his lips. “Yes,” he said, “yes, please.”

I held my hands out to him and smiled. “Come to me, Avery.” And just like that, he took those few steps forward. He went to his knees in front of me without being asked. He raised his face up to me, and there were two things in his face, eagerness, and a complete and utter trust. It wasn’t him who wasn’t bright, it was me. I’d rolled him. I’d rolled him the way a master vampire could roll a mortal. In that moment before I touched him, I wondered, if I’d drawn a gun and put it to his head would he have flinched or stared at me with those trusting eyes, while I pulled the trigger?