Circus of the Damned

24

I was staring up into a face I didn't know. The face was holding a bloody handkerchief to its forehead. Short hair, pale eyes, freckles. "Hi, Larry," I said. My voice sounded distant and strange. I couldn't remember why.

It was still dark. Larry's face had been cleaned up a little, but the wound was still bleeding. I couldn't have been out that long. Out? Where had I been out to? All I could remember was eyes, black eyes. I sat up too fast. Larry caught my arm or I would have fallen.

"Where are the. ."

"Vampires," he finished for me.

I leaned into his arm and whispered, "Yeah."

There were people all around us in the dark, huddled in little whispering groups. The lights of a police car strobed the darkness. Two uniforms were standing quietly next to the car, talking with a man whose name wouldn't come to me.

"Karl," I said.

"What?" Larry asked.

"Karl Inger, the tall man talking to the police."

Larry nodded. "That's right."

A small, dark man knelt beside us. Jeremy Ruebens of Humans First, who last I knew had been shooting at us. What the hell was going on?

Jeremy smiled at me. It looked genuine.

"What makes you my friend all of a sudden?"

His smile broadened. "We saved you."

I pushed away from Larry to sit on my own. A moment of dizziness and I was fine. Yeah, right. "Talk to me, Larry."

He glanced at Jeremy Ruebens, then back to me. "They saved us."

"How?"

"They threw holy water on the one who bit me." He touched his throat with his free hand, an unconscious gesture, but he noticed me watching. "Is she going to have control over me?"

"Did she enter your mind at the same time as she bit you?"

"I don't know," he said. "How can you tell?"

I opened my mouth to explain, then closed it. How to explain the unexplainable? "If Alejandro, the master vampire, had bitten me at the same time he rolled my mind, I'd be under his power now."

"Alejandro?"

"That's what the other vampires called the master."

I shook my head, but the world swam in black waves and I had to swallow hard not to vomit. What had he done to me? I'd had mind games played on me before, but I'd never had a reaction like this.

"There's an ambulance coming," Larry said.

"I don't need one."

"You've been unconscious for over an hour, Ms. Blake," Ruebens said. "We had the police call an ambulance when we couldn't wake you."

Ruebens was close enough for me to reach out and touch him. He looked friendly, positively radiant, like a bride on her big day. Why was I suddenly his favorite person? "So they threw holy water on the vamp that bit you; what then?" I asked Larry.

"They drove the rest of them off with crosses and charms."

"Charms?"

Ruebens pulled out a chain with two miniature metal-faced books hanging on it. Both books would have fit in the palm of my hand with room to spare. "They aren't charms, Larry. They're tiny Jewish Holy Books."

"I thought a Star of David."

"The star doesn't work, because it's a racial symbol, not really a religious symbol."

"So it's like miniature Bibles?"

I raised my eyebrows. "The Torah contains the Old Testament, so yeah, it's like miniature Bibles."

"Would the Bible work for us Christians?"

"I don't know. Probably, I've just never been attacked by vampires while carrying a Bible." That was probably my fault. In fact, when was the last time I'd read the Bible? Was I becoming a Sunday Christian? I'd worry about my soul later, after my body felt a little better.

"Cancel the ambulance; I'm fine."

"You are not fine," Ruebens said. He reached out as if to touch me. I looked at him. He stopped in mid-motion. "Let us help you, Ms. Blake. We share common enemies."

The police were walking towards us over the dark grass. Karl Inger was coming, too, talking softly to the police as they moved.

"Do the police know you were shooting at us first?"

Something passed over Ruebens's face.

"They don't know, do they?"

"We saved you, Ms. Blake, from a fate worse than death. I was wrong to try and hurt you. You raise the dead, but if you are truly enemies with the vampires, then we are allies."

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend, huh?"

He nodded.

The police were almost here, almost within earshot. "All right, but you ever point a gun at me again and I'll forget you saved me."

"It will never happen again, Ms. Blake; you have my word."

I wanted to say something disparaging, but the police were there. They'd hear. I wasn't going to tell on Ruebens and Humans First, so I had to save my smart alec comebacks for later use. Knowing Ruebens, I'd get another chance.

I lied to the police about what Humans First had done, and I lied about what Alejandro had wanted from me. It was just another of those mindless attacks that had happened twice already. Later, to Dolph and Zerbrowski, I'd tell the truth, but right now I just didn't feel like explaining the entire mess to strangers. I wasn't even sure Dolph would get the whole story. Like the fact that I was almost assuredly Jean-Claude's human servant.

Nope, no need to mention that.