Obsidian Butterfly

"You take the head first."

"Why?"

"I'm afraid if I take the knife out while the body's still intact that he'll sit up and start breathing again."

Olaf raised eyebrows at me. "You are not joking me?"

"I never joke about vampires," I said.

He gave me another long look. "You would have made a good man."

I took the compliment because that's what it was, maybe the best compliment he'd ever given a woman.

"Thank you," I said.

The SWAT team came back out of the far tu

"Then it got away," I said. I looked at the body still lying there. "Take the head. I want out of this damn cave."

The SWAT team leader didn't like us cutting up the body. He and Ramirez went into a yelling match. While everyone was watching the argument, I nodded to Olaf and he beheaded the corpse in one blow. Blood gushed out onto the cave floor.

"What the fuck are you doing?" one of the SWAT cops asked, bringing his gun pointed at us.

"My job," I said. I put the tip of the blade under the ribs.

The policeman brought the gun up to his shoulder. "Get away from the body until the captain tells you it's okay to do it."

I kept the knife against the body. "Olaf."

"Yes."

"If he shoots me, kill him."

"My pleasure." The big man turned his eyes to the policeman, and there was something in that gaze that made the heavily armed man take a step back.

The captain in question said, "Stand down, Reynolds. She's a vamp executioner. Let her do her job."

I plunged the blade into the skin, and it slid home. I cut a hole just below his ribs and reached into the hole. It was tight and wet and slick, and it took two hands to get the heart out, one to cut it free of the co

I caught Ramirez and Bernardo both looking at me, with nearly identical looks on their faces. I didn't think either of them would be wanting a date any time soon. They'd always remember watching me cut a man's heart out, and that memory would stain anything else. With Bernardo, I didn't give a shit. With Ramirez, it hurt to see that look in his eyes.

A hand touched the heart. I stared at that hand, then looked up to meet Olaf's eyes. He wasn't repulsed. He stroked the heart, hands sliding over mine. I pulled away, and we looked at each other over the body we'd butchered. No, Olaf wasn't repulsed. The look in his eyes was that pure darkness that only fills a man's eyes in the most intimate of situations. He raised the severed head up by the hair and held it almost as if he'd let me kiss it. Then I realized he was holding it over the heart, like a matched pair.

I had to turn away from what I saw in his face. "Does anyone have a bag that I can carry this in?"

Someone finally found an empty equipment bag and let me spill the heart into it. The policeman told me I could keep the bag. He didn't want it back.

No one offered Olaf a bag, and he never asked.

63

THEY FOUND MY GUNS in the chest with the rest of the weapons, though the holsters were missing. I just couldn't keep a holster intact on this job. But I stuffed the guns down my jeans. The knives weren't in the chest. Ramirez drove me personally to a crematorium so that I could see the heart and head burned down to ash. When I had two little containers of ash, it was almost dawn. I fell asleep in the seat beside him, or he'd have had a fight about taking me to the hospital. But he insisted that the doctors check me out. Amazingly enough, none of the cuts were even deep enough for stitches. I wouldn't even have any new scars. Miraculous.

One of the men had given me a jacket that said FBI on it to cover my nearly naked upper body. Several of the uniforms and most of the hospital staff assumed I was a federal agent. I kept having to correct people, and I finally realized that the emergency room doctor thought my denial meant I had a concussion and didn't know who I was. The more I argued the more concerned he got. He ordered a series of head X-rays, and I couldn't talk him out of it.

I was actually sitting in a wheelchair waiting to be escorted to X-ray when Bernardo came up. He touched the FBI jacket. "You're moving up in the world."

"When the nurse comes back, he'll be taking me down to X-ray."

"You okay?"

"Just precautionary," I said.

"I just came back from checking on the invalids."

"Olaf said Edward would live."

"He will."

"How are the kids?"

"Peter is okay. They put Becca in a room. She's got a cast to her elbow."

I stared at his cast stained a dirty brown. "That thing is going to start stinking with all that blood dried into it."

"The doc wants me to get a new cast, but I wanted to check on everyone first."

"Where's Olaf?"

Bernardo shrugged. "I don't know. He disappeared once the monsters were all dead and Ramirez had you in his car. He said something about the job being done. I guess he went back under whatever rock Edward found him under."

I started to nod, then remembered something that Edward had said. "Edward told you that you couldn't have a woman because he'd forbidden Olaf to have women, right?"

"Yeah, but the job's over, babe. I am headed for the first open bar."

I looked at him, nodding. "Maybe that's where Olaf is."

He frowned at me. "Olaf's at a bar?"

"No, he's out getting his ashes hauled, his way."

We both looked at each other, and there was a moment when horror dawned on Bernardo's face, and he whispered, "Oh, my god, he's out killing someone."

I shook my head. "If he's just out killing at random, there's no way to find him, but what if it's not random?"

"What do you mean?"

"Remember how he looked at Professor Dallas?"

Bernardo looked at me. "You don't think … I mean he wouldn't … oh, shit."

I got up out of the wheelchair and said, "I've got to tell Ramirez what we're thinking."

"You don't know he's there. You don't know he's doing anything wrong."

"Do you believe he just went home?" I asked.

Bernardo seemed to think about that for a second, then shook his head.

"Neither do I."

"He saved your life," Bernardo said.

"I know." We went to the elevator.

The elevator doors opened and Lieutenant Marks was standing there. "Where the fuck do you think you're going?"

"Marks, I think that Professor Dallas is in danger." I got into the elevator.

Bernardo followed.

"You think I'd believe anything you say, witch?" He hit the button that kept the doors open.

"Hate me if you want, but don't let her die."

"Your pet FBI agent kept me out of the big raid."

I didn't know what he meant, but I was pretty sure who he meant. "Whatever Bradley did, he did without me knowing, but that's not the point."

"I can make it the point."

"Did you hear that Dallas is in danger? Did you hear that part?" I asked.

"She's as corrupt as you are."

"So it's okay that she dies a horrible death," I said.

He just looked at me. I moved as if to go towards the buttons. Bernardo caught his clue. He hit Marks in the head with his cast. The man went down, and I hit the door closed button. The doors hushed closed as Bernardo lowered Marks to the floor.

"You want me to kill him?" Bernardo asked.

"No." But now if I went to Ramirez for help, Marks would think he'd been in on it. Shit. "Do you have Edward's car?"

"Yeah."

"How did Olaf drive off, then?"

Bernardo looked at me. "If he's really doing this, he'll steal a car and ditch it away from the murder scene. He won't chance using Edward's car."

"He'll go back to Edward's house for his goody bag," I said.

The doors opened on the floor that he'd parked on. We got out. "What do you mean goody bag?"