Dave Carver (Book 1): Thicker Than Blood (17 page)

“What’s the matter, May?”

“Nothing. It’s just...” She sighed heavily. “I hate this war.”

“So do I,” I said. “We all do.”

“It’s different for me.” Tears welled in her gray eyes as she looked at me. “You said the vampire was scared of me? Well, he was right to be afraid. I’ve done terrible things these last six months. I’ve tortured vampires. More than one. More than two. I’ve lit eight vampires on fire. I smelled their flesh cook. I listened to their skin sizzle and heard their screams as they burned to death.”

“They’re vampires,” I said. “I can’t get upset about that. Besides, it’s war. You did what you had—”

“I’ve tortured people, too, Dave. Vamp groupies. God, Dave. Most weren’t even old enough to buy booze and I drove spikes through their hands.”

I swallowed. “Still. You didn’t have a choice.”

“Yes, I did,” she said quietly. “I didn’t have to save you from Guyana. This war never would have happened.”

“And I’d be dead,” I said. “So would Bill. So if you want me to be sad that you did it—well, sorry, May, but I can’t. You saved my life. Can you honestly tell me that was the wrong choice?”

She held my gaze for a long time. There were tears falling in earnest from her eyes. “I don’t know, Dave. I really don’t. And that scares me more than anything. Six months ago, it wouldn’t have been a question. I’d have said I’d do anything for you. But now...now I really don’t know if it was worth it.”

Chapter 22

After the attack on the office, Rob had escorted Madison to Queens Hospital. He hadn’t left since, standing guard and keeping an eye on her. I was glad he was there—although I doubted that a wounded receptionist would be high on the list of targets—partly because it gave me an excuse to get away from May.

The van that we’d liberated from the vampires’ garage was busy ferrying dead vampires to their final resting place. Rob’s Mustang was gone, too—Bill had taken it somewhere early that morning—and Earl had the keys to his Toyota. I needed a car of my own, I decided. This borrowing rides was not awe-inspiring in a leader, and public transportation obviously wouldn’t work. Imagine taking the D-train with a three-foot arming sword across my lap. I added “buy a car” to my mental list of problems, but it was all the way down, near the bottom.

So I called a cab. I’d get a receipt and send it to London. The Table could afford it.

As I rode in the back of a curry-scented car, I had time to think. Maybe too much time. May’s last words to me rattled around in my brain like nails in a tin can. She didn’t know if
saving my life
was
worth it
? I’d be lying if I said that didn’t sting, like, a lot, but what was worse was the fact that I couldn’t say she was wrong. Up till now, I’d only thought about the war in the ways that it had affected me. How
I
was hurt, the things
I
had to do. I hadn’t given much thought to what it was doing to the ones on the front lines. The people like May.

So far the fighting in New York had been small ball. But out in the real battlefields—Latin America, the former Soviet states, and the mountains of Nepal, it was as real, bloody, and vicious as any war you could name. And May was in charge of the whole scene. Hell, with
Guinevere’s
help, my ex’s boots had probably touched the soil of every major battlefield in the war.

No wonder the gentle, magical woman I loved was now known in the supernatural world as
La Bruja
. As a killer and a torturer. I could see it in those tears: She was starting to see herself in the same terms. And it bothered her. It bothered me. I couldn’t imagine how she felt. But I didn’t think it was strictly personal. If the war was affecting her this badly, it had to be doing similar, if less severe, things to every knight in the field. And that wasn’t even taking into consideration the body count.

Maybe she was right. Maybe it would have been better for May, for the Round Table, for the human race, if she had left Bill and me in Guyana to be slowly drained to death.

When Bill and I had been taken, it came with a side-order of a promotion for May. As captain of the Nomads, she’d spent three months marshaling support for a rescue mission deep in vampire territory. The Battle of Guyana had been the largest Round Table operation in decades. More than a hundred knights—including the entire contingent of Nomads as well as volunteers from dozens of field offices throughout the world—had stormed the underground tunnels where we were being held. It had been a roaring success, obviously, but it had also inspired the vamps to retaliate. The Third Vampire War was officially begun. The weight of that war was pressed down on May’s shoulders like an obese condor. She blamed herself.

Not only that, but she could see herself becoming as bad as the monsters she fought. The captain of the Nomads was the Pendragon’s right hand for dirty deeds. The main purpose? Assassinations and killings.

That was my background in the Table. Over nearly ten years I’d gotten used to it, but May had never been as violently inclined as I was. She came from a long line of witches. Her mother was a highly respected member of the Magic Council, and her mother, and her mother, and so on. Through all of those generations, May had once told me, the Strain women were taught one thing above all else: Magic was about peace. And now, here was May using spells to turn vampires’ heads into so much fiery ash.

I didn’t think I’d ever forget the look on May’s face when she threatened to torture Craig. She hated herself. Everything she’d spent her life believing was gone. She was broken. And the worst part, for her at least, was that she’d done it to herself.

But she was wrong about that. It wasn’t her fault.

It was mine.

If I hadn’t walked away after Guyana, I could have stayed with her. Most likely, I would have been made captain of the Nomads, and it would have been my job to torture and to kill. Instead, I left her alone. The woman I loved needed me, and I had abandoned her. What kind of man did that?

A coward.

No wonder May hated this war. It made her into a monster, but she may have been a monster that we needed.

A heavyset nurse with shoulder-length, thin dreadlocks and bright pink scrubs told me where I could find Madison Coburn’s room. I thanked her and headed for the elevator. I had to break into a jog to sneak through before the doors closed. Swallowing hard as the doors slid shut and my claustrophobia kicked in, I did my best to smile at the middle-aged couple who were already inside.

The man frowned at me. He was dressed in an expensive business suit, so I guess my longish hair; unshaven face; and collection of cuts, bruises, and scars offended his delicate Wall Street sensibilities. I nodded respectfully and smiled at his wife, who was holding the string of a bright yellow “IT’S A GIRL” balloon.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“Oh, thank you so much,” the woman beamed, seemingly oblivious to her husband’s distaste for me. “She’s our first grandchild.”

“That’s nice.” I was starting to think that opening my mouth had been one of my worst ideas of the last couple of days, and that was saying something. I had nothing else to say.

“Why are you here?” New-Grandpa’s eyebrows bristled suspiciously.

I told them the truth. Sort of. “A couple of my friends got attacked last night.”

“Oh, my goodness,” New-Nana said. “Will they be alright?”

“Should be. They just moved them out of the ICU.”

I had no idea why I was telling this couple what the nurse in the pink scrubs had told me. The woman leaned against her husband and slipped her fingers through his. I didn’t interact much with the vanilla, non-supe world much these days. When I did, I was reminded why I did my job: people like this. This couple was at the hospital to do something that millions of people celebrated every day, but that made it no less miraculous: the birth of a child. They had no idea who I was or what I did or what would happen if I failed. I put my hands in my pockets and made a silent promise:

These people would never know what was happening in this city. Their granddaughter would not grow up in a world run by vampires. And if she did, it was going to be because I died trying to stop it. This family would never know I existed.

The elevator opened on the third floor and I stepped out. It took me a moment to find my bearings, as it always did after emerging from a closed-off space, and went down the brightly-lit hall towards Madison’s room.

Rob Haney was sitting in a chair in the hallway. His chin was pressed against his chest and his eyes were closed, but he looked up when he heard me coming. When he saw me, he stood up, moving slowly and gingerly.

“Boss. Glad to see you.”

“You too,” I said. “I hear you had a busy night.”

His eyes sparkled. “Don’t ever let anybody tell you us old guys don’t know how to party, boss.”

“I heard you got cut up. You get your side looked at?”

“Sure did. The doc stitched me up right in this chair. She wasn’t happy about it, but I wasn’t leaving Madison alone.”

“Speaking of our patient, how is she?”

“The doc says she’ll be okay. On a lot of painkillers. She’s asleep.”

“You mind if I look in on her?”

He made a
be my guest gesture
and sat down. Madison lay on the bed nearest the door in the darkened room. Her chest rose and fell slowly but steadily. A bandage was wrapped around her head and the only sound was the periodic beeping of a monitoring system set up next to the bed.

“No concussion or anything?” I asked.

“The docs didn’t see any signs of one.”

“Good. I...I was expecting it to be worse.”

Rob frowned. “You didn’t see her last night, boss. It was...bad. I thought we’d lost her.”

I pushed the air out of my lungs. “Well, just keep watching her. And try to get some rest.” I turned to leave, but stopped. “Hey, where’s Krissy?”

“Madison was awake before. She wanted someone to go feed her cat.”

I grimaced. “So she’s out in the city alone?”

“Is that a problem?”

“I hope not.” I shook my head. “Listen, when she gets back here, send her to office. I want to make sure she’s okay.”

“Will do, boss.”

I shook Rob’s hand and nodded at the open door to the hospital room. “And take care of our girl.”

His eyes flashed and, for a moment, he looked ten years younger. “Absolutely.”

Madison’s image was imprinted in my brain like a horrific pop song as I rode the elevator down to the lobby. She’d looked so..small, so fragile. Something like this shouldn’t happen to some like her. It’s caveman of me, I know, but I hate seeing a woman, especially a young woman hurt. Made me angry. It wasn’t like Madison was a knight—she hadn’t put herself in harm’s way. All she’d done was show up to her job in the morning.

Unlike Kim.

Kim Larsen’s death was still a mystery. Assuming I was right, and Roberto and Loretta were involved, I might be able to track them down that way. I got myself another cab and told the driver to take me to the 108th Precinct.

Chapter 23

“I need to speak with Detective Fuerte.”

The old bulldog of a desk sergeant squinted at me from above his jowls. “Why?” Even his voice sounded like a bark.

“I have information about the Kim Larsen case,” I said. “My name’s Dave. He’ll want to talk to me.”

Sergeant Bulldog picked up a desk phone, woofed quietly into it, frowned, and hung up. He looked at me and growled, “You can go back.”

I pushed through the Old-West-saloon-style half-doors that separated the police station’s lobby from the beating heart of the precinct. Bulldog watched me as I went, his beady eyes never blinking. (Hell, I half-expected him to start snarling and snapping his teeth.) I smiled politely, which only seemed to make the big cop angrier. I hurried past.

The office of the 108th Precinct’s Homicide division was a wide-open room, not dissimilar from my own office’s bullpen. It was in the center of the building—no windows, so no natural light. Everything was bleached by fluorescence. Clumps of desks were pushed together, front-to-front, with no cubicles or walls to divide them. Only a few were occupied, which surprised me. Mid-morning and so few cops on duty? There must have been budget cuts.

Fortunately, Fuerte was one of the officers in the big room. His back was to me, his beefy legs squeezed underneath a desk. The detective’s huge body didn’t fit at the desk. His massive bulk seemed to perch on top of the wood. I was reminded of an overstuffed ice cream cone.

I stood a few yards away and loudly cleared my throat.

“Dave,” Fuerte said, without turning around from his paperwork, “didn’t expect to be seeing you again.”

I laughed. “Me, either. Not so soon, anyway.”

“You got something about Larsen?”

“Well...” I said. “Sort of.”

Fuerte turned around, his dark eyes blank.

I hurried to add, “I might have a couple names you might be interested in. But I need to know if you’ve found anything.”

The cop smirked. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine? I can work with that.”

“Mind going first?”

He eyed me for a moment, as if he was considering an argument. Then he shook his head, moved aside some papers, and showed me a manilla folder. “This is a witness statement. Some old guy was walking his dog. Saw Miss Larsen. Saw this teenager run up behind her and cut her throat. Then he ran off without so much as taking her purse.” Fuerte looked at me again. “Any of that making sense to you?”

I nodded slowly. “Yeah, but the kid probably wasn’t acting rationally.”

“Gee, ya think?”

I shook my head. “I mean the kid wasn’t in control of his actions.”

“What, like drugs?”

“More like hypnosis.”

Fuerte’s eyebrows lifted so high they nearly merged with his hairline. “Like that Vegas crap?”

“Not exactly.” I took a deep breath, trying to figure out the best to phrase this crazy idea so that Fuerte could understand. “I’m saying this kid wasn’t the killer. He was the murder weapon.”

“That don’t make sense.”

“Detective,” I said, “I’m sorry, but this is one of those things I was telling you about. It isn’t
going
to make sense.”

“You’ve got a suspect in mind.” It wasn’t a question. “Even though we have a perfectly reliable eyewitness telling us about this kid.”

“Yes.”

He continued to stare at me, without a word, waiting for me to continue.

I sighed. “Their names are Roberto and Loretta. I don’t know their last name. They said they’re brother and sister. From...Europe, I guess.”

“That’s all you got? A brother-sister team from Europe? Not a lot to go on, Dave.”

I shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Well, do you at least know what they look like?”

“Yeah. Why?”

Fuerte shifted his bulk to stand up. “Wait here. I’m gonna get you a book to read.”

Cops passing by Fuerte’s desk looked at me strangely, but none of them asked me what I was up to. Apparently enough of them had seen me speaking with the detective, so they were willing to tolerate my shaggy presence. I waited almost twenty minutes until Fuerte returned, a big, black-leather-bound binder in his arms.

“Sorry ‘bout the wait,” he said as he dropped the book on the desk with a loud thump. “I couldn’t find the damn thing.”

“What is it?” I asked suspiciously. I’d had more than my share of mysterious books in the last few days.

“Interpol suspect directory,” he explained. “This is all of the wanted people from Europe from the last three years. If either of your friends have been arrested or accused of a crime, they’ll be here.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “They’re not exactly the kind of criminal that gets arrested.”

“Humor me,” Fuerte said. “If this doesn’t work, I don’t know, maybe we’ll have you talk to a sketch artist.”

I turned through the glossy-bound pages of the book. Each sheet was filled three columns and three rows of mugshots. Most were photographs of hard-looking men and women. A mixture of all races—mostly white, but there were more than a few Middle Eastern-looking ones as well. I skimmed past those. Here and there, though, there were drawings, like the sketch of me that Fuerte had shown me.

“What’s with the cartoons?” I asked.

“If the suspect’s never been arrested that’s what they use. A witness talks to an artist and comes up with something like this. You know, like the one I had of you.”

“The one that looked like me,” I said.

Fuerte snorted and leaned back in his chair to wait for me t find Roberto or Loretta in the book. This seemed pointless, but I was taking it seriously. After all, if I could find them in here...what would happen, exactly? It wasn’t like Fuerte would be able to arrest Roberto, throw Loretta in jail. If he—or any mortal cop—stumbled onto the vampires, he’d die. But on the other hand, if Roberto’s mugshot was in this book, maybe we could give it to the Channel 4 News. A photo, with the “Armed and Dangerous” caption, could lead to his location. If I could find them that way, I could catch them before they could hurt anyone else. But only if they were in the book, and I was doubting they’d be listed.

The criminal element of Europe stared up at me. Long dark hair, short blond hair, handlebar mustache, gray eyes, brown eyes, blue eyes, green eyes, dark skin, light skin, medium skin, scars, beards, glasses, hats, shaven heads, tattoos, long noses, short noses, thin lips, bony faces, fat faces, turkey necks, pencil necks, bull necks, muscles, bony shoulders, an eyepatch, gold teeth, a missing ear, somebody with what looked like an anthill in his cheeks, beautiful dark eyes and a strong nose, turbans, earrings...

Wait.

I flipped back a page and stared at the second face in the last row. It was a police artist’s sketch of Loretta. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun and she was wearing a pair of cross-shaped earrings, but it was unmistakeable. It was Loretta.

I turned the book around and tapped her picture. “This is her. What did she do?”

Fuerte slid the drawing out of its protective pouch and flipped it over. He frowned as he read something on the back.

“Well?” I said. I was running my hands along the fronts of my legs.

“This,” Fuerte said slowly, “is an Interpol sketch of the sole suspect in an act of piracy from six weeks ago. Seems this woman was hanging around a shipyard in the south of France. The dockworkers noticed her, because, well, she looks like this, and because she was only there at night, staring at this one ship.”

“What kind of ship?”

“A big one. One of them tankers they use to bring the Jap cars over here.” He opened a laptop computer on the desk, typed something, clicked the mousepad a few times, then turned the screen around so I could see.

A gunmetal gray ship was on the screen. She was docked and stevedores were operating cranes to unload huge crates. I estimated she was a thousand feet long. The top deck was huge, not to mention all of the room there had to be in the holds belowdecks.

“One woman stole this ship?” I said, incredulous. “By herself?”

“No one at Interpol’s sure,” Fuerte said. “All they know is what the dockworkers said. They saw her hanging around. Then, one night, she was gone and the boat was heading out to sea.” He was staring at me. “So what do ya make of that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I’ll tell you this: Whatever this ship is for, it isn’t good.”

“I had a similar thought,” Fuerte said. There was a dark look in his eyes that I recognized, because I felt the same way. The detective may not have known what was happening, but he could see something bad going down in his city. Something that had already led to one death and would probably lead to more. I could see it in his eyes—Fuerte hated the idea of someone getting away with murder. Hated it as much as I hated the vampires. Hated it enough to do almost anything to stop it.

“Detective,” I said, “I know you believe in the law, and that’s admirable. But this woman is extremely dangerous, and she isn’t subject to our laws. If you somehow run into her, call me. Don’t try and take her in yourself. If you go after her, a lot of people will die. Most of them will be cops and one of them will be you.”

“I’m not afraid to die.”

“I’m sure you’re not,” I said. “But trust me. This is what I do. I’ll stop her. I promise.”

“This woman is a murderer,” Fuerte whispered. “And I catch murderers. It’s what I do. But...this is one of them things, isn’t it? One of those cases the cops can’t do anything about?”

“Yeah,” I said. “This is one of those cases.”

I stood in the cold on the stairs outside the precinct, downwind of the smoke from some cops’ cigarettes. After a few minutes I decided to start walking. I needed to figure some things out and, ever since I was a kid, I did my best thinking while moving.

One: The vampires had chosen New York as their target. It didn’t make much sense. Sure they could use it as a staging area, but it wasn’t like the Round Table would sit on their swords while that happened. If they really wanted to cripple us, they’d go after Paris or Madrid or Belfast. somewhere they could use to launch a quick attack on the home office in London. But here they were, an ocean away. Why?

Two: the stolen ship. You could easily fit a thousand vampires in the hold of that thing. Enough to completely crush any resistance.

Three: I needed to find the vampires. I was sure they had killed Kim and McCreary. It made sense that they’d want him out of the way—the man was a beast. If I’d been planning an attack, killing Jack McCreary would have been my first move. But there was something about his behavior in his last days that ate at me. The pyramid trap, specifically. Why had the wily old knight installed that thing in the basement without telling anybody? There were easier ways to hold prisoners, ways that didn’t require such old and specialized magic.

My knowledge of magic was fairly small. I didn’t know what it took to build something like a pyramid trap. But if they hadn’t been used in centuries, the number of people who did know had to be fairly small. I had no idea how to do it, obviously, but I knew someone who might.

Steve Dallas, the magic shop owner. If Earl was right, and he knew all of the major magical players in town, he’d know who McCreary would have gone to for the pyramid trap.

I resisted the urge to break into a run as I followed the gray asphalt road, off to see the wizard.