"You could change in the ambulance," I said.
Nicky frowned at me.
Domino said, "He'll have to stay in beast form for a few hours to make sure it heals completely. He can't just shift back and forth even if he's able to do that without risking permanent damage to his hearing."
"He can't run around Dublin in lion form, Anita," Damian said.
"Especially not one the size of a small horse. We're all bigger than the regular version of our animal side. A lion that big would attract a lot of attention," Domino said.
"I'd think any lion loose in Dublin would attract attention," I said.
"True, but our normal beast size is huge. It won't pass for a natural animal."
"I've seen shapeshifters that were the normal size of their animal," Damian said.
"I haven't."
"I think it may be an older type of lycanthropy," he said.
"That would explain it, and be weird. Why would older lycanthropy strains make their beast half look like a regular animal?" Domino asked.
"Maybe it's camouflage," I said. "Back when there were more real lions, tigers, and bears running around, if you could pass for a real animal I'd think you'd go undetected longer."
"So why did that strain die out and ours with the really unnatural-looking beasts survive?" Domino asked.
Nicky was watching the conversation, but unless he read lips he couldn't follow it. I felt guilty about the fact that it was my damage he was suffering through. I hadn't consciously given him the hearing damage. I touched his face, which earned me a smile. I wanted to give him a kiss but was afraid that leaning that far forward would make my arm move too much. My stomach had settled down, and I wanted to keep it that way, because there was nothing romantic about throwing up on someone.
"I know that the shapeshifters that looked like normal beasts didn't hide in their animal form as stringently as those who couldn't pass for ordinary," Damian said.
"That led to many of my brethren being hunted like common wolves," Jake said. He'd apparently walked up while we were talking.
"Are you saying that the fact that they could pass for a normal wolf meant they let themselves be seen, and that led to them being hunted?" I asked.
He nodded.
"But ordinary weapons couldn't harm them," Domino said.
"Once the hunters knew it was no ordinary beast, other weapons and magic were brought to bear," Kaazim said.
"Wait," Domino said. "Are you saying that your wolf and your jackal look like the natural counterpart?"
"Mine does," Jake said.
"So your lycanthropy is old-school," I said.
"Very old-school," he said with a small smile. He still had the pack with Echo inside it on his back. I wasn't sure I could carry her like that at all, but wounded I knew I shouldn't try.
"My jackal does not, but that is neither here nor there," Kaazim said.
"There are reports from all over the city about people being on fire," Jake said.
"People?" I made it a question with the upward lilt at the end.
Nicky asked, "Did you say people are on fire?"
"Vampires. I believe all reports are of vampires."
"Nicky, can you hear us?"
"Some," he said.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"My job," he said.
"I'm still sorry."
"I'm not."
"Are you sure all the victims are vampires?" Damian asked.
"The news and social media are speculating, especially the latter. They are saying anything from religious zealots burning themselves alive in protest to a serial arsonist setting helpless victims on fire with some unknown combustive agent that cannot be extinguished by normal means."
"The police don't realize how good your hearing is," I said.
Jake smiled. "No, but I can also hear the crowd that has gathered, as well as the police."
Kaazim added, "They are talking about the book of faces and other Internet sources. The police are trying to decide what they can reveal to calm the rumors."
"If the vampires tore into people like this one did, then that should be in the media, too. They'd know at least some of the other victims are vampires," I said.
"If what we are hearing is to be trusted, then the other vampires have not attacked the people that tried to help them," Kaazim said.
"Why did this one attack, then?" I asked.
"Vampires are driven by bloodlust, but underneath that is the person they were before the attack. Some remember themselves sooner, and if they were a good person before they became a vampire, they do not cease to be good."
"A few people would be able to fight the craving for blood," Damian said, "but not many. No matter how good a person you think you are when you first rise from the grave and seek blood, there is no pity, no humanity left."
"Once they have fed for the night, sanity can return," Jake said.
"But that first feeding is often vicious enough to kill, like what happened to Detective Logan. Have there been reports of more victims like that?" Damian asked.
"You are very right, Damian. There should be more. Even a good man rises the first few nights as a crazed beast," Kaazim said.
The air whispered along my skin, heavy with power. It made my skin run in goose bumps again, and that made me shiver, which moved my arm. The pain was sharp and the sensation of the shard moving in my arm made my stomach roll again. I took a deep breath and let it out slow.
Domino was holding his stomach. "You know, you've been hurt worse than this. Why does this make you nauseous?"
I took a few more calming breaths, then said, "I don't know."
"Do you hear it?" Damian said, and even those few words were full of fear.
I concentrated on that whisper of power, tried to listen, and just like before I could hear the words, "Come out, come outside." I nodded. "I hear it."
"It's just noise to me again," Domino said.
"Come out," Jake said.
"She is compelling more of her creations to come out into the light," Kaazim said.
"Then she's limited on how many she can control at one time. Not that that really helps us stop her," I said.
"Can we stop her this time?" Domino asked.
"I don't know, but I'm open to ideas," I said.
"We need to get this wound treated, before you do any more vampire hunting," Nicky said.
"Is your hearing back completely?" Jake asked.
"No," Nicky said. "I won't hear everything that's coming."
"I'd have tagged you for being too manly to admit it," Domino said.
"If I can't hear everything, and I lie about it, it could endanger Anita."
"Good man," Jake said, and patted Nicky on the shoulder the way he patted Dev and Pride.
Damian's phone rang. He answered it by saying, "It's Nathaniel."
"Is he all right?" I asked, my pulse speeding up just thinking about possibilities.
"He says he's fine." Then he was quiet, listening, but his hand came back to rest on my shoulder as if something about talking to the other third of our triumvirate made him want to touch me more. I didn't mind as long as he didn't push on me.
The evil energy faded away--no, not faded. It was like it was muffled, and there was music in its place. I couldn't hear the tune, or the words, only that there was a tune and someone was singing--something was singing.
"Do you hear music?" I asked.
"No," Jake and Kaazim said together. They exchanged a look at each other and then Kaazim said, "But the compulsion is quieter, not gone, but as if its power has been dimmed."
"I hear music," Domino said.
"Can you make out the words?" I asked.
"No."
"Me, either."
"I don't hear it, but Anita feels calmer," Nicky said.
"What the hell is it? The music, I mean."
"Whatever it is seems to be on our side, or at least not on hers," Jake said.
Damian said, "Nathaniel says it'
s Flannery's friends."
"You mean the fa . . . little gentle folk?" I finally managed to get out something that wasn't going to insult every Fey within earshot.
"Flannery has them dimming her magic with their own, but it's a temporary fix," Damian said, and he was listening as he talked, as if he were repeating things.
"How temporary?" Domino asked.
"How much time do we have?" I asked.
"They aren't certain since they've never done anything like this," Damian said, "but they think maybe until dark."
Jake was looking off in the distance, but whatever had caught his attention was hidden from the rest of us by the open ambulance door. "Nolan and Forrester are coming this way."
Kaazim looked that way, too. "They are moving with purpose."
"Ed . . . Ted always moves with purpose, and probably so does Nolan," I said.
Domino moved so he could see around the door. "You know how Ted is Clark Kent?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"It's serious Superman face coming this way."
"If Superman needs me to play Batman for him, then I'm going old-school Bat."
"What does that mean?" Domino asked.
Jake answered, "Batman originally used a gun and shot people rather than using gadgets and kung fu. I would have thought you would be too young to know that, Anita."
"My dad had a comic book collection, and he liked Batman," I said.
"Ah, of course."
I looked down at my arm. "Good thing I practice shooting with my left arm."
"This is why we practice with our off hands," Kaazim said.
"Your groupings on the range are as good left-handed as they are right-handed," Nicky said.
"Yeah, but my speed for drawing and finding my target in a dynamic training exercise is a little slower," I said.
"It's our job to shoot the bad guys and protect you," Domino said.
"Not when I'm working with the police," I said.
"You have your own version of Clark Kent, Anita. It complicates things," Jake said.
I didn't even try to argue, because he was right. "If I had shot the vampire inside the building as soon as I saw him, there'd be two less wounded, and one less dead police officer."
"But Superman wouldn't have done that anyway," Domino said.
"That is so not my superhero alter ego."
"You and Ted are both more Batman than Superman," Nicky said.
"Agreed." And then Edward and Nolan were with us, and since it was just my people we didn't have to pretend we were mild-mannered anything; we could just be what we were, which was the good guys who worked like bad guys, because to catch the villains sometimes squeaky-clean doesn't do it. Sometimes to clean up the dirt, you have to get dirty yourself. If I'd shot when I first wanted to, I wouldn't be hurt. If I'd shot then, I know that Edward and my people would have joined me. There might have been only two casualties today, Logan and the vampire. I'd have been good with that. I was pretty sure the families of the injured and fallen officers would have been good with that, too.
69
FOUR HOURS LATER my arm was wrapped in bandages, and they'd even insisted on putting it in a sling. Since it was my right arm, I'd had to have Edward help me adjust where all my weapons were so I could get to them with my left arm. This was why I practiced off-hand weapons practice, from guns to blades and hand-to-hand. I couldn't remember the last time I'd hurt my right arm this badly, maybe never. If it had been a wound caused by almost anything else, I'd have already been healed, or at least starting to heal without a trip to the emergency room, but a wound caused by something preternatural or magical healed slower. Now that the piece of vampire was out of my flesh I would start to heal faster than human-normal, but because of what made the injury I probably wouldn't heal like I normally did. In fact, what I really needed was to find someplace private and use some of my metaphysical healing abilities, but since almost all of them either were sex based or looked like they were sex based, it didn't seem like the thing to do when I was surrounded by the Irish police and medical personnel. Saying, "Excuse me while I take my lover off for a quickie. No really, it'll help me heal"? Nope, just nope.
Besides, the local painkillers they'd given me had stopped working before the doctor finished sewing up the wound. Only pride had kept me from throwing up, and if it hadn't been Edward holding my hand my pride might have lost. One of the reasons he had been holding my hand was his insistence that I'd be tougher with him than with one of my lovers. He'd been right, and it had freed Nicky up to get a ride back to Nolan's headquarters, where he could change into his lion form and heal the damage to his hearing that he'd taken for me. I was still determined to keep Domino off the menu for me, so that had left me with Damian for sexual healing, but I was still surrounded by police and doctors. Besides, my stomach hadn't settled completely, so sex didn't seem like the best idea. Nausea was one of the few things that ruined even my mood for sexy naked time. Nathaniel, Dev, and the rest of our party hadn't gotten back to us until all the cursing at Edward and the hazmat-suited doctor and nurses was over. Yes, the doctor and nurses who actually helped treat me had taken one look at my medical alert card and treated me like a contagious plague victim. It had been like being sewn up by an astronaut, or abducted by bulky aliens.
Now I was standing in a large, long room that had its lights so dim it was almost dark, but when they raised the light levels, the unconscious vampires had squirmed, or even cried out, though the monitors hadn't registered any more brain activity, as if whatever made them react to the brightness wasn't them. Did the Wicked Bitch of Ireland dislike light? She could walk out into full sunlight, so why did the hospital's indoor lighting bother her puppets?
Nathaniel squeezed my other hand; normally I wouldn't have let him hold my only working hand in a room full of potentially hostile vampires, but he had bandages on both his wrists where he'd voluntarily helped feed some of the undead in this room. We'd already had our fight that had been all about my fear for his safety and nothing to do with logic, or the fact that I was hurt far worse than he had been. I wanted to feel the solid reality of his hand in mine more than I wanted to keep my hand free for weapons; besides, all the vamps in this room had calmed after they'd taken blood. They'd calmed enough that Fortune and Flannery had been able to reason with them. Some of them had been burned in the sunlight, but none as badly as the one that had left his bone in my arm, because Fortune had grabbed a heavy tablecloth and put out the fire on the first one that staggered out into the light near their sightseeing. She'd let that one feed on her own wrist, and it had come back to itself. Maybe it wasn't the exact person it had been before someone made it into a vampire, but it was still a reasoning, thinking person once it fed. Most of the vampires that they'd either saved from the sun or found before they staggered out into it had been reasonable after they took blood, but not all of them. Griffin was in surgery now because one of the vampires had damn near torn through his wrist. The vampire had taken Griffin's blood and still tried to kill him, and when the others had gotten him to safety the vampire had attacked them, too. It just wanted to hurt people like the one at the police station had. They had had to kill three vampires but had managed to save dozens.
Some of them were lying in the beds now with IVs sending fluids to their burned, or just undead, flesh. Others in the room had called ambulances when they "woke" to themselves and found that they'd tried to rip out a friend's or family member's throat. Others had turned themselves in to the police after waking up covered in blood, with no memory of what was happening. If other of the new Irish undead had hidden after their first murder of the day, then we'd find them later by the bodies they left behind. They'd given drugs to the vampires to put them out of their pain, and some just a sedative in case the craving for blood returned. Most of them had volunteered for anything that would keep others safe.
Nathaniel's bandaged wrists had been the hospital's insistence. He hadn't thought either vampire bite needed the a
ttention. To me later he'd whispered, "I get more hurt at home from sex with Asher than this." Wisely, he hadn't tried explaining that to the doctors.
Devereux and Damian stood behind us. Fortune and Jake were off with Nolan's people to try to answer more questions about vampires and how to take care of them. Edward and Nolan himself were off trying to get their/our group more powers of authority. There was some talk that killing the two vampires we had was going to get us kicked out of Ireland, but there were too many dead people and too many vampires waiting for nightfall for most of those in power to want to lose their experts on the undead. They'd keep us around until the crisis was over, but after that I wasn't sure. I'd hoped to sightsee around Ireland for a few days when it was all done, but I was beginning to wonder if they were just going to escort us to the airplane and tell us, Don't ever come back. Yeah, they were scared and they had a right to be scared, but fear makes people look for someone to blame. I was a necromancer and sleeping with the monsters; it made me an easy target for hatemongers.
The room was very quiet with just the rush and whir of the machinery and monitors to break the silence. That, combined with the dimness, made it all unreal, or like a scene from a bad dream. They'd isolated all the vampires in their own area; even the burn victims weren't being taken to the burn unit. The doctors had cut away the tissue that had to be excised, but they would heal even less than a human patient would. Fire was one of the few things that the supernatural could not heal from. I knew that burns from holy water scarred over eventually, but I didn't even know if burns from actual fire would do that much. Would the open skin, so raw and painful, be where they were trapped for all eternity? God, I hoped not.
"There are other rooms full of vampires; how did just your group give enough blood for all of them?" I asked. It was something I hadn't thought to ask before. My stomach was settling down and the pain in my arm was just a dull ache, so I was thinking better.
"People started coming up to us and offering themselves for feedings," Dev said.
I looked back at him. "You're joking."
"He's not joking," Nathaniel said. "At first we thought the Irish were some of the bravest people on the planet, and some ordinary citizens did help us put out the flames, and even donated a wrist or two."
"We stopped letting civilians help once Griffin got hurt," Dev said.