"Talk to us, Sutton," I whispered.
"Tall figure standing near middle of room; second figure lying down on stone structure in center of room, seems to be struggling, maybe tied down; third figure slumped in far right corner, no movement."
My gut tightened again at that slumped third hostage with no movement. Was it Tomas? Were we going to be too late for Manny's son? I pushed the thought away, because it didn't help anything right now. Tomas and Connie and even Max's fiancee needed me thinking, planning, helping to get them out. I held on to the thought that they needed me to do my job. They needed me to help SWAT do theirs. It was true, and I'd keep on doing all that, until we either saved them . . . until we saved them.
"Do you have a shot at the standing figure?" I asked. Was I a hundred percent sure that one was our bad guy? No, but it was my best guess, and sometimes that's all you got.
"Negative."
"Shit," I said, softly. I prayed that they would be okay. I prayed that this would work and no one else would get hurt, not because prayer was the only thing I could do, but because prayer never hurts, and if you can get God to help, why not?
I saw the other team members moving up through the graves on the side of the crypt. It was good to be hunting a human for once, because he wouldn't be better than the men with me. If you had to go into danger with just humans, these were good men. Maximiliano was not a good man, not in any way. Was that judgmental of me? Yes, and I was okay with that.
I felt magic on the air, a rush against my skin. "He's casting," I said.
"Casting what?" Sutton asked.
"Magic."
"Talk to me, Blake," Hudson whispered.
I heard screaming, muffled through a gag, but it carried on the soft night air surprisingly well. The woman in the doorway started screaming, too, and struggling harder, so that she spun her body around, and I could see her face for the first time.
"It's not Connie," I said.
"What?" Sutton asked.
"It's not Connie Rodriguez."
"Who is it then?"
"I think it's the zombie from some of the films."
"Doesn't look like a zombie," Sutton said, eye still snugged to his eyepiece.
I used his extra eyepiece to look closer at the struggling woman in the doorway. "It's the zombie. I saw her on film."
The magic tightened around me, so that it was hard to breathe past it, as if the air were getting heavier. "The spell, whatever it is, is almost complete, and when he finishes he will kill her."
Connie and the zombie were both screaming, because one was alive and wanted to stay that way, and the other one didn't know she was already dead.
"Knife, he's got a knife," Sutton said into his mic.
The other men were still doing the plan, working their way carefully up through the graves, because if the bad guy knew they were coming he could shoot them all before our team made entry.
"He's going to kill the hostage," I said.
Hudson said, "Sutton, do you have a shot?"
"Negative."
"Shoot through the zombie. Greenlight his ass," I said.
"I can't shoot through a hostage."
"Zombies aren't hostages."
"Sutton, Blake--give me eyes," Hudson said.
"Zombie," I said.
"Hostage," Sutton said.
The women were screaming. The magic was squeezing the world down; something big was coming. I didn't know if it was the loa coming to ride Max, or something else, and I didn't care; as long as I shot him before he finished, it didn't matter.
I moved to the other side of the tombstone from Sutton and used the stone to steady my rifle. I hit my throat mic and said, "I have the shot. Repeat, I have the shot."
"He's going to kill her," Sutton said. He still had a shot, because he could still see past the zombie's struggles to what the perp was doing.
"Greenlight, repeat, greenlight," Hudson said.
I used the skills that Ares had taught me, the ones that had let me shoot him from the doors of a still-moving helicopter and do the last thing he ever asked of me, to kill him before he hurt someone. I knew the woman hanging there was a zombie; she was just like Thomas Warrington. It only looked alive. I prayed with the breath I drew in to steady myself, "Let me be right," and I squeezed the trigger from that well of silence where I went when I shot, where there was nothing but the gun, my hands, my body, the target. It became not a person, but just the place you needed your bullet to go. Especially from these distances you don't think you're going to kill them, or shoot them; you think only be still, don't breathe, control your pulse. Even your heart slows, as you pull the trigger, and let it happen. The hardest things to overcome are, don't flinch, don't pull, don't anticipate that a small explosion is going to go off in your hands, because that's what it is really; just be in that moment when the world narrows down to the dot of your laser sight going on the woman's dress, but the target is behind her with its arm upraised and what you think is a knife coming down . . . and . . . the recoil of the rifle rocked against the snug of my shoulder, the firmness of my hands.
The body in the doorway moved, the target on the other side fell out of sight, the magic paused, like a giant had taken a breath. "Target down," Sutton said.
I saw the other team members enter the building. They didn't use flashbangs as planned, because they didn't need to; the target was down, no need to stun the hostages. Sutton and I put our rifles to our shoulders and moved at that jog-trot that was still strangely smooth. I fell in beside him and just to one side, so that we stacked, even though it was just the two of us, and we went to join our team.
Gunfire ahead of us; there was still something to shoot in the crypt, or to shoot back. We ran like we'd been taught, not as fast as we could have run, but as fast as training had taught us we could keep our rifles to our shoulders, ready to aim, and keep moving.
65
THEY WERE DRAGGING Max out in cuffs. He was leaving a trail of blood. The moment they put him on the grass it started to pool underneath him. I knew one hole was mine, but he was bleeding in places I hadn't shot him. The hostage from the doorway was on the grass with Saville, but there was no blood pooling under her. Max looked like so much bloody meat; she looked like an anatomy illustration, clean and bloodless. The dead don't bleed like the living.
I heard Connie screaming, "Tomas! Tomas!"
My stomach tightened and fell into my feet. Please, God. Sutton was stopped at the door to the crypt, too big to get through the other men, but I was smaller, and fuck protocol, I had to see why Connie was screaming her brother's name.
I yelled, "Make a hole!" and pushed between the men without waiting. They didn't so much make a hole, as I could fit through where the bigger guys couldn't. Sometimes small isn't a bad thing.
Connie was kneeling over Tomas's body in the corner, where it had been motionless through the scope. They were trying to pull her off him, so they could do what they could until the ambulance got here. I could hear sirens coming closer. Tomas was pale, eyes closed, face slack. His face looked more like the pictures I'd seen of Manny from high school than the last time I'd seen the kid. His upper body fell boneless against the stone floor as they pulled Connie off him.
I heard Hudson say, "Let us help him, Ms. Rodriguez."
I yelled, "Connie, Connie, it's Anita!" I took off the helmet and pulled the balaclava off so she could see my face.
She turned and looked up at me. "Anita! Oh God, Anita!" She got to her feet then and did what the men hadn't been able to force her to do, gave them room to do their best for Tomas.
Hudson motioned, and I did what he wanted, taking her outside so there'd be more room to work, and so if he died she wouldn't have to see it happen. Please, God, let me have saved them in time.
Of course, outside had other problems. The zombie I'd shot was shrieking. She seemed upset at the huge gaping hole in her side. There wasn't much blood, so her shattered ribs were very white in the dark, and her lungs wer
e still moving in her exposed chest.
Connie yelled, "Estrella!"
I turned her away from the two team guys trying to figure out what to do for a wound that big that really wasn't bleeding much, and a victim with a hole in her that should have been fatal, or at least made struggling and screaming not possible. They'd hunted enough vampires with me that they knew she wasn't human now, but she still seemed like an attractive young woman who just wasn't quite human. If she'd been a vampire they'd have done first aid, so they were trying.
Turning Connie away from the zombie meant she could see Max where he lay bleeding out on the grass with Hill and Montague standing over him. Connie ran at him, yelling profanities that I was betting Rosita didn't know she knew. I couldn't blame Connie, but I caught her arm anyway and tried to turn her away. She fought me the way she'd fought the men in the crypt, and for someone without training she was pretty good. Maybe I'd give her some self-defense pointers after we all survived the night. I finally picked her up around the waist, having to bow my back a little, because she was inches taller than me.
She was screaming wordlessly, in between threatening to kill Max, and she was seriously trying to get away and get to him. I wasn't a hundred percent sure she wouldn't try to kill him when she got there, so I held on. It would be a bitch to save her life and have her spend the rest of it in prison for being the one that struck the final blow on Max's ass. At least she didn't kick.
The ambulance came down the gravel road in full lights and sirens. The paramedics spilled out and started to go for Max, but the guys waved them off and pointed to the crypt. I thought the paramedics might argue, but in the end they went in to see what SWAT wanted them to triage first. It actually wasn't a good sign that they brought Tomas out first on the gurney, with all the damage visible on the grass out front. It meant he was hurt enough that they chose him over Max, who was lying in a pool of blood almost bigger than his body, and a "woman" whose side was blown open.
I put Connie down and let her run to Tomas. They didn't argue with her getting in the ambulance with the one paramedic and the stretcher, though there'd be precious little room for her in the back. I was left to call Manny and tell him what hospital they were headed to, and then the ambulance was off in a spill of gravel, lights decorating the night, sirens leaving the night quieter than it actually was just by getting farther away.
Manny thanked me, and it was all I could do not to say, don't thank me yet, thank me after your son wakes up, but I knew better than that. I took his gratitude and turned back to the two problems lying on the grass among the graves--Max and the zombie. Connie had said her name was Estrella. It was Spanish for star. Jesus.
She was still screaming, and I guess I couldn't blame her. We'd need to find the jar, or whatever had been used to hold her soul, but if it was in her body now, would destroying the bottle free her soul? Would she end up like Warrington, put back in the ground, but alive and aware down there? I didn't know. I just didn't know enough about what he'd done to her, but I knew how to find out.
I walked toward Max where he lay in a dark pool of his own blood. If he could still talk, he'd tell me everything I wanted to know, because a warrant of execution meant I could kill him any way I wanted to do it. If I chose carefully, it could hurt a lot before that last moment. People tell you all sorts of things if you scare them enough, and pain scares most people.
Sutton was in front of me like a black wall, because I was staring at about his upper stomach. Why were so many men on special teams, police or military, so damn big? "Hudson called an ambulance, Blake."
"She's a zombie and he's a dead man walking," I said.
"You don't have a warrant of execution, Blake."
I stopped trying to walk around him. I couldn't remember the last time I'd shot someone and hadn't had a warrant for their death. It meant that I had almost carte blanche on what I did to him, or how I did it.
"We need him to tell us how to set her soul free before the ambulance gets here, Sutton. He's bleeding out, scared, and in pain; this is our best chance to get him to tell me how to free her so she won't be scared anymore."
"I couldn't have taken the shot tonight, Blake. I couldn't have shot her."
"I knew she was already dead, Sutton. I'd seen her picture as a zombie, you hadn't."
"He was going to put that knife in Connie Rodriguez's heart and I would have hesitated, because I didn't want to shoot a zombie."
"Lucky you had me to take the shot," I said.
"Hudson greenlighted you, but you still didn't have a warrant of execution. You'll be seeing Internal Affairs on this one, Blake, and you won't have the warrant to keep them off your back."
"Whoever shot him inside the crypt will be seeing them, too. What's good for the gander is good for the goose. Are you delaying me from questioning Max over there for a reason?"
"You can't lay a hand on him, not a fingertip, nothing. You've never had to do this without the warrant absolving you of damn everything. I need you to remember that before we walk over there."
I took in a deep breath, let it out slow, and nodded. "Thanks for the reminder, Sutton."
"You took the shot I couldn't. Next time you tell me someone is already dead, I'll believe you."
"If we get this son of a bitch off the streets, we may not have to debate zombies again." To myself, I thought, unless it's one of my zombies, but if it's one of mine, then I'll take care of it myself. I really hoped I never raised another one as "real" as Warrington. No more cows as blood sacrifices.
We went to stand with Montague and Hill over the handcuffed bad guy. I stayed up on my tac boots and didn't kneel down in the blood, but I stood in the pool of it so I could be sure Max could see my face. He was lying on his stomach and in obvious pain, so he might not be tracking well.
"Hello, Max, nice to meet face-to-face, isn't it?" I smiled when I said it.
He looked at me, and the hatred on his face . . . if he could have done instant magic something very bad would have happened to me right then. But he couldn't, and vaguely I realized there'd been verve drawn in chalk all over the inside of the crypt. I just hadn't realized I'd seen it, until that moment. I'd been too focused on Manny's family to worry about details.
"Anita Blake, at least you didn't get to shoot me yourself."
I smiled wider. "The first bullet was mine, Max."
"Liar, their sniper took me."
"The sniper didn't believe that Estrella was a zombie, they wouldn't take the shot. You almost got to kill Manny's daughter, your half-sister, but I stopped you."
"He'll still lose a son tonight."
"Tomas is on his way to a hospital. He'll be fine." No, I didn't know that was true yet, but I hoped it was, and it would upset Max. I wanted him upset. "Now, if you mean Manny will lose you tonight, I'm all for that."
"They called an ambulance, because you missed your shot."
"She didn't miss her shot," Sutton said from where he towered over us.
Max craned his neck to look at him. It looked awkward and painful for him; good. "She took you through the side, under the arm, your heart should be gone."
"She missed."
"Blake didn't miss, and neither did I," Hudson said coming up behind us. "He was trying to bring his gun up and shoot the boy when we got inside the crypt. His one arm isn't working too good, or he'd have done it. I shot him twice in the chest so I didn't risk hitting the boy. I wonder what would happen if he got shot in the head?"
"You don't have a warrant of execution, so you've lost your chance to shoot me in the head."
"Oh, Max, you should know that when it comes to people using magic to kill people, I'll get another chance at blowing your head off. But if you tell us how to free Estrella's soul, to give her peace, maybe they won't give me a warrant for you. Judges still don't like putting out execution warrants on humans."
"I want her afraid. I want her to know what is happening to her."
"She doesn't believe she's a zombie, Max. She
doesn't really know what's happening to her, does she?"
"Maximiliano," he said.
"What?" Hudson asked.
"My name is Maximiliano." He wasn't having any trouble breathing, though he had three bullet holes in his chest.
"Okay, Maximiliano, I'll play," I said. "How do we free her soul?"
"You'll never find what contains her soul, and even if you do, you won't know how to free her."
"Tell me."
"No."
"We can just sit here and watch you bleed out," I said. Actually, technically, police weren't allowed to do that. They could triage the victims over the perpetrators, but they had to give medical aid where needed. Ironically, if the first bullet killed the bad guy, then it was done, but if you just wounded him you could go from trying to kill him, to having to try to save his life. Sometimes the rules for regular cops were just too confusing for me.
"I'll still be alive when the ambulance gets here," he said.
I hunkered in a little closer to him, my boots in his blood. The last time I'd seen another animator that could heal like a zombie, or a vampire, he'd had a spell helping him. "What have you done to yourself, Maximiliano? Am I going to find a gris-gris on you somewhere?"
His eyes widened just a touch, his shoulders reacting to it.
"What's a gris-gris?" Hudson asked.
"It'll be something he wears, so probably a bracelet, or armband. It'll never come off, because it needs to touch his skin at all times to work, doesn't it, Maximiliano?"
He was watching me now, and not nearly as happy with himself.
"It's a spell, and it's what let him take three bullets to the chest and keep on ticking. But they'll cut your clothes and jewelry off at the emergency room, so they can treat your wounds. What happens when they cut the gris-gris off, Max?"