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“Who killed him?” Olaf asked.
“I did.”
“Tell me.”
“He tried to shoot me, and I was better.”
“Of course you were better than him.”
“Thanks, tell Ted that I have one of his handguns. The Heckler & Koch USP.”
“I will tell him. So there is no one left to hunt together?”
I thought about it. “We have one more traitor at the Circus that was trapped with everyone in the underground, because they were reporting to Deimos and his people.”
“Is it one of the old Harlequin?” he asked.
“My first thought is yes, but I’m not sure if that’s true. Kane and Demolition Man weren’t.”
“I will stay in town to make sure the traitor is caught and the other imprisoned traitor executed.”
“Thank you,” I said, and for once I meant it. I remembered him throwing the fire blanket over me and the weight of his body shielding me. He’d saved my life at least twice and maybe three times over the years. I wasn’t sure I’d ever really returned the favor. People tended to be afraid of Olaf and didn’t put him in positions where he was a prisoner much. I guess when you’re damn near seven feet tall and a trained fighter, most people either kill you or leave you alone. I was small and female; people kept thinking I was easier to handle no matter how many people I killed to prove otherwise.
“I hope we find someone to execute together before I leave town, Anita.”
“I hope we get all the traitors in our house before you leave town, too.” I really wasn’t looking forward to sharing a kill with him; he tended to like killing people slowly and painfully. I just executed people, no muss, no fuss if I could manage it.
“We will find your traitors and execute them together,” he said.
I agreed, then said, “I need to call Jean-Claude and make sure Asher woke up.”
“It is not yet sunset.”
“In the underground he wakes before dawn sometimes or has lately.”
“Can you not contact Jean-Claude mind-to-mind now that Deimos is dead?”
“You’re right, damn, you’re right, the vamp that messed with me is dead. We killed him.”
“Not personally,” Olaf said.
“It was a group effort,” I said.
“I do not find group efforts as satisfying.”
“I know you don’t.” I made a good-bye noise at him and handed the phone back to Rafael. Then I closed my eyes and reached out to Jean-Claude and he was there. I could see him pacing the floor in his bedroom, dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt; his boots were some of the lowest and most practical he owned. It scared me that he was dressed so normally.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He looked up at me from all the miles apart and smiled so wide he flashed fangs. “How can you ask me that when I have been waiting for news of you?”
“Just open the marks between us, Deimos is dead.”
He got a thoughtful look on his face, his eyes focused on things I couldn’t see. I felt his power tugging down the metaphysical line that bound us. Once he touched me it was like flowers in a meadow opening up for the sun, all our people coming online in our heads and our hearts. The busy, happy hum of all of us inside me again, just the way it was meant to be.
56
Richard as Dr.Richard Zeeman reached out to local experts and put together a team to do the necropsy on Deimos’s body. As U.S. Marshal Anita Blake I helped work the police angle so we could get them access to the body ASAP. First for science, but second, Olaf had a point about the heart needing to come out before sunset. I’d never, ever had a vampire rise after a beheading no matter how ancient or powerful, but Deimos was an exception to a lot of things. Did I really expect the body to sprout a new head like some lesser version of the Lernaean Hydra that Hercules fought? No, but Deimos was a creature out of Greek mythology that had turned out to be very real.
