“You all right?” he asked.
I nodded.
He gave me a look.
“He tried to mark me, but he couldn’t get past my shields in the time you gave him.”
Olaf loomed over us. “Is she hurt?”
“I’m fine,” I said, and forced myself to let go of Edward’s hand, when what I really wanted to do was collapse into his arms and hold on.
Green uniformed SWAT guys were there now, moving the crowd around as the people began to wander around, asking what happened.
Hooper was there, his face the only pale thing in the outfit. “What the hell happened, Blake?”
“The hostages, the club, it was a trap.”
“A trap for what?” Hooper asked.
“Me.”
Georgie came up beside his sergeant. “Nothing personal, Blake, but then why didn’t he kill you?”
“He doesn’t want me dead.”
“What does he want?” Hooper asked.
“Me, as his human servant.”
“You already belong to the master in St. Louis, right?” It was Cannibal, coming up from the other side of the dispersing crowd.
What was I supposed to say? “Something like that.”
“Then he’s too late,” Cannibal said.
“He thinks he’s powerful enough to take me away.”
Hooper was standing there, not moving but watching my face. “Is he?”
“Not tonight, he wasn’t.”
Hooper’s mouth made a small movement; maybe it was a smile, maybe not. “Let’s not give him another night.”
“Amen to that,” I said.
I turned to Cannibal, alias Sergeant Rocco. “Some heap-big psychic you are. Didn’t you sense Vittorio working the crowd?”
“Sorry, Anita, but I only do memories.”
“Shit, can’t any of you sense this kind of thing? Where’s Sanchez?” I asked.
“Why?” Olaf asked.
“I thought he might have sensed the metaphysics.”
“He’s with the second team. They’re going to scout Bering’s house,” Edward said. “Grimes wanted his practitioners to see if they could sense the demon.”
“Why aren’t you with Sanchez?” I asked Rocco.
“My ability is touch and memories. I’m not touching a demon on purpose, and I don’t want those memories.”
Edward said, “They’re trying to see if they can sense the demon, so we can make entry closer to the targets or farther away from them, depending on what they find.”
“Give me a gun, and let’s get out there.”
Edward was beside me; he handed me my own backup gun from a pocket in his tac pants.
Rocco said, “You have vampires right here; why chase demons?”
“This is a hostage situation. I’m not a negotiator.”
Bernardo came up. He had blood running down his face from a cut on his forehead; apparently someone had hit back.
The people from the crowd who had tried to beat the hell out of police officers were being given blankets and hot drinks by Red Cross workers. The team doctor was checking them out, with his med tech by his side. I heard a man say, “I knew what we were doing was wrong, but I couldn’t stop. I had to do what the voice in my head told me to do. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t.”
I stepped in front of Rocco, and he stopped, looking at me. “If Sanchez and the other practitioners can sense the demon, it can sense them. If it’s what killed the other operators, it could come out and trail them by their own magic.”
“Most demons aren’t that bright,” Edward said.
“We’re aware that some preternatural beings can sense psychic ability, Marshal. We’ve got them warded so their”-he made a waffling motion with his hand-“signature is garbled.”
I was impressed and said so.
“Psychic ability is just another part of the job for us,” he said. His radio crackled to life, and he turned to listen. He started to do a slow jog, and the rest of us just fell into step with him. All right, the men slow-jogged; I had to fast-jog. My legs were shorter. “The vampires have given up. They’ve freed the hostages, and they surrendered.”
“What’s the catch?” I asked. If anyone heard me, they didn’t answer, but I knew there was a catch; with vampires there was always a catch.
64
SOMEONE HAD HIT the lights in the club so that it was bathed in bright lights. Lower-rent strip clubs are not meant to see bright lights; they reveal all the cracks and bad paint patch-up jobs. They show the illusion for what it is: a lie. A lie about sex, and the promise of having it, if you just pay a little bit more money. Nathaniel, my live-in sweetie, had explained to me that dancers make their living on the customer’s hope that real sex is possible. It’s all about advertising but never really selling. Under the harsh overhead lights, the scarlet women looked like even if they were selling, you wouldn’t want to buy.