"Can't," he said.
Hmmm. "Maybe I have overestimated your powers. My apologies if I have."
"Accepted, and I understand how rare it is for you to apologize for anything, Anita." The phone went dead.
I hit the button that turned off the buzzing line.
Dolph walked back as I got out of the car. "Well?" Dolph asked.
I shrugged. "Looks like we go in without vampire backup."
"You can't depend on them, Anita, not for backup." He took my hand, something he'd never done, squeezing it. "This is all you can count on. One human to another. The monsters don't give a shit about us. If you think they do, then you are fooling yourself." He dropped my hand and walked away before I could think of a comeback. Just as well. After talking to the Traveler, I wasn't sure I had one.
45
An hour later I was dressed in a Hazardous Materials suit—Haz-Mat for short. It was bulky, to say the least, and turned into a portable sauna in the St. Louis heat. Heavy tape was wrapped around my elbows and wrists, securing the seal between gloves and sleeves. I'd walked out of the boots twice, so they taped my legs, too. I felt like an astronaut who had gone to the wrong tailor. Insult to injury, there was a Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus, SCBA, strapped to my back. Add Underwater and you got SCUBA, but we weren't planning to go underwater. I was grateful for that.
There was a mask that covered the entire face instead of a mouthpiece with regulator, but other than that, it was damn close to SCUBA gear. I had my diving certification. Got it back in college and keep it updated. If you let it slide, you have to take the whole damn training course over again. Updating was less painful. I was delaying putting on the mask as long as possible. Due to a diving accident in Florida, I've got claustrophobia now. Not bad enough for elevators to be a problem, but enclosed in the suit, with a mask about to cover my face and the Haz-Mat helmet going over my entire head—I was panicking and didn't know what to do about it.
"Do you really think all this is necessary?" I asked for the dozenth time. If they'd just give me a regular fire helmet with the SCBA, I could handle it.
"If you go in with us, yes," Corporal Tucker said. Her three inches of extra height didn't help much. We both looked like we were wearing hand-me-downs.
"There's the possibility of disease contamination if there are bodies floating in the basement," Lieutenant Wren said.
"Will there really be that much water in the basement?"
They exchanged glances. "You've never been in a house after a fire, have you?" Tucker asked.
"No."
"You'll understand once we're in," she said.
"Sounds ominous."
"It's not meant to," she said.
Tucker didn't have much of a sense of humor, and Wren had too much. He'd been entirely too solicitous while we were wriggling into the suits. He'd made sure he taped me up and was even now wasting a brilliant smile on me. But it was nothing too overt. Nothing obvious enough for me to say, look I have a boyfriend. For all I knew, he was always like this and I'd look an ass for taking it personally.
"Put the mask on, and I'll help you fit the hood over it," Wren said.
I shook my head. "Just give me a regular helmet and I'll use the SCBA."
"If you fall in the water without the hood sealed, Anita, you might as well not have the suit at all."
"I'll take my chances," I said.
Tucker said, "You had trouble walking from the Haz-Mat truck to here. You'll get better with practice, but in deep water, even we'll have trouble keeping our feet."
I shook my head again. My heart was pounding so hard, I was having trouble breathing. I put the mask on my face. I took a breath, and that horrible sound began. It was like Darth Vader breathing except it was yours. In the water, in the dark, your breath was the only sound. It could become thunderously loud while you waited to die.
"Strap needs tightening," Wren said. He started to adjust the strap as if I were five and being bundled off to play in the snow.
"I can do it." My voice came over the open radio line in the mask.
He raised his gloved hands skyward, still smiling. He was a hard man to insult, because I'd been trying. He had this sort of cheerful goodwill that seemed to deflect everything. Never trust people who smile constantly. They're either selling something or not very bright. Wren didn't strike me as stupid.
Insult to injury, I couldn't get the strap adjusted on the damned mask. I always hated trying to work with anything bulkier than surgical gloves. I pulled the mask off and my first breath of real air was too loud, too long. I was sweating, and it wasn't just the heat.
I had the Browning and the Firestar lying on the side of the fire truck. There were enough pockets on the outside of the suit to hold half a dozen guns. I had a sawed-off shotgun from my vampire kit in a makeshift pack across my back. Yeah, it's illegal, but Dolph had been with me once upon a time when we went after a revenant vampire. They were like PCP users: immune to pain, stronger even than a normal vamp. A force of hell with fangs. I showed him the shotgun before I got it out. He okayed it. We'd ended with two dead security guards and one rookie officer spread all over the hallway the last time. At least Dolph and his men had silver ammo now. He and Zerbrowski nearly getting killed because they didn't have it was what pushed the paperwork through. I gave them a box of ammo for Christmas before they got official silver ammo. I never wanted to watch any of them bleed their lives away for lack of it.
I'd left the knives in their wrist sheaths. Carrying naked blades in the pockets of a suit that was air-and water-tight seemed sort of defeatist. If I lost both handguns and had to scramble for the knives under the suit, then we were probably toast. No need to worry about it. My silver cross hung naked around my neck. It was the best deterrent I had against baby vamps. They couldn't force their way past a bare cross, not when it was backed up by faith. I'd only met one vamp that could force his way past a blazing cross and harm me. And he was dead. Funny how so many of them ended up that way.
Tucker came over to me. "I'll help you adjust the mask."
I shook my head. "Leave me till last. The less time I'm in this get-up the better."
She licked her lips, started to say something, stopped, then said, "Are you all right?"
Normally, I would have said sure, but they were depending on me, maybe for their lives. How scared was I? Scared. "Not exactly," I said.
"You're claustrophobic, aren't you?" she said.
I must have looked surprised, because she said, "A lot of people want to be firemen, but in the middle of a fire with the mask down and smoke so thick you can't see your hand in front of your eyes, you don't want to be claustrophobic."
I nodded. "I can understand that."
"There's a part of training where they cover your eyes completely and make you do the equipment by touch as if the smoke had blacked out the world. You learn who doesn't like it close."
"I could take the suit without the SCBA. It's the combination of the suit and listening to myself breathe. I had a diving accident just after college."
"Can you do this?" No accusations, just honesty.
I nodded. "I won't leave you stranded."
"That's not what I asked," she said.
We stared at each other. "Give me a few minutes. I just didn't understand what Haz-Mat was. I'll be okay."
"You sure?"
I nodded.
She didn't say anything else, just walked away to let me gather my scattered wits.
Wren had finally wandered over to talk to Fulton. Wren and Tucker were going in because they were both paramedics and we might need their medical training. Also, frankly, I didn't want Fulton in the dark with me and a bunch of vamps. He was simply too freaked. I didn't blame him, but I didn't want him at my back either. Of course, if I'd been watching me sweat and struggle to breathe calmly, I might not want me in there. Dammit. I could do this. I had to do this.