He’d heard at least part of what Malcolm and I had said. His face was angry, defiant. “I won’t talk.”
“I won’t ask you to.”
“What’s happening, Anita?” Zerbrowski asked.
“I’m going to find out what we want to know.”
“How?” He looked positively suspicious.
It made me laugh. “God, Zerbrowski, what do you think I’m about to do?”
“I don’t know.”
That made the laughter fade, and the smile went with it. It’s always hard to see your friends look at you like they don’t trust you not to be monstrous. “I’m not going to do anything you haven’t seen me do already tonight.”
He widened eyes at me. “This guy doesn’t like you, the other one did.”
“It won’t matter.”
He made a small gesture as if to say, help yourself, but he looked like he’d believe it when he saw it. I guess I couldn’t blame him. I reached out toward Cooper’s face.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Would you rather I shoot you?”
He just glared at me.
“Then hold still.” If I hadn’t been afraid that he’d either try to hurt me with his hands or his teeth, I’d have touched him from behind, but he was a vampire, and you don’t cuddle one if you aren’t sure about your safety. I touched him from the side, so if he tried to bite me I’d feel it, and could move. I touched the side of his face. He was clean shaven, but he was also cold. He hadn’t fed tonight.
I thought, Who is your master?
He fought me. He tried to think random thoughts. I got chaotic images. I saw the second stripper, the one from last night. I saw her alive and dancing on the stage. I saw a cloaked figure huddled by her stage.
“No!” he jerked his head away from me.
I pressed my hip against his arm and put a hand on either side of his head. His hair was soft, but not as soft as Avery’s. Cooper’s hair had the texture of someone who, if they let it grow out at all, it would have body and wave to it.
“Don’t,” he said, but it wasn’t a shout this time. He tried to think of anything, everything. But somewhere in those confused images, I recognized a face. A woman’s face. I remembered her at a banquet table. I remembered her at Belle’s court. It wasn’t my memory.
I thought, Jean-Claude. He whispered through me, and this time I got a sense that he was busy, or about to be. “Do you need me to come to you, ma petite? I can put this off.”
I said it out loud, but for his ears, though more heard it. “Who is she?”
“Gwenyth, Vittorio’s lovely Gwennie.”
“Vittorio,” I said, and I had a face with the name. He was darkly handsome, and I doubted he’d started life with an Italian name. He looked very dark, Arabic maybe. “Vittorio.” I must have whispered it out loud, because Cooper screamed and stood up. He stood up still cuffed to the chair. He stood up, and the last thing I got from him was a very clear thought. I’ll make them kill me.
I was the closest, but I’d had to put my gun up to do my little hand trick. I did the first thing I thought of, I hit him. I hit him as hard and fast as I could. I hit him the way I’d been trained for years in martial arts. You don’t try to throw someone to the floor, you aim for three feet below the floor. My target wasn’t his cheek, it was the other side of his face. When I was merely human, it was just a way to concentrate, to get the maximum punch out of your body. Now, suddenly, aiming to punch a hole through someone had a whole new meaning.
Blood spattered, and his cheek gave under my fist. I thought I heard his jaw break. The blow spun him around, and he fell onto his side, chair and all. He fell on the floor and didn’t get back up.
“Jesus,” one of the uniforms said, “Jesus, you broke his neck.”
Had I? I stood there for a second with my right hand covered in blood, and I realized that my hand hurt. I’d cut myself on his teeth.
“He’s not dead,” I said, and my voice was hoarse.
Everyone was staring at me, and not in a good way. More like I’d sprouted a second head, and it was a big, scary one. I looked at Malcolm. “Does this work while he’s unconscious?”
Malcolm just nodded.
I knelt beside the fallen vampire. I touched his hair and tried not to look at what I’d done to his face. I hadn’t literally punched a hole through him, but I’d split the skin away from his teeth, as if I’d used a dull blade. I closed my eyes, and thought, Daytime retreat, where is the daytime retreat?
He couldn’t fight me now. His thoughts came like smooth silk, and I knew in that moment that Malcolm could read people easier in their sleep. I let the thought go and followed Cooper’s thoughts, images. It was a big building, a condo. A fucking modern condo. I wanted to see the front of the building. I saw it. I had the address. Wait, number and name on the condo, and I was looking at the little boxes with all the names and numbers. I was looking at it from higher up than I would have seen it. Street, I thought, what street are we on?
I said the address out loud, street and name that the condo was under. “Got it,” Zerbrowski said.
I opened my eyes and took my hands off of Cooper. His eyes fluttered open. He made a sound, a low groan. The look he flashed up at me as I stood over him was one of surprise and fear. I was as surprised as anyone, but I couldn’t let anyone see that. I’d known that joining with Jean-Claude and Richard would up the metaphysics, but hadn’t thought what it would mean to the physical. If Cooper had been human, my punch would have snapped his neck. Shit.
Zerbrowski was already on his phone.
“Who are you calling?” I asked.
“Mobile Reserve. We’ll want the fire power.”
“Wait,” I said.
Zerbrowski hit the button on his phone, killed it. “Wait for what?”
“If we give them the address, they may go in tonight. We don’t want that.”
“We want to catch these bastards,” Smith said.
“Yeah, but they’re out hunting now. They won’t be home, or at least most of them won’t be. We’ll miss some of them, or all of them, and once we’ve got that many police around the place, they’ll know it.
They’ll never come back to the place again, and we won’t know where to look for them.”
“We can’t withhold the address,” Roarke said, “not if we’re asked.”
“If the address leaves this room, more women are going to die. If the address leaves this room, maybe cops are going to die. His master is someone so powerful that no master vamp in this city sensed him.
That means he’s really, really good. Mobile Reserve is who I want in a firefight, but they aren’t immune to vampire powers. They go in at night when he’s at his best, and they may all die.”
Everyone was looking at me, except Zerbrowski. He had already moved on and didn’t need convincing. Marconi would be cool, it was the uniforms and Smith I had to convince.
“Zerbrowski, call Mobile Reserve, get me Captain Parker.”
Zerbrowski raised an eyebrow at me. “You sure that’s a good idea?”
“No, but he knows me. And he’s the man in charge of Mobile Reserve. Get him for me.”
Zerbrowski made a face. “Your funeral.”
“Let’s hope not,” I said.
I looked down at Jonah Cooper, vampire, ex-vamp executioner. He blinked up at me. He’d have probably had something to say to me, but a broken jaw cuts down on the chit-chat.
Zerbrowski clicked his phone shut. “I’ve left a message. He’ll get back.”
I nodded. I looked down at Jonah again. I had everything he knew, all of it. I’d seen him helping murder women. I’d seen his own memory of it. I sighed.
“While we wait for the call back, help me move our prisoner outside.”
Zerbrowski gave me a look. I gave him one back. It was his turn to sigh. “Smith, take his other arm. We’re going to escort him outside.”
Smith was looking at us sort of funny, but he helped Zerbrowski lift the vampire to his feet. Cooper made small protesting noises and hissed curses under his breath. Maybe I hadn’t broken his jaw, or at least not badly.
Zerbrowski and Smith got him on his feet and started him for the door. I got my gun out and followed them. One of the uniforms said, “What are they going to do?”