Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,239

vitals. I think it was more for something normal to do than because he felt he needed to get Henry’s temperature and pulse rate.

Nicky helped me down off the bed and then started handing me my weapons back. Al came over to us. He looked pale. ‘I didn’t think any of that was possible.’

‘Things are only impossible until you find someone who can do it,’ I said, as I tucked the last gun back in place.

‘I guess so. So he made Henry his human servant?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Is that like someone who they bite a couple of times or something?’

‘No, the really powerful ones don’t have to lay a fang on someone to make them a servant.’

‘I thought they had to bite you first.’

‘Nope,’ I said.

His phone rang, and he checked the Caller ID. ‘Sorry, got to take this, glad you were able to help Little Henry.’ He left to take his phone call.

Dr Aimes came over to me. ‘I don’t understand everything that just happened, but he seems perfectly fine now, a little shaken, but fine.’

‘If you don’t believe in angels I can’t explain it to you,’ I said with a smile.

‘Are you saying you’re an angel, Marshal Blake?’

I laughed. ‘An angel, no, I would never claim that.’

‘You were covered in white light at the end, almost completely hidden by the white glow of the crosses, and when you kissed him I swear I saw the light travel from your mouth into him.’

‘I prayed for guidance to be able to free him without him coming to any more harm.’ Yes, that was an edited version of what I’d prayed for, but God is okay with not explaining everything to everybody; if he weren’t, he’d have left more explicit instructions for the rest of us.

‘For a moment I could have sworn I saw wings in the light,’ Aimes said.

I smiled and looked at Nicky. ‘You see wings?’

He shook his head.

I smiled at the doctor. ‘If you saw wings, Dr Aimes, they weren’t mine.’

‘Whose were they, then?’

I smiled wider. ‘I believe in angels, remember.’

He looked shaken. ‘You’ll drive a man to drink, or to church, saying things like that, Marshal.’

‘It’s not my job to drive you to church and not my intention to drive you to drink.’

Dr Aimes looked at me. He had a look I’d seen before, but it was usually the first time people see a ghost, or a vampire, and they get good and truly scared for the first time.

‘What is your intention, Marshal Blake?’

‘I want to question Henry and see if we can get a clue where the vampire’s body is. If we can destroy the original body, we can end this.’

‘I’ll leave you to question Mr Crawford. I think I’ll go get that drink.’

‘On duty?’ I said.

‘If any good science-loving atheist wouldn’t need a drink after what I just saw, he’s a better disbeliever than I am.’ With that, he left.

The other cops were almost evenly divided between being scared by what they’d seen and being so impressed that it was almost worse, because I wasn’t sure what they’d expect me to be able to do next time. Aimes hadn’t been the only one who saw the white-shadowed outline of wings. I told them it was an answer to prayer, not me personally. I finally told one overly solicitous uniform, ‘Trust me, I’m no angel.’

Nicky started laughing and couldn’t seem to stop.

‘Yuk it up, lion boy.’

That made him laugh harder, until he had to lean against the wall with tears trailing down from his eye. At least his laughing stopped any more weird theological questions; they just couldn’t seem to talk about angels with this big, muscled bad-ass guy laughing his ass off beside me.

72

My phone rang, and it was Ted Nugent’s ‘Bad to the Bone,’ which was Edward’s ring tone.

‘Hey, Ted, what’s up?’

‘All the older crime scenes that we found today were in Callahan’s district almost without exception.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, I don’t think the sheriff was targeted by accident. Gutterman says that Callahan senior visited the isolated houses regularly, had coffee with them, checked on his older couples, or people with disabilities, anyone he was concerned about.’

‘I take it those were a lot of the people who got hit,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

I said, ‘Hang on a minute, Ted.’ I turned to the cops and nurses with Henry. ‘I’m going to take this call. I’ll be right back; I have a few questions for you, Mr Crawford.’

‘Marshal Blake, you just saved my immortal soul; you can call me Little Henry.’

I smiled. ‘I