"Parasites. May I tell the rest of the council your so high opinion of us?" He was angry now. I could hear it like heat across the line.
"Yeah, tell them all. But mark me on this, Traveler, vampires can't just gain privileges with legal citizenship. They also gain responsibilities to the human law that made them legal."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah, that's so. This mysterious 'in your world but not a part of it' may have worked in the past. But welcome to the twentieth century, because that's what legal status means. Once you're citizens who pay taxes, own businesses, marry, inherit, have children, you can't hide in some crypt somewhere and count the decades. You are a part of our world now."
"I will think upon what you have said, Anita Blake."
"When I get off the phone with you, I'm going inside the house. We're going to start bringing out the vamps in body bags to protect them in case the floor caves in. If they rise as revenants while we're doing it, it'll be a bloodbath."
"I am aware of the problems," he said.
"Are you aware that it's the presence of the council that's giving them the energy to possibly rise this early in the day?"
"I cannot change the effect our presence has on the lesser vampires. If this Malcolm wishes to claim the status of master, then it is his duty to keep his people safe. I cannot do it for him."
"Can't or won't?" I asked.
"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.