"I called him after you didn't answer your beeper."
"Call him back, tell him not to go."
There must have been something in my voice, because he said, "What's wrong, Anita?"
"We can't get any answer at the morgue, Bert."
"So?"
"The vampire may have already risen and killed everybody, and John's walking right into it."
"I'll call him," Bert said. The connection broke, and I shoved the receiver down as we spilled out onto New Highway 21.
"We can kill the vampire when we get there," I said.
"That's murder," Dolph said.
I shook my head. "Not if Calvin Rupert had a dying will."
"Did he?"
"Yeah."
Zerbrowski slammed his fist into the back of the seat. "Then we'll pop the son of a bitch."
"Yeah," I said.
Dolph just nodded.
Zerbrowski was grinning. He had a shotgun in his hands.
"Does that thing have silver shot in it?" I asked.
Zerbrowski glanced at the gun. "No."
"Please, tell me I'm not the only one in this car with silver bullets."
Zerbrowski grinned. Dolph said, "Silver's more expensive than gold. City doesn't have that kind of money."
I knew that, but I was hoping I was wrong. "What do you do when you're up against vampires and lycanthropes?"
Zerbrowski leaned over the back seat. "Same thing we do when we're up against a gang with Uzi pistols."
"Which is?" I said.
"Be outgunned," he said. He didn't look happy about it. I wasn't too happy about it, either. I was hoping that the morgue attendants had just run, gotten out, but I wasn't counting on it.
Chapter 15
My vampire kit included a sawed-off shotgun with silver shot, stakes, mallet, and enough crosses and holy water to drown a vampire. Unfortunately, my vampire kit was sitting in my bedroom closet. I used to carry it in the trunk, minus the sawed-off shotgun, which has always been illegal. If I was caught carrying the vampire kit without a court order of execution on me, it was an automatic jail term. The new law had kicked in only weeks before. It was to keep certain overzealous executioners from killing someone and saying, "Gee, sorry." I, by the way, am not one of the overzealous. Honest.
Dolph had cut the sirens about a mile from the hospital. We cruised into the parking lot dark and quiet. The marked car behind us had followed our lead. There was already one marked car waiting for us. The two officers were crouched beside the car, guns in hand.
We all spilled out of the dark cars, guns out. I felt like I'd been shanghaied into a Clint Eastwood movie. I couldn't see John Burke's car. Which meant John checked his beeper more than I did. If the vampire was safely behind metal walls, I promised to answer all beeper messages immediately. Please, just don't let me have cost lives. Amen.
One of the uniforms who had been waiting for us duck-walked to Dolph and said, "Nothing's moved since we got here, Sergeant."
Dolph nodded. "Good. Special forces will be here when they can get to it. We're on the list."