Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(19)

“Over here.” The uniformed cop jerked on my sleeve, pulling me against a marked vehicle. She pointed to a black limo across the street. “In that one.” It wasn’t a long limo, but a short one. The vehicle looked heavy, as if armored. “Don’t expect me to get any closer to the fangheads,” she said. “I like the blood in my veins where it belongs. Maintain cover position until we clear the street and the buildings.”

“Thanks,” I said, “and I feel the same way about vampires. But you don’t say no to Ming of Glass.” Crouching, I stepped off the curb into the street and raced over. The chauffeur got out, hunkered down like I was, and opened the back door. I did not want to get in that limo, sit on that leather, touch anything with bare skin. The thought of dead possum and maggots wiggling on my bare feet nearly made me gag as I ducked inside and sat, hands in my lap, my eyes adjusting as the door closed on me with a solid thunk.

“Special Agent Maggot,” a familiar voice said.

“Fanghead Yummy,” I said. Which was totally impolite, not that I cared as much as I might once have. Except that the inside light came on and Ming was sitting beside the blond vampire. “Ming of Glass,” I said, not apologizing, though the words I’m sorry wriggled in the back of my throat like a squirrel in a trap, trying to get out. Mama might fear vampires, but she would be polite to Satan himself. I’d be polite, though I had a momentary vision of Mama meeting the devil in the middle of an ice storm, the Angel of the Morning hovering on bat wings at the end of Mama’s shotgun.

“You find us amusing?” Ming asked.

I blurted a half-strangled laugh. “No, ma’am. I just imagined my mama meeting, ummm, you.”

“Your mother fears Mithrans?”

My laughter died. “My mama survived her worst nightmare. Now she don’t fear nothing. You called me over here?” It wasn’t exactly true, but it sounded good.

“Do you feel maggots in my limousine?”

I thought about lying, since I’d already insulted the chief blood-sucker in Knoxville. “Not through my clothes. I thought you were inside Pierced Dreams when the shooting took place.”

“I was just arriving. I was delayed. If one of my kind was behind this shooting, is there any way you or your fellow nonhuman police officers could tell?”

“The cats aren’t trackers. They’re sight hunters. We don’t have our own K9 paranormal dog. We don’t have a werewolf on the team, and that would be the best nose were-critter.”

“If I flew a werewolf in, could it—could he track this shooter?”

“I doubt it. Too many scent patterns.” I paused.

“You have thought of something,” Ming said.

“Maybe.” I frowned. It would be against regulations. But PsyLED didn’t always go by regs. And Jane Yellowrock had a tame werewolf . . . “Hmmm.”

“Tell me what you are thinking,” Ming said, her voice full of velvet persuasion, a vampire mesmerism.

I looked her in the eye. “Really? You’un gonna try that on me? ’Cause it don’t work.”

“So I see.” Ming sat back against the leather, making it sigh like flesh still alive. She motioned to Yummy. “Go with her. Provide assistance as needed. PsyLED will bring you back before dawn.” Ming looked at me, her eyes intense, giving a final little push with her voice and her mind. “You will bring her back before dawn.”

“I’ll be glad to give Yummy a ride, but if traffic stalls us on the highway and she burns up, you’un’re paying to have my truck fumigated. I hear it’s mighty hard to get out the burned vamp stink.”

Yummy made a strangled sound that might have been laughter.

Ming’s eyes went wide and then she burst out laughing. She was still chuckling when Yummy followed me out of the limo into the exhaust-laden air and the too-bright lights. “Girl, you are either stupid or you got big brass ones,” Yummy said.

I decided that no reply was the wisest reaction this time. Not that I’d been wise for the last few minutes. Occam appeared at my side, ushering us into the shadows cast by streetlights against the ornate brick wall of a building. He was walking fine now, as he took in Yummy as part of his constant scan of the street and buildings and law enforcement rushing around. Around us, Old City’s Christmas decorations glowed, a festive red and white this year. To me he said, “Uniforms and feds found the greatest concentration of casings. They think the shooter stood in the greenspace there.” He jerked his chin to a couple of winter-leafless dogwoods and evergreen plantings at the edge of a roofed overhang. “There’s some land. Rick wants you to get a read.”

The patch of earth was maybe ten feet by twenty. “That little bit of land? You’uns—you’re kidding.”

“Nope. I got your blanket outta your truck.” He held out my faded pink blanket and I took it, uncertain for two reasons. I had locked my truck, and the blanket suggested that Occam either had a key or owned and knew how to use a slim-jim. And I didn’t like reading city land. It was usually dead land.

Yummy leaned into Occam and breathed deeply. I realized she was taking his scent. “Wereleopard. I am still eager to taste you.”

Occam turned his eyes from me to her and said, “No. Again. No.”

Yummy laughed and her voice took on that persuasive tone, low and liquid. “You might change your mind. Such liaisons have always been things of pleasure and joy.”