“Blake, I take it you saw the tape.”

“Morgan, where are you?”

“Atlanta,” he said.

“No, where are you standing.”

“I’m outside the crypt in case some of the little vampires wake up still crazy.”

“Are there still techs down there?”

“For another hour and then we’ll clear it, except for me.”

“Get them out. Get them out, now!”

“I took care of it, Blake. He ain’t getting up.”

“He’s a rotting vampire, Morgan. They don’t die when you destroy the brain and heart. Even sunlight may not do it. Fire is the only certainty and then the ashes need to be scattered over different bodies of flowing water.”

“He didn’t rot until I shot him, Blake. Once they look like a corpse, they’re dead.”

“He didn’t turn into a corpse, Morgan, he rotted. It’s different. Please, just trust me on this. Get your people out of there and flamethrower everything in the crypt.”

“We’re still dragging bodies out of there, Blake. I can’t fry the evidence. We haven’t even started to identify the dead.”

I fought the urge to scream. “Morgan, just humor me. Just pretend I’m right, and at least clear the crypt of personnel, okay? Just do that and we’ll debate the whole flame thing later. Please, God, please, just do this one thing for me.”

“You really think he’s a genuine rotting vampire. Those are really rare in the United States,” he said.

“They are, but just in case, Morgan. It doesn’t hurt to clear out the techs and the cops.”

“All right, but unlike you, I don’t carry a flamethrower as part of my usual vampire-hunting kit, Blake.”

Truth was, neither did I. “Just clear the crypt and call an extermination team.”

“You mean a bug squad.” That was one name for the exterminators who did everything from cockroaches to rogue wererat infestations and ghouls. They were who you called if you found a zombie just wandering down the street, since fire would destroy it and most animators couldn’t put the zombie back without knowing the grave it came from.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’ll ask my superiors if I can call them as backup, but they aren’t going to let me burn everything down there. The lesser vampires may wake up sane and fine now that he’s dead.”

“He’s not dead, Morgan.”

“How do you know that?”

I almost said, Because the Lover of Death was looking for his bloodline last night, but I couldn’t share that without explaining things I couldn’t explain to the cops at all.

“If you’re asking me am I a hundred percent sure, I’m not, but I’m ninety-eight percent sure and I wouldn’t have my people down in that hole this late in the day.”

“Rotting vampires rise earlier than most, though they can’t pass for human until full dark because they look like decayed corpses until then.” He sounded like he was quoting. Morgan was one of the newer executioners who had been recruited for the job, and not grandfathered in like most of us. He was part of a new breed of vampire hunter, trained in classrooms with books and guest lectures. It wasn’t a bad way to learn, and you probably had less death in the learning curve, but in this moment I’d have taken an old-fashioned shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later vampire hunter.

“I’ll clear the crypt, Blake, but that’s all I can do until I clear this with someone.”

“I’ll take what I can get, Morgan. Just get your people out of there.”

“I will.”

“Now,” I said.

“I’m walking toward the entrance to the crypt as we speak. Good enough?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit . . .” The phone fell against something loud enough I had to take it away from my ear.

“Morgan, Morgan, you all right?” I heard him moving as if he were standing on gravel and the phone were on the ground. “Morgan, are you still there?”

I heard noises on the phone as if he’d picked it up. “Morgan, talk to me.”

I heard someone swallow as if his throat hurt. It was a wet sound. “I’m afraid Marshal Morgan can’t come to the phone. To whom am I speaking?” The voice was male and thick, as if he had a speech impediment or injury to his mouth.

“Marshal Blake,” I said.

“Anita Blake.” The voice coughed as if to clear something.

“Yes. Who is this?” But my speeding pulse already knew the answer, before he said, “I am Clayton, Master of the City of Atlanta, Georgia, but my true masters have filled me with purpose. Do you know what that purpose is, Ms. Blake?”

“To slaughter as many people as you can so that your true masters can feed off the death.”

“You do know what’s happening.” He hung up.

I screamed wordlessly into the dead phone. It took everything I had not to fling the phone across the room. I dialed Finnegan’s number. He picked up, voice rushed. “Morgan isn’t picking up his phone.”

“He’s probably dead,” I said.

“How do you know that?”

I told him how I knew.

“Clayton isn’t supposed to be a rotting vampire. He’s never shown any sign of it.”

“He was hiding, Finnegan. People may want to be vampires, but not if they think they’ll be spending eternity looking like decayed corpses. That’s not sexy enough for people to volunteer.”

“How many others are hiding in plain sight, Blake?”

“I don’t know.”

I heard sirens, lots of sirens. “I’m almost there. I’ll call you, let you know how bad.”

“Finnegan, wait, you need an extermination team with flamethrowers. He walked out in daylight; only fire will kill him.”

“That’s not standard issue to cops,” he said.

“I know that.”

“Fuck,” he said, and this time he didn’t apologize. “If we all live through this I’ll call you back.” He hung up.

We were hundreds of miles away with no way to help them. “Motherfucker.” Or were we? I reached out for Jean-Claude down that metaphysical pipeline and he was there. He looked up and whispered, “Ma petite.” I didn’t try to tell him everything, I simply opened my mind and he knew what I knew.

I asked out loud to the room, “Is there anything we can do from here? Can you help me control him from here?”

“I am sorry, ma petite, but no. He is a Master of the City, as am I. His ties to the land and the vampires there will keep us from interfering.”

“Damn it!”

“I am sorry, ma petite.”

My phone rang. I hit the screen almost yelling. “Finnegan, what’s happening?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not Finnegan,” a male voice said.

“Who is this?”

“Sorry to catch you on a bad day, Anita, but this is Jake. I gave you some jewelry once.”

I think I stopped breathing for a moment. The turn of events was too fast. My hand went to the charm around my neck. “I’m wearing it now,” I said.

“You do remember, then,” he said.

“Yeah, though an amazing number of our people don’t seem to.”

“We need to stay secret, Anita.”

Jake was the wolf to call of one of the Harlequin. They were the closest thing to police that the vampire world had. They were supposed to be some of the finest warriors to ever live, or unlive.

“If you’d come to kill us you wouldn’t be calling, so why are you calling?” Jesus, didn’t I have enough disasters on my plate without the Harlequin? Some days it doesn’t rain, it fucking drowns you.

“Your Nimir-Raj put out the word that he’s wanting clanless weretigers. He wants to honor all the weretigers and not just the clans.”

“Micah’s very fair-minded.”

“He is,” Jake said.

“You just want to bring us some tigers,” I said.

“I’d also want to come back to work as security for you.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Are you saying you can’t use another guard?”

“No, extra manpower is going to come in handy.”

“I want the kittens safe, Anita, and things are getting very dangerous out here.”

“Kittens?” I made it a question.

“The weretigers, someone’s hunting and killing them. It started in Europe, but I’m afraid it will spread to here.”

“Funny coincidence that we’re calling for weretigers and someone else is killing them.”