“I understand that the big bad wolf has been watching the flock, when they thought you were the sheepdog.”

“You’re right. They call me Uncle Jake.”

“And if I’d been an honorable but cruel person, you’d have still offered them up like lambs to slaughter.”

He looked at me. Brown is supposed to be a warm color of eye, but in that moment there was nothing warm in his gaze. It was as cold and pitiless a look as any I’d ever seen, and I’d seen some good ones. “Yes,” he said, “I would have.”

“Evil old Uncle Jake,” I said.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“I couldn’t be evil Aunt Anita,” I said.

“Even to keep the Mother of All Darkness from spreading across the entire world like an evil, death-spreading plague?”

I wanted to look away then, but I forced myself to keep meeting his eyes. I finally said the only truth I had. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do,” he said. “You just don’t like that your answer would be the same as mine.”

“If we do evil in the name of good, it’s still evil, Jake.”

“Lucky for me, you are a good person at heart, Anita Blake. You will do your best not to hurt them, so I can do my duty and not be evil this time. But I never lie to myself. I know the only thing that keeps giving those kids to you from being evil is your own innate goodness. But if you were the most evil bastard on the planet and it would save the rest of us, I would give you all my golden kittens, and that is evil.” He offered me his hand. I took it, expecting him to shake it, but he raised it to his mouth and laid a brief kiss on my knuckles. “Thank you for letting me do my duty, and not be the motherfucking bastard I feared I’d have to be.”

He rose and turned away, but not before I saw the shine of tears in his eyes. He said he never lied to himself, but he did. He said he didn’t love them like children, and I knew in that moment that he did.

33

WE WERE OUT the door and going down the steps when my phone rang again, that peal of church bells. I said a little prayer and picked up. “Blake, here.”

“Check your email, Marshal.” It was Clayton.

“What did you send me?”

“A video. I do love these new gadgets, don’t you?” He hung up.

I sighed. “Go talk to your tigers. I’ve got to see what the bad guy sent me.”

“What bad guy?” Jake asked.

I shook my head and handed the phone to Nicky. “Help me play the video he sent me.”

“You know we do have spies in almost every major city, Anita. We have us in every major city.”

I turned and looked at him. “What are you offering?”

He glanced back at his tigers with their circle of our guards around them. “Tell me what’s happening, and I’ll tell you if we have anyone or anything that can help.”

“I’ve got it open, Anita,” Nicky cut in.

“Hold that thought,” I said to Jake, and turned to Nicky. He handed me the phone but stayed close so he could look over my shoulder. I didn’t complain. If I needed to pause it or run it back, I’d need his help anyway. I really had to learn to work this damn thing.

The screen was surprisingly clear, like a little TV. There was a figure in white crime scene scrubs top to bottom, even with a hood on, and a face mask. She was crawling on the ground in front of the camera. I knew it was a she, because she was crying out, “No, please, no!”

A decayed hand with bones showing through the putrid flesh reached past the camera. She screamed, scrambling faster on her arms and one good leg. The other leg was covered in blood, the coverall torn so we could see the spurt of blood timed to the beat of her heart in the back of her knee. Something had attacked her down in the crypt. The other vampires were alive and still crazed, and once daylight stopped they’d come out. Only their master could brave the daylight.

He grabbed her by her wounded leg and dragged her back to him, while she screamed. He sat on her waist, pinning her to the ground. She just screamed, one long ragged scream after another as he jerked her hood down, spilling long brown hair, and tore her mask off with his rotting hand so her face was bare to the camera. He wanted me to see how afraid she was.

I was whispering something under my breath over and over as he reached for her throat. He gripped the front of her throat and squeezed until her face turned dark, purplish with lack of air, and then he let her go. He let her breathe, and then he reached for her throat again.

“Don’t,” I whispered.

“He killed her before he sent this, Anita. It’s not happening now. You can’t save her,” Nicky said.

“How do you know?”

“He’d need both hands to send the video,” he said.

It was such a practical reason for the woman to be dead that it calmed me a little. It helped me watch, but he didn’t strangle her this time; he dug his thick, decaying fingers into the front of her throat and tore it out like you’d rip open a ripe piece of fruit. Blood gushed up and out. Her eyes rolled, and she made sounds, horrible, wet, choking sounds.

The camera stayed on her until her eyes glazed and the only movement was involuntary twitches. She was dead; she just hadn’t stopped moving yet.

He put the camera on his face so I could see the Halloween mask that was all he could have for a face in the daylight. Even the rotting vampires that could brave the light couldn’t pass for human in the day, but it didn’t matter now, because Clayton wasn’t trying to pass anymore. The face that stared back at me was a monster and happy with it.

“Come and get me, Anita Blake. Come and get me, because I and my vampires will kill as many as we can for as long as we can.” His cheek was collapsed on one side, and I could see his tongue working in his mouth. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. With everything he’d done, that sickened me. You never know what will push you over the edge until you see it.

A gunshot exploded over the speakers and his body jerked. He moved the phone so I saw the second shot go through his chest. “Oh, look, more police to kill.” He turned and the camera swung so that I saw the uniformed officer shooting into him as the vampire strode toward him, no hesitating, as if the bullets meant nothing. A shotgun roared off camera, and the vampire’s body rocked and turned to an older uniform aiming at him over the hood of their car. The vampire laughed at them both and said, “Bullets can’t hurt me while I’m like this.” He laughed again, and the screen went dead as more gunshots sounded.

I stared at the screen. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Jake came back to me. “What has happened now?”

I dialed Finnegan’s phone number, wondering if he was alive to pick up. It went to voice mail and my stomach fell into my feet. When the phone rang I made a little squeak. Fuck. “Blake,” I said.

“Returning your call.” It was Finnegan.

“Is the vampire still at the cemetery?” I asked.

“No. He broke through the officers and he’s gone. He’s a rotting corpse and he just disappeared. How can we not find him?” He was almost yelling.

“He sent me a video,” I said.

“What?”

“I think he used Morgan’s phone to send me a video.”

“Send it to me.”

“You don’t want to see it.”

“Send it.”

“It’s him killing one of your techs and about to kill some uniforms. While he’s in rotted corpse form he’s almost invincible to bullets. Once he looks solid, human, then bullets will work again.”

“Why?” Finnegan asked.

“I don’t know. I just know that’s how this kind of vampire works.”

“How do we find him, Blake? And what the fuck do we do when we find him?”

“Burn him. Flamethrowers.”

“We’ve got an extermination crew on its way. We’ll burn the vampires in the crypt. Why did he leave them behind?”

“I think he’s insane. Vampires go crazy just like living people. Think of him as serial killer who’s devolved into a spree killer.”