Chapter Eighteen
HILL AND I arrived behind the house, pulses in our throats, hearts beating, slow and thick, bodies slick with sweat. Sutton and Hermes were waiting for us, lost in the blackness of underbrush and night. I didn't see them in the dark, but I smelled the oil on Sutton's big f**king gun. He'd brought the Barrett .50-caliber, good for stopping charging rhinos, stray elephants, and any kind of preternatural that bullets could harm. In a neighborhood packed this tight with houses I wouldn't have wanted to use it, because if the big bullet missed its intended target, it would keep traveling until it hit something. A .50-caliber bullet would take out most of the chest on a vampire or wereanimal; on a normal human it would take out the upper part of the entire body. To bring the big gun here said something about Sutton's arrogance about his own abilities and his teammate's confidence in him. He'd already put the Barrett on its little tripod stand, so he didn't have to hold the six-foot barrel. He was kneeling on the spread blanketlike surface of the drag bag that he'd carried the gun in; now it was a nice little shooting platform thick enough you didn't have to worry about twigs, rocks, broken glass, or whatever. It was like a picnic blanket but without the basket of edible goodies.
Hermes had put some sort of liniment on a joint, probably his knee, because the scent was lower down than the arm. It was a faint, sharp undersmell. Would I have noticed the scents of Sutton's gun oil or Hermes's bum knee if Hill hadn't told me the sniper would be waiting for us? I wasn't sure; maybe not. Hill and I knelt with them in the planted tree line that bordered the Bores yard and the one behind us. There was no light in either yard. It was the thickest dark that I'd seen in any yard. I had a moment to wonder if SWAT had helped the lights to be out, but it didn't matter. We knelt in a pool of darkness and second-growth bushes and small trees, with Sutton, and were as hidden as if we'd been in deep woods. Even if the vampire looked out the window he would miss us. It wasn't his eyes we had to worry about.
I was almost shoulder to shoulder with Hill, so the fact that I could hear his heartbeat, his pulse thudding faintly in his throat, was almost to be expected. I tried to hear Sutton's and Hermes's bodies, and it was more that I could feel the vampire like heat in the dark. I just knew he was there, but again, would I have been so certain of it if I hadn't known it? I hoped not, because that was the real problem with supernaturals; they had other, better senses than normals.
Lincoln's voice whispered in my ear, "Kids and dog are coming out."
Sutton asked, voice low, "Did perp send the dog out, or did the kids insist on taking it?"
"Perp sent it."
"Shit," Sutton and Hermes said together.
Hill said, "Crap."
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"He either sent the dog and kids out so they won't see him kill Mom, or didn't want the dog to bite him," Hill said.
"Either way," Sutton said, "it's not good."
"Spot him for us, Blake," Hermes said.
I didn't argue; I just looked at the side of the house and lowered my control. I used to say that I lowered my metaphysical shields, but I could keep my shields that protected me in place and still strike out through them. It was like having a shield and sword; you could use the sword and still hug your shield to your body. I tried to do that now, with my necromancy. To use my ability with the dead, but not open myself up so that the vampire inside could spot me metaphysically. I'd only recently learned how to use my power and stay more hidden from the undead in a given area; before this it had been like lighting a bonfire every time I used my abilities. Great as a distraction, an attraction, or if I was positive that I could take out whatever was coming to get me. Being able to do it quieter made my psychic gifts way more useful for police work.
I reached out toward the vampire; toward that particular vampire. Again, I used to just reach out to the dead, but now I could "aim" better at vampires that weren't tied directly to me metaphysically. If a vampire was tied to me in some psychic way I could reach out to them pretty easily, but strange vampires were harder. I reached out toward the house, and as silly as it sounded, reaching out with my hand toward the wall of the house helped me aim. It wasn't like pointing and shooting with my finger, but more like my hand was a line of sight so I could look down it, and follow the line of it toward the house. It was just a visual help, something that helped my eyes get out of the way for my mind.
I felt a vampire in the house, but with one I'd never met before I couldn't honestly tell you that it was the vampire that we were looking for; I had to rely on the fact that Lieutenant Lincoln had just been talking to him over the phone, and that everyone else told me this was the right vampire. I had to trust that the intelligence was accurate, because even though it wasn't me pulling the trigger, it was still my warrant of execution. It was my presence as a U.S. Marshal with an active warrant that got us a green light for this vampire. Sutton's shooting on a warrant of execution meant there'd be no investigation into the kill. He could fire, kill, and not lose an hour off the job, or a minute talking to Internal Affairs or anyone else. The snipers loved working with me, because it was always a clean, no-muss, no-fuss kill.
I couldn't really see the vampire. I could feel him, not like touching something with your fingers, but more as if you could touch something with your thoughts, as if thoughts were fingers, hands that could wrap around the vampire, so that I could feel the edges of him.
"He's pacing," I whispered. I closed my eyes so that my real vision would get out of the way. It didn't matter what the side of the house looked like; it didn't matter that there was a scattering of stronger light to one side. What mattered was inside the house. What mattered were things the real, hard eyes couldn't see at all.
"How fast?" Sutton asked.
"Fast." I didn't realize I was moving my hand in time to the pacing until Hill said something.
"Is that his speed?"
I stopped moving my hand, eyes opening wide and glancing at Hill. "I guess so."
"Hermes, spot the woman for me," Sutton said.
Hermes raised a pair of binoculars that were a little too bulky to be "normal" ones. "She's by the floor, sitting with her back to cabinets, not flat enough to be wall."
"Good," Sutton said, and his voice was already going quieter, a little deeper, as he began to slide away into the mind-set that would let him make the shot. He was already lying on the mat that the drag bag unfolded into, snugged up against the big rifle. It was so big that it mounted on a bipod, to help with the weight. Sutton was about to fire a .50-caliber projectile through a wall, into a moving target, and he needed to not just hit it, but hit it square and true, because the last thing we wanted was a wounded vampire inside the house with a hostage, or for that matter a wounded one coming out at us. The fact that there was even the slimmest doubt that hitting the vampire with the Barrett might not bring him down was exactly why Sutton had been given the yes on bringing the big gun in the first place. We hadn't had it happen, but other units in other cities had had vampires and wereanimals keep coming after anything less than a .50, and a couple of nightmare stories about them coming with half their chests missing. It had just been the wrong half of the chest, like the half that didn't contain the heart. Sutton had to take the heart, or head, or both with one shot. Not just damage it, but take it the f**k out; it was the only surety for a true kill.
Lincoln's voice came over the earpieces. "Boy says suspect has a handgun. Repeat, vampire is armed with a handgun."
"Fuck," Hermes said.
"Blake," Sutton said.
I tried to reach out carefully, but the gun changed things. Up to that point I'd thought the vampire would have to get close to the woman to hurt her; now he could stand farther away and kill her. Shit. The spurt of adrenaline brought my shields further down, but it helped me see the vampire better; no loss without a gain.
"He's slowing, turning," I said, and my voice was lower, careful. If the vampire had been older, more powerful, he might have felt my power touching him, looking at him, but either he was just that weak, or he was too emotional to sense anything but his own immediate crisis.
"Turning which way?" Sutton asked, voice squeezed down with concentration.
I used my finger to point. I could never have explained how I knew which way the vampire was looking, but I was sure of it; knew it.