Crimes by Moonlight Read online

  “Deserved what she got,” Dahlia agreed. She was thinking that after the honor of the nest had been restored, she might find out what it felt like to kiss lips as full and hot as the half demon’s. Since hers were always cold, the sensation might be interesting.

  Cedric greeted Melponeus with appropriate dignity, mentioned a price, and Melponeus agreed to accompany Dahlia and Taffy. When the three were setting out, Dahlia realized no one knew the location of the Fellowship’s organizational offices. Taffy had to look it up in the phone book. “This is the kind of thing detective novels don’t cover,” Taffy complained.

  “You haven’t read a detective novel since Agatha Christie quit writing,” Dahlia said. “Don’t whine.”

  “She’s quit writing?” Taffy was really put out. “When did that happen?”

  “She died. Probably fifty years ago.”

  “And why should I know that?”

  “There have been plenty of novels since then. You should read some of them,” said Dahlia, who seldom read herself. “We’ve got the address. Let’s pay them a visit.” In Taffy’s Trans Am, they drove west into the old part of Rhodes.

  They left the Trans Am on Trask, which ran a block south of Field Street, the location of the modest storefront housing the Fellowship headquarters. The small businesses in the area had already closed for the night. The occasional pedestrian hurried along, since the evening was chilly. The three approached Field through a filthy alley two blocks west of their goal. Since they could all remember times when filth and debris were the norm, this didn’t bother them. The two vampires and the half demon hung in the shadows of a trash bin while they evaluated the Fellowship headquarters.

  “Cameras,” Melponeus murmured.

  “I see them,” Dahlia said. There were cameras all around the building. After a low-voiced discussion, Dalia returned to Trask Street and ran silently east until she was pretty sure she was in line with the Fellowship building. She slid into the next alleyway and headed north. About halfway down the alley, Dahlia found a nice dark patch she didn’t believe human eyes could penetrate. She crouched and gathered herself. She launched herself upward, landing neatly on the roof. Dahlia was confident that even the Fellowship wouldn’t think of pointing a camera upward. She was right.

  After a quick smile of self-congratulation, she took off her designer heels and made a great leap, landing across the street on the roof of the two-story building housing the Fellowship. She swung her legs over. Her fingers and toes clamped into the little spaces between the lines of brick, and she worked her way to the first camera. With a quick twist, she removed it from its mounting. She pitched the camera onto the roof, then did the same with all the others. Then she put on her shoes again.

  She waved at Taffy and Melponeus, who began trotting toward the Fellowship. Dahlia leaped down from the roof to join them, landing on the sidewalk as lightly as a feather, though she was wearing three-inch heels.

  “Good job,” said Taffy, and Dahlia inclined her head.

  “I’m impressed,” Melponeus said, looking at Dahlia’s legs. “Taffy, let’s see who’s minding the store.”

  Taffy knocked on the door, which bore the distinctive Fellowship symbol—a sun, represented by a circle with wavy rays leading outward. Within the circle was a pyramid.

  “What does the pyramid mean?” Taffy asked.

  “Earth for Humans, Eradication of Vampires, Eternal Victory,” Melponeus said. “Kind of ironic that the hotel was the same shape. Maybe that sparked the plan.”

  A young man came to the door. Through the thick glass (bullet-proof?) the three could see he was a reedy Asian guy in his twenties with a soul patch.

  Taffy gave him her best smile and said, “Young man, I want to come in.”

  If she hadn’t called him “young man,” he might have unlocked the door, because Taffy had a great no-fangs smile, and her tight leather pants added a powerful incentive. But the “young” roused his suspicion, since Taffy looked (at most) twenty-five. He began punching numbers on a cell phone.

  “Look at me,” Dahlia said in a voice that managed to compel, even through the glass. And he did, no matter what he’d been taught.

  “Open the door,” she said. And her voice was so reasonable that the young man did just that.

  Melponeus immediately set to work looking at the Fellowship computers. Dahlia sat opposite Asian Soul Patch at a table covered with coffee stains and notepads.

  She said, “What is your name?”

  “Jeffrey Tan.”

  “You’re Fellowship?”

  “I hate vampires. I killed one myself.”

  “Did you really?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  While Taffy searched the office building and Melponeus began copying files onto a disc, Dahlia asked a few more questions. Jeffrey Tan had been dating a vampire, a girl he’d known before she went over. They’d been going at it hot and heavy one night, and she’d bitten him. Terrified, he’d stabbed her with a handy wooden chopstick. (Unfortunately for the young vampire, Jeffrey’s mother had brought him a traditional meal that day.)

  In a flash, Jeffrey’s lover had been shriveling and flaking on his bed.

  He had to live with himself, and the easiest way to do that was to find other people who thought he’d been perfectly justified.

  Dahlia, who’d heard this sort of story many times before, had a fleeting moment of sympathy for Jeffrey, since she’d become reacquainted with panic the night before. But she squelched the moment ruthlessly. She asked, “Did you help bomb the Pyramid?”

  “No, but I applaud the courage and determination of our soldiers,” he said unconvincingly.

  “Yes, slaughtering people who are asleep is brave. Do you know who planned and executed this action?”

  “They’re hiding, getting ready,” he said, his eyelids flickering furiously. “The vamp lovers in the police department and the fire department who rescued vampires, they’ll die next.”

  “Where are these heroes hiding?” Dahlia asked.

  Melponeus, who’d been looking at the screen of one of the office computers, said, “I think I may have the membership list,” at nearly the same moment as Taffy pulled a large file out of the filing cabinet.

  “Here’s a list of the properties they lease or own,” Taffy said, as Melponeus began downloading the list. “Oh, I checked out the basement. No one there.”

  A phone began ringing. Jeffrey Tan reached for it, but Dahlia stayed his hand. “What does the phone call mean?” she asked.

  “I told them the cameras went out. They’re calling to check on me,” he said, and he seemed to be coming out of his trance. His gaze began flickering from Taffy to Dahlia to Melponeus.

  “You said the Fellowship was going after firefighters?” Dahlia had a sudden misgiving.

  “We have pictures of every traitor who worked the rescue at the Pyramid.”

  Melponeus said, “We’d better hustle.”

  “Shall I kill him?” Taffy asked.

  “No, that would be too much of a red flag,” Dahlia said. “Though I’d enjoy it very much. Look at me, Jeffrey!”

  He couldn’t disobey, but he was struggling.

  “We were here to check for your leaders,” Dahlia said, gripping his chin to force his attention on her. “They weren’t here, so we left full of frustration.”

  “Yes,” he said, his face slack again.

  The three left the building as quickly and quietly as they’d entered. In silent accord, Dahlia and Taffy flanked Melponeus and held him, leaping to the top of the building. The three made their getaway across the roofs. By the time they’d gone two blocks, cars were parking in front of the Fellowship office.

  “That was almost too easy,” Dahlia said, on their return to the mansion. She and Taffy were drinking Red Stuff, and Melponeus was sipping coffee, very strong and very black. Cedric had come to the common room to listen to their report. “They left one human, and such a puppy, to guard the office? When they’d have
to figure we’d be looking?”

  “Humans do underestimate us,” Taffy said. “Their thinking’s limited.”

  “And we underestimate them,” Dahlia snapped. “Look who wiped out over fifty vampires at once. Even that puppy killed his girlfriend with a chopstick.”

  “I’m half-human,” Melponeus said. “Some of us are honorable.”

  Though Taffy and Cedric looked in another direction, embarrassed, Dahlia met his snowmelt eyes and inclined her head regally.

  Cedric said, “What do you suggest we do, Dahlia?”

  “This list of properties has to be checked out, as does the membership list,” Dahlia said. “We’ll be spread very thin, but I think we can do it. After all . . .” She didn’t have to emphasize their responsibility.

  “You’re in charge, Dahlia,” Cedric said. “Melponeus, if you will come with me, Lakeisha will write a check.”

  “How will we do this?” Taffy asked when they had left.

  “Divide into teams. Give each team a short list of properties to search,” Dahlia said. “Each place must be searched very thoroughly but very discreetly. One special team has to kidnap a Fellowship officer, a person without family. This team can’t be averse to forceful persuasion. We need to know if there’s some place not on this list, perhaps a place belonging to one member, that’s large enough to hide ten to fifteen people. The newspaper said that’s roughly how many Fellowship fanatics are missing. We’ll check the people we can find against the list to get a better count.”

  Cedric returned in time to hear. He nodded. “This seems sound,” he said. “Especially the torture part.” He smiled.

  “Thank you, Sheriff.” Dahlia braced herself. “Someone must be detailed to warn the humans involved in the rescue. They saved lives that night; not just human lives.”

  “Some of them were not pleased to rescue vampires,” Cedric said. “I read that in the newspapers, too.”

  “However they felt, they did it. We can’t abandon those who’ve done us a service.”

  “Are you telling me my duty, Dahlia?”

  “Sorry, Sheriff.” Dahlia looked away to compose her face.

  “This is very unlike you.”

  “I’ve never been hauled out of a pit before.”

  “The half demon—the half human—would take no money for his service,” Cedric said. “He told me we were on the same side.” Dahlia tried not to look self-conscious. She mostly succeeded.

  Cedric nodded to Dahlia. “All right, go.”

  THAT was how Dahlia came to be walking into the firehouse of the Thirty-four Company at the corner of Almond and Lincoln. Though the night was chilly, the door to the firehouse was open. The men and women inside were washing the fire trucks under floodlights. None of them whistled when Dahlia approached, though she was the center of attention in her black belted coat and black high heels.

  “A cold one,” said the biggest firefighter of all, a burly guy over six feet tall. “Whatcha want, vampie?”

  To rip your impudent throat out, Dahlia thought. But she recognized his high voice; he had helped the captain haul her up out of hell. “I need to speak to Captain Fortescue,” she said.

  That brought a chorus of whistles and comments about Ted’s wife and her reaction to his extracurricular pastimes.

  If Dahlia had been a breather, she’d have sighed.

  Ted Fortescue came out, wiping his hands on a towel. His men and women fell silent when the captain looked around to meet their eyes. He recognized Dahlia immediately, somewhat to her surprise. “Evening. Have you recovered from your broken leg?”

  “I have,” Dahlia replied. Her back was stiff as a poker. “I have come to warn you. The people of the Fellowship of the Sun have said they’ll take vengeance on those who rescued vampires.”

  “They’re going to target first responders?” Fortescue was appalled.

  “Yes,” Dahlia said.

  “They’ll lose all public sympathy for their cause,” he said slowly, “aside from the obvious point, they believe in killing vampires and recruiting humans.”

  “I don’t pretend to make sense of what humans do,” she said. “You saved my life. Now I am doing my best to save yours.”

  “Well . . . thanks,” he said. The firefighters looked from the captain to the vampire, obviously thinking he should say something else. “You were human, once,” Fortescue said.

  Dahlia was taken aback. She fumbled for a response. “I was a human for eighteen years. I have been a vampire for . . .” She shook her head. “Nine hundred years, perhaps.”

  There was a little moment of total silence.

  “Good luck to you, Ted Fortescue, and to all of you who helped us,” Dahlia said. She looked at each face around her. She would remember each one. “I’ll dispose of them all if I can,” she promised the firefighters, and then she walked away.

  “Commando Barbie,” one of the women muttered, but Dahlia heard her. In fact, she smiled a little, all to herself.

  WORRY was not a familiar pastime for Dahlia, who was more of a direct action person. During the bit of dark remaining, Dahlia and Taffy visited two Fellowship locations, a “church” on the south side and a “meeting hall” on the east. Both buildings were easy to break into, and the two vampires searched both very thoroughly. They were straightforward modern constructions: no hidden passages, secret rooms, or false floors.

  The next night similar results were reported by the other search teams.

  The Rhodes vampires felt the pressure. By the time they had to retreat to day sleep lairs, they’d only learned where the Fellowship plotters weren’t. Their shame was mounting.

  Even the abduction-and-torture team reported failure. True, they managed to find a family-free Fellowship official, and true, they managed to snatch her unobserved, but to their immense irritation, the woman had a weak heart. She died too early in the proceedings to offer any useful information. In fact, the team simply restored her body to her house, and no one was the wiser.

  Taffy arrived at the mansion the next night radiating excitement. She made a beeline for the common room. Dahlia was sitting at the table, lost in unhappy thought. “Don says we should look in the tunnels!” Taffy said, seizing her friend.

  Dahlia said, “If you shake me again, I’ll break both your arms.”

  Taffy let her go with alacrity. “Sorry! I’m just so excited!”

  “That’s a very good idea,” Dahlia said. “We should have thought of the tunnels earlier.”

  The tunnel system lying below the original city center of Rhodes was extensive, and it had once connected all the major buildings in the area. The tunnels had seen much use in the years before and during Prohibition. In the decades since, some passages had been blocked up as part of new construction. Vampires seldom used the tunnels anymore ... but they had in years past, along with all kinds of other creatures, including regular humans.

  “Do the tunnels run under Field Street?” Dahlia asked Taffy.

  “Don’s faxing us a map.”

  Don, Taffy’s werewolf husband, had a friend who was a historian at Rhodes’s City University. Don’s friend faxed the map to the little office where Lakeisha took care of Cedric’s correspondence. Lakeisha had been an executive assistant in life, and Cedric had brought her over expressly to be his executive assistant in death. Lakeisha knew her office machinery and had a thorough grounding in modern communications, skills most of the older vampires found baffling.

  Lakeisha had had the advantage of knowing she was going to be brought over, so she’d had her hair washed, cut, and styled before her death. She was perpetually cute. “I don’t think you’ve ever gotten a fax before, Dahlia,” Lakeisha said.

  “I hope I never get another one.”

  “Grumpy, grumpy!” Lakeisha chided. Dahlia snarled at her.

  “Did we get up on the wrong side of the coffin tonight?” Lakeisha said.

  “It’s annoying that you’re not frightened of me, and it’s a mistake.”

 
“You don’t want to make Cedric mad,” the young vampire said calmly.

  Dahlia snatched up the tunnel map, and she and Taffy retreated to the common room to study it.

  “Yes! We gotcha, assholes!” Taffy said, after the two had found Field Street and examined it.

  “I’ll give Don something nice,” Dahlia said.

  “Not a groomer’s brush, like you sent last time? That shit gets old,” Taffy said.

  “No, something really nice.”

  “Not another bag of doggie treats!”

  “I’m serious; it’ll be very appropriate. Lakeisha, we need you,” Dahlia called. Normally, Lakeisha would have insisted the request come through Cedric, but circumstances were hardly ordinary.

  Lakeisha used the copying machine and then the intercom. When everyone had assembled in the common room, she passed out copies of the map.

  Dahlia stood up on the hearth, so they could all see her. She was wearing her black leather jumpsuit and was happily aware she was being admired. Melponeus was there; she could see his curls and reddish face in the corner. Good.

  “Thanks to Taffy, we’ve gotten a map of the tunnels,” Dahlia said when the silence was complete. “They run under the Fellowship headquarters, and if the leaders entered the tunnels after their attack against us, they may still be there. Has anyone here been down below the city in the last twenty years?”

  “I have,” said Melponeus. “I was in the tunnels five years ago, chasing an imp because ... well, it’s not relevant. There are more dead ends in the tunnels now than your map shows. The Fullmore Street tunnel is blocked with rubble at the intersection with Gill.” Pens moved over paper. “The Banner Street tunnel is divided in the middle. Someone built a bank aboveground, and in the process they made the tunnel impassable—though I’ve heard someone’s cut a hole in that wall.” Melponeus went on to list two more closed or abbreviated tunnels.

  “Thanks, Melponeus,” Dahlia said. “We owe you.”

  “Oh, I’ll collect,” he said, a gleam in his eye.

  It was a measure of Dahlia’s reputation that no one sniggered.

  Cedric strolled through, carrying a pipe and wearing a smoking jacket. Taffy rolled her eyes at Dahlia.