"Laurell K. Hamilton - Anita Blake 12 - Incubus Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

how wide his eyes were made me wonder if this was his first vampire kill. Was he
worried that the victim would rise and try to munch on him? I could have calmed his
fears, because I knew this one would never rise. She’d been drained to death by a
group of vamps. That won’t make you one of them. In fact, the act is guaranteed to
give the vamps their fun and not to make the vic one of them. I’d seen this once
before. I hoped like hell it wasn’t another master vampire gone rogue. The last one
had purposely left vics where we could find them, in an attempt to get the new laws
that gave vampires legal rights repealed. Mr. Oliver had believed that vampires were
monsters, and if they were given legal rights, they’d spread too fast, eventually
turning the entire human race into vampires. Then who would everybody feed off of?
Yeah, it would take hundreds of years for vampirism to spread to that degree, but
the really old vampires take the long view. They can afford to, they’ve got the time.
I knew it wasn’t Mr. Oliver again, because I’d killed him. I’d crushed his heart,
and no matter how many times Dracula might rise in old movies, Oliver was well and
truly dead. I could guarantee it. Which meant we had a new group of nuts on our
hands, and they could have an entirely new motive for killing. Hell, maybe it was
personal. Vampires were legal citizens now, which meant they could have grudges
just like humans.
 But somehow it didn’t feel personal. Don’t ask me to explain it, but it didn’t.
Dolph saw me coming toward him. He didn’t smile, or say hi, because one, it was
Dolph, and two, he wasn’t completely happy with me. He wasn’t happy with the
monsters lately, which rubbed off on me because I was way too intimate with the
monsters.
Still, convincing his son not to become a vampire had earned me brownie points.
The fact that Dolph had just gotten off of a leave without pay, with an informal
warning that if he didn’t shape up, he’d be suspended, had also mellowed him out.
Frankly, I’d take whatever I could get. Dolph and I were friends, or I’d thought we
were. We were both a little unsure where we stood right now.
“I need to move the Dumpsters to look at the body. I also need to move the body
around to look for more bite marks, or whatever. Can I do that without screwing the
crime scene up?”
He looked at me, and there was something in his face that said, clearly, he was not
happy to have me here. He started to say something, glanced around at the other
detectives, the uniforms, the crime-scene techs, and beyond that to the waiting
ambulance, shook his head, and motioned me off to one side. I could feel people’s
gazes follow us as we moved away. All of the detectives there knew that Dolph had
dragged me up a flight of stairs at a crime scene. When I said manhandled, I wasn’t
exaggerating. God knows what the stories said now, probably that he’d hit me,
which he hadn’t, but what he’d done had been bad enough. Bad enough I could
have pressed charges and won.
He leaned over and spoke low. “I don’t like you being here.”
“You called me,” I said. God, I did not want to fight with him tonight.
He nodded. “I called, but I need to know that you don’t have a conflict of interest
here.”
I frowned up at him. “What do you mean? What conflict of interest?”
“If it’s a vamp kill, then it was someone that belongs to your boyfriend.”
“It’s nice that you said if it’s a vamp kill, but if you mean Jean-Claude, then it
might not be his people at all.”
“Oh, that’s right, you got two vampire boyfriends now.” His voice was ugly.
“You want to fight each other, or fight crime? Your choice,” I said.