'He showed me what he meant to do to the city.'

'How?'

'He put it in my head. At first I just saw it in my dreams, but then I started seeing it when I was awake anytime that I wasn't bespelled by his puppet.'

'The female vampire,' I said.

He nodded and suddenly looked very unhappy. 'She mind-fucked me, and then she was beautiful and I couldn't help but want her. She mind-fucked me with his help, and then she fucked me for real, or made me fuck her.' He gave a bitter laugh.

'You had no choice, Henry; you were under their spell, literally.'

'Please call me Little Henry. Straight Henry was my dad.'

'Okay, Little Henry. Vampires can make humans do anything they want once they have your mind thoroughly rolled.'

'I remember pieces of what they did to me, and that was bad, but what they made me do was worse, and Pop, he ...' He looked away, shoulders hunching as if the memory were a blow.

'Don't try to remember today,' Nicky said.

Henry looked at him. 'The real stuff is hazy, or missing, but the dreams are crystal clear. They were his wish, his goal. He wants to turn everyone into a walking corpse like him. He wants to fill the city streets with walking dead that are faster, smarter, than regular zombies. You know how they say some people just want to watch the world burn?'

'Yeah,' Nicky said.

'Yeah,' I said.

'Well, he wants to watch it die.'

CHAPTER 74

The nurse, whose name was Brenda, found scrubs that fit and a hairbrush and a hair tie so that Little Henry could put all that hair back in a braid. She'd also brought him little slip-on booties. He stripped off the hospital gown so that he walked out with us in just the scrubs and boots. Nurse Brenda gazed on the tall muscled yummy of him without a shirt like she was viewing property with an eye to purchase. Little Henry didn't notice, but Nicky did. He and I exchanged looks, then smiled and looked away. It wasn't our job to match-make, and honestly right now Henry's mind wasn't thinking anything but revenge.

While we waited for SWAT I tried to call Edward, but wherever he was in the mountains there was no cell service. I walked a little distance from Henry so I could call Claudia then; our head of security needed to know that the Lover of Death wasn't dead and had a whole new level of power and crazy. Nicky stayed talking to Henry, so I didn't go too far; if I did Nicky would feel compelled to follow me.

Claudia answered on the second ring. 'You okay?'

Something in her voice made me say, 'Yeah, but your voice says that I shouldn't be.'

'Seamus is missing,' she said.

'Oh, motherfucker,' I said.

'What? That's your curse for special occasions. Do you know where Seamus is?'

'Maybe.' I told her that the vampire we were hunting was the Lover of Death.

'He's supposed to be dead,' she said.

'Vamps that jump bodies are hard to kill, and harder to make sure of the kill. Apparently, when I was taking care of business with the Mother of All Darkness, she tried to spill herself into him and use him as her escape. I was stronger than she'd planned and it didn't work, but it worked a little. He's gained power from what she did give him.'

'Just like you and Jean-Claude gained from it,' she said.

'Yeah, except that he seems to plan on using his new-found power level to raise as many flesh-eating zombies and rotting vampires as possible and turn them on the humans.'

'That's bad, but what does it have to do with Seamus?'

'The Lover of Death bit him, rolled his mind. I was able to use my connection to hyenas to help him fight it, and his ties to his vampire master probably helped him fight it better than Ares, but-'

She cut me off. 'But you thought Seamus was free of the mind control because the vamp that did it was dead.'

'I should have called you as soon as I suspected that the vamp wasn't dead, but I was trying to save one of our human victims and ... Oh, hell, Claudia I didn't think about Seamus until you said it.'

'You think the Lover of Death has control of Seamus.'

'Yes, I do.'

'Well, fuck,' she said.

'Yeah,' I said.

'The Harlequin may not be as good as advertised, but they are good, some of them very good, and Seamus is one of their best fighters.'

'What's his weapons skill? I haven't trained with him much; our schedules don't seem to overlap.'

'Don't try hand-to-hand with him, he's wicked fast, Anita. Fredo nicknamed him Water because he's that smooth and fast. You shoot better than he does, but you and he both like knives. Seamus beat Fredo in knife practice, not just cut him like you've managed, but beat him.'

'Holy shit,' I said.

'Yeah, Fredo is the knife guy. I've never seen anyone beat him like that before.'

'If we have to shoot him, then his vampire master may die with him,' I said.

'I know that, but unless you shoot him, you're going to lose, and so is Nicky. If Nicky can land a blow, he's stronger, but he's not faster, and he's not better with the martial arts. We were thinking of letting Seamus help teach the mixed martial arts class.'

'He's that good,' I said.

'I'm afraid so.'

'Well, doesn't this just suck,' I said.

'Anita, I need you to tell Nicky that Seamus is the hand-to-hand fighter that I'd least want to face for real. Make sure he understands not to mess around; if he gets a chance he must kill him, because there won't be a second chance.'

'I'll tell him,' I said.