Description: Burned 1 ERIC ALL A PART OF THE PLAN Vampires burn. It''s a rule. A blanket hit me from behind, smothering the flames, and I felt strong arms around me, patting out the more stubborn patches around my neck and shoulders. I pushed Talbot away and rubbed at the smoldering remnants of the sun''s wrath the same way a mortal man might dry himself after a shower. "You could have just turned into a mouse," Talbot said. "I would have carried you in from the car." Talbot''s a mouser. He''d probably tell you that I''m his vampire. A pet of sorts. Mousers are basically cats that can be humans when they feel like it. Talbot has been with me since El Segundo, when the world went crazy and I had to play the hero. He believes I have hidden depths. I think he''s deluded. I tossed the blanket on the floor and stared up at him. Talbot is bigger than me, over six feet tall, and he has better taste in clothes. He''s almost always wearing a bespoke suit, with well-tailored silks and satins setting off the dark color of his skin, the bright green of his eyes, and his bald head. I, on the other hand, have all my hair and prefer jeans and a T-shirt. Smoke rose off my T-shirt as I seated myself calmly in a metal folding chair, waiting for my burns to heal. "I forgot the sun was out," I said with a shrug. I''ve never been too good at keeping track of whether it''s day or night outside . . . which may sound funny coming from a person who catches fire if he gets it wrong, but it''s the way I am. When I died (okay, if we''re being picky, I was murdered), it was daytime when I rose as a vampire, so at least it''s not a new development or anything. I needed to keep it together. This was going to be The Big Day. With an exasperated sigh, I stopped worrying about having forgotten the sun and decided to blame it on the sunproof glass they have in the back of the squad cars in Void City. One of the perks I get is cop-chauffeur service; I''ll explain why later. If I ride around in a squad car too long, though, I forget why it''s so bright outside. Bright. It was bright inside the warehouse, too. The place was old, but the lights worked well. I closed my eyes, waiting for the last trace of pain to vanish with the burns. My mind doesn''t always work properly. It works better at night, but I still have good days and bad days. I needed today to be a good one. This was it. Day number one of my Big Plan. When I closed my eyes, my other senses kicked into overdrive on instinct. The sound of heartbeats came first. I''m always aware of them on some level, the heartbeats of those who have them. It''s worse when I''m hungry. I hadn''t fed yet, and there were a lot of heartbeats to hear. Talbot''s heart--a strong steady thumping; Magbidion''s--a fluttering weak sound; and all the cops who were in on at least this portion of my Big Plan . . . their hearts beat in different ways: harder, softer, faster, slower . . . as unique to me as a face or a voice. After the heartbeats, other sounds came into play. Outside the warehouse, I knew Sal was still sitting in the front seat of the squad car that had driven me here, wearing a portable radio, with one earbud tucked into the collar of his uniform and the other snaked up into his right ear. He and Little Carl have never been able to agree on a station, so he listens to an earbud and Carl listens to silence. Vampire hearing is good enough that I heard Sal''s favorite station as well as he could. Better, even. I don''t know how the station does it yet, but when the Veil of Scrythax, the mystical artifact that used to prevent mundane citizens from seeing or remembering encounters with the supernatural, got ripped to shreds last year, 100.6 FM (WVCT--Void City Talk Radio) kept broadcasting the same as it always has. Mundane listeners seem to hear Christian or sports talk programming, but the rest of us hear the never-ending jabber of Sly Imp: Void City''s demonic voice of the airwaves. The damned shock jock is distracting enough to make me forget about the sun, although apparently, that doesn''t take much. I''d been thinking about something he said, kind of a tagline of sorts: "In Void City, the vampires run the town, the cops are on the take, and the werewolves have found religion." Sly Imp''s voice caught my attention, and I focused in for a moment. If I recognized the background music, Denis Leary''s "Asshole," correctly, Sly was about to discuss me. "And what do we think of our new Lord and Master, the great and powerful raging erection that is Eric Courtney?" "Cue laugh track," I mumbled. And as if on my cue, the laugh track sounded. Who the hell still uses a laugh track? "I mean, is it just me, or if our fearless leader is going to fly around in his combat form killing things left, right, and sideways, does he really have to do it with his ''staff of office'' swinging in the breeze? We know it''s big, pal. You don''t have to wave it around out in the open like that. Save that thrill for the little woman back home. Am I right? Oh, oh, and speaking of the little woman . . ." I really need to put some pants on the ber vamp. A pair of shorts. Something. The ber vamp is my "big bad combat" mode: all leather wings and ebony claws. Real balls-out vampire badass mojo. Quite literally balls out in my case. I don''t know why I can shape-change into a mouse and back while keeping my clothes, but I always wind up naked when I''m the ber vamp. I tuned out Sly''s ongoing roast and concentrated on the task at hand. Lord Phillip, the former vampiric ruler of Void City, never had the kind of trouble I was having. Killing him had set loose such a world of shit that I was still dealing with it almost a year later. In my own defense, I hadn''t intended to take over. Lord Phillip had been a twisted freak, which was fine with me--or would have been, provided he kept out of my way. I''m not the sort of guy who runs around righting wrongs and slaying dragons. But Phil messed with Greta, my daughter. She''s adopted, one hell of a vampire, and can generally take care of herself, but if you mess with her, I''ll kill you, knock your ivory tower down, set it on fire, and slaughter all your friends. It''s a rule. Unfortunately, the act of following said rule put me in charge. I don''t like responsibility, but it''s not something I shirk, which is why my singed sorry ass was seated on but not sticking to (thanks to my blue jeans) the aforementioned folding chair, watching Captain Stacey in his office on the other side of town, through the eyes of one of my thralls. It had been almost a year since I''d knocked down Lord Phil''s Highland Towers and taken over, and this was a part of The Plan I couldn''t put off any longer. Like I said before, I had a plan. If you know me, you know the idea of me with a plan should scare the hell out of you. Maybe sometimes in the past I''ve been willfully ignorant, but I''m not stupid. Remember that bit about not shirking my duty? Keep it in mind. Step one of The Big Plan involved just that: doing my duty. It also involved Captain Stacey of the VCPD. Captain Stacey had been in charge of the VCPD since the late sixties. Well, mid- to late sixties. Shortly after my death, let''s say. He surely must have felt safe, protected, sitting there in his office. No mortal man would be a threat to him. His door wasn''t locked. His gun wasn''t even on his desk or at his side. I''m sure a being like him doesn''t feel the need for such things the way a mortal might. As a mouser, like Talbot, Stacey was nigh immortal, incredibly hard to kill, and his morals were, to say the least, mutable and open to negotiation. I mean, mousers basically have the same morals a cat has. Even so, there are good cats and bad cats. Stacey was a bad cat. The VCPD badge with his name on it meant he was part of the biggest gang in Void City. Every last cop was either crooked or kept under his mystic control by an ages-old deal with the Mages Guild. A thing like Stacey made the perfect public servant for Vampire High Society. For years I had no interest in him at all, even when he was hired to help capture me a few years ago. I''ve been historically willing to ignore all kinds of heinous crap as long as the other denizens of Void City stayed out of my way or were willing to offer a simple apology. That changed when I walked the Paths of the Dead to get my daughter back. Ever since, I''d been remembering some things. Things I was finding it harder and harder to ignore. Too many things, maybe. As a result, I''d been making plans and recruiting allies. Through the eyes of one of my newest allies, I watched Captain Stacey sitting at that desk. And I remembered it. It was a classic steel tanker desk. It brought with it flashes of memory: eating lunch with Marilyn, being intimate with her, looking at crime scene photos, drinking with Sal and Little Carl . . . Stacey couldn''t see me, of course, because I was in a warehouse all the way across town. How could I see him? Interesting question. Vampires can create a bond with humans, share a little of their power: The human generally does the vampire''s bidding and, in exchange, gets increased longevity and some measure of vampiric resilience and strength. They''re called thralls. As a rule, I don''t like having any because the whole "master" thing ma

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