Dead Ice

The man who was going to be the zombie’s co-star walked into frame. He was young and in great shape, down to washboard abs, which takes a hell of a lot of gym time and nutrition work to get and maintain. If the face matched the body, he could have been a movie star, but he was wearing one of those black leather hoods that covers the whole face except for the mouth. Even the eye-holes had mesh over them so the color and shape of his eyes were lost.

“Shit,” I said.

“What is it?” Manning said.

“She’s afraid.”

“It shows in her eyes,” Manning agreed.

I shook my head.

“Can you feel her fear?” Gillingham asked.

I nodded, but it was more than that. I could . . . hear her. “She’s praying. She’s praying for help. She’s praying to be saved.”

“You’re not a telepath,” Gillingham said. “How do you know that?”

“I’m not hearing what she’s thinking, I think I’m hearing her prayer, literally hearing her prayer.”

“Interesting,” Gillingham said.

“We’re losing people in the chat and we haven’t even started the sex yet. They don’t drop out this early, not in numbers like this,” Brent said.

“What’s happening then?” Manning asked.

“We started at thirty, and now we’re down to twenty . . . nineteen.”

Gillingham said, “The guy who was monitoring all of it on their end keeps typing Who are you? Who the hell are you? Why are you here?”

“I think he’s typing for the guy in the corner.”

“Who the hell are you? he’s typing now,” Gillingham said.

I could have moved my gaze by inches and read the screen, but I didn’t want to look away from her eyes. I could feel her. I didn’t want to lose that.

“Uh-oh,” Brent said.

“What’s uh-oh mean in this context?” Manning asked.

“I just got a private message from the monitor. They’re telling me to drop out, they’ll refund my money and give me a credit for another session, just drop out now.”

“Then just drop out,” Manning said.

“If we drop out, Anita’s energy stops and my cover is blown, but if we don’t drop out, then eventually everyone else will. . . .”

“And my energy will still be coming through so your cover is blown anyway,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” Manning said.

“Unfortunately,” Brent said, hesitating over the keyboard.

“Then answer his question,” Gillingham said.

“What question?” Brent asked.

“Tell him who is here.”

“The FBI?” Brent asked.

“Anita Blake, that’s the energy he’s picking up that’s making him frantic.”

“You okay with being outed to this nut job?” Brent asked.

“Nut job? Really?” I asked.

“I’ll give you the standard vocabulary that’ll go in my report later, right now decide whether you want this man, these people to know who you are.”

Manning said, “Once they know who you are, then they can find you, Blake. You’re all over the news right now.”

“Let them find me, that means we have a better chance of catching them.”

“Are you sure?” Manning asked.

“We have to decide soon, he’s gone past me in the queue. If everyone else drops out first, then we’ve lost him.”

“A bold front is our only chance,” Gillingham said.

“Do it,” I said.

“Bold it is,” Brent said, and typed on the keyboard. In between the repeated “Who is this?” he answered, “Anita Blake, who is this?”

“Private message again: What do you want?”

“Is it too bold to say, your head on a pike?” I asked, still looking into the zombie’s eyes.

“That’s a little aggressive. The longer we keep him on, the better chance we have of our techs tracing this to its source.”

“You mean where they’re filming?” I asked.

“If we’re lucky, very lucky, yes.”

“He’s asking the question again, what do you want?”

“Type: You know what I want.”

“Really?” Brent said.

“Just type it,” Manning said.

I heard the keys click. “Sent,” Brent said.

“No, I don’t, he says.”

“Liar, tell him liar,” I said.

Brent typed it.

“We’re not breaking any laws with the videos, he says,” Brent read.

“Tell him, not with the videos, but where are you getting your zombies?”

“He says, We have someone raise them for us.”

I put my other hand on the corner of the film where he had to be sitting, and I flexed the connection to the zombie and there it was, a line of power flaring so bright. “Tell him, he’s lying, he raised the zombie.”

“We’ll kill whoever told you, he typed.”

“Anita, try and make the zombie do something that he’s not ordering,” Gillingham said.

“I can’t do that to someone else’s zombie, and I sure as hell can’t do it over a computer like this.”

“Stop saying can’t and try, damn it. Don’t you understand, if he thinks someone ratted them out, they’ll start killing people that they suspect.”