‘Get your animals out of here, Blake!’ Rickman yelled it; he wasn’t that angry, he just wanted everyone within earshot to hear. He was full of an I-told-you-so self-satisfaction. It masqueraded as righteous fury, but he was too pleased with himself for that.
‘They aren’t animals, Rickman,’ I said, my voice calm.
One of the uniform officers said, ‘Are they wereanimals?’
‘Yeah, all of them are,’ Rickman said.
‘How can you tell?’ the officer asked. His eyes were a little wide, which made him look even younger than he was. Perfect.
‘I can just tell,’ Rickman said.
I whispered to Dev and Nicky, ‘Whatever happens, stay out of it. Don’t do anything that feeds this.’
Nicky gave a small nod. Dev said, ‘Okay, boss.’
‘If you want to whisper sweet nothings to your fur-bangers, do it somewhere else,’ Rickman shouted; he was moving up on us, on me, trying to use his height to intimidate.
I was calm but made sure my voice carried. ‘First, bullshit, Rickman, you know they’re lycanthropes because I told you. Second, they aren’t animals, they’re people.’
‘Your last pet killed Baker and tore Billings’s fucking hand off!’ Rickman towered over me, shouting into my face.
We had a crowd gathering around us. There were mutterings of, ‘They don’t get to come in here.’ ‘Get them out of here.’ ‘Animals.’ ‘They’re monsters.’
‘First, he wasn’t my pet, he was a Marine. Second, he was bespelled by a vampire just like some of the other officers,’ I said.
‘He wasn’t an officer’ – Rickman spat it in my face – ‘he was a fucking animal!’
I wiped the spittle off my face as I smiled up at Rickman. I didn’t want to smile. It was an involuntary expression, one that usually preceded me doing something unpleasant and usually violent. I was angry. I controlled it, but the smile most unpleasantly showed it.
‘What the hell are you smiling at, Blake?’ he yelled.
I have no excuse for what I did next; I deliberately stepped into Rickman. I didn’t hurt him; I even kept my hands at my sides, so that the body armor under our shirts was all that barely brushed against each other, but I understood violence and men. That one small movement was an escalation. I’d touched a man who was leaning over me, spitting his rage in my face; the lightest touch can tip that into something physical. A lot of women don’t understand the rules, that most fights among men start like dogfights with trash talk and body language and that one delicate brush against him went through his adrenaline-pumped body like a jolt of electricity, sharp, nearly painful. To his anger, his body, I might as well have hit him.
We were too close for him to swing at me, so he pushed me hard enough that I stumbled back from him. I thought about falling on purpose, but I debated too long and lost the chance to make him look like a bully, but when someone is that angry you get other chances.
I said, ‘You fight like a girl.’
He swung at me, and no matter how stupid he seemed, he was a cop and had been one long enough to make detective, which meant he knew how to fight. I was still fast enough and good enough to block the blow, but I was also fast enough and good enough to take the hit. I needed to show Rickman for what he was.
His fist connected solid on my cheek, and I went down. Rickman was just human, but he was six feet of in-shape human, and he was a cop; they know how to hit, because sometimes their lives depend on putting someone down and making sure they stay there. I ended up on my ass on the floor, my head ringing with the blow. I staggered to my feet before my head had cleared, because one rule in a fight is that you get to your feet as soon as you can. The only thing I could have done from the floor was dislocate his knee with a kick. I wanted more options than crippling him, so I got to my feet and faced him hands up, already in a stance, weight springy and even, slightly on the balls of my feet so I could move.
Rickman was faster than he looked, because he had another fist headed my way. This time I blocked it with my forearm and hit him with my other fist in the side of the body. I pivoted on my feet, throwing my weight into the blow and twisting my fist at the end just like you do when you work the heavy bag. I did what I’d trained to do, but it had been years since I’d fought a normal human. Rickman had hit me full out, and I returned the favor, but I forgot that I was stronger than any human being of my size and sex. I forgot that I carried multiple strains of lycanthropy and had metaphysical ties to vampires. I just hit him and forgot everything but making the blow count.
I felt his ribs give, heard a low-pitched crack as something broke, and knew it wasn’t anything on me. Then there was a wall of men in uniform separating us, pushing us back from each other.
I expected to hear Rickman cursing me, but there were no yells over the crowd. I spotted a familiar face among the men pushing me back; Officer Bush had a hand on my shoulder and was trying to divide his attention between me and the men behind him. The right side of his face had bloomed into amazing bruises. Him I’d been able to knock out when the vampire mind-fucked him. I had a moment of regret so sharp that it took my breath away, because I had one of those ridiculous thoughts that guilt will give you. Why hadn’t I tried to knock Ares out? Answer: Once the change begins, that kind of shit doesn’t work. In fact, it can make things worse, because you can knock out the human but leave the beast more in control. Logically I knew that, but regret isn’t about logic, it’s about emotion, and that’s got no logic to it.
I stood in a little bubble of isolation even with Bush and others touching me, holding me back as if I were fighting to get free. I wasn’t struggling to get to Rickman. The fight was over as far as I was concerned. The only reason there’d been a fight at all had been my emotions about losing Ares. Motherfucking son of a bitch, I knew better than this.
Bush grinned down at me. ‘You pack quite a punch, Marshal Blake.’
‘Hey, you were going all vampire-controlled on us, I had to do something.’
‘Not me,’ he said, ‘the detective. They’re saying you broke one of his ribs.’
‘It’s only a floating rib,’ I said, ‘they bust up easier than the ones higher up.’
A plainclothes officer with a head full of unruly black hair said, ‘How’s your hand, Marshal?’
I flexed my right hand and nothing hurt. ‘I’m fine.’
He smiled, flashing a dimple to one side of a nice mouth. His eyes were a nice, solid brown, not too dark, not too pale. ‘You’re going to need ice on your face, though.’
It had hurt when Rickman hit me, but it wasn’t until the new detective said something that it started to ache. The fact that it hurt this much with my healing abilities meant Rickman had intended to hurt me badly. I felt less bad about the rib thing.
‘I’m MacAllister, Detective Robert MacAllister; friends call me Bobby.’
I wanted to ask if we were friends, but comments like that were taken as either hostile or flirting, so I took it for what it was. ‘Glad to meet you, Detective, Bobby. I’m Anita.’ I said it on automatic, my attention on the cluster of men I could see through Bush’s and MacAllister’s chests. I felt separate from it all, distant and almost floating. Fuck, I was in shock. How could I be in shock from a puny fight like this?
Dev was at my side. He touched my face, gently, turning so he could see the mark. ‘If you keep ordering us to stay out of the fights, all the other bodyguards are going to make fun of us.’
That made me smile, which was probably his goal. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’
Nicky moved up beside us. ‘You did just get out of the hospital.’
I turned to look at him. What I could see of his face through the fall of his hair was set in bored, stoic lines, but I realized that I’d ordered him to stay out of the fight no matter what. Would he have been forced to watch someone hurt me badly, try to kill me, and been helpless to help me, because I’d given him a direct order? I wasn’t sure, and I should have thought of that before I
spoke. I felt off my game.
I reached my left hand out to him and he wrapped his bigger hand around mine. I didn’t normally hold hands with my lovers when they were being bodyguards, but it was the best I could do to apologize for making it impossible for him to do his job, maybe, by not thinking my words through. I should have been able to know if what I said had crippled his ability to guard me that much, but I couldn’t seem to think my way through the maze in my head. His hand was warm and real in mine. It helped.
He smiled, and that was enough to make me happy that I held his hand even in front of the cops.
Bush said, ‘Hey, Nicky, does the marshal ever let you guys actually protect her?’
Nicky grinned at him. ‘Every once in a while.’
‘Naw,’ Dev said, ‘she’s usually protecting us.’
Bush looked up at the taller man, as if waiting for the joke, but something in Dev’s face stopped him and made him frown instead. He might have asked if we were kidding, but someone came up behind us who made Bush stand at the cop’s version of attention. MacAllister was suddenly all serious. The other officers cleared out around us as if we were all suddenly contagious. Whoever was behind me was someone in charge. They weren’t in charge of me, but I was in their house, and that meant …
‘Marshal Blake, Detective Rickman, I need to see you both in my office, now.’
With a serious face, MacAllister leaned over and whispered, ‘Called into the captain’s office first time you step inside; fast work.’
‘About par for me,’ I said, and then turned with a professional face, but a hand going up to the blossoming bruise on my cheek. I’d let Rickman hit me so that everyone wouldn’t get all hysterical about Dev and Nicky being wereanimals, because nothing undercuts someone’s accusations like being made to look unprofessional and a bully. It had worked, but a sympathy bruise is a sympathy bruise, and I was going to see if this one could be multipurpose. I was going to milk it, just in case the captain was upset about me breaking one of his detectives.
41
Captain Jonas was a large African American man who looked like he’d probably played high school ball, maybe college, but the desk job had started to round out his middle to the point where I wondered if he had to pass the same health standards as his patrol officers. He sat behind his desk glaring at us. The ‘us’ didn’t include Rickman. He was on the way to the hospital. The ‘us’ was U.S. Marshal Susan Hatfield, Edward, and me. Apparently my doing something bad enough to get called on the carpet by Jonas had renewed Hatfield’s fighting spirit and she was trying to get me kicked off the case again.
Hatfield was about five foot six, which made her almost as tall as Edward. He gained about two inches from his cowboy boots and she was in the same flat treaded boots as I was, so she seemed shorter, or he seemed taller. Her chestnut-brown hair was back in a small, neat ponytail. She moved her head as she gesticulated angrily, and the overhead lights picked out deep red highlights in her hair. She was about two tones off from going from chestnut to a nice deep auburn. She was thin, but it was a thinness that came from genetics and working out, not starving herself. Her forearms had lean muscle on them as she gestured, and what I could see of her upper arms wasn’t bulk. She was all long, lean muscle, almost mannish hips, and small breasts. She was one of those women who managed to look delicate and feminine without having the curves to go with the triangular face. Her chin was a little sharp for my tastes, but then I wasn’t shopping to date her, I was just noticing things while she ranted. She was basically accusing me of being too close to the monsters to make good choices. I wasn’t really listening, because I’d heard it all before, and I was a little tired of hearing it from anyone. I just stood there and let her words wash over me like white noise.
It was Edward saying, ‘Anita, Anita, the captain is talking to you,’ that made me blink and pay attention again.
I looked at Edward standing a little behind and to the other side of Hatfield, and then I looked at Jonas behind his desk. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t hear what you said.’
‘Are we boring you, Blake?’ he asked.
‘I’ve heard the song and dance before, sir.’
Edward stepped forward in his best good-ol’-boy Ted persona. ‘There’s a beaut of a bruise blossoming out on Anita’s face. I think she got her chimes rung pretty good when Rickman hit her.’
‘Are you making excuses for her?’ Jonas asked.
‘No, sir, just pointing out that she just got released from the hospital and she may heal like a son of a bitch, but the healing isn’t perfect or instantaneous. I’m just wondering if she’s more hurt than she’s letting on.’
Jonas narrowed his eyes at Edward and then looked back at me. ‘You hurt, Blake?’
‘My face hurts,’ I said, but my voice was as empty of emotion as Hatfield’s had been full of it.
‘I can’t see the bruise from here. Turn so I can.’
I turned to give him the right side of my face where the throbbing was beginning to spread into the beginnings of a really nice headache. It put me looking at Hatfield, who glared back at me.
I heard Jonas’s chair slide back. ‘It’s swelling a lot for just a bruise.’ He’d come around the desk so he could see it better. He pursed his lips, scowling. ‘Ricky hit you just on the bone there. You think he cracked the bone?’
‘I didn’t hear it break,’ I said.
‘How bad does it hurt?’
‘Not bad enough to be broken, I don’t think.’
‘You had broken bones?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So you know what it feels like,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir, I do.’
He let out a big huff of air. ‘You need some ice on it at least before it swells into your eye. Can’t send you out looking beat to hell.’ He went to his door, opened it, and yelled out at someone. ‘Need an ice bag and some towels wrapped around it.’ He seemed to expect it would get done, because he closed the door and went back to sit at his desk. He steepled his fingers, elbows resting on his stomach, because he’d gained too much weight to use the chair arms for it. It looked like a habitual gesture from before the stomach came on. He looked at us over his fingers.
‘Marshal Hatfield holds the warrant of execution on these vampires, and she wants you and Marshal Forrester to mind your own damn business.’
‘That much I heard,’ I said.
‘Technically, I’m not in charge of the three of you – you’re federal – but we’re the local PD who will be backing your move. Hatfield here is the local executioner. I know her. Why should I give either of you any consideration?’
‘If we just needed to kill the vampires, fine,’ I said. ‘Wait until dawn and then chain them to a metal gurney with some holy objects and stake their asses, but we want information from them, and for that we need them alive.’
‘They aren’t alive!’ Hatfield said, and there was way too much emotion in that sentence. She was one of those, a vampire hater. It was sort of like giving a Ku Klux Klan member a badge and a license to kill the racial group of his choice, and could get just as nasty.
‘Legally, they are,’ Edward said in a friendly, almost joking voice.
Hatfield turned on him with an accusing finger and said, ‘Of course you’d defend Blake; you’re sleeping with her.’
‘Hatfield,’ Jonas said, and the word was sharp.
She turned to the captain, and underneath the anger was uncertainty plain enough for all of us to see.
‘Actually,’ Edward said, ‘I’m defending the law, not Marshal Blake. Legally the vampires in custody have rights as citizens.’
‘The only reason I couldn’t kill them tonight was because of the law that she’ – and she pointed a finger at me without really looking at me – ‘helped create.’
I resisted the urge to grab her finger and break it as it pointed in my face, but her face stayed toward Edward. ‘If you kill the two vampires we have, then what, Hatfield?’
/> She finally deigned to look at me. ‘Then we’d have two less vampires walking around.’
‘So you’re more about killing the vampires than solving cases,’ I said.
‘Once they’re dead, it is solved,’ she said.
I looked at Jonas. ‘The two vampires in custody only went missing as humans about a month ago, or that’s what the locals have told me. I’d come down here tonight to read over the files, but are they about a month missing?’
‘About,’ Jonas said.
‘So who made them vampires? Who made the rotting vampires that we killed in the woods?’
‘The bastard that runs the bloodsuckers in this city made them!’ Hatfield said, her voice strident and just this side of yelling.
‘They were rotting vampires. That means that your Master of the City couldn’t have made them, because he’s not a rotter.’
‘They’re all walking corpses, Blake; they all rot in the end.’
‘Everyone rots in the end, Hatfield,’ I said.
‘Fredrico has disavowed all knowledge of the vampires in the woods,’ Jonas said.
‘Of course he has,’ Hatfield said. ‘What else could he say? That he lost control of some of his bloodsuckers and they slaughtered people?’
‘Entire families are missing,’ I said. ‘Vampires don’t take out families. It’s illegal to make children into vampires.’
‘I’ve killed kid vampires,’ she said.
‘How many?’ I asked.
She looked sullen and finally muttered, ‘Two.’
‘They were older than they looked, though, weren’t they?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked.
‘I mean they looked like kids, but they weren’t,’ I said.
‘They were kids,’ she said, and sounded so certain.
‘Did you talk to them at all?’ I asked.
‘Talk to them? Talk to them? Who talks to the vampires? Oh, wait, you do, and a hell of a lot more than just talk.’
Edward said, ‘Have you spoken to any of the vampires before you killed them?’
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