Affliction ab-22

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Deputy Al went out with all the officers who could be spared to hunt up some of the more isolated people who weren’t answering their phones and hadn’t been seen in a while. Now that the warrant was officially mine I could include our guards in the investigation. It was a clause in the Preternatural Branch that had come into place after several marshals died because they were alone and hunting very bad things but couldn’t involve civilians. When they did, some of the civilians had been charged with assault and in one case murder, because it had happened in states where self-defense wasn’t as broadly defined in that individual state’s laws. Most people don’t realize how different some laws are from state to state. We are still the United States of America, and the founders of our country worded it that way for a reason. We’re supposed to be a bunch of individual entities under the umbrella of America, not just one entity known as America, or that’s how it was originally set up. The states may not be the nearly separate countries that the Founding Fathers thought they’d be, but legally there can be some surprising differences. In the days before I had a badge but was still expected to carry out legal executions, I read up on the laws of individual states, a lot. The Supreme Court had ruled in favor of some of the civilians who had saved the marshals’ lives, but they’d been in jail until that time, so a new ‘law’ had been piggybacked onto the Marshals Service. It was really an old tradition given new language and new legality. As the warrant holder I could recruit civilians if I thought they had skills that would help me stay alive and help me keep civilian casualties lower.

  It was basically a legal version of the sheriff standing out in front of the saloon in the Old West and saying, ‘Let’s form a posse and go get these guys.’ It meant that I could have Nicky with me officially.

  I found a little privacy in a corner of the room as everyone cleared out and called him to join me; he’d asked, ‘Do you want Dev?’

  ‘I think Dev has had enough of my day job for a while,’ I said.

  ‘Do you have a preference of who I bring with me?’

  ‘I don’t know who all is here now. Lisandro said that they’d only brought the best; with Claudia in charge I believe it.’

  ‘So let Claudia pick?’ he asked.

  ‘As long as her choice isn’t someone that you or I don’t like to work with, and it has to be someone who works well with the police.’

  ‘I’ll see who Claudia wants to send. Do you have a preference where Dev goes in the rotation?’

  ‘Do you? He and you partner a lot for guard duty,’ I asked.

  Either he made a small pleased sound, or I could hear him smile over the phone. ‘I love that you asked my opinion, when you could just make your Bride suck it up.’

  I smiled. ‘I guess I’m just not that kind of Groom. Honestly, until you made that remark in the hospital I thought you and Dev were good friends.’

  ‘I don’t know if I can explain it to you, but he’s a friend up to a point. When he lost it after the basement fight, his status in my friend list went down.’

  ‘Because he was weak?’ I made it a question.

  ‘And because if that fight bothered him, then he doesn’t want to know most of what I’ve spent my life doing. You can’t really be friends with someone who only likes parts of you. I can be work friends with Dev, and share you with him like in the shower, that was fun, but he couldn’t stomach who I really am, Anita. I know that now.’

  Edward came up to me. ‘Can I put a vote in?’

  I nodded. ‘Ted wants to put his two cents’ worth in,’ I said.

  ‘I’m cool with that,’ Nicky said.

  I looked at Edward, raising my eyebrows. ‘Who do you want to play with?’

  ‘I don’t know everyone they brought with them, but if I can’t have Bobby Lee or Fredo, I’ll take Lisandro. If they brought him, Socrates would be okay, too. I’d say Claudia, but she’s not sure she likes me.’

  ‘Claudia’s never said she doesn’t like you, at least not to me,’ I said.

  ‘She suspects I get you into more danger than I help you get out of.’

  Nicky chimed in. ‘I don’t want Claudia. She’s great in a fight, but she’s not comfortable around me.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m a big, dominant male werelion; after what happened with your last lover who fit that description, she doesn’t trust me.’

  He very delicately hadn’t said Haven’s name, because he knew having to kill him had hurt me in ways that I was still discovering. Claudia had never liked Haven, and when the shit hit the fan she’d helped me kill him, after he shot Nathaniel and her and killed one of the other werelions. It had been a mess.

  ‘Okay, I guess I can understand that,’ I said, ‘but I’d rather not use Lisandro.’

  ‘He’s good at the job,’ Nicky said.

  ‘Yeah, but he almost died last time he came out on a case. He’s the only one on the list who’s married and has kids. I’d rather not have to explain to his wife and kids why they’re down one husband and father.’

  ‘Lisandro knows the risks,’ Nicky said.

  Edward said, ‘If you leave Lisandro home when it gets dangerous, then you’ve effectively ruined him as a guard.’

  I sighed. ‘Maybe, but humor me, okay?’

  ‘If you’re talking to me, just tell me what you want and I have to humor you, remember,’ Nicky said.

  ‘I remember, Nicky. I was talking to Ted.’

  Edward said, ‘Is Socrates in town?’

  ‘Socrates is good,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, but he doesn’t trust me, makes it hard to work together.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he trust you?’

  ‘I’m a bad guy and he’s an ex-cop,’ Nicky said.

  ‘You’re not a bad guy,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I am, Anita.’

  ‘We’ll agree to disagree,’ I said.

  He gave that deep chuckling laugh. ‘No, Socrates’s cop sense goes crazy around me, and it should. I’m exactly what he thinks I am. I just don’t hide it as good as Ted.’

  I started to say, But Ted isn’t a bad guy either, and then stopped myself. Bad and good were relative terms when it came to my best bud and to some of my lovers. I took a deep breath and let it go. It was a philosophical problem for another day.

  ‘No, of the people they brought I’d prefer Lisandro or Domino. Pride would be okay, but he was raised and trained with Dev. He might have the same issue in a rough fight. Ethan is good, but I don’t know if he can handle your job either,’ Nicky said.

  ‘Pride is here, really? Our other golden tiger guard hasn’t ever come out on an away job,’ I said.

  ‘Apparently Claudia volunteered him and he didn’t say no,’ Nicky said.

  ‘Who else?’ I asked.

  Edward came close and said, ‘Anita, let Lisandro do his job.’

  ‘I just remember how I felt when I thought we’d gotten him killed last time out. All I could think was I didn’t want to tell his kids and his wife.’

  ‘I have kids, and I’m Donna’s husband except for a legal piece of paper, but you aren’t leaving me home.’

  I looked up into those blue eyes. He was saying something warm, but the eyes had bled to winter sky pale. I realized we were the last in the room, except for Hatfield. She wanted to ride with us, to learn the job the only way that seemed to work well, in the company of someone else who already knew how to do it. She was standing across the room, giving us privacy. Everyone else had taken their share of the addresses to check and left. Edward didn’t have to pretend to be Ted when it was just me.

  ‘Compromise,’ I said. ‘We bring Lisandro and Socrates. I’ll talk to him about toning down his spider-sense about your thugginess.’

  ‘You really think having Socrates along will keep Lisandro safe?’ Edward asked.

  I shrugged.

  ‘You have to let him do his job, Anita.’

  ‘No, no, I don’t.’ I looked at him.

  He frowned at me. ‘You can’t be lik
e this just because people are married and have kids. Your guards are going to have a life outside of their job, and that’s going to include more kids eventually.’

  ‘I know that,’ I said, but I sounded defensive even to myself.

  ‘Then stop letting your issues with your own childhood mess with Lisandro’s ability to do his job,’ Edward said.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Anita,’ he said, and just looked at me.

  I wanted to pout, or get unreasonably angry, all things I’d done for years as a coping mechanism. ‘Fine, but I still want a third guard to come with them.’

  ‘Will you trust Nicky to pick the third guard?’ Edward asked.

  I sighed and then said, ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Me, too,’ he said.

  I looked at him. ‘Really?’ I said, and didn’t try to keep the surprise out of my face.

  ‘Lisandro and who?’ Nicky asked.

  ‘Edward and I agree that you can pick whoever else comes with the two of you.’

  ‘You used his real name,’ Nicky said.

  ‘Sorry, he just surprised me.’

  ‘What’d he do to surprise you that badly?’

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ I said. ‘Just be ready. We’ll pick you up on the way out of town.’

  ‘Will do. Love you,’ he said.

  ‘I love you, too,’ I said, and it was automatic, because I was still studying Edward’s face. When Nicky had hung up, I said to Edward, ‘You trust Nicky’s judgment that much?’

  He gave one nod.

  ‘High damn praise,’ I said.

  ‘You know me, Anita; I like working with sociopaths who are willing to do anything to get the job done.’

  ‘What’s that say about me?’

  He grinned, and it was all back to good-ol’-boy Ted. ‘You’ll never be as good a sociopath as I am, Anita, and neither of us will be as good at it as Nicky. It means he won’t let emotion color his choice. It isn’t that his feelings are hurt about Socrates not trusting him, it’s that the lack of trust makes Socrates hesitate to follow Nicky’s lead in a fight, and that makes for a bad team, and more than any sport, combat means you need a good working team.’

  I stopped arguing, because Edward trusted Nicky. It was unprecedented that he had that much faith in one of my lovers. He liked Micah and Nathaniel. He didn’t dislike Jean-Claude, but that wasn’t the same thing as trusting any of them. I shoved it all away, put in a box to look at later, because we were running behind. I admitted to myself that the reason I’d argued about Lisandro had been about me losing my mother when I was eight. I knew how much damage that had done to me, and I didn’t want to do the same thing to Lisandro’s kids; there, that was the truth. I hated when my own issues interfered with me doing my job. They’d gotten in the way of my personal life for years, but my job was usually safe from my neuroses – well, most of the time.

  We got Hatfield and went for Edward’s SUV. I told her we were picking up some deputies on the way out of town. She didn’t argue, just asked, ‘Are we picking up the two blond men?’

  ‘One of them,’ I said.

  ‘And new friends?’ she asked.

  ‘New to you,’ Edward said.

  ‘I look forward to meeting them,’ she said.

  I glanced in the rearview to see if she was being sarcastic, but her face looked open and honest.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘Just trying to decide if you meant that.’

  ‘If there’s anyone, or anything, that can help me do my job better, I’m all for it. I got those people killed last night. I can’t bring them back, but I can get better and not do it again.’

  ‘You didn’t kill them, Hatfield,’ I said.

  ‘Neither of you would have stored the body parts in the morgue of a hospital. If either of you had been in charge last night, all five victims from last night would be alive now. Tell me how my ignorance didn’t cost them their lives.’

  I didn’t know how to answer her.

  ‘We all make mistakes until we know better,’ Edward said.

  ‘Exactly, and I’m going to follow you both around like your fucking shadows and learn all I can before you leave.’

  I wasn’t sure I wanted Hatfield following me that closely, but I couldn’t tell her no. Edward and I exchanged a look. He didn’t tell her no either. I guess we had a third wheel. I wondered how she’d like Lisandro and whoever else Nicky picked. For that matter, I wondered what they’d think of Hatfield.

  59

  We were at the third house on our list. If someone had come down the two-wheel track by accident and driven past, the house would have looked ordinary from the front. You had to get out and walk around to the back of the house to see the broken windows, the shattered door, its pieces scattered around a small deck that had a view off the side of the mountain that people would pay millions for in other towns farther north. They’d tear down the little house and put up something more elegant and a lot more expensive, but the view wouldn’t be one bit better off a bigger, fancier deck than it was from the little one.

  The mountains marched off and off until the front range rose in white, snow-capped peaks, stark and so beautiful that it looked like a calendar shot instead of someone’s back porch view. I took in deep, even breaths of the crisp, clean air, but took too deep a breath because I caught the whiff of what lay inside. The elderly couple had been eaten by zombies. Had they been bled by vampires first? There was no way to tell from the scattered bones and what little flesh was left on them. It was amazing how bad just a little bit of meat smelled after a few days. If the bodies had been dragged outside, the scavengers would have cleared up the mess by now, but the wrecked furniture had partially blocked the door and even the windows. The windows I thought the couple had tried to board up with the tall dresser, but the door … why and how had the kitchen table gotten in the wrecked doorway? If the couple put it there, then why were they ripped apart and eaten? We’d had to move the table to get inside ourselves.

  Nicky came to stand beside me. ‘You saw worse than this last night,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Why is this bothering you so much, then?’

  It was a fair question. I thought about it. ‘Did you see their pictures?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘They have all their pictures up. You can watch their family grow from babies to grandkids. They loved each other. You can see it in every damn picture, and after forty years of marriage they died in terror and … it just seems like I’ve spent too many years seeing the bad end of a lot of happy.’

  ‘Pictures don’t tell the truth, Anita. Anyone can lie long enough to have a picture taken.’

  I looked at him and realized he was looking out at the view. I knew he’d grown up on a big cattle ranch somewhere, but I’d never asked where. Had there been mountains like this where he grew up?

  ‘You think they lied in all those pictures and they actually hated each other?’ I asked.

  He smiled, still looking out at the view. ‘No, you’re probably right that they were great people. They raised their family and were the kind of parents that Hallmark commercials tell you everyone has, and yet the abusive bitch who cut my eye out is still alive, she’s in jail, but she’s alive. The kids in those pictures … I thought childhoods like that were fiction. I thought everybody was abused like me, that it was this big secret that nobody said out loud, but it happened to everybody, and then one day I realized that it wasn’t everybody. It was just my shitty family.’

  I wrapped my arms around him as much as our both being in body armor and packing more weapons than most people would have thought necessary would allow. It was a lot cozier out of work stuff, but in that moment touching was better than not touching.

  ‘When I see pictures like that, it pisses me off. It makes me feel cheated. Stupid, huh?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘not stupid at all.’

  He looked down at me. ‘I can feel that y
ou mean that. I think if I couldn’t feel what you’re really feeling, I wouldn’t believe in it.’

  ‘In what?’ I asked.

  ‘In us, in love. If I didn’t have to feel your emotions, I could have kept convincing myself that none of it was real, and everybody was lying, at least a little. That nothing could be as good as those pictures in there, but you won’t let me believe that. I feel how sad you are, how much you want to make me feel better, and because it’s my job to make you feel better, I have to feel happier, because you want me to feel happier so much.’

  ‘When you love someone, their happiness is important to you,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘I’m beginning to understand that.’

  Edward came out to join us. Hatfield trailed after him. Lisandro and Seamus came last. Seamus was tall, dark, and handsome, and very African, which made his name jarring. Someone who looked like he should have been hunting lions with a spear shouldn’t have been named the Irish equivalent of James. He blinked rich, brown eyes at me. If hyenas hadn’t had slit pupils, more like you think a reptile would have, you could have mistaken the eyes for human, but the pupils were wrong and the color was odd. It wasn’t coppery red like the werebear Goran, but it wasn’t human brown either. I wasn’t sure I could explain the difference, but I was beginning to know it when I saw it.

  I’d been informed that the vampire, Jane, that he called master had made him his animal to call hundreds of years ago and had forced him into animal form at one point until his eyes had never changed back. They, like Micah’s, were stuck. It just seemed worse that Seamus’s master had done it. I’d helped Micah escape from Chimera by killing him. There was no escape for Seamus, because if his master died, very likely he’d die, too. He wouldn’t have been my choice for rounding out our little party of crime busters. It wasn’t his fighting skills I questioned, because I’d seen him in the practice ring. He was eerily graceful for such a tall, long-limbed man. Fredo had described him as ‘dark water,’ because of how liquidly he moved. The nickname had stuck and some of the guards called him Water. He didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t seem to mind anything. He was a big, dark, graceful killing machine who seemed to have fewer emotions than all the other sociopaths.