Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I didn’t try to argue with him. I hadn’t realized it was a hair. I just said, “It doesn’t mean it was your uncle’s hair. Hell, if you share a washer and dryer with someone, you can get trace evidence on your sheets and then it transfers to you. Not all fiber and hair mean anything.” I was babbling at him, trying to get his energy to calm down without me having to add to it, because if Livingston could feel just Bobby, I wasn’t sure what he’d think if he felt me, too. I wasn’t afraid that I’d out myself to him. I was afraid that he’d think my extra energy was Bobby changing, and shoot him because of that. Could I explain the metaphysics to Livingston in time?

  Newman said, “I had Dale, our coroner, look, and there were no signs of abuse on your uncle’s body.”

  Bobby tried to turn and look at him, but the shotgun barrel dug in so hard that he’d have had to push the barrel partially into his skull to see Newman and the sheriff on the other side of the bars.

  “I don’t believe you,” Bobby said, and he kept turning toward Newman as if a gun weren’t pressed to his head.

  Livingston tried to stand his ground. I saw the metal imprint on Bobby’s temple. If he’d been plain human, he’d have been bleeding, but the metal of the gun barrel wouldn’t cut into him that easily. He kept pushing until a trickle of blood trailed down his skin. It would heal almost immediately, but that he was cutting himself at all meant he was really trying to hurt himself.

  I glanced at Livingston and realized he was bracing his body and the gun to prevent the force of Bobby’s head from moving him. Livingston’s eyes flicked to me. He seemed to be asking me what the hell was going on. Bobby was either totally oblivious to the pain, or he was trying suicide by cop. When Wagner had shot at him, Bobby had reacted automatically, trying to hide and save his own life. But now, with more time to think, he wasn’t trying to save himself. Maybe it wasn’t in the front of his head, but the back of his head wasn’t thinking survival anymore. If he changed tactics from slow pushing to sudden moves, Livingston would kill him.

  “We called the coroner from the car on the way to your house,” I said.

  Bobby moved his head toward me, which was just enough to help Livingston stop having to fight against moving another inch, or maybe he was fighting not to hurt Bobby more. Maybe both.

  “I told you not to call Dale about any abuse nonsense,” Duke said.

  “You’re going to bitch about that now,” I said, still staring at Bobby and Livingston. I didn’t have to see Duke to fight with him.

  “This is my case, Duke,” Newman said.

  “And this is my town,” Duke said. “You’re just visiting your girlfriend.”

  “Are you telling the truth about Uncle Ray’s body?” Bobby asked. “It wasn’t . . . hurt that way?”

  “You’re a wereanimal. You should be able to feel that I’m telling the truth.” I didn’t say we were telling the truth, because to my knowledge the coroner hadn’t gotten back to us yet, so Newman couldn’t know if our victim’s body had been raped.

  “I should be, but I can’t feel anything, except that I’m afraid of what I did to Uncle Ray.”

  “He just confessed. You all heard him,” Leduc said.

  “No,” Bobby said, and tried to turn back to look at the hallway again. “I don’t remember.”

  “Confess, Bobby, and it’ll all be over,” Leduc said.

  Bobby opened his mouth, but Newman said, “I won’t execute Bobby because you trick him into confessing.”

  “I keep telling you that we don’t have any other shapeshifters in this area. It had to be him.”

  “And we keep telling you that it doesn’t look like a shapeshifter kill to us,” Newman said.

  I kept my attention on Bobby and Livingston. Kaitlin had moved to the far corner of the cell, as far away from us as she could get without asking to be let out. A lot of people would have asked for someone to open the door by now. Points for her.

  “Win, you can’t make it something it’s not just because you don’t want to have to kill someone you know,” Duke said.

  Bobby’s eyes shifted completely. Only years of watching that change in people’s eyes made me positive of what I was seeing. The march of energy down my skin confirmed it. Livingston let out a breath loud enough for me to hear it. I did that sometimes just before I squeezed the trigger, too.

  “Don’t shoot him,” I said.

  “Give me a reason not to,” Livingston said, voice careful and controlled so that even his breathing didn’t accidentally make his finger twitch.

  “Bobby, help me save you,” I said.

  “What if I don’t want you to save me?” he asked. A shudder ran down his body from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. He was starting to give himself over to the change. Fuck!

  I grabbed his wrist and the energy poured over my hand and up my arm like I’d plunged it into a tub of warm water. If I didn’t do something now, it would just get warmer. I lowered my shields and poured my own energy back into Bobby’s, like trying to stop a fire with a firebreak.

  “Livingston, I’m putting energy into Bobby to keep him in human form. Don’t shoot him because of my energy, okay?”

  “How do I tell the difference between your energy and his, Blake?” Livingston asked. His eyes were showing a lot of white now, too, but there was no answering energy from him.

  “You probably can’t.”

  “Fuck that,” he said, and he was gritting his teeth again, as if even his jaw muscles were holding on for dear life.

  “If he starts to shift, you have to shoot him,” Duke said from the safe side of the cage bars.

  “Shut the fuck up, Duke,” I said.

  He protested, but Newman made him back off and stopped him from commenting on us, which was good since I needed all my attention to keep Bobby from shifting. Usually when I was doing this, the shapeshifter wanted to stay in human form, so they took the help like a lifeline, but Bobby didn’t.

  He poured his own “fire” into mine as if he wanted to burn us both up. It took me a few minutes to realize that if I couldn’t contain Bobby’s beast, he might trigger my own. If I’d been a full-blown shapeshifter, he might have brought on both our beasts and gotten us both killed, but I didn’t change form except for my eyes.

  “Blake, your eyes. What the fuck is wrong with your eyes?” Livingston said.

  “She’s one of them!” Duke yelled.

  “Don’t shoot me, Livingston.”

  “Don’t change, and I won’t.”

  “Bobby, you’re going to get us both shot,” I said.

  “I don’t want to get you hurt,” he said, but his voice had the edge of a growl to it.

  “Then swallow your beast back down.”

  “If I hurt Uncle Ray, I need to die.” His voice was barely human. He opened his mouth and flashed fangs.

  Kaitlin screamed. I heard the door open but didn’t dare look away from the two men in front of me.

  Newman said, “Get out of there!”

  “Get out of here, Livingston,” I said.

  “I won’t leave you in here alone with him.”

  I stared at him with eyes that I knew were almost the same shade of yellow as Bobby’s, and said, “I won’t be alone with him, Livingston. He’ll be alone with me.”

  That was enough for him. He backed away with the shotgun snugged against his shoulder still aimed at Bobby, though I was in the way of that aim.

  “Don’t shoot either of us,” I said. I wanted to look at him as I said it, but I had to keep my eyes on the shapeshifter in front of me.

  “If either of you starts bending bars, all bets are off,” Livingston said.

  “Deal,” I said.

  Really powerful lycanthropes change shape rapidly, almost gracefully, like ice melting to reveal a new form. But for the rest of them, it’s slow and painful a
nd kind of horrific. If you’ve ever dislocated a joint, broken a bone, torn a ligament, or ruptured a muscle, you know how much that hurts. Now imagine that every joint, bone, ligament, and muscle in your body is tearing itself apart all at the same time. That’s what a slow shape change is like, and that’s why even the most experienced of lycanthropes will lash out while the pain rips them apart. The bones begin to slide under their skin like they’re trying to stab their way out.

  Bobby threw his head back and shrieked his pain to the heavens.

  I jerked my hand off of Bobby as blood started running down his hands, and claws forced their way out over his fingernails. I hadn’t been near anyone who changed like this in years. He might be safe once he was fully leopard, but until then . . .

  I dropped to one knee so two things could happen: Livingston had a clean shot that didn’t include part of me, just in case, and I could come up under what was left of Bobby’s chin with as hard an uppercut as I’d ever thrown. If the bones of his face had still been solid, it might have knocked him cold, but it just staggered him. I drove my other fist into his diaphragm, and leopard or man, if you can hit the right spot, it will knock the wind out of him. Since he was still standing on two legs, it bent him over a little, and I hit him in the face with my elbow on the right side of his face and then used my other elbow on the left side of his face. I grabbed the back of his neck to help his face meet my knee twice, and he was still moving. I drove my knees into his face until he slid out of my hands in a smear of blood, and I couldn’t tell whether I’d broken all the bones in his face or he was still trying to change into a leopard when he passed out. Either way, the fight was over.

  21

  THERE WAS ONLY one bathroom in the sheriff’s station, so that was where I went to clean the blood off my hands and dab cold water on the knees of my pants. I was hoping the blood wouldn’t set. I liked these pants. Not all the blood had come off my hands either, because some of it was fresh and mine. I’d managed to cut my hand on one of the surprise bones underneath Bobby’s skin. Normally hitting under the chin isn’t where you cut your hand in a fight. It’s usually the cheekbone or the teeth that are the problem. Hell, maybe it had been one of those moved down into his chin, or maybe it had been leopard bones out of place when I hit them. I stared at the cut on my knuckle and didn’t know what part of Bobby and his beast that I’d cut myself on. And just like that, I started to shake. The emergency was over. I could have my moment now. I’d been arrogant thinking I could control Bobby. When you’re hunting, you want the target to be as powerless and animalistic as possible, but when you’re trying to talk to them, you don’t want to talk to the animal. You need a human being in there who can hear you and think about what’s happening.

  I found tears in my pants where Bobby’s claws had poked through. I hadn’t even known it happened in the heat of the fight. Even if my hand hadn’t been bleeding, I’d have been forced to get tested for lycanthropy, except that there was no need. I’d popped as having leopard-based lycanthropy years ago. Lucky it hadn’t been Newman in there, but of course he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to let them lock him inside once Bobby’s bones started sliding around. No, just me being so abysmally stupid.

  I rested my hands on the cool edges of the sink and watched the blood begin to well up in the chunk I’d taken out of my knuckle. I let out a breath and stared at myself in the mirror. My skin was paper white; the dark brown of my eyes looked black, like holes burned into paper. I’d always thought that my hair was what made me look so pale afterward, but my hair was still back in its braid. Maybe it wasn’t the hair after all. Shock is what happens when your mind decides that it needs to protect you from experiencing everything around you, or when your body begins to shut itself down for the same reason. As far as I could tell, Bobby’s claws hadn’t cut anything but my clothes. Lucky for me he’d been in manacles. If he hadn’t been . . . No, don’t even think it. Well, don’t think too hard about what might have happened if I’d been just a little slower or less well trained. Nope, just don’t think about it too hard.

  We still had a few hours until Edward would get here to back me up, but even he couldn’t protect me from my own arrogant stupidity. I’d never have taken such a terrible chance once upon a time before . . . before what? The only psychic ability I’d started with had been the ability to raise the dead as zombies. Of the eight of us old-time vampire hunters who had transitioned to being U.S. Marshals, three of us were animators, as in could animate the dead, which probably meant that our ability to raise the dead had given us more help against vampires than we’d first thought. Before I had fallen under Jean-Claude’s spell and eventually in love with him. Before he’d shared his vampire marks with me and I’d become more than human. Before I’d caught lycanthropy and held a rainbow of beasts inside me. We weren’t even sure why I didn’t shapeshift completely, but we thought it had something to do with the vampire marks getting to me first. Now I was going to marry Jean-Claude. Yes, we were in love, but he was also technically my master, which made me his human servant, though due to my own abilities with the dead, there was some debate on who was in charge of whom. Last year I’d raised a zombie army to combat one raised by an ancient evil vampire. So what was my short list? Necromancer, vampire slayer, Mistress of Beasts, Queen of the Dawn were all titles I’d earned among the supernatural community. It was a lot of power, a lot of magic. I’d let it give me delusions of grandeur, and those delusions had almost gotten me killed. All the wedding plans and any other plans I had almost went up in bloody ruins, because I thought I was the biggest, baddest thing in the pool. Fuck.

  There was a soft knock on the door, and Newman said, “You all right in there?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” I got more paper towels and pressed them to the wound on my hand. I needed the bleeding to slow more before I could put a bandage on it.

  “Can I come in, or would you prefer Kaitlin?”

  “Why would I prefer Kaitlin?” I asked and saw myself frown in the mirror.

  “She’s a girl. Some women prefer other women when they’re hurt.”

  “I don’t know her,” I said.

  “So, can I come in?” he asked again.

  I glanced back at the mirror, but knew I wasn’t going to look better anytime soon. “Sure.”

  He opened the door and had about as neutral an expression as I’d seen on him. “Are you hurt?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then why are you holding pressure on your hand?”

  I think I gave him an unfriendly look, because he held up his hands in a little push-away gesture.

  “What’d I say wrong?”

  “Why ask if I’m hurt if you already know the answer?”

  “That’s fair, but I already asked if you were all right, and you said yes.”

  “Then stop asking me questions I’ve already answered.”

  “Okay. Are any of the all-right, not-hurt parts of you needing a doctor?”

  I almost smiled at his wording but fought it off. “No, thank you.”

  He smiled then and stepped a little farther into the room. “Can I help you with your all-right and not-hurt hand?”

  “Yes, once the bleeding slows enough for a bandage.”

  “How badly are you bleeding?”

  I tried to motion toward the wastebasket, but since I was using one hand to press paper towel to the other hand, it was an incomplete gesture at best. “I thought one paper towel was enough, but apparently not.”

  He walked to the wastebasket so he could see what I was talking about. “That’s not bad,” he said.

  “Like I said, I’m all right.”

  “I think your definition of all right may not match mine.”

  I smiled and shook my head. “It’ll match Ted’s when he gets here.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind if either of you decides to slug it out with another shapeshi
fter.”

  I sighed and looked at the floor before I made myself meet his eyes. I hadn’t been this embarrassed on a case in years. “There won’t be another time. I’ve learned my lesson.”

  “Aren’t I the one who’s supposed to learn lessons when I’m working with you?”

  “Don’t rub it in, rookie,” I said.

  He grinned at me. “If it’s any comfort, it was impressive as hell to watch you beat a lycanthrope unconscious in the middle of shapeshifting.”

  “It was arrogant and stupid, and if my reflexes weren’t more than human normal, I’d probably need that doctor.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone move that fast in a fight.”

  “Don’t you ever watch the new shapeshifter MMA fights?”

  He shook his head. “I see them when they’re trying to kill people. That’s enough.”

  “The fighters aren’t like Bobby. They have more than one shape, and they’re in control of their change.”

  “I’ve heard it’s a hell of a show,” he said.

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Are the fighters on TV scarier than what I saw Bobby do in that cell?”

  “No, but they fight a hell of a lot better than he does.”

  “He didn’t fight you at all that I saw.”

  “Yeah, there was enough of Bobby still in there somewhere that he didn’t want to hurt me.”

  “I think you nearly broke his jaw with your first punch, and he never recovered enough to hurt you before you knocked him out.”

  “Or that,” I said. The paper towel stuck to the wound a little as I pried it off gently. I didn’t want to jerk it off and stop the blood from clotting this time. I threw the paper in the wastebasket with the first one.

  “What did you cut your hand on?” Newman asked.

  “A bone that was someplace it wasn’t supposed to be.”

  “Is it always like that, fighting them while they’re in the middle of changing?”

  “I don’t know. This was my first time doing it.”

  Newman stared at me, and I watched the blood begin to drain out of his face. “Sweet Jesus, Blake. I don’t know if you’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met or the stupidest.”