Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Let’s call the judge and see if Newman can get an extension on the deadline,” Livingston said.

  “And if I can’t?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Livingston said.

  “Is the shapeshifter a close friend of yours, Newman?” Olaf asked.

  “Not really,” Newman said.

  Olaf looked at him, shaking his head. “Then why do you care about him?”

  “Wouldn’t it bother you if you had to kill someone you believed was innocent?” Newman asked.

  “No,” Olaf said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t care if you believe me.”

  “Newman, you have to make the call to the judge to get the ball rolling,” I said, trying to derail the conversation. It was going to go somewhere creepy with Olaf involved. I was kind of done with his creepiness for tonight.

  “Have you lost your taste for killing?” Olaf asked Newman.

  “I’ll kill people if I have to, but I won’t let someone use me to do their murder.”

  “So, you object to them using you,” Olaf said.

  “Yes. Wouldn’t you?”

  Olaf took a sip of coffee and then nodded. “I would.”

  “Then let’s see if we can buy ourselves enough time to figure out who’s framing Bobby,” I said.

  “We aren’t a hundred percent sure that anyone is framing him,” Livingston said.

  “Fine. Time to figure out if someone is framing Bobby.”

  “And to avoid killing him if he’s innocent of the crime,” Newman added.

  “That, too,” I said.

  Newman went for his phone to call the judge who’d put his name on the warrant. I went to get the last cup of coffee out of the pot. Maybe I could persuade Leduc to make a second pot. We were going to get to see the sunrise, and no one was talking about sleep. We were going to need more coffee.

  25

  LEDUC MADE COFFEE, and we helped him finish off a second pot before Newman got anyone to answer a phone at any of the numbers that he had for this area. They were all still asleep an hour past dawn on a Sunday, lazy bastards, and we still hadn’t gotten the actual judge on the phone. Clerks were useful, but they couldn’t change the parameters of the warrant; only the judge who signed it could do that. In all the time I’d been hunting monsters, I’d never tried to get a judge to change a warrant, so I had no idea how it worked or even if there was a step in the legal system to cover it. Surely there was, or if not, there needed to be, but I honestly didn’t know. I wasn’t used to this much downtime when I was hunting monsters. It had given me enough time to text Edward and let him know Olaf was here. Since he hadn’t texted back or called, I had to assume he was on a plane on his way here.

  Olaf came to stand next to me against the wall. I tensed up, waiting for something creepy, or at least sexist, but he asked, “Do you normally just wait like this?”

  “Wait like what?”

  He motioned with his coffee mug at Newman trying yet another phone call and Kaitlin trying to get the images of the two very different footprints up on the computer so they could be sent to the judge when he finally returned the call. Livingston and Duke were talking quietly together in the far corner.

  “While they gather evidence and talk to lawyers, do you just wait and do nothing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He frowned down at me.

  “I’ve never been on a case like this. I come into town, round up the bad guys, hang ’em high, and get out of Dodge.”

  His frown became a scowl. “You meant that as a metaphor of some kind, didn’t you?”

  I had a minute to remember that his first language wasn’t English, though he spoke it perfectly now. The one thing that travels least well between languages is slang. I’d grown up watching old Westerns, and he probably hadn’t.

  “Even I have never hung one of my victims,” he said.

  I sighed. He just couldn’t help himself; he always had to push it to the next level of disturbing.

  He noticed my expression and knew it wasn’t happy. “Have you hung one of yours? Vampires can’t even die from suffocation. It seems very inefficient even for shapeshifters.”

  I shook my head. “No, I have never executed anyone by hanging them. What I meant is that we’re like Old West lawmen. We ride into town, shoot the bad guys, and then we leave. I’m not used to waiting around like this either.”

  “Ah,” he said, and took a drink. I think he drank to give himself time to think about what he wanted to say next. He cared about how I reacted to him. He didn’t always care in the way I wanted him to, or the way that a non–serial killer would, but within his limits he was trying.

  “The monster is locked up and maybe innocent. I’ve never had that happen before.”

  “The way the law is written, his guilt or innocence doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “If you mean the warrants of execution are worded in such a way that we could kill him and not go to jail, you’re right. If you were any other fellow marshal, I wouldn’t say this, but it’s not about covering our asses legally. It’s about doing what’s right.”

  “You do not think I have a sense of right and wrong?” he asked, his voice low, and I realized that to the rest of the room, we looked like Livingston and Duke: just two cops talking shop.

  “I think your sense of right and wrong isn’t the same as most people’s.”

  “That is true,” he said.

  “I want to kill the person who killed Ray Marchand, not the person who was framed for the crime.”

  “So, you agree with Newman that it’s about not allowing the murderer to use you.”

  “That’s part of it.”

  “What is the other part?”

  “I took this job believing that if I killed the monster, it would save the lives of all their future victims. Killing the monsters keeps the rest of us safe. But killing someone that hasn’t gone rogue doesn’t save lives. It just takes a life.”

  “You see yourself as the protector of the innocent,” he said.

  “I guess so.”

  He took in a deep breath so that his chest rose and fell noticeably with it. “I do not see our job that way.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  He looked down at me, those deep-set eyes so intense that I wanted to look away from them. It took more willpower than I’d admit out loud to stare back and not flinch. “How do I see our job?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?”

  “I never ask questions unless I want the answer, Anita.”

  I fought the urge to lick my lips, but I was trying to keep my heart rate slow and even, and if I was going to waste energy doing that, I’d be damned if I’d show any secondary signs of nervousness. “It’s a legal way for you to indulge in your violent fantasies and get paid for it.”

  He smiled, and it was one of the best and most normal ones I’d ever seen from him. It changed his face like a shadow of what he might have been if he’d been a completely different person. “Yes, exactly.”

  I licked my lips and added, “You’re also like Ted. You like testing your skills against the most dangerous prey, and there’s nothing more dangerous to hunt than vampires and shapeshifters.”

  Even his eyes sparkled with his happiness as he said, “I’ve never met a woman that understands men as well as you do.”

  “I’m just one of the guys, I guess.”

  He nodded, the smile beginning to fade into something more serious but not yet disturbing. “That is truer of you than of any other woman I have ever met.”

  I shrugged, not sure what to say to that.

  A voice called from the open door to the cell area. “Hey, I think we need some help back here.” It was Wagner, the deputy who would be seeing real jail sometime soo
n.

  I called back without moving from the wall. “What do you need?”

  “Can you beat a wereleopard to death?”

  “What? Why do you want to know that?” I pushed away from the wall and moved around Olaf toward the doorway.

  “Because Bobby hasn’t moved at all, and I’m not sure he’s breathing.”

  26

  BOBBY LAY ON his side on the floor of his cell. I’d moved him onto his side so that he wouldn’t choke on his own blood, as Olaf had said they could suffocate. I hadn’t put him on his bunk because he’d have gotten blood all over it. He should have healed by now. He should have been up and moving by now. I tried to see if he was breathing under the blanket I’d pulled up over him. I wrapped my hands around the bars, willing him to move.

  Olaf touched my hand, which made me jump and look at him. “He is alive, Anita.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I can hear his heartbeat.”

  “I forgot you could do that now.”

  He placed his hand over mine. I think if he’d had room through the bars, he’d have held my hand, but the metal protected me from a more intimate gesture, just like it was supposed to protect us from the man on the floor I’d beaten senseless.

  “Can someone please go in there and check on Bobby?” Wagner said.

  Newman yelled back, “Duke, we could use the keys to the cells.”

  Duke’s voice came a little muffled. “I’m working on it.”

  “Please hurry, Duke!” Wagner yelled.

  “You’re awfully worried about someone you tried to kill earlier,” I said, and used talking to Wagner as an excuse to pull away from Olaf and walk toward the other cell.

  Wagner was pressed up between the bars that separated his cell from Bobby’s, as if pushing hard enough would let him touch the other man. His concern seemed as real as the hysteria had earlier. Maybe he was feeling guilty. I knew I was.

  “I know. I was stupid and crazy, and I’m sorry, but Bobby hasn’t moved at all since you guys left him there. Shouldn’t he have moved or done something by now if he was going to be all right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and I was suddenly afraid not of Bobby’s beast but of what I might have done to him. I wasn’t as strong as a real shapeshifter or vampire, but I was stronger than a normal person. I’d hit Bobby as hard as I could. I’d been fighting for my life, so I hadn’t held back. Had that been more than Bobby’s body could handle? God, it would suck if I’d accidentally killed him when we were trying so hard to save him.

  “Could you have snapped his neck?” Newman asked.

  “The uppercut was the most dangerous for spinal injury, and he moved just fine after that.”

  “If he was human, I’d worry about some kind of brain injury,” Livingston said from the doorway.

  “You mean a concussion?” I asked.

  “Can shapeshifters get those, and if they can, do they heal from them better than humans do?”

  “He is not dead,” Olaf said.

  “Good to know, but I’ve never seen a shapeshifter take this long to heal from something like this. If he’s not seriously injured, he should be moving by now,” I said.

  “Can he change into a biform?” Olaf asked.

  “I can’t keep up with the new politically correct language. I thought biform meant any shapeshifter and bipedal was what we used for half-man forms?”

  Olaf seemed to think about my question and then gave one nod. “Bipedal would be for leopard-man form, but that we are debating it proves that biform and bipedal are too close.”

  “I prefer that for correct speech to Therianthrope for shapeshifter and Ailuranthrope for all werecat forms just because some humorless humans decided lycanthrope is an insult to anyone who isn’t an actual werewolf.”

  “Does the prisoner have a bipedal form?” Olaf asked.

  I shook my head. “He’s got the leopard form, and honestly it was one of the smallest beast forms I’ve seen in a wereleopard. It was about the same size as a regular leopard.”

  “That makes him very weak.”

  “Are you saying he’s not powerful enough to heal from a beating like this?”

  “I am saying that he will not heal like a more powerful shapeshifter would—that is all.” He even spread his hands for me in an it’s-okay gesture. I realized that he was trying to soften the blow for me emotionally. The Olaf I’d first met years back would not have bothered.

  I yelled, “Leduc, get in here with the keys!”

  “And if I do let you in the cage, what are you going to do, Blake?” He spoke from the door as Livingston moved back to make room for him.

  “See how hurt he is.”

  “And then what?”

  “We call—” And I stopped. “We can’t call an ambulance.”

  “We have to,” Wagner said.

  “I agree with Troy,” Newman said.

  “Newman, you saw what Bobby almost did to me,” I said. “We can’t put EMTs or paramedics in there with him.”

  “He’s unconscious, Blake, thanks to you, so no danger to anybody.”

  The comment pissed me off, and I let some of the anger into my voice. “I thought he was going to kill me, Newman, and so did you.” I gave him the look that went with the tone in my voice.

  Newman glared back for a second or two, and then all his defiance seemed to wash away. “Damn it, Blake, we’re trying to save him.”

  “I know that, but if what we saw in that cage is all the control he has during the change, then I’m amazed he hasn’t hurt anyone before now.”

  “You saw all the pictures of him in leopard form with the family,” Newman said.

  “I did, but all I can tell you is the wereanimals with good control that I know don’t change form like that.”

  “What do you mean?” Kaitlin asked from outside the door. There just wasn’t room for all of us in the hallway in front of the cells.

  “He does the really painful, violent change where you see all the parts rearrange themselves. It’s grotesque, like a medical textbook where a body is dissected and put back together. If that was the way they all changed form, no one would want to see it onstage.”

  “Don’t go bringing up the unnatural businesses that your fiancé has in St. Louis,” Leduc said.

  I turned and stared at him. “Did you miss the point of all the new politically correct speech, Duke? Because calling supernatural citizens unnatural sounds awfully insensitive.” My words were calm; my tone was a little warm.

  “One of the perks of being the boss on a small force like this is that I don’t have to read the latest memo about the new politically correct vocabulary. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone by calling them what they actually are, now, would we?”

  “The men in my life are fine with being called vampire or shapeshifter. Hell, none of the werewolves in my life has bitched about being called lycanthropes.”

  “How about calling them soulless demons and rampaging beasts? Let’s call a spade a spade,” Duke said.

  I shook my head, not even angry anymore. “The only people who throw around the term demon are people that have never met one for real.”

  “You haven’t met a real demon,” Duke said, but his tone wasn’t as sure as his words.

  “The fuck I haven’t.” I stepped into him then, and I let myself get angry as I said, “You can live here like this and insult the men I love because people like me are hunting shit down and keeping it away from you and this nice little town of yours.”

  “Win doesn’t hunt shit like that.”

  “I can’t speak to what cases Newman gets called up on, but I can tell you that I deal with shit like that and worse. I’m War, and Otto is Plague. You don’t call in the horsemen unless it’s some apocalyptic shit.” I was angrier than I’d meant to get, angry enough that my beasts s
wirled inside me like a rainbow of shapes. I had to step back from Leduc and take some nice even breaths. I hated that I’d let his racist, intolerant assholery get to me like that. I knew better.

  Leduc watched me regain control of myself. I couldn’t hide that he’d gotten to me, but he didn’t look pleased by it. I expected him to gloat, but he didn’t. “I don’t know about all that, Blake, but I guess you and the big guy here have earned your reputations. I’ll try not to use words like demon unless one pops up for real.”

  “Thank you,” I managed to say.

  “Open the door to the cell, Duke,” Newman said.

  “And what will you do once I open it?” He’d apologized for his words, but his actions continued to be just as obstructionist as before. One apology doesn’t an open mind make.

  “I’ll check on Bobby,” Newman said.

  “I can call an ambulance and tell them what we’ve got for them, but they can’t take him to the hospital. The local one doesn’t have an area rated for supernaturals, and since he’s already under a death penalty for murdering someone, they cannot transport him to the nearest supernatural trauma center. It’s too far away for them to risk him waking up on the way, Win.”

  “Open the door, Duke,” Newman said, and he sounded like he meant it.

  Leduc came forward with the keys. “It’s your funeral.”

  I touched Newman’s arm. “I hate to agree with Duke—you know I do—but he’s right about one thing.”

  “What is he right about?”

  “Newman, come on. You’ve seen me in there with him twice.”

  “You risked your life to save him twice.”

  “Yeah, I did, but the second time, he spooked me, Newman. I was too close, and it all happened too quick to go for a weapon, but if he hadn’t gone down when I stepped away from him, I would have.”

  “Are you saying you would have shot him?”

  “With the damage I’d just done to him, if he had come after me, I’d have been grateful to get to a weapon in time to kill him before he killed me.”