teenage boys, and Billings didn't believe he was a kid any more than I did. I yelled, "Billings!" If he heard me, he didn't show it. Zerbrowski yelled, "Ray!" There was other yelling, but he didn't seem to hear any of us. His big arm came back, fist cocked, and I was just suddenly there, grabbing his arm. I don't know who was more startled that I'd managed to get there in time to stop the blow - him, or me. I was fast enough to get there before he hit the prisoner, but I wasn't fast enough to get in front of the punch, and I didn't weigh enough to stop him from swinging. I was airborne as I held on to him, moving with the force of his swing the way small children swing on their father's arms. I threw his balance off, so that he didn't hit the boy. He let go of the boy, who fell to the floor, unable to catch himself in the chains. Billings turned, with me still dangling from his arm. His other hand grabbed a handful of my hair as if he meant to fling me across the room, and I just reacted. I let myself do what I'd been tempted to do since the fine, red burn of his rage touched me - I ate his anger. I sipped it through the muscled bunch of his arm under my grip, through the twist of his fingers in my hair, through the bulk of his body, so big and solid beside my so much smaller one. I drank down his anger as he breathed heavy and loud, through the pounding of his heart, the pulse and beat of his blood, and as I swallowed the thick, red fire of his rage, I smelled his skin so close: sweat, and the scent of his fear, which was what lay under all that anger. Beyond that I smelled his blood beating just under the bitter sweetness of his anger, so that Billings was like a piece of cupcake with dark bittersweet chocolate icing that could be licked away, to the warm, moist cake, and then the hot, liquid center where the sweetest, thickest chocolate lay waiting like some hidden treasure that would make the anger even tastier. All I had to do was bite through that sweet, slightly salty skin of his wrist that was just above my mouth, that beating pulse so close to my hands, where they encircled his arm.
His hand let go of my hair, and he lowered me to the ground. His eyes were open wide; his face tried to frown as if he were struggling to remember something. He looked confused as he set me gently on the floor.
"Where are we?" he asked.
I was still holding his arm, though now it was more like holding hands than holding on. "We're at the old brewery," I said, and I didn't like that he didn't know where he was; it made me wonder what else he didn't remember. What had I done to him? I'd fed on anger before and never had anyone forget things.
He wrapped his big hand around one of my small ones, and blinked at the vampire that was crumpled at his feet. "Why are these people shackled?"
Jesus, he didn't remember they were vampires, which meant... "Lieutenant Billings, what's the last thing you remember?"
He frowned at me, and the effort of concentration was visible on his face and in the pressure of his hand, tense around mine. His eyes were a little scared, and he just shook his head. Shit.
Zerbrowski was there with Smith and some uniforms at his back. "Ray," Zerbrowski said, "we need to go for a walk."
"A walk?" Billings made it a question.
"Yeah," he said, and touched Billings's arm where he was still holding my hand.
Billings just nodded, but he didn't let go of me.
Zerbrowski pulled on his arm, just a little, to get him to come along, and Billings moved, but he also kept my hand in his. "Can she come with us?"
"Not right now," Zerbrowski said, and he looked at me; the look said, clearly, what had I done to him? I shrugged, and I knew he understood my expression, too. He might even believe that I didn't know what I'd done to the big lieutenant.
Billings was reluctant to let go of my hand, and that wasn't good either. I'd done more than feed on his anger, and way more than I'd