with those blue-gray eyes of his, so serious. "We only give names to the ones that we fear. She is the Executioner, and along with three others she makes up the Four Horsemen."
I heard Stevens take a breath, and then stop. He obviously wanted to ask, but Urlrich had probably stopped him, so I asked for him. "The Executioner isn't a name of one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
"You are the only one with two earned names," he said.
"Let me guess, I'm Death," I said.
He shook his head very solemnly. "You're War," he said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you've killed more of us than Death."
I didn't know what to say to that. I wanted to ask who the other Marshals were, but I was afraid that Death was my very good friend Ted Forrester, and he'd earned that nickname long before we all had badges, and some of the things he'd done to earn the name hadn't been legal. I wasn't sure how much the blond vampire knew, or how much he'd share. He was acting too odd for me to judge what he'd say next.
A woman who looked more like someone's youngish grandma than a vampire said, "Why haven't you killed us?"
"Because I didn't have to," I said.
The blond boy that Billings had tried to hit said, "The other officers want you to."
"You haven't fed, so you didn't take the officers' blood. You didn't kill them."
"We watched it done," he said, "under the law that makes us as guilty as the ones who tasted them."
I frowned at him. "Do you want me to shoot you?"
He nodded.
I frowned harder. "Why?"
He shrugged and dropped his eyes so I couldn't read his face.
"You are evil and your master is evil," said the grandma.
I looked at her. "I didn't just rip the throat out of a man who was trying to keep you from making a fifteen-year-old girl a vampire against her will."
Her eyes showed hesitation for a moment and then she said, "The girl wanted to be one of us."
"She'd changed her mind," I said.
The grandma shook her head, looking sullen. "There was no going back."
"That's the same thing date rapists say: 'She agreed to the date, so it's too late for her to say no to the sex.'"
She looked shocked, as if I'd slapped her. "How dare you compare us to that."
"Forcing someone to be a vampire against their will is rape and murder all rolled into one," I said.
The boy said, "You believe that, don't you?"
"I do."
"And yet, you cohabitate with the master vampire of this city," he said.
"Cohabitate," I said. "You're older than you look."
"Can't you tell my age?" he asked.
I thought about it, just a tiny use of power, and said, "Twenty years dead, that's why the eighties haircut."
"I don't have enough power to grow my hair long after death like the vampires closest to you. Your master steals energy from me, from all of us, and uses it to heal his people, and grow his long, black curls out for you."
I'd known that Jean-Claude took power from his followers, and gave power to them, but I hadn't thought how that exchange of power might affect the other side of the equation. Was Blondie here right? Did Jean-Claude steal power from them just to grow his hair long for me, when they could have used it to heal their wounds, grow their own hair? Was it true?
"You didn't know," he said.
"She knew! She knows!" Grandma said. Her voice was strident with her anger, but under the anger was a thread of fear like a hint of spice in a piece of cake. I looked at her, and something she saw in my face stopped her, and upped the fear in her. Was she really that afraid of me?
Zerbrowski came to me. "Anita, the bus is back. We need to move them."
I nodded, and realized I'd made the rookie mistake. I'd let the bad guys talk me into doubting people I trusted. They say if you listen to the devil he won't lie, but he won't exactly tell the truth either. Blondie wasn't the devil, far from it, but he'd spoken the truth as he saw it, and I'd ask Jean-Claude tonight when I got home.
I addressed the prisoners. "If you try to escape, try to run, we will shoot you."
"Because of the Preternatural Endangerment Act," Blondie said.
"That gives us the legal right to kill you, yes, but the two dead cops, killed by vampire bites, make you all murder