Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,137

guess the same goes for winning the fair lad. Here’s hoping.

40

Some of the local police were like Yancey from SWAT and accepted me as one of them because I’d held my shit together under fire, but others … were very busy trying to blame me for what Ares had done. They needed to blame someone, and I’d killed the only other person they wanted to hate, so they hated me.

Dev and Nicky had driven with me to the station. We’d meet up with Edward/Ted and get introduced to Marshal Hatfield and the rest. There were witness statements to read, crime scene photos to look at, and the pictures of the missing, some of whom had turned up as the walking dead of one flavor or another. I hated to waste darkness on doing stuff I could do in daylight, but the vampires in custody were safe behind their lawyer for tonight. Maybe by the time I got to question them tomorrow night I’d have a better handle from reading up on the case. That was what I told myself to keep the frustration down. We had two perfectly good suspects who had seen the big bad vampire that was the real danger, and we couldn’t ask them a damn thing.

The plan was for the men with me to wait out in the public area until I was done, or until they were relieved of duty by the next pair of bodyguards. They knew the drill. They also had carry permits for their guns with them, and they were willing to give their guns up to a lockbox if the local PD demanded it. What we weren’t prepared for was Detective Ricky Rickman to be passing through the check-in desk. One of the things people fear most about shapeshifters is that they look just like everybody else, because they are everybody else. It’s just a disease, and short of a blood test or a change of form, you can pass for straight human. I wasn’t trying to sneak them past anybody; I just didn’t think about it.

‘Get your animals out of here, Blake!’ Rickman yelled it; he wasn’t that angry, he just wanted everyone within earshot to hear. He was full of an I-told-you-so self-satisfaction. It masqueraded as righteous fury, but he was too pleased with himself for that.

‘They aren’t animals, Rickman,’ I said, my voice calm.

One of the uniform officers said, ‘Are they wereanimals?’

‘Yeah, all of them are,’ Rickman said.

‘How can you tell?’ the officer asked. His eyes were a little wide, which made him look even younger than he was. Perfect.

‘I can just tell,’ Rickman said.

I whispered to Dev and Nicky, ‘Whatever happens, stay out of it. Don’t do anything that feeds this.’

Nicky gave a small nod. Dev said, ‘Okay, boss.’

‘If you want to whisper sweet nothings to your fur-bangers, do it somewhere else,’ Rickman shouted; he was moving up on us, on me, trying to use his height to intimidate.

I was calm but made sure my voice carried. ‘First, bullshit, Rickman, you know they’re lycanthropes because I told you. Second, they aren’t animals, they’re people.’

‘Your last pet killed Baker and tore Billings’s fucking hand off!’ Rickman towered over me, shouting into my face.

We had a crowd gathering around us. There were mutterings of, ‘They don’t get to come in here.’ ‘Get them out of here.’ ‘Animals.’ ‘They’re monsters.’

‘First, he wasn’t my pet, he was a Marine. Second, he was bespelled by a vampire just like some of the other officers,’ I said.

‘He wasn’t an officer’ – Rickman spat it in my face – ‘he was a fucking animal!’

I wiped the spittle off my face as I smiled up at Rickman. I didn’t want to smile. It was an involuntary expression, one that usually preceded me doing something unpleasant and usually violent. I was angry. I controlled it, but the smile most unpleasantly showed it.

‘What the hell are you smiling at, Blake?’ he yelled.

I have no excuse for what I did next; I deliberately stepped into Rickman. I didn’t hurt him; I even kept my hands at my sides, so that the body armor under our shirts was all that barely brushed against each other, but I understood violence and men. That one small movement was an escalation. I’d touched a man who was leaning over me, spitting his rage in my face; the lightest touch can tip that into something physical. A lot of women don’t understand the rules, that most fights among men start like dogfights with