heard a noise that shouldn’t have been there, because you’re supposed to be alone?’
Chapman just looked at him, controlling his face and giving blank face back. ‘I can’t say I have.’
‘I have. Anita has. We know that the nightmare can be real, and we have the skills, the will, and the tools to fight the nightmares and win.’
‘You and Blake are tough motherfuckers, I get that, Forrester.’
Edward shook his head. ‘That’s not it.’
‘Then explain it to me,’ he said, and his irritation sounded in his voice.
‘The newer marshals think like cops, which means they’re trained to preserve life. Blake and I think more like soldiers; our job is to take lives, not save them. In killing the monsters we save lives, but our actual job is to take life. We aren’t Officer Friendly coming into the classroom to reassure the kids. We aren’t the person with a badge who the nice elderly lady can call for help when her cat’s up a tree. We aren’t the patrol officer who will give you directions when you’re lost. We aren’t the state trooper who will stop you when you’re drunk so you don’t kill anyone else or yourself with your car. We aren’t any of those things and neither of us ever has been; we weren’t trained for it. All the best executioners come from backgrounds that do not include police work but often include military, or a civilian background where they hunted and killed large game.’
‘Blake is not a great white hunter,’ Chapman said.
‘No, but her dad took her hunting for deer, which was the biggest game they could hunt in her home state.’
He glanced at me. ‘That’s not in your file.’
I shrugged.
‘We hunt and kill things. When it comes to a stand-up fight like it did yesterday, we are soldiers first, cops second, because even if we negotiate with the bad guys, they know, and we know, that we are going to kill them. We are assassins with badges. We are death squads, and the fact that Hatfield and all the good police officers in our field don’t understand that is why they aren’t as good at the job as we are, and Bernardo Spotted-Horse, and Otto Jeffries, or … All the best of us started out as bounty hunters, or vampire hunters who were supplementing the police.’
‘You’re admitting that you’re just killers with badges,’ he said.
Edward nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘I can’t endorse the Marshals Service being a party to that.’
‘I know,’ Edward said, ‘because being a police officer is about preserving life, liberty, and safety.’
‘We put the bad guys away, so the innocent aren’t hurt,’ Chapman said.
‘The police are really good at that if the politicians let them do their job, but the monsters are real, Chief Deputy Marshal Chapman. When the government decided that the monsters were too dangerous to put in jail and that executing them was the only way to keep the innocent safe, then it stopped being a job for the police.’
‘You have badges; you are the police,’ Chapman said.
‘We have badges and we are police officers, but you don’t really believe that. If you did, you wouldn’t have cared that Hatfield was giving the warrant to Anita.’
‘It’s the lack of control, the lack of checks and balances for you and her,’ he said.
‘We make you nervous.’
‘No, you don’t make me nervous.’
I wanted to say Liar, but wisely kept my mouth shut.
Then Chapman looked at us, and finally at Hatfield. ‘You’re a good marshal, Hatfield; if you want to leave the Preternatural Branch and come back to our side of things I will fully support you. I’ll personally see that you don’t suffer any ill effects careerwise.’
‘Thank you, Chapman, and I may do that, but I feel I have to stay with this case until it’s done. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t.’
‘When it’s over, you can come back to regular service,’ he said.
‘Thank you, sir; I think I’d prefer that.’
He turned to Edward and said, ‘You and Blake, Spotted-Horse, Jeffries, the rest of you, don’t make me nervous, Forrester; you scare me, because you aren’t cops, and I don’t like people thinking that just because the monster has a badge it ceases to be a monster.’
‘Are you calling us monsters, Chapman?’ I asked.
‘They’ve let two marshals who tested positive for lycanthropy keep their badges. They’re in the field again, but I saw the damage that Blake’s shifter friend did to the officers in the chopper. Are you really comfortable letting something