Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

‘You can’t blame yourself because Blake and Forrester here didn’t share information.’

I pushed away from the wall. ‘I was unconscious in the hospital, Chapman. How was I supposed to share information?’

He looked at me, then gave a little nod. ‘Perhaps that was unfair; if so, my apologies.’

‘I didn’t arrive in the state until after Marshal Blake was shot,’ said Edward. ‘I didn’t know the facts of the case until dark the next night; in what way did I conceal information that would have prevented the deaths yesterday?’ His voice was quiet, calm, but held enough suppressed anger to set fire to something. I’d never heard Edward sound this angry as Ted.

Chapman shifted on the balls of his feet, hands clasped behind his back like an echo of being at ease in the military. His gray hair was cut high and tight. I’d have said Marines, but it felt more like Army. Marines fucked about a little less and were less likely to rise as high in rank as Army, due to a certain cussedness that seemed to go with being a nonpracticing Marine. You had Marines who rose to high rank, and you had ex-Army who were as stubborn as a Marine, but it was usually the other way around.

‘Sir,’ Hatfield said, ‘I knew about the rotting vampires in Atlanta. I read the same information that Blake and Forrester did, but I failed to make the logic leap that these vampires might need fire just like the ones in Atlanta did. I’d never seen anything like them, and I thought … heads blown up, spines damaged, hearts … I could see through their chests, sir. I thought that was dead enough; I was wrong.’

Hatfield’s willingness to fall on the grenade for what had happened made me like her better, and it was even true. She should have erred on the side of caution, and she hadn’t, and people were dead because of it, but … she was letting the guilt tear her up.

‘They were missing civilians, Marshal Hatfield. We owed it to their families to identify them before the bodies were burned,’ Chapman said.

‘Are you saying it’s become acceptable practice to not burn vampires once we’ve taken their heads and hearts?’ I asked.

‘Outside of special circumstances, it has worked very well. We’ve closed missing-person cases that were decades old.’

Huh. ‘I honestly hadn’t thought about that, sir, that some of the vampires that go bad would be filed missing persons from decades and probably cities away.’

‘It’s given closure to families who had given up on ever hearing news.’

‘But you need an intact head for dental records, so only decapitations, not blowing the face away with an AR or shotgun, right?’ Edward asked. His voice was a little less hostile, but not much.

Chapman nodded. ‘Exactly; many people don’t have their fingerprints on file.’

‘If you’re looking at people missing for decades, then dental records don’t always help either,’ Edward said. ‘It’s routine that when a dentist retires, old patient records aren’t kept track of if the patient isn’t being referred to another dentist.’

‘That is true.’

‘How are you identifying the dead vampires then?’ I asked.

‘DNA of surviving family members, female in particular.’

‘Because the maternal line carries the most direct DNA,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Yes, most people don’t know that.’

‘In my misspent youth I got a BS in biology,’ I said.

‘I read that in your file. There’s been some discussion that your science background is part of what makes you so effective at this job; do you believe that’s true?’

I thought about it, then nodded. ‘I actually took preternatural biology classes and classes on myth and folklore beasts and beings that exist in the real world, so yeah, it gave me a jump on knowing what I was supposed to be up against.’

‘You had no police background, no military, nothing but the biology, and yet new marshals who have come straight from the classroom to the Preternatural Branch aren’t doing as well as you did at the beginning of your career.’

‘I was trained in raising the dead and hunting vampires by a fellow animator, and by Marshal Forrester here when he was a bounty hunter specializing in monsters.’

‘The animator you’re referring to is Manuel Rodriguez.’

I nodded.

‘He has no background in police or military either.’

‘No, sir, he was an old-fashioned vampire hunter. What we call a stake-and-hammer man.’

‘That’s still standard for morgue executions,’ Chapman said.

‘Yeah,’ I said, and couldn’t quite keep my disdain for it out of that one word.

‘You disapprove, Marshal?’

‘You try putting a stake in someone’s heart while they’re chained to a gurney and begging you not to kill them, then come tell me how much you liked it.’

‘It’s supposed to be done during daylight when the vampires are comatose.’

‘Yeah, it is, but when I was new to this business I let people bully me into executing as soon as possible; sometimes that meant the vampire was awake. A few executions like that, sir, and I lost my taste for it.’

He nodded again, rocking on the balls of his feet, hands behind his back. I think it was a nervous gesture. Hmm … why was he nervous? ‘I can certainly understand that, Marshal Blake.’

‘Good to know,’ I said, and studied his careful eyes and face. Either there was more and worse to come, or something else.

Hatfield looked at me from the chair, and her eyes were even wider. ‘God, you mean you put a stake through someone who was begging and struggling?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ve shot ones that were begging, but that’s …’ She turned back to the paper, pen poised.

‘No,’ Chapman said.

She looked up at him. ‘Why not, sir? Why shouldn’t I sign this over to the best person for the job?’

‘We’ve started fielding new preternatural marshals with older, more experienced ones, much as Forrester and Blake did on their own, but, Hatfield, you have the field experience. You’re a good marshal, a good cop.’

‘I am, sir, but I am not a psychic anything. When they did the mandatory testing in the Marshals Service, I came up as a total blank. Blake has a psychic ability with the dead and with shapeshifters. She has skills with the very creatures we are hunting that I will never have no matter how many more years I have with a badge. I cannot learn Blake’s skills with the monsters.’

‘Preternatural citizens,’ Chapman corrected automatically.

‘Whatever you want to call them, but no amount of time behind the badge will give me the skills Blake has naturally. A lot of the SWAT are starting to put psychics on their teams, and police forces across the country are pairing up cops with psychic ability with partners who have none. I believe that the preternatural service should do the same thing. I’ve spent all night trying to think how I could have done things differently, and the only thing I can come up with is that I needed someone who was psychic to tell me the bodies weren’t dead, or warn me that it was a bad decision. With the information and the standard practices as they are, sir, I did my best, but I believe that I did not have all the information I needed to make an informed decision. I will happily work with Blake, and I am eager to see how her psychic abilities change how we do this job.’

‘Forrester barely tested on the psychic profiling,’ Chapman said. ‘How do you explain his success?’

‘I don’t know, sir, but I know that the psychic testing isn’t perfect.’

‘You believe that Forrester is more psychic than the testing showed?’

‘Or maybe he’s spent years fighting monsters, and the rest of us just don’t have his wealth of experience, but I know that he listens to Blake even though he started out as her mentor. They work as a team, sir, and I believe that’s part of the key. They don’t seem to care who gets the credit or rises in rank; they just do their job to the best of their ability, which I believe saves lives.’