Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

Nicky moved up beside us. ‘You did just get out of the hospital.’

I turned to look at him. What I could see of his face through the fall of his hair was set in bored, stoic lines, but I realized that I’d ordered him to stay out of the fight no matter what. Would he have been forced to watch someone hurt me badly, try to kill me, and been helpless to help me, because I’d given him a direct order? I wasn’t sure, and I should have thought of that before I spoke. I felt off my game.

I reached my left hand out to him and he wrapped his bigger hand around mine. I didn’t normally hold hands with my lovers when they were being bodyguards, but it was the best I could do to apologize for making it impossible for him to do his job, maybe, by not thinking my words through. I should have been able to know if what I said had crippled his ability to guard me that much, but I couldn’t seem to think my way through the maze in my head. His hand was warm and real in mine. It helped.

He smiled, and that was enough to make me happy that I held his hand even in front of the cops.

Bush said, ‘Hey, Nicky, does the marshal ever let you guys actually protect her?’

Nicky grinned at him. ‘Every once in a while.’

‘Naw,’ Dev said, ‘she’s usually protecting us.’

Bush looked up at the taller man, as if waiting for the joke, but something in Dev’s face stopped him and made him frown instead. He might have asked if we were kidding, but someone came up behind us who made Bush stand at the cop’s version of attention. MacAllister was suddenly all serious. The other officers cleared out around us as if we were all suddenly contagious. Whoever was behind me was someone in charge. They weren’t in charge of me, but I was in their house, and that meant …

‘Marshal Blake, Detective Rickman, I need to see you both in my office, now.’

With a serious face, MacAllister leaned over and whispered, ‘Called into the captain’s office first time you step inside; fast work.’

‘About par for me,’ I said, and then turned with a professional face, but a hand going up to the blossoming bruise on my cheek. I’d let Rickman hit me so that everyone wouldn’t get all hysterical about Dev and Nicky being wereanimals, because nothing undercuts someone’s accusations like being made to look unprofessional and a bully. It had worked, but a sympathy bruise is a sympathy bruise, and I was going to see if this one could be multipurpose. I was going to milk it, just in case the captain was upset about me breaking one of his detectives.

Captain Jonas was a large African American man who looked like he’d probably played high school ball, maybe college, but the desk job had started to round out his middle to the point where I wondered if he had to pass the same health standards as his patrol officers. He sat behind his desk glaring at us. The ‘us’ didn’t include Rickman. He was on the way to the hospital. The ‘us’ was U.S. Marshal Susan Hatfield, Edward, and me. Apparently my doing something bad enough to get called on the carpet by Jonas had renewed Hatfield’s fighting spirit and she was trying to get me kicked off the case again.

Hatfield was about five foot six, which made her almost as tall as Edward. He gained about two inches from his cowboy boots and she was in the same flat treaded boots as I was, so she seemed shorter, or he seemed taller. Her chestnut-brown hair was back in a small, neat ponytail. She moved her head as she gesticulated angrily, and the overhead lights picked out deep red highlights in her hair. She was about two tones off from going from chestnut to a nice deep auburn. She was thin, but it was a thinness that came from genetics and working out, not starving herself. Her forearms had lean muscle on them as she gestured, and what I could see of her upper arms wasn’t bulk. She was all long, lean muscle, almost mannish hips, and small breasts. She was one of those women who managed to look delicate and feminine without having the curves to go with the triangular face. Her chin was a little sharp for my tastes, but then I wasn’t shopping to date her, I was just noticing things while she ranted. She was basically accusing me of being too close to the monsters to make good choices. I wasn’t really listening, because I’d heard it all before, and I was a little tired of hearing it from anyone. I just stood there and let her words wash over me like white noise.

It was Edward saying, ‘Anita, Anita, the captain is talking to you,’ that made me blink and pay attention again.

I looked at Edward standing a little behind and to the other side of Hatfield, and then I looked at Jonas behind his desk. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t hear what you said.’

‘Are we boring you, Blake?’ he asked.

‘I’ve heard the song and dance before, sir.’

Edward stepped forward in his best good-ol’-boy Ted persona. ‘There’s a beaut of a bruise blossoming out on Anita’s face. I think she got her chimes rung pretty good when Rickman hit her.’

‘Are you making excuses for her?’ Jonas asked.

‘No, sir, just pointing out that she just got released from the hospital and she may heal like a son of a bitch, but the healing isn’t perfect or instantaneous. I’m just wondering if she’s more hurt than she’s letting on.’

Jonas narrowed his eyes at Edward and then looked back at me. ‘You hurt, Blake?’

‘My face hurts,’ I said, but my voice was as empty of emotion as Hatfield’s had been full of it.

‘I can’t see the bruise from here. Turn so I can.’

I turned to give him the right side of my face where the throbbing was beginning to spread into the beginnings of a really nice headache. It put me looking at Hatfield, who glared back at me.

I heard Jonas’s chair slide back. ‘It’s swelling a lot for just a bruise.’ He’d come around the desk so he could see it better. He pursed his lips, scowling. ‘Ricky hit you just on the bone there. You think he cracked the bone?’

‘I didn’t hear it break,’ I said.

‘How bad does it hurt?’

‘Not bad enough to be broken, I don’t think.’

‘You had broken bones?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So you know what it feels like,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir, I do.’

He let out a big huff of air. ‘You need some ice on it at least before it swells into your eye. Can’t send you out looking beat to hell.’ He went to his door, opened it, and yelled out at someone. ‘Need an ice bag and some towels wrapped around it.’ He seemed to expect it would get done, because he closed the door and went back to sit at his desk. He steepled his fingers, elbows resting on his stomach, because he’d gained too much weight to use the chair arms for it. It looked like a habitual gesture from before the stomach came on. He looked at us over his fingers.

‘Marshal Hatfield holds the warrant of execution on these vampires, and she wants you and Marshal Forrester to mind your own damn business.’

‘That much I heard,’ I said.

‘Technically, I’m not in charge of the three of you – you’re federal – but we’re the local PD who will be backing your move. Hatfield here is the local executioner. I know her. Why should I give either of you any consideration?’

‘If we just needed to kill the vampires, fine,’ I said. ‘Wait until dawn and then chain them to a metal gurney with some holy objects and stake their asses, but we want information from them, and for that we need them alive.’

‘They aren’t alive!’ Hatfield said, and there was way too much emotion in that sentence. She was one of those, a vampire hater. It was sort of like giving a Ku Klux Klan member a badge and a license to kill the racial group of his choice, and could get just as nasty.