Laurell Hamilton - Affliction

‘I haven’t seen Otto since he caught lycanthropy either.’

‘You’re a fur-banger; why would him being a wereanimal bother you?’ Hatfield asked.

I turned and looked at her. ‘What did you call me?’

‘So you don’t deny that you slept with Jeffries, too.’

‘I didn’t sleep with him, but I’ve learned two things. One, it’s impossible to prove a negative, to prove I didn’t do something. Two, when a woman sleeps with more than one man, she gets accused of sleeping with damn near everybody. But let’s get back to you calling me a fur-banger.’

‘I’m not familiar with the term,’ Jonas said, ‘so before I yell at someone for saying it, tell me what it means.’

‘It means someone who fucks shapeshifters,’ Hatfield said.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ I said. ‘It means people who will fuck any shapeshifter just because they are one. It’s like badge bunnies are about cops.’

‘Hatfield, that sounds pretty insulting to a fellow marshal.’

‘I heard you were living with Sheriff Callahan’s son, Mike, and another wereleopard from his group; that true?’

‘Yeah, it’s true.’

‘The two blonds you brought in with you tonight. They’re shapeshifters just like Rickman said, right?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘You sleeping with them, too?’

I took a deep breath in and let it out slow. I counted slow, before saying, ‘Yes.’

‘So four shapeshifters,’ she said.

‘I never said I didn’t date shapeshifters.’

‘And Forrester here, too, right?’

I looked at Edward. ‘Will it do any good to deny it?’ I asked.

‘If she wants to believe it, she’s going to,’ he said, but his voice was losing the Tedness and getting colder and more empty. The real Edward was beginning to seep through.

‘And I hear your Master of the City flew to your side, so you’re also screwing him.’

‘You know, Hatfield, I was going to try to like you, but I don’t think I want to work that hard; let’s just hate each other and get it over with.’

‘You’re fur-banging coffin bait and helping Forrester cheat on his fiancée who has two kids; I was never going to like you, Blake.’

‘Hatfield,’ Jonas said, one word, sharp and unhappy with her.

‘If I’m really doing Ted here, then why is Donna, that’s his fiancée, okay with me being in the wedding? She’s wanting one of my fur-bangees to be in the wedding, too. I know some of the other law enforcement people will be at the wedding; maybe when they see me standing at the altar with Donna and Ted, this stupid rumor will go away.’

Hatfield’s mouth opened and then closed; unfortunately it opened again. ‘If that’s true, I’ll apologize after the wedding.’

‘Fine, what’s the longest-term relationship you’ve ever had?’

‘I don’t see how that’s any of your business,’ she said.

‘You call me names and get up in my face about my personal life. You spread rumors about me and Marshal Forrester, and you get insulted because I ask a simple question?’

She went back to looking sullen. There were lines around her mouth that showed she frowned a lot more than she smiled. Smile lines are happy exclamations; frown lines just makes you look old before your time. If Hatfield wasn’t careful she was going to do the latter.

‘Blake is being polite after everything you’ve said to her, Susan,’ Jonas said.

She frowned harder but said, ‘Three years. I was married for three years.’

‘Okay. Micah Callahan, Nathaniel, and I have been living together for three years. I’ve been dating Jean-Claude, my Master of the City, for almost seven. The blonds, as you call them, have both been with me over a year.’

‘It’s not the same thing as being married,’ she said.

‘It’s not my fault that it’s illegal to marry multiple men at the same time; that’s like saying that a gay couple isn’t as serious as a straight couple because the straight couple is married, at the same time you make it impossible for the gay couple to marry.’

‘Are you saying that you would marry all of them?’ She made sure I didn’t miss the disdain in her voice.

‘Not all of them, but a lot of them, yeah.’

‘A lot of them?’ Again, she made sure the disdain dripped all over her words.

‘We’re still working out who’s going to marry whom,’ I said.

‘Are you telling me that the engagement to Callahan’s son is real?’

‘Something like that, yeah.’

‘It’s not just so the sheriff can die knowing his son is okay, and not gay?’

I laughed; I couldn’t help it. She obviously knew nothing about the sheriff’s domestic arrangements.

‘What’s so funny?’ she asked.

‘Hatfield,’ Jonas said, ‘you may be our local vampire executioner, but you haven’t been here long. You don’t know all the local PD all that well yet.’

She looked from him, to me, to Edward, and back to Jonas. She knew she’d stepped in something, but not exactly what. I had no intention of enlightening her. I wasn’t sure that Edward even knew about Micah’s dad’s love life, but no one living did better poker face than Edward, so it seemed like the only one in the room who didn’t know that Sheriff Callahan was living with another man, and a woman, was Hatfield.

She decided to go back to something she was certain of and said, ‘This is my warrant and I don’t need Forrester or Blake looking over my shoulder. It’s just two vampires to execute.’

‘There were more than two vampires in the woods,’ I said.

‘You saw them die, Blake. From what I hear you helped blow some of them away with that arsenal you carry.’

I turned to Edward and said, ‘Please tell me that someone burned the remains of the rotting vampires that we blew to hell with the guns?’

‘Ask Hatfield; she was the marshal in charge by the time I got here.’ Ted’s cheerful voice was wearing around the edges so that Edward’s coldness was leaking out. He didn’t like Hatfield either.

‘They all either were decapitated or had their chests blown open, and all of them had their spines damaged. That’s dead enough,’ she said.

‘Didn’t you follow what happened in Atlanta when the Master of the City went crazy?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, the police used flamethrowers on the vampire lair and ruined most of the evidence. They still haven’t identified all the victims’ remains. Local police say you were the one who told them they had to use fire to cleanse it, which is bullshit and overkill.’

‘Fire is the only surety with rotting vampires,’ I said.

‘There are still people waiting for news of their loved ones, thanks to your suggestions in Atlanta,’ she said.

‘Anita’s right,’ Edward said, and his voice was cold now. ‘Fire is the only way to make sure the rotters don’t heal and rise again. Tell us you burned their bodies, Hatfield.’

She was looking from one to the other of us. ‘Nothing keeps moving after a decapitation except zombies.’

‘Exactly,’ I said, ‘and rotting vampires are a lot more like zombies than most vampires.’

‘The Master of Atlanta may have needed fire, but that’s a master vampire. They’re all harder to kill. These were all newly risen, right?’

‘New makes them easier to kill,’ I said, ‘but I burn all rotting vampires regardless of age just to be safe, and then sometimes I do the whole scattering of the ashes in different bodies of running water.’

‘You are just trying to spook me now,’ she said.

‘I travel with a flamethrower when I drive,’ Edward said, ‘and sometimes I can even get it on the plane if I promise there’s no fuel in it.’

‘I heard you liked fire, Forrester. Were you a bed-wetter and terror to the neighborhood pets?’