Affliction

15

Morgues aren't usually my favorite places, but it had been a choice of the morgue or helping Micah talk to the hospital security and police about not having his mom and aunt hauled off to jail. Frankly, I'd have let them take Aunt Bertie if it wouldn't have sent his mom to jail, too. Richard Zeeman's mom, my other almost-mother-in-law, had also had a temper. What was it with the men that I loved having moms who were such ... live wires? Maybe they both liked women just like dear old Mom? In Micah's case, I was a cop like his dad, so he got a two-for-one deal. It was all too weird and Freudian for me.

I stared down at the first plastic-edged corpse and wasn't happier here with the dead than up trying to figure out the living, but I was less confused. I had felt guilty leaving Nathaniel with Micah and the mess of the living, but he couldn't come with me. Dr Rogers had barely gotten the okay from the local cops for me to see the first three victims. Including my boyfriends would have been asking too much, and besides, I didn't want either of them to see the horrors I saw in my job, especially not if this was what would be happening to Rush Callahan. Previews are a bitch. I pushed away that last thought and looked down at the body.

There would be paperwork somewhere that told me her name, maybe even her background. Had she had a family? But I didn't need, or want, any of that right now. The only way to stay sane was to think body, it; depersonalize. Background information got in the way of the pronoun it and made it more a her. Looking down at the body I didn't want it to be a her. I needed it to be a thing. Sometimes I worried that I'd become like some legal serial killer with my victims just rogue vamps and shapeshifters, but moments like this made me understand that my empathy was way too good for me ever to be a serial killer. Most of them saw their victims as things like a lamp, or a chair, or a tree, no more real than that. It was what allowed them to do their crimes with so little remorse. You don't feel bad about beating up a chair or breaking a lamp, right?

I stared down at the body and fought to keep in that Zen mind-set where it was all impersonal and I didn't keep seeing Micah's dad in the hospital bed, or think what this woman must have gone through before she died. I fought to keep all that in the back of my head, because in the front it would stop me from being helpful. I couldn't function if my emotions were fucking me over. Yay, I wasn't becoming some emotionless killing machine. Boo, I was staring down at a partially rotted corpse and all I could think was, What a horrible way to die.

'Dazzle us, Blake,' Detective Rickman said.

Did I mention I had an audience? Dr Rogers and the coroner, Dr Shelley, I'd sort of expected, but I also had Sergeant Gonzales; Rickman; his partner, Detective Conner; Commander Walter Burke; Deputy Al; and Deputy Gutterman. Al was apparently senior officer while Rush was hurt, but I wondered, if we had two of their officers, how many were left on their force to protect and serve while they stayed down here? It was a small-town sheriff's department, it couldn't be that big, but I didn't question Al's use of manpower. He was in charge and he knew his resources.

The audience had been part of what made Rickman not have a hissy fit about me looking at the bodies. Apparently, he was worried I'd mess up the victims or do suspicious magic. I'd run into officers like him before. Some were ultrareligious, so they thought I was evil, but others just had the same problem with me they had with all female cops, or with a federal cop of any kind butting into their case. I was a woman, a female cop, a godless user of magic, and a Fed - so many reasons for other cops to hate me. The fact that this many different flavors of police were cooperating was rare and good to see. I had a feeling it was Sheriff Rush Callahan's good rep and work that made them all willing to band together. Normally police fought over jurisdiction like dogs over the last meaty bone. It was better than it had been years ago, but it was still a general rule that cops didn't like to share, except when they wanted to pass the buck so that a messy or boring case was someone else's problem. This case was messy, but it wasn't boring, and one of their own was hurt, so it was personal, but more than that, solve a case like this and it could make your reputation. Fail at solving it and it could break you. I wasn't big on failing or breaking.

Though with this many people in the room it was damn near claustrophobic. I felt like I had a wall looming up behind me that kept bending closer. It was actually Dr Shelley who finally turned around and said, 'Gentlemen, you were allowed to observe, not to breathe down our necks. Now, everybody take two big steps back.' She pushed her glasses back up on her nose with the back of her gloved hand and glared at them when they didn't move. 'This is my part of the crime, my domain; you're here because I let you be here. If you don't give us some room to work, then I'll clear the room, is that understood? Now step the hell away from us.'

I liked her. The men exchanged glances as if waiting to see who would back up first. It was Gonzales who stepped back first, followed by Burke, then the deputies, and finally Rickman. Maybe it wasn't just me he didn't like, or maybe it was all women?

'Thank you, gentlemen,' she said in a voice that held no grudge. She turned back to me and Dr Rogers. 'Marshal Blake, now that we can move without bumping into people, do you have any questions?'

Rickman piped up. 'We want to know what she sees that we didn't, not just information that you've already given us.'

Shelley turned around, and I didn't have to see her eyes to know she was giving him her cold look. It was a good look, and we'd all seen it a few times already. It was a look that reminded you of that teacher in elementary school who could make thirty kids go silent with a glance, except this look was more hostile.

Rickman took the full weight and gave his own defiant look back; we'd seen that a few times, too. 'If you feed her information, Sheila, we won't know if she's really an asset to this case or just another Fed to get in our way.'

'This is my morgue, Ricky. I run it the way the way I see fit.' Her voice was very cold, but the fact that he'd used her first name made me wonder if they'd had more than a working relationship once. Of course, maybe he just wanted to point out that her name was Sheila Shelley. He probably didn't get to use names that were almost as bad as his own Ricky Rickman very often.

'She's supposed to be some hotshot zombie expert; let her prove it,' he said, undaunted.

'I can raise zombies from the grave,' I said. 'Can anyone else in this room do that?'

There was silence and a couple of nervous looks.

'Was I not supposed to remind everybody that I raise the dead? Sorry, but it's a psychic gift. I'd exchange it for something else if I could, but it doesn't work that way. I make zombies rise from the dead the way some people are left-handed or have the recessive genes for blue eyes. It's just the way it is; I raised my first one when I was fourteen, so yeah, that makes me a zombie expert, Detective Rickman.'

'Then like I said, dazzle us, Blake.'

'Get out of my morgue,' Dr Shelley said.

'Now, Sheila,' he said.

'Stop using my first name as if that will make us buddies, Detective. You have an issue with women in authority, you always have, and apparently you always will.' She turned to me. 'I'm sorry, Marshal, it's nothing personal, he's always like this.'

'How did he make detective this young if he's always this big a pain in the ass?' I asked.

'Unfortunately, when he gets his head out of his ass he's a really good detective. He solved some big cases early and saved lives by catching the monsters early. I mean murderers, not your kind of monster,' she said.

I nodded, that I appreciated the difference.

She pointed a gloved finger at Rickman. 'But right now you are being childish and unhelpful. Sheriff Callahan has helped everyone in this room do their jobs better. He's saved lives literally and by simply helping all of us do ours. He never grabs credit, but we all know we owe him. Now, we are all going to let the marshal here do her job and respect her expertise with the preternatural, but more than that I hear she's engaged to Callahan's son and that means she deserves respect on that account, too, and you, Ricky, will by God give it to her for one of those three reasons. I don't care which one you pick, but choose one and give her the same credit you'd give a man with the same badge, the same reputation, and the same connection to a wounded officer that we all respect and owe.'

I fought the urge to applaud. Rickman finally looked embarrassed; good to know he could be. The other officers looked shamefaced, too, as if the lecture were somehow contagious, or as if Rickman had made them all look bad. Either way, Rickman shut up and the rest of them were on their best behavior as if to make up for him.

'Zombies, when they do bite, usually just bite down like a person. The first male victim's shoulder is torn, savaged, more like a wereanimal or a vampire.'

'Vampires don't tear at you like a terrier with a rat,' Burke said. 'They kill neat, almost clean.' He didn't sound happy when he said it, but he sounded sure.

I tried to remember if I'd touched anything in the morgue that I wouldn't want touching my bare skin. I thought and just couldn't be a hundred percent sure. 'I'd have to take my gloves off and reglove, but after we're all done here I can show scars where a vampire did just that to me.'

Burke's serious cop eyes let me know he wasn't sure he believed me.

'I know the literature, and most of the databases treat vampires as sort of organized serial killers, methodical planners, and wereanimals as the disorganized serial killers, making a mess, choosing their victims more by chance like a wounded antelope that falls behind the herd. But I've known vampires that slaughtered and wereanimals that were more organized.' I thought about it for a minute and then shook my head. 'Okay, I've known more vampires that went all slaughterfest than shapeshifters that were methodical in their kills, but trust me, the antelope doesn't always leave the herd by accident. It may look like happenstance, but most predators cause things to happen that will isolate or test the herd, so they get to see who's weak or careless. It's so not accidental most of the time.'

'Predators are all the same, I guess, two legs or four,' Burke said.

'Human, vampire, shapeshifter, a predator is a predator,' I agreed.

'There's nothing in the federal database about vampires eating their victims like a shapeshifter does,' Rickman said. 'I thought they couldn't eat solid food.'

'The commander said worry at a wound like a terrier with a rat, not eat it,' I said.

Rickman looked blank.

'Didn't you ever see a dog savage something just for the hell of it, not to eat it?' I asked.

He shrugged. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

Gonzales said, 'Did you ever play tug-of-war with a dog that was serious about it?'

Rickman shrugged again. 'Never had a dog.'

We all looked at him. 'Never?' Gonzales asked. 'Ever?' Al asked. 'Are you a cat person?' Shelley asked.

'No, but I hear that Blake is.' The words were innocent, but the tone was not, and neither was the look that went with it.

'Is that some kind of clever reference to Micah Callahan being a wereleopard?' I asked, and made sure that my voice held all the disdain I could manage, which was a lot.

'If the furry slipper fits ...' he said.

'Detective, I've been called the whore of Babylon to my face more than once; do you really think calling me a "cat person" is going to insult me?' I made little quote marks around cat person.

'Yeah, Ricky,' Gonzales said, 'for a ten-year veteran officer that was weak.'

'It was weak,' Al said.

'That was a pathetic insult, Detective,' Commander Burke said.

'Come on, Ricky,' I said, 'at least call me a blood whore since I'm sleeping with vampires. Oh, wait, that's not an original insult either; in fact, Micah's crazy aunt and uncle already called me that today.'

'Fine, fine, you've made your point.'

'No,' I said, 'I haven't begun to make my point. The vampire that tore me up the most broke my collarbone gnawing at me. The bend of my left arm has so much scar tissue that they said I'd lose the use of it, but enough weight lifting and stretching has kept me whole.'

'So, you're big and tough, we get it.'

'Shut up, Ricky,' Gonzales said.

Burke said, 'If the vampire wasn't trying to eat your flesh like a wereanimal, then why did he tear at you?'

'Because he meant to hurt me, because he wanted me to suffer before he killed me. You can see what human teeth can do to bodies on these.'

'I saw a ninety-pound cheerleader on PCP tear out a man's throat with her teeth once,' Burke said. He shuddered, and his professional cop look slipped a little and let the haunted look show through. Most cops had a haunted look; they hid it, but we all had it if we'd been on the job long enough. There were always things that happened that left stains on your mind, your heart, your soul. You saw the great, terrible thing and you couldn't forget it, you couldn't unsee it, unknow it, and you were never the same afterward. We had a moment of everyone's eyes remembering something bad, it didn't matter what, different memory, but same effect. We were all haunted; even Rickman's eyes had the look.

I turned and looked at Rogers and Shelley, and the two doctors looked just as haunted. Cops; emergency medical personnel; hell, emergency personnel; firemen; ambulance drivers; all of us ... you don't need ghosts to be haunted. Memory does that just fine without any supernatural help at all.

16

The woman's bite had been neater, but it had also been in her face, as if the zombie had tried to tear off her cheek. 'I can't tell how much damage was bite and how much was excised afterward.'

Rogers answered, 'The patient wouldn't sign off on the surgery to excise her wound. It was only after the patient realized that the disease was going to do more damage to her face than the surgery that she agreed to it, but it was too late. The disease had made its way to her brain and there was nothing we could do. I cut away as much of the infected tissue as I could, but when I realized that it wouldn't save her life, I did what I could to make her comfortable. Once this thing gets into a major organ that is needed to sustain life there isn't anything we can do, except pump them full of painkillers and make them comfortable until the end.'

I stopped looking down at the woman's ravaged face and back up at him. 'Is that why Sheriff Callahan is pumped up on pain meds? Has it reached a major organ system?' My pulse sped a little, but outwardly I was calm, my best blank cop face forward.

'No, the disease is also incredibly painful, and since we can only slow it, not stop it, we make the patients as comfortable as possible.'

'You swear,' I said.

He nodded. 'I swear, Rush was lucky it was an arm wound. I was able to take a lot of the flesh. I thought I'd gotten it all, honestly, but it's as if you can't cut fast enough to stay ahead of it. If we hadn't had the earlier patients to treat so we knew to put him on massive full-spectrum antibiotics and use the hyperbaric chamber, it would have spread everywhere by now, but we're learning more with every patient.'

'Why didn't you excise flesh from the man's shoulder wound?' I asked.

'He was the first we found alive. The emergency room doctor tried treating it as less virulent than it turned out to be. In his defense, you see the mess that the wound was. The thing really tore at him, so it was treated as a regular zombie bite, since they carry their own types of infection. By the time the attending doctor called me in it was simply too late. The infection had reached the man's heart, and there was nothing we could do.'

'Are you saying that his heart was rotted away?' I asked.

Dr Shelley answered that question. 'Yes, it was quite decayed. I'd never seen anything like it. You can see that the flesh on most of the chest is clean and looks healthy, but when I did the autopsy the heart looked more like the area around the initial wound.'

'Why did his heart rot? Why her brain? Why didn't it eat the outer healthy flesh first?' I asked.

'We aren't a hundred percent certain,' Rogers said, 'but we think that this infection enters the bloodstream through the bite and rides the blood into a major organ system and rots from both ends, so to speak.'

'So, bad luck about the face bite hitting the brain,' I said.

'Yes,' he said.

'And if you'd known to excise the shoulder wound on the man, then he might have been able to hold on,' I said.

'If he'd been a later victim instead of one of the first, I believe his odds would have been as good as the sheriff's,' Rogers said.

I didn't like the way he said it, not that Rush would make it, but better odds, but we all knew that unless a miracle cure showed up, it was just a matter of time for Micah's dad. He and I had gotten on the plane knowing that, but still ... I shook it off and concentrated on work, clues, we needed fucking clues. If we couldn't save Micah's dad, then maybe we could find who raised the aberrant zombies and kill them. Revenge wasn't a substitute for saving his dad, not even close, but sometimes it's the best you can do, and it beats the hell out of nothing, or that's what I was going to keep telling myself until I couldn't believe it anymore.

'Where are the earlier victims, the ones who died even faster than shoulder-wound here?'

Rogers and Shelley exchanged a look; it wasn't a look you see often between doctors, especially when one of them is a trauma surgeon and the other is a coroner. They didn't want to see the bodies again. Something about them bothered both doctors. What the hell?

'We'll have to go into the other area,' Shelley said.

'Other area?' I made it a question.

'Where we keep the bodies that are so decayed that we, well, we wouldn't want the smell to contaminate everything. No one would be able to work down here.'

'You mean the room for floaters and bodies like that,' I said.

'Yes,' she said, and she gave me a curious look, as if she hadn't expected me to know that.

'These don't smell that bad; in fact, shouldn't the infection make them smell worse?'

'That is one of the odd things about it; it doesn't seem to have the odor to match the putrefaction process. It's a small blessing for the patients and their families, but it is odd.'

I frowned down at the bodies. 'But you put the other dead bodies in the area with the stinky stuff; why?'

'The early bodies decayed more completely. The infection spread from the initial bite site to encompass fifty to eighty percent of the available flesh in just hours.'

'Wait, hours?' I asked.

They nodded.

'These victims died in hours?' I asked.

'The man did; we were able to prolong the woman's life for three days.'

'Did the early victims in the lockbox die from the infection hitting a major organ group?' I asked.

'No,' Rogers and Shelley said together. She motioned to him.

He continued, 'Actually, the infection seemed to spread faster through the flesh until it hit a major organ. It's almost as if as the patient begins to die, the infection slows. It shouldn't, but it seems to, and I emphasize seems to, because we have far too small a sample set to be sure of much with this infection.'

'Understood, you're investigating the disease the way we're investigating the crime,' I said.

He nodded. 'Very much so.'

I shook my head. 'I don't know enough about this kind of disease to hazard a guess, but is there a pattern to the wounds on the other victims?'

'What do you mean, pattern?'

'Well, the neat bite is in the woman's face. The rough bite is a shoulder wound. We know we have multiple zombie whatevers; what I'm asking is, does one zombie bite on the arms and shoulders and the other one bite on the face, or was the bite placement just what they could grab? Do they have a bite preference?'

'Two of the victims had facial wounds,' Burke said behind us.

It was almost startling, as if we'd forgotten the other cops were back there.

'Three of them, including the sheriff, were shoulder, arm, or back wounds,' Al said.

'You said you had witnesses to some of the attacks. Did they report differences in how the zombies attacked?'

Al seemed to think about it and then glanced at the other officers. They all sort of shook their heads and shrugged. 'The witness statements read like a horror movie,' Rickman said. 'I don't mean they're horrible, but more like they're describing a scene from a movie.'

'What do you mean?' I asked.

Rickman looked at the other men, and it was the first sign of insecurity I'd seen in him. I wasn't sure if it made him more human and likable or if it should have worried me.

Burke said, 'My guys were the first on the scene for one attack, and I know what the detective is saying. Zombies are the shambling dead, slow - relentless, but slow. One thing all the witnesses agree on is that these zombies are human-fast, at the very least, and maybe a little faster, which is movie stuff, not reality.'

'The one flesh-eating zombie I dealt with was more than human-fast,' I said.

'Why does eating flesh make them faster?' Rickman asked.

In my head I thought, I've seen zombies after they've eaten flesh and they haven't been faster, but I can't say it to a roomful of policemen, because I was the one who had raised the zombies and used them as defensive weapons. I'd done it every time to save my life and the lives of other innocent people, but none of it had been sanctioned by the police, and in fact I wasn't entirely sure the police would have okayed it regardless of circumstances. Technically as a marshal with the preternatural service I could use my psychic abilities to do my job; there were no caveats on what psychic abilities I used to finish my job, and since my job was to execute people ... technically I was now covered if I did it in the future. In reality I wasn't sure the police would be able to overlook it. At best I'd lose my badge; at worst I might be up on charges of using magic to kill people, which was an automatic death sentence. It was a gray area for the law, but the price was a little too high for me to want to test the limits of it.

'Marshal Blake, Marshal, can you hear me?'

I blinked and realized that Burke had been talking to me for a while, and I hadn't heard. Automatically I said, 'I'm sorry, can you repeat that? I think I was thinking too hard.'

'Too hard about what?' Rickman asked.

'The dead,' I said. I left the statement there for him to make what he would of it: the dead in this room, zombies, vamps, the victims - what dead?

'Why does eating flesh make them faster?' Rickman said, and I realized he was repeating himself.

'I don't know, but I do know that fresh blood allows zombies to speak and helps them be more "alive."'

'What do you mean, fresh blood?' he asked.

'Have any of you ever seen a zombie raised from the grave?'

They all shook their heads. I thought about explaining the whole ritual to them, but it was more information than they needed, and if they didn't have a background in some sort of ritual-based religion it would be way too much. 'We usually kill a chicken at the grave, or some animators cut their own body to get the blood, but either way you need fresh blood to do the ritual.'

'What else do you need?' Al asked.

'A blade, salt, and most use an ointment with herbs in it; the mix is usually unique to each individual animator, because it's homemade. Some animators feel they can't raise the dead without their own mix of herbs and ointment; it's usually partly based on the ointment their mentor used when he or she trained them.'

'Is that all you need to raise the dead?' Rickman asked.

'You need the psychic ability to do it, which is damn rare. You need a buried body that is at least three days dead and you need to know the name of the body you're trying to call from the grave.'

'Why three days dead?' Al asked.

'That's minimum time for the soul to leave the body,' I said.

I got owl blinks from most of them, like I'd startled them or overcomplicated their little heads. It's not a look you get from veteran cops very often. It didn't make me proud; more crap, how did I explain this?

'You believe in the soul?' Rickman asked.

'Yes,' I said.

'Do you believe in God?'

'Of course.'

'Then how can you ...' Al asked it.

I frowned at him. 'Finish your sentence.'

He shifted a little as if maybe my look and my request didn't match up, but he finished. 'Then how can you use black magic to raise the dead?'

'Oh, for pity's sake, don't you guys read the federal bulletins on religious differences between legal religious practices and illegal ones?'

Al flushed a little, and I didn't want to embarrass him. He was an ally and I would probably need them. Crap. 'Sorry, we're just a little podunk town sheriff department. We don't get all the federal updates.'

'Sorry, Al, I'm just a little tired of being accused of black magic and devil worshipping after Micah's aunt and uncle.'

'Geez, I'm sorry, Anita, really; they were horrible to you. I should have remembered that.'

'You mean Bertie and Jamie?' Gonzales asked.

'Yeah,' Al said.

'Talk to me later and I'll give you some stories that'll make her leave you alone.'

'That'd be great,' I said.

'Okay, I apologize again,' Al said, 'but if raising the dead isn't black magic, what is it?'

'Most people consider it vaudun, or voodoo, but since I'm still a card-carrying Episcopalian, it's not a religious ritual for me, it's just a ritual that helps me focus a natural ability with the dead.'

'Is that what it is to other zombie raisers?' Rickman asked.

I gave him a look. 'If I were a practitioner I'd accept voodoo priestess, but since I'm not, the term is animator, from the Latin "to bring life." I know the Boulder PD gets seminars on what's insulting and what's okay to say to various special groups, and animators are about as elite a group as we can get.'

'Elite, in what way?' Rickman asked.

'As in a specialized skill. There probably aren't two hundred people in the world who can raise the dead, at all. Of those, most can only raise the typical kind of zombies, slow, rotting corpses that can barely move like people; most can't even speak. Those of us who can raise the dead so they are able to answer questions with prompting are maybe fifty. If you want a zombie that is coherent enough to answer a lawyer's questions or say the last good-bye to loved ones, well, that narrows it down to maybe twenty-five, thirty. The only flesh-eating zombies I'm aware of have been raised by only the most powerful of us, maybe the top one percent of that. Someone who could raise multiple flesh-eating zombies like this is really rare. There are none in this state that I'm aware of.'

'So it would have to be someone from one of the major animating firms?' Rickman asked.

'I can't imagine anyone from the firms doing this kind of shit,' I said.

'Who else?' Rickman asked.

'There are good vaudun practitioners and not-so-bad ones. A really powerful one who had chosen to do dark magic could do it, but the only one left that I'm aware of is in New Orleans, and Papa Jim is eighty and a good guy from all accounts. There are powerful priests and priestesses, but that doesn't automatically mean they can raise the dead, no matter what the legends say about voodoo.'

'I thought all voodoo priests could make zombies if they were powerful enough,' Al said.

I shook my head. 'No, you can't just pray your way into the ability to raise the dead. It's a gift, like running a mile in under four minutes; practice makes you faster, but some stuff has to be genetic, inherent to you.'

'So you're saying that you couldn't do a spell evil enough to be given the ability to control the dead?' he asked.

I thought about that for a long minute. 'Honestly, I can't answer that. I don't do black magic or mess with the kind of stuff that bargains power for sacrifice or evil deeds.'

'Why does anyone do it?' Burke asked.

'Because they're too weak, or scared, or powerless on their own, and they want to be stronger, scary themselves, and feel powerful.'

'And you don't need any of that?' Rickman asked.

'Nope, do you?' I asked.

He looked surprised. 'No, but I'm just a detective. There's nothing the demonic could offer me.'

I laughed. 'Oh, Detective, there's a certain kind of evil that specializes in finding what a person wants most and pretending to offer it to them at a price.'

'Why do you say pretend?' Al asked.

'Because the demonic can only give you what God has created, or what someone else has; they can't help you create something new and fresh, because that's beyond them. They are a part of the creator's design, not part of the creating of it. They imitate, they bargain, they may know your darkest secret, or worst fear, but they can't create your fear, only exploit the one that's already there, and they can't make you do a damn thing, only know what you've already done and try to use it against you.'

'How do you know all this?' Rickman asked.

'One, I was raised a good little Catholic girl. Two, I've come up against the demonic a time or two.'

'You've fought demons?' Al said.

'Not the way you probably mean, but yeah.'

'And you won?' Rickman said, and he sounded skeptical.

'I'm here, and their victims survived, so yeah, I won.'

'Did you do an exorcism?' Burke asked.

'No, I've assisted a priest on one once; really don't want to do a traditional exorcism again.'

'Why not?'

I just looked at him. 'If you have to ask, you don't want to know.'

'So you help priests fight demons?' Rickman managed to be even more disdainful.

'No, I worked with one priest on one exorcism, but the Catholic Church has excommunicated all of us animators, so I can't help now.'

'Excommunication must make demons harder to fight,' Rickman jibed.

'If your faith is pure, you're safe enough,' I said.

'Pure? Your faith is pure?' Rickman laughed.

'Don't be a dick, Ricky,' Dr Shelley warned him.

'She's sleeping with enough men to field a football team, how is that pure?'

Gonzales and Burke both called him on it, but I raised a hand and said, 'It's okay, I've heard it before, but I have a question for the detective.'

Burke looked skeptical, Gonzales looked worried, Al more curious, Shelley angry, and Rogers like he was ready to be elsewhere, but they all let me ask my question.

'If I were a man sleeping with that many women, would it bother you as much?'

He seemed to think about it and then finally shook his head. 'No, I guess it wouldn't. I wouldn't want the guy dating my sister, but ... no, it wouldn't bother me as much.'

'Why not?' I asked.

'Why not, what?' he asked.

'Why wouldn't it bother you as much, if I were a man?'

He frowned, thought, and finally said, 'You're a woman, you're not supposed to sleep around. You're a beautiful woman. You don't have to be a slut.'

Dr Shelley said, 'Jesus, Ricky.'

Burke said, 'You aren't in my chain of command, but I will be speaking to your superiors about this.'

Gonzales was shaking his head. 'All I can do is apologize for him, Anita.'

I laughed, not the I-think-this-is-funny laugh, but the abrupt I-can't-believe-what-I'm-hearing laugh. 'I've heard all of it before, unfortunately, but this is the first time I've ever heard anyone's reasoning being that only ugly women sleep around. That's a new one.'

'Beautiful women don't have to; men chase them,' Rickman said, as if he truly didn't understand what he was doing wrong. Maybe he didn't?

'So ugly women sleep around because sex is the only way they can get men?' I asked.

'Please, shut up now, Ricky,' Gonzales said. 'You are embarrassing yourself and the Boulder PD.'

He looked from one to the other of the others, and his expression was plainly confused.

It was Dr Rogers, who had been so quiet through all of it, who said, 'He doesn't understand, does he?'

'Jesus, Ricky,' Dr Shelley said, 'I thought you just hated women in authority and were offensive, but you honestly don't understand that you're wrong.'

'Regardless, I will be reporting this incident to your superiors,' Commander Burke said.

'What?' Rickman said.

'You called Marshal Blake a slut,' Al said.

'I didn't,' he said.

Gonzales sighed and smoothed his hand over his face. 'So that's why when the other women came forward and said you'd called them names, you were so surprised.' He looked at me. 'It's why none of the complaints stuck; he seemed so damned innocent.'

'Because he thought he was,' I said.

Gonzales nodded.

'It's like social dyslexia,' I said. 'He can't see it.'

Gonzales nodded again.

Burke said, 'Regardless, it's unacceptable behavior in an officer.' I was betting he hadn't realized he was sounding more military than cop, but once military enough, it's hard to shake all of it.

'Conduct unbecoming,' I said.

Burke nodded. 'Very much so. I apologize for all the discourtesy you have experienced since you arrived here. I thought the religious zealots upstairs would be the main problem, but apparently not.' He gave Rickman a hard, cold look.

Rickman might not understand why he was in trouble for talking to me, but he understood the look. He tried to give a hard look in return, but his face was uncertain. I think because he knew that not everyone in the room could be wrong, which made him wrong. Maybe, just maybe, he was rethinking all those accusations from other women and wondering if they had been right? One could hope that even men like Rickman could be taught.

Dr Rogers had to go back to his living patients. We were all stripping off the gowns, masks, and protective gear as I asked him, 'Is Micah going to be able to actually talk to his dad?'

'He's basically in a medically induced coma. Normally, I'd bring him out of it pretty quickly, but the last patient to die seemed to go into shock when the drugs left her system, so I'm going to wean the sheriff off more slowly and hope his body adjusts better.'

'You mean, one of the victims died just from coming out of the drugs?' I asked.

He nodded.

'Shit,' I said, softly.

'I am sorry, Marshal. I will do everything I can to give your fiance a chance to say good-bye to his dad.'

'I appreciate that, Doctor.'

He nodded, his face a little grim. It's never good when doctors make faces like that. I turned to the only thing I could do to help: police work. I got promises to have access to everyone's witness statements. Al went one better. 'Deputy Gutterman was with Rush when he was attacked. You can hear his statement firsthand.'

'We can do that next,' I said.

He shook his head. 'Gutter is out on another call. With the sheriff and me out of rotation, there's not enough people on our force to keep Gutter at the hospital, too.'

Burke said, 'I could send a couple of cars on extra patrols through your town if you need it, Al.'

'I really appreciate that, Commander. I may take you up on it, just depends on how ... things go.'

I was pretty sure that if I hadn't been Micah's fiance, he'd have said something different, because once Rush Callahan died, his small police force wouldn't feel compelled to keep manpower at the hospital. I could have told Al that I didn't have to be babied, but if Micah was with me, then we'd need it; better to get in the habit now.

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as all the policemen knew exactly why Deputy Al had hesitated, and everyone wondered whether to say something or let the silence spread.

'It's okay, Al, I know that it's a matter of time for Micah's dad, unless we get a miracle.'

'Do you believe in miracles, Anita?' Al asked.

I nodded. 'Yeah, I do.'

Rickman snorted. 'Miracles are for Sunday school and Christmas specials. I've been a cop too long to believe shit like that.'

I started to say something, but Dr Shelley beat me to it. 'Be cynical on your own time, Ricky. I want Rush to have his miracle and get to see his son married to Marshal Blake.'

'Not going to happen,' Rickman said.

'Ricky,' Gonzales said in a low, angry voice, 'you are not going to kill Rush before he's dead.'

Rickman looked shocked, and again he didn't know what he'd said wrong. I was wondering if there was maybe something socially wrong with the detective, beyond just being rude. 'I didn't mean anything, Ray, I ... I want Rush to make it, too, but facts are facts.'

'Fuck facts!' Gonzales said, and he loomed over the detective. Ricky was six feet, the same height as Gonzales, but somehow the sergeant dwarfed the detective. Gonzales did what some people could do, he just seemed bigger. I was told I could do it, too, but I didn't have Gonzales's size, so it couldn't be as impressive.

Burke didn't step between them, but he moved up sort of halfway between where each of them was standing. 'Detective Rickman, go somewhere else away from Sergeant Gonzales for a while.'

'I'm sorry, Ray, I ...' Rickman shrugged, shook his head, and finally just walked away, but I was betting he was clueless on why the other man was rigid with anger.

Gonzales's voice crawled out of his chest, thick and dark with rage. 'I won't give up on Rush. I do believe in miracles, because I have to.'

I reached out to touch his arm and then stopped myself. Sometimes, when you're angry enough, any physical contact escalates the rage. I didn't want to do that, so I let my hand drop back to my side.

'I believe in miracles,' I said.

He rotated his neck as if the muscles hurt to move, so tight with the tension in his shoulders, and that movement alone let me know how close he'd come to hitting Rickman or how much he'd wanted to do it. 'It's all Rush has got.' It was a growl.

'Let's you and me get some coffee in the cafeteria,' Al said. He gave a small nod to let me know to leave him with his friend. Since I had no clue what to do for Gonzales and I was supposed to be here as moral support for Micah, I let Al take care of it. If I was hand-holding anyone emotionally it had to be my 'fiance.'

Burke walked me out through the last doors and the hallway beyond. Ares and Bram pushed away from the wall, going from at ease to at attention. Neither of them had been out of the military that long. They'd come back to the hospital just in time to trail me with the police. Micah had told me to take them because the police would be more comfortable with two ex-military guards than with Dev and Nicky's more civilian-muscle attitude. He'd been right, but the fact that he'd thought of it in the middle of the family chaos made me hug him tight and feel bad that he was having to think about anything but his dad. I looked at the two tall, slender, muscled men, one about as dark as he could get, and the other all honey and golden blond, even his tanned skin. I saw them so often together that I'd started thinking of them as a unit, the way you think of some couples, never alone, but always two. They'd traded military backgrounds with the police, and it had helped put the other men at ease. None of the guards were going to make Micah's family comfortable with their son, brother, cousin, and nephew needing bodyguards because of threats. But seeing Commander Burke nod and smile at them and exchange handshakes was a help here.

Ares and Bram dropped back and took up their posts behind me. It was habit now for all of us, but Burke noticed it. 'I understand that Mike Callahan has threats because he's part of the Coalition, but why do you need bodyguards?'

'I've been tied to Micah and the Coalition in the media, and I'm also tied to the Master of the City in St Louis, Jean-Claude, and the hate groups hate the vampires, a lot. You saw the level of hate from Micah's aunt and her husband; now imagine strangers.'

'Is it that bad?' he asked.

'We had a zealot try to blow up one of Jean-Claude's clubs this year.' I didn't add that he'd tried to blow it up with Nathaniel, Dev, Nicky, Cynric, and me inside it. The zealot had been a human with a few vampire bites on him, the daytime servant of a group of vampires that had decided Jean-Claude was building an evil empire to enslave them all. If they could have killed my leopard to call, two of my tigers to call, and me all at the same time, they hoped it would be enough to kill Jean-Claude. We were all metaphysically connected, which meant we shared a hell of a lot more than just emotional well-being. I'd killed a few vampires myself by simply killing their human servants. You could potentially get the same effect by killing the animal to call their moitie bete, literally their beast half? Kill anyone in the psychic power chain and you had a chance to kill them all.

'So you have terrorists,' Burke said.

I thought about it, then nodded. 'Something like that.'

'What happened to your bomber?'

'He died,' I said.

Burke looked back at the other men and said, 'Good to have men of action around when you need them.' He smiled as he said it.

'Oh, it wasn't us,' Ares said.

Burke frowned and hesitated as he walked. 'You mean the other guards upstairs?'

'They were hostages,' Ares said.

'They assisted in their own rescue,' Bram said, and he gave his partner a look that took the smile off Ares' face.

'What'd I say wrong? You're giving me that look again.'

'You mean the look that says you're letting your mouth run away with your head?' Bram said.

'Hey,' Ares said.

Burke laughed. 'You two have been partners for a while.'

'We have, sir,' Bram said.

'Does it show?' Ares asked.

'Yeah, it shows; good partners are like married couples,' Burke said.

'Some people in civilian circles call the partner the work spouse,' I said.

'God knows in police work you see your partner more than you see your wife sometimes,' Burke said.

I just nodded.

'What did I do to earn the look this time?' Ares asked.

Bram glared at him.

'What?'

I said, 'You implied that the other guards with us aren't as good at their jobs as you two are.'

'I did not,' he said, and his face showed that he totally didn't get it.

'Don't you get it, Ares?' Bram said, 'Dev and Nicky don't look like cops, or military, and saying they were hostages just undermines them in Commander Burke's eyes even more.'

Ares looked from one to the other of us, and then his face sort of fell. He took in a deep breath, let it out, and said, 'That is not what I meant.'

'I know,' Bram said with an eye roll, like a long-suffering spouse.

I turned my head to hide my smile.

'I'm just glad Marshal Blake and young Callahan have good men to step in when needed.'

Bram gave him a very direct look. 'None of us saved Marshal Blake that day.'

Burke frowned. 'I'm not sure I'm following.'

Bram sighed. He looked at me, back at Ares, and finally back at me. 'I'm sorry, Anita; having bodyguards with you is going to make all the other cops think less of you as a cop, like a soldier who needs guards.'

I nodded and shrugged. 'Yeah, but what can we do?'

Bram turned back to Burke. 'Let's be clear, Commander. Marshal Blake helped come up with a plan to rescue the hostages and take out the bomber. She went in with SWAT to execute that plan. The other guards upstairs were key players in that plan. In fact, Nathaniel Graison, the other civilian with Micah Callahan, helped save them all, too. If Nathaniel hadn't done his part first, the rescue would have failed. But it was Anita who took out the threat - not the other cops, not the guards, her.'

'You get mad at me for being chatty and now you're just running off at the mouth,' Ares said.

'It's a police case. Everything's on record,' Bram said.

I looked at Bram's stoic dark face. I couldn't read his expression, and hyena wasn't one of my animals to call, so I had no extrasensory hint of what he was thinking. 'Ares is right - this is the longest speech I've ever heard from you.'

'Commander Burke is the highest-ranking officer we've met. I just want him to know that you aren't a victim who needs saving, you're the person who comes through the door and does the saving.'

I smiled and frowned at the same time, puzzling. 'Then why add Nathaniel in?'

'Because he's the kind of man that men like us discount, and Nathaniel deserves better than that. If I had just told Commander Burke how tough you, Dev, and Nicky are, then it marginalizes Nathaniel.'

'You didn't defend Mike Callahan's honor to me,' Burke said.

Bram turned just his head, and there was some change in his energy, not quite his beast peeking out, but almost anger. Ares reacted to it by standing taller and moving slightly closer to his partner. Bram said, 'Micah doesn't need anyone to defend his honor. He is his honor.'

'No offense,' Burke said.

Bram nodded. 'We take Anita's orders because she leads from the front line. We follow Micah's orders because he is our leader.'

'What about your Master of the City, this Jean-Claude?'

'We respect Jean-Claude,' Bram said.

'But he isn't your leader the way Callahan and Blake are?'

It was Ares who stepped forward for Bram this time. 'Excuse my partner here; he's not used to talking this much. I think sharing time is over, right, Anita?'

'Yeah,' I said. It was actually a point of contention between some of the vampires around Jean-Claude that the bodyguards followed my orders better than his and that almost all the shapeshifters followed Micah's orders better. The Harlequin had once been the elite bodyguards of the head of the vampire council, the Mother of All Darkness, but with her defeat they belonged to Jean-Claude now. He was the new head of the vampire council. Not all the Harlequin had agreed with the change, but once the Mother of All Darkness was dead, it was very much 'The king is dead, long live the king.' Though I guess in this case it had been 'The queen is dead, long live the king.'

Burke looked from one to the other of us, but our faces gave him nothing back and he'd been a cop long enough to know when to let it go. What I didn't like was that he'd asked about Jean-Claude in the first place. How much did the other police know about our vampire politics? Looking at Burke's face, I thought maybe more than I'd thought. It made me wonder if Burke had the same mysterious federal friend as Sheriff Callahan had and how much the commander here knew about some of the less public adventures we'd all had, things that hadn't been reported to the police, because we'd handled it old-school. Yeah, I meant illegal.

I needed away from Burke before he asked something even more awkward. Unfortunately, I had the perfect out. 'I need to get back to Micah and Nathaniel. I really wish I'd been able to meet Sheriff Callahan under other circumstances,' I said.

Burke nodded, face somber. 'Callahan is a good sheriff and a good man. I hope like hell that you get a chance to find that out for yourself, Marshal.'

'So do I, Commander, so do I.'

We all shook hands and three of us went for the elevator. It was time to see if Micah's mother and aunt had gone to jail on mutual assault charges. The fun just never stopped on this trip.