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“I’ve got him,” Zerbrowski said. He had his gun nice and steady on the vampire.

I nodded and pressed the back of my gun to my forehead. It didn’t feel cool, it was warm. Warm from being tucked up under my arm, wedged next to my breast. If I wore the wrong bra I scraped the edge of my breast as I drew, so I’d learned that all those minimizer bras that spread the breast to the side are not my friend wearing a shoulder holster. Push-up bras actually keep your breasts up and out of the way. You just had to make sure that the bra actually covered the front of you, so you could run without falling out of it. Why was I thinking about bras when we had a double murdering vampire still to be subdued? Because I’d almost killed him. I’d almost shot into the mass of his body, not because it was time, but because that’s what I did. I rarely looked down the barrel of a gun without being able to pull the trigger.

I’d almost killed him before we tried to question him. I’d almost killed him, because my body and mind fell into it. Fall into this is what we do. We look down the barrel of a gun, and we pull the trigger, and we shoot to stop. Dead is stop.

“Anita, how you doing?” Zerbrowski asked.

I nodded and lowered the gun to point at the floor. I trusted Zerbrowski to get a shot off and slow the vamp down. I trusted me to get my gun up in time to finish it. I wasn’t sure in that moment that I trusted me to stand there with a bead on the vampire. Funny, but I didn’t.

“I’m fine, Zerbrowski.”

He kept his eyes on the vampire along with his gun. “Okay. It’s your warrant.”

“Yeah,” I said, “my dime.” I looked at the vampire, still hiding behind his leather jacket, and felt nothing. He was just something that I wanted information from. I couldn’t offer him a deal for it. The law didn’t allow deals with vampires who had murdered. But that was a problem for another hour.

“Slowly, put your hands on your head and lace your fingers. Now!”

His voice came strangely muffled. “Have them put the crosses up.”

“Do you want to die right this second?”

He was quiet for a moment, then his voice again, “No.”

“Then do what you’re told. Hands on head, fingers laced, right fucking now. Now!”

He tried to keep his face hidden in the jacket, eyes squeezed tight shut as his arms came up and he put his hands on top of his head.

“Lace the fingers.”

He did.

“Now, on your knees.”

“Can I use my hands?”

I had my gun back up and pointed. “You are beginning to get on my nerves. Drop to your fucking knees.”

He did it. Goodie.

“Cross your ankles.”

“What?”

“One ankle over the other, cross your ankles.”

He did it. Which meant it was time to actually pat him down. I hate patting down someone who’s alive, so much easier to search the dead for weapons. How can you tell when you’ve been killing maybe a little too much? When you think it’s a pain in the ass having to pat down someone who can still move.

I put the barrel of my gun against his head. “If you move, I shoot. Is that clear?”

“Yes,” he said in a strained voice.

The other nice thing about only touching them after they’re dead is that you don’t hear the fear in their voices, or feel that fine tremble in their hands and arms. You don’t have to know that what they’re afraid of is you. You don’t have to think about the fact that the person you’re touching is going to have to die, and that nothing they can do, or you can do will stop it. The law isn’t about justice or mercy. The law is about the law, and law didn’t give Jonah NoLastName, or me, options.

He had another knife, this one was at the small of his back in a sheath on the inside of his belt. He had a wrist sheath, empty, and a larger sheath at his neck, hidden by the jacket’s collar. I’d never known a vampire to carry that many weapons. When he dropped the knife, I thought I’d been wrong about seeing the knife in the other vamp’s chest, but no, the bastard had stabbed him and had plenty of knives left. I remembered the knife like an exclamation point in the vamp’s chest.

It made me wonder. I looked at one of the knives, hefted it, touched the