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By Root 7407 0

flat of it with my thumb. “Shit, it’s silver.” I didn’t run back to the vampire. I waited and helped them get Jonah the vampire handcuffed, though I knew that they would only slow him down, if he really wanted free. We just hadn’t come up with anything that could hold up against a vampire’s strength. It was one of the reasons that they were killed instead of held over for trial. One state had tried cross-wrapped coffins, but it had been shot down as cruel and unusual. If I’d been asked, I would have asked the legislators that decided the coffins were too cruel, if they, themselves would rather be held in a small confined space until trial, or just killed. I’d have bet they’d have chosen the coffin, but then, no one asked me. I’d been invited to speak before a Senate subcommittee on undead rights, but the date kept being switched, or the committee chairperson kept changing, or . . . it was almost as if someone didn’t want the committee to finish its report. Probably political, but whatever, I hadn’t been called. I’d just been asked, a date to be specified later. Funny, but I think the committee would have liked my testimony better if they’d let me come talk when they first issued the invitation. Lately, I had nothing comforting to say.

“Sit him in a chair. If he tries anything funny, shoot him.”

“Where are you going?” Zerbrowski asked.

“The knives are silver.”

“So?”

“So, our good Samaritan vampire may be dead, or dying.” I was already moving for the door. “If he’s going to survive, we’ve got minutes to save him.”

“Save him how?” Zerbrowski asked.

I just shook my head and went for the door.

“Go with her, Smith.”

Smith just changed his grip on his gun so it was pointed two-handed at the floor. “I got your back.”

I didn’t argue with Smith coming along. Zerbrowski and I were partnering tonight. We trusted each other to watch the bad vamp, but I had to check on the wounded vamp, so Zerbrowski stayed on the suspect and gave me backup. Because neither of us trusted anyone else to cover Jonah the vampire. Zerbrowski got the murderer, and I got the hero. Life had been so much simpler when vampires didn’t come in hero-flavor.

68

I COULDN’T SEE our hero for the broad back of his friend. The blond was still kneeling there, holding his hand. The blond’s shoulders were slumped, and he turned a tear-stained face up to me. Faint reddish-pink tracks down his face where the blood in his own tears had marked him. The tears made me fear the worst, until I moved around the feet of the other vamp. The hero lay on his back, but he blinked wide gray eyes up at me. The eyes were the only thing pale about him. Longish dark hair, and the beginnings of a beard around a wide mouth. I almost said out loud what I was thinking, Oh, good, you’re not dead, but I managed not to. Point for me.

I knelt on the other side of him, across from his friend. The knife was sticking out of his chest like an exclamation point. I’d stabbed my share of vamps in my time, and I knew a heart blow when I saw one. Blood welled out around the blade, soaking into the dark-haired one’s clothing. It was bleeding a lot. Which meant either he’d fed tonight, or it was a bad injury, or both.

“I didn’t realize the knife was silver until we disarmed him. I’d have come back sooner.”

Smith said, “We got company.”

“Sooner or later,” a voice said behind us, “it matters not.” Malcolm was behind us. Other church members were behind him. You always get gawkers, I guess.

“It matters,” I said.

“He is dying, Anita, and nothing we can do will save him.”

I looked back at the hurt man and caught the look in his friend’s blue eyes. Blue eyes framed by the blue of his shirt collar. “I’ve seen vampires survive worse.”

“You have seen master vampires survive worse. He is not a master.”

“He gets power from his line, his master,” I said, “it isn’t always about personal power.”

“Truth and Wicked have no masters, do you?”

The blond looked at Malcolm, and there was such hopelessness in his face. I couldn’t even make remarks about the names. I mean, who gets named Truth and Wicked?