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By Root 847 0

it hadn’t been a legal monster hunt. It had been Haven, our local Rex, lion king, going apeshit and shooting Nathaniel, my live-in sweetie, wereleopard to call, and one of the loves of my life. Haven had meant to kill him, but Noel, one of the weakest of our werelions, had put himself between Nathaniel and that bullet. He’d lost his life to save Nathaniel’s, and I’d barely known Noel. Haven had been jealous, and wanted to hurt me as badly as possible; that he’d chosen Nathaniel’s death as the most painful thing he could do to me was something I still hadn’t looked at too closely. I had enough pain, because Haven had been one of my lovers. I’d never killed anyone that I’d cared about before. It hadn’t felt very good. In fact, it had sucked.

“You’re saying I’m still raw from killing Haven?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever had to kill a lover?”

“Yes.”

I glanced at him. “Really?”

He nodded. “Now ask me if I cared about her.”

“Okay, did you care about her?”

“No.”

“And I cared about Haven, so it hurts more.”

“I think so,” he said.

We leaned against the wall some more in companionable silence. Edward and I didn’t need to talk—we could talk, but we didn’t need to. “We’re going about hunting these killers all wrong. Even if we didn’t know what was killing them, and sort of why, we’re still doing it ass-backward.”

“We need to consolidate the warrants of execution from the first three cities and just make it one hunt,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“But the first three warrants are all in the hands of marshals who were book-and-classroom trained. They were cops, but no one has a violent crimes background. I’m not sure why they’re recruiting some of these kids.”

“We were all kids once, Edward, but we need to take over the warrants before some of the other marshals get themselves killed. Raborn said that you, me, Jefferies, and Spotted-Horse are the cleanup crew. We come onto a warrant after other marshals have been killed or injured.”

“It’s the law, Anita. The warrant is theirs until they are unable to execute it, through death or injury, or they sign it over to another marshal for some other reason.”

“Let’s make them sign it over to us now.”

“How?” he asked.

“We could just ask,” I said.

“I asked two of the marshals. They both refused.”

“You asked the men,” I said.

“Yes.”

“So I’ll ask the female marshal,” I said.

“A little girl talk?” he asked.

I frowned at him. “I don’t really do girl talk, but I’ll try to persuade her to sign the warrant over to me. If just one of them signs off, then we can hunt the monsters. Stop the crimes by killing the criminal, not by solving them.”

“I like it,” he said.

“You know and I know that we’re legal assassins, not cops. Sometimes we solve crimes and catch the bad guys, but at the end of most days we kill people.”

“You sound like that bothers you,” he said. He looked at me as he asked it.

I shrugged. “It does, and we already discussed that it doesn’t bother you. Well, fucking bully for you, but it’s beginning to get on my nerves.”

“I think I’ve figured out a way to use you as bait to lure them out, if it’s really you they’re wanting.”

I studied his unreadable face. “But first we’ll need someone to sign a warrant over to us, right?”

“That would help, and you getting some bodyguards from home, and maybe calling in Bernardo and Olaf now, before anyone’s dead, as backup wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“Olaf still thinks I’m his girlfriend or something.”

“The couple that slaughters people together stays together.”

“That wasn’t really very funny,” I said.

“Yes, it was, but I apologize anyway. We both know that someday you, or I, will have to kill Olaf because he’s decided to kill you.”

“If he really plans on killing me he’ll kill you first, Edward, because he knows that you won’t rest until he’s dead.”

“You’d do the same for me.”

“True, so he’d kill us really close together, so neither of us could go all revenge on his ass.”

“Probably,” Edward said.

“And yet, you’ll call him in to back us up on this case.”

“He’s a good man in a fight.”

“He’s a crazy psycho killer, is what he is,” I said.