Hit List(12)

“I’ve been doing it longer,” I said.

“There’s only eight of you from the early days,” she said.

“There were more of us than that,” I said.

“They either retired early like your friend Manny Rodriguez, or they . . .” She was suddenly very interested in getting her clothes in a drawer. “Is it okay if I take the top drawer?”

“Fine, you’re taller.”

She smiled, a little nervous around the edges. “It’s okay, Karlton,” I said. “I know the mortality rate was high when the vampire executioners first started serving warrants.”

She put her clothes in the drawer, closed it, and then looked at me, sort of sideways, again. “Why did the mortality rate among the executioners go up after the warrant system was put in place? The books all say it went up, way up, but it doesn’t explain why.”

I knelt down and she gave me enough room to put my clothes in the bottom drawer. I thought about how to answer her. “Before warrants, vampire hunters weren’t always particular about how they killed. We didn’t have to defend it in court, so we were a little more trigger happy. After the warrant system some hunters hesitated, worried about what would happen if they couldn’t defend it in court and ended up on murder charges. Remember, back then we had no badges. Some of us went to jail for murder even though the vampire killed was confirmed as a serial killer. It made some of us hesitate to kill. Hesitation will get you killed.”

“We have badges now.”

“Yeah, and officially we’re cops, but make no mistake, Karlton, we are still executioners. A policeman’s main job is to prevent harm to others. Most of them go twenty years and never draw their gun in the line of duty, not matter what you see on television.” I laid shirts on top of bras and underwear in the drawer. “Our main job is to kill people; that’s not what cops do.”

“We don’t kill people, we kill monsters.”

I smiled, but knew it was bitter. “Pretty to think so.”

“What does that mean?”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four, why?”

I smiled, and it still didn’t feel happy. “When I was your age I believed they were monsters, too.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“You’re only six years older than me, Blake.”

“Cop years are like dog years, Karlton, multiply by seven.”

“What?” she asked.

“I may only be six years older than you chronologically, but in dog years I’m forty-two years older.”

She frowned at me. “What the hell is that even supposed to mean?”

“It means, how many vampires have you executed?”

“Four,” she said, and it was a little defensive.

“Hunted them down and killed them, or morgue stakings where they’re chained to a gurney and unconscious while you do it?”

“Morgue, why?”

“Talk to me after you’ve killed some of them awake, while they’re begging for their lives.”

“They beg for their lives? I thought they’d just attack.”

“Not always; sometimes they’re scared and they beg, just like anybody else.”

“But they’re vampires, they’re monsters.”

“According to the law we uphold they’re legal citizens of this country, not monsters.”

She studied my face. I don’t know what she saw there, or wanted to see, but she finally frowned. I think a blank face wasn’t what she’d been hoping to see. “So you really do believe that they’re people.”

I nodded.

“You believe they’re people, but you still kill them.”

I nodded again.

“If you really believe that, then it would be like me killing Joe Blow down the block. It would be like me putting a stake through a regular person’s heart.”

“Yeah,” I said.

She frowned and turned back to unpacking. “I don’t know if I could do my job if I thought of them as people.”

“It does seem a conflict of interest,” I said. I began debating on where to put the weapons I’d want easy access to, just in case. Knowing that the Harlequin might be planning to try to kidnap or kill me made me more than normally interested in being well armed.

“Can I say something without you taking it wrong?” she asked, and sat on the edge of her bed.

I stopped with one gun and two knives laid out on the bed. “Probably not, but say it anyway.”

She frowned again, putting that little pucker between her eyes. If she didn’t stop frowning so much she’d have lines there before too many years. “I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with you.”