Hit List(13)

I sighed. “What I mean, Karlton, is anytime someone asks me, ‘Can I say something without you taking it wrong?’ it usually means it will be something insulting. So say it, but I can’t guarantee how I’ll take it.”

She thought about that a minute, serious as a small child on the first day of school. “Okay, I guess that was a stupid thing to say, but I want to know the answer enough to be stupid.”

“Then ask,” I said.

“We had some of the other vampire executioners come and give lectures. One of them said you’d been one of the best before you got seduced by the master vampire of your city. He says that women are more likely to be seduced by vampires than men, and you’re proof of that.”

“It was Gerald Mallory, the vampire hunter assigned to Washington, DC, wasn’t it?” I said.

“How did you know?”

“Mallory thinks I’m the whore of Babylon because I’m sleeping with vampires. He might forgive shapeshifters, but he hates vampires with a depth and breadth of hate that’s frightening.”

“Frightening?” She made it a question with a upward lilt of her voice.

“I’ve seen him kill. He gets off on it. He’s like a racist who has permission to hate and kill.”

“You say race because I’m black.”

“No, I say racist because it’s the closest thing I can imagine to his attitude toward vampires. I’m not joking when I say after seeing him stake vampires that he scares me. He hates them so much, Karlton. He hates them without reason, or thought, or any room in his mind for a reason not to hate them. It consumes him, and people consumed by hate are crazy. It blinds them to the truth, and makes them hate anyone who doesn’t agree with them.”

“He also says that you should always stake a vampire. He doesn’t approve of using silver ammunition.”

“He’s a stake and hammer man.” I knelt by my backpack and came up with the Mossberg 500 Bantam shotgun. “This is my favorite for shooting them in their coffins. All you need to do is destroy the brain and the heart, but don’t just shoot them in the head and chest and think you’ve got the job done. You need to make sure the brain is leaking out on the floor, or the head is completely detached from the body, and then you need to see some daylight through the chest. The older the vampire, the more completely you need to destroy the heart and head.”

“He said just staking the heart was enough.”

“If I see daylight through the chest and the heart is completely destroyed, you’re probably okay, but if I have time I destroy the brain, too, just to be safe, and I want you to know that’s safer in the field. I’d still go back and shoot them in the head after the heart was taken out in a field situation.”

“You mean on a hunt,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“This is my first hunt.”

In my head, I thought, Well, fuck. “You mean you have never participated in a hunt?”

“No,” she said.

“I know you said you’d only done morgue stakings, but I thought you’d gone on at least one hunt as the junior marshal. You’ve never even seen a vampire hunted and killed in the field?”

“I can handle myself.”

I shook my head. “Now I need to ask you something without you getting insulted,” I said.

She sat on the side of her bed. “That’s fair; what do you want to know?”

“This is a bad case, Karlton. It’s not a hunt for a first-time field agent.”

“I know it’s a bad one,” she said.

“No, you don’t, not yet.” I sat on my bed and faced her. “I want you to sign the warrant over to me, please.”

She was angry and didn’t try to hide it. “I can’t. I’m the girl, and if I back down on this the other marshals will never trust me again.”

“It’s not about being a girl, Karlton, it’s about being new and inexperienced.”

“I’ll have your back, Blake.”

“I’m not worried that you’ll get me killed.”

She frowned again. “Then what are you worried about?”

I looked into those dark brown eyes, that earnest face and said, “I’m worried you’ll get yourself killed.”

There was no more girl talk after that. We just got ready for bed. I went into the bathroom to get dressed. I had packed my weapons, but not my clothes. Nathaniel, one of my live-in sweeties, a wereleopard and my leopard to call, had. He was the most domestic of us all, and I was fine with the jeans, T-shirts, boots, and jogging shoes, but the pajamas, well, I’d be talking to him about the pajamas. It was a camisole and boy shorts except they were both black lace and stretchy fabric that fit like a second skin. There was enough lift to the fabric that the camisole actually supported my breasts enough for it to fit right. The skimpy pj’s looked great on me, but were so not appropriate marshal jammies. But they were the most appropriate of what he’d packed. Soooo going to talk to him about that.