Skin Trade(22)

I said, “Shoot her.”

The vampire made mewling sounds, like a frightened child. Her voice came high and piteous, “Please, please, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. He made me. He made me.”

“Shoot her, Mendez,” I said into the mic.

“She’s begging for her life,” he said, and his voice didn’t sound good.

I peeled shotgun shells out of the stock holder and fed them into the gun as I walked toward Mendez and the vampire. She was still crying, still begging, “They made us do it, they made us do it.”

Jung was trying to hold pressure on his own neck wound. Melbourne’s body lay on its side, one hand outstretched toward the cringing vampire. Melbourne wasn’t moving, but the vampire still was. That seemed wrong to me. But I knew just how to fix it.

I had the shotgun reloaded, but I let it swing down at my side. At this range the sawed-off was quicker; no wasted ammo.

Mendez had glanced away from the vamp to me, then farther back to his sergeant. “I can’t shoot someone who’s begging for her life.”

“It’s okay, Mendez, I can.”

“No,” he said, and looked at me; his eyes showed too much white. “No.”

“Step back, Mendez,” Hudson said.

“Sir…”

“Step back and let Marshal Blake do her job.”

“Sir… it’s not right.”

“Are you refusing a direct order, Mendez?”

“No, sir, but-”

“Then step back and let the marshal do her job.”

Mendez still hesitated.

“Now, Mendez!”

He moved back, but I didn’t trust him at my back. He wasn’t bespelled; she hadn’t tricked him with her eyes. It was much simpler than that. Police are trained to save lives, not take them. If she’d attacked him, Mendez would have fired. If she’d attacked someone else, he’d have fired. If she’d looked like a raving monster, he’d have fired. But she didn’t look like a monster as she cringed in the corner, hands as small as my own held up, trying to stop what was coming. Her body pressed into the corner, like a child’s last refuge before the beating begins, when you run out of places to hide and you are literally cornered, and there’s nothing you can do. No word, no action, no thing that will stop it.

“Go stand by your sergeant,” I said.

He stared at me, and his breathing was way too fast.

“Mendez,” Hudson said, “I want you here.”

Mendez obeyed that voice, as he’d been trained to, but he kept glancing back at me and the vampire in the corner.

She glanced past her arm, and because I didn’t have a holy item in sight, she was able to give me her eyes. They were pale in the uncertain light, pale and frightened. “Please,” she said, “please don’t hurt me. He made us do such terrible things. I didn’t want to, but the blood, I had to have it.” She raised her delicate oval face to me. “I had to have it.” The lower half of her face was a crimson mask.

I nodded and braced the shotgun in my arms, using my hip and my arm instead of my shoulder for the brace point. “I know,” I said.

“Don’t,” she said, and held out her hands.

I fired into her face from less than two feet away. Her face vanished in a spray of blood and thicker things. Her body sat up very straight for long enough that I pulled the trigger into the middle of her chest. She was tiny, not much meat on her; I got daylight with just one shot.

“How could you look her in the eyes and do that?”

I turned and found Mendez by me. He’d taken off his mask and helmet, though I was betting that was against the rules until we left the building. I covered my mic with my hand, because no one should learn about someone’s death by accident. “She tore Melbourne’s throat out.”

“She said the other vampire made her do it; is that true?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Then how could you just shoot her?”

“Because she was guilty.”

“And who died and made you judge, jury, and ex-” He stopped in midsentence.

“Executioner,” I finished for him. “The federal and state government.”

“I thought we were the good guys,” he said.

“We are.”

He shook his head. “You aren’t.”

And through all of it, I could feel Cannibal’s energy like a song that you can’t get out of your head, but I could feel that this song was feeding on the pain, the terror, even the confusion.

I pushed at the power, shoved it away, but it was like trying to grab a spiderweb when you run through it. You feel it on your skin, but the more you pull off, the more you find, until you realize that the spider is still on you somewhere making silk faster than you can get it off you. You have to fight the urge to panic, to simply start screaming, because you know that it’s on you, crawling, ready to bite. But the memory receded like turning down a radio, still there, but I could think again. I could feel Cannibal’s hands in mine, and I could open my eyes, look at him, see the now. Through gritted teeth, I said, “Stop this.”