“Vodka Sunrise was injured, but had enough life to be turned. He’ll be an insane suckhead for ten years, but he’ll be alive, if you call that living.” Sunrise had lost a tooth in Leo’s service not so long ago. He was good people. All Derek’s men were good people. I could smell Derek’s conflict, his anger, his grief, and I tightened my fingers on his arm, letting a bit of Beast into my grip. It had to hurt, but he didn’t meet my eyes. I understood that too. I wasn’t human. I was one of the monsters. And I hadn’t reacted with anger when one of the monsters had said no human law enforcement involvement. I was getting in deep. Too deep? How deep did I have to get to be happy that Sunrise had been turned instead of dying? “We’ll honor their sacrifice. Your men and me. And right now, I honor their sacrifice.”
I closed my mouth with a soft snap. I didn’t have time for this, but I also didn’t not have time for it. I shoved my conflict down deep inside and shook his arm until he looked at me. “In the ways of The People, the War Woman was responsible for restitution and revenge after battle. I am War Woman.” His eyes widened slightly and his scent changed, though I couldn’t tell what the pheromones meant, except more confusion. “I promise you the right to choose how our enemy will die. If you choose, then for each man true-dead, I will cause our enemy to scream until he can’t scream anymore. I will let him heal. And I’ll make him scream again for the next man. For the men turned, I’ll bring them a cup of his still-warm blood to drink. If you choose this, the death of the one we hunt will not be clean or easy.”
Derek’s head went up, his mouth hard. “You’re asking me to let you torture a man.”
“No. I’m asking what you want done.”
“Clean death,” he spat. “I’m not a monster.”
I smiled, and knew it was bitter. “No. You aren’t. And for that I’m thankful.”
He blinked several times, then said, “You don’t want to . . . do what you said.”
“I really, really don’t. But for you, to honor your men, to remember your men, I would have.” I let a small smile soften my face. “The last time I counted coup—to use a word not of The People—I was five years old and my grandmother put the knife into my hand.” Derek’s scent changed again, this time taking on a clearly identified horror in the chemical mixture. “Humans, ordinary humans, can be far worse than the monsters. To torture a man when you’re a child, when your mother and grandmother stand beside you and guide in the methodology and the mechanics, it changes you. It changed me, changed who I became; who I am now. But I’m willing to go back to that time if you need me to.”
Derek took my hand from his arm, but instead of dropping it, he curled his fingers around my wrist and pulled my hand into a soldier’s handclasp. I gripped his wrist back. “They were soldiers for the United States. We’ll honor them with a soldier’s burial.”
We stood nearly eye to eye in the hallway, arms clasped. “Okay. Good. You want me there, I’ll be there. If not, I’ll understand. I’ll contribute to the families’ funds. And I’ll get Amy Lynn to feed your man. With a little luck and her super-duper special vamp blood, he might be back in as little as two years, rather than the standard ten.”
He released my arm and I let him. He said, “Savin’ my mama is worth part of my soul. And bein’ Leo’s Enforcer sounded—”
He stopped, and I could guess what it had sounded like. Easy job, lotsa money. But it had been a devil’s bargain. It always was, with fangheads.
Derek went on. “I don’t understand how fangheads think. Why not call in the law for the dead humans?”
“Leo had a hard time getting the human LEOs to leave, the last time one of his people died in this building. Leo has control issues and danger on his turf.” Derek didn’t reply so I said, “Honestly, I don’t really care what Leo does about the law.” Oddly, it was true. Once upon a time I called in the law every time a human incident took place. But it never did any good. Leo was his own law. Always had been. Probably always would be. And I was the Enforcer who carried out his law. I had quit, but not really. I was still doing the job and wouldn’t stop even when Peregrinus was dead. I still had a contract with Leo as his Enforcer for a cool half mil. And with the EuroVamps coming, this job might be the only way to keep my friends alive.
My forehead wrinkled as a thought occurred to me. “The last time someone died here, it was one of the new guys. Wayne something? He had what I thought was a hawk tattooed on his scalp. But maybe it was a peregrine?”
“I’ll check back. Make sure.” He pulled his cell and started thumbing around for photos of the crime scene.
“I know vamps work ahead, plan things for decades,” I said thoughtfully, uncomfortable with the direction of my thoughts.
“Centuries.”
“Yeah. For real. But it would be hard to put that incident together with the EuroVamps and Satan’s Three, and Reach.”
“No, it wouldn’t. Not for a fanghead.” He stopped thumbing on the screen. “Not a falcon. No. It was a hawk. And it was done in reds and browns, not the blue tattoos on the wrists of the fanghead and his human.” He turned the cell to me and I studied the photo of the top of Hawk Head’s scalp. The hawk tattoo looked nothing like the peregrine falcons sported by Peregrinus’ followers, and his wrists were bare. “Hawk,” Derek insisted.
“Okay. But . . . let’s keep that in back of our minds, okay? I don’t like coincidences.”