Then again, how was I to know? Maybe every single one of them had been arrested for creating human-animal hybrids. I doubted any of them looked at me and thought, “Homicide.”
I leaned my head back against the cinderblock wall, crossed my arms over my chest, closed my eyes, and settled in for a long and boring night. Voices rose and fell in the hallway, and a cart with a clattering wheel rolled past. A door shut with a heavy clang followed by a stream of curses. Sweat and piss lurked beneath the acrid tang of industrial cleaner, and above it all drifted the old-cabbage scent of low-quality cafeteria food.
“Hey, Princess!”
Tensing for a confrontation, I opened my eyes to find Angry Chick focused on the sniveling girl. “Stop your fucking whining before I stop it for you,” she snapped at Young Thing, which did nothing except make the poor girl cower and cry harder.
Angry Chick rose to her feet. Young Thing’s eyes widened in terror, and she let out a thin panicked wail.
“Leave her alone,” I said, using the same mild and even tone Bryce used in stress situations. “She’s probably never been arrested before. I bet you were scared the first time you got hooked.”
Angry Chick rounded on me with a teeth-baring snarl. “You trying to say I’m a habitual offender, bitch?”
So much for being reasonable. Fine. I could play it her way. “Well, you sure are familiar with the term ‘habitual offender.’”
Angry Chick let out a growl of rage and took a step toward me, fists clenched.
“That’s a bad idea,” I said.
She hesitated, no doubt trying to understand why her subconscious told her I was a potential threat when I looked like an easy mark. I continued to regard her steadily. I’d locked gazes with far more powerful creatures than this woman.
To my dismay, instead of backing down as I’d hoped, she narrowed her eyes. “I know you,” she said. Dread flickered in my gut at the hatred in her voice. “You’re a cop.”
Son of a bitch. Adrenaline dumped into my system to send my pulse racing, and it took all the willpower I possessed to form a lazy smile.
“Not anymore,” I said. “I got a better offer.” With any luck her imagination would fill in lurid details. Enforcer for a cartel, or mercenary, or international spy.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t that creative. She sneered down her nose at me. “Doesn’t matter. Cop or ex-cop, I’ll beat you bloody before they pull me off you.”
If they pulled her off me. The dread roared to life. Even if the guards on duty thought Farouche deserved what he got, I couldn’t depend on their support. Far likelier that they regarded me as nothing more than a cop gone bad who deserved whatever might happen. And right now the “whatever might happen” I faced topped me by several inches and outweighed me by at least thirty pounds.
Sweat rolled down my sides despite the chill. My mind raced in search of a tactic to avoid a nasty fight but kept circling back to one ploy. Shit.
Heaving a deep sigh, I stood, nice and slowly, maintaining eye contact. When I spoke it was with a quiet and scary intensity that I’d learned from months of dealing with immortal beings of vast power.
“I’ve survived more pain, more torture than you could ever hope to dish out,” I said, stupidly pleased that I’d pitched my voice just right to resonate against the walls. With deliberate movements I pulled up my shirts to reveal my collection of scars. A whisper of horror flitted through her eyes. Sure, there were people who were into body modification through scarring, but a primal sense told her these scars were different.
Though my heart pounded like a marching band drumline, I lowered the sweatshirt and adjusted my clothing with steady hands. “Now then, you need to ask yourself if it’s worth trying to knock me down and punch me a few times when you know I’ll get Right. Back. Up.” I had no need to pygah to remain calm. Every word I spoke was the absolute truth.
Angry Chick knew it too. She retreated a step then put on the scowl of someone who knows they’ve been beaten but doesn’t want to look like a coward. “You ain’t worth my time,” she scoffed, but her words had no strength behind them. “Bitch, you lucky I don’t want more charges on me right now.”
“I am indeed very lucky,” I replied as I resumed my seat. I glanced over at the sniveling girl—who wasn’t sniveling anymore. She and the three others watched me with wide-eyed awe.
Angry Chick muttered under her breath but plopped back down onto her bench, no less angry than before, although cowed.
Good enough. With that settled, I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
Chapter 31