“We don’t want to shoot her,” Tate corrected, firing a single round into Lazarus’s leg. “We want to shoot you.”
Lazarus screamed once and then twice when Cooper squeezed a shot off as well, striking him in the thigh.
“Hold your fire... for now. I have some questions for him. And I’m hoping he’ll be stupid and give me an excuse to carve him up like he did that couple last night.”
Lazarus was dumbfounded at his helplessness. “What are you? How are your men not under my control?”
“Because they just drank the juice out of your buddies back there and they have undead blood running in their veins. Like a remote control with low batteries, your signals aren’t getting through. Now, enough of this shit. I’m going to ask questions, and my friends here are going to cut something off you every time you don’t answer me. Gather ’round, boys. Plenty of flesh for everyone.”
They crouched over Lazarus, and every hand gripped a knife. I smiled as I flipped Lazarus over, cradling him on my lap with the silver still imbedded in his back.
“Now tell me, how did you meet Danny Milton... ”
The helicopter carried away Dave’s body, and the three of us watched it disappear into the sky. Our chopper with the rest of the team waited nearby. We were the only ones who hadn’t boarded.
“Is this what you feel like every day, Cat? Stronger, faster... superior? That’s what I feel like with this crap in my body. Superior. It scares the hell out of me.”
Tate spoke quietly, no need to shout even with the rotating blades churning up around us. My reply was low as well. For the next few hours, he’d hear the softest whispers from a block away.
“Believe me, Tate, seeing Dave without his throat makes me feel anything but superior. Why didn’t you listen to me and deploy that missile? He’d be alive now if you had.”
Juan touched my shoulder. “Dave wouldn’t do it, querida. He said no way was he going to detonate. Said we’d get to drag your ass out for once. Then we went to the cave... ”
“It’s not your fault.” My tone was brittle. “It’s mine. I told you not to fire. I should have warned you about the vampire first. First, before I said anything else.” Abruptly I turned away and walked to the helicopter. I was almost to the door when Cooper spoke. He hadn’t said a word to me since the cave.
“Commander.”
I stopped and waited. My spine was straight.
“Yes, Cooper?” Any accusation I deserved. I was in charge and a man had died. The buck stopped with me.
“When I first heard what you were, I thought you were a freak.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “Or an accident of nature, a mistake—I don’t know. But I know this. You lead, and I’ll follow. Just like Dave did. He didn’t make a mistake by doing that.”
Cooper passed by me and climbed into the chopper. Tate and Juan each took my hand, and together we went inside.
Don tapped his pen on the report in front of him, one of several. We were both depressed. Dave’s funeral had been earlier today. Before joining us, Dave had been a fireman, so it seemed everyone from his old precinct was there. Seeing Dave’s sister crumple as she closed the lid on his coffin would haunt me forever. Two days had passed since we returned from Ohio, and Don was reading the final descriptions of what happened.
“Four years ago, after you rescued your mother when she’d been kidnapped by vampires, stories spread about a redheaded human with incredible abilities. After your years with us, those rumors increased. Lazarus was then subsequently hired to track down and kill this mysterious ‘Red Reaper.’” Don sighed. “Which still doesn’t explain how he tied Catherine Crawfield to you. You weren’t able to make him tell you that?”
“No.” My voice was flat. “He struggled as we were questioning him and my knife shredded his heart. How he found out the Red Reaper is really the supposedly dead Catherine Crawfield, I don’t know. Maybe it was just a lucky guess, like how he found the cave by reading old police reports that had me pegged in that area of the woods. Danny he found because the jerk apparently liked to brag about how he slept with the infamous governor murderer.”
“And the ‘here, kitty kitty’?”
“Years ago Hennessey, the vampire who’d been running the old governor’s operations, knew me as Cat. He must have repeated it to people.”
Don rubbed his forehead, a sign he was tired. We were all tired, but I couldn’t sleep, only seeing Dave’s throat when I closed my eyes.