glowing along with it. It was even more impressive as I lay on the floor, tugging my skirt down, and watched Zerbrowski walk past me, hand held high, most of his body lost in the bright glow of his cross. I had afterimages of the cross in my eyes when I blinked, as if I needed a welder’s helmet. It never seemed this bright when my own cross was shining alone, but we were allowed holy objects in the interrogation room only if the vampire was under arrest for assault or murder. Then we could say we needed the protection of something that couldn’t be taken away from us like a weapon could.
Dolph offered me a hand, and I took it. There’d been a time when I wouldn’t have, but I understood that from Dolph it was a sign of respect and camaraderie, not sexism. He’d have offered Zerbrowski a hand, too.
We watched Zerbrowski drive the vampire into the far corner with the light of his faith, because a holy object doesn’t shine unless the holder believes, or the object has been blessed by someone holy enough to make it stick. There were a few priests that I wouldn’t let bless my holy water, because I’d had it not glow for me at critical moments. The Church actually surveyed the vampire executioners around the country asking what priests had failed that test of faith. I’d felt like I was tattling.
The vampire curled into the corner, trying to make himself as tiny as possible, his face hidden between his arms. He was yelling, “Please, stop it! It hurts! It hurts!”
Zerbrowski’s voice came out of the shining light. “I’ll put it away after you’re cuffed.”
A uniform had brought in some of the new cuff-and-shackle sets that were designed specifically for the preternatural suspects. They were expensive, so even RPIT didn’t have a lot of them. Barney was a new vampire; we didn’t think he was dangerous enough to need them. We’d been wrong. I looked at the one uniform still lying against the wall. Someone was checking his pulse, and he moved, groaning, as if something hurt a lot; he was alive, but not because of anything I’d done. I’d been stupid and arrogant and others were hurt because of it. I hated it when it was my fault. Hated it, fucking hated it.
The uniform had wide eyes but he went toward the vampire. Dolph and I both reached out at the same time to take the cuff set with its single solid bar connecting the hands and ankle shackles. We looked at each other.
“I was the one who took off his cuffs to play friendly cop.”
He studied my face. His dark hair, cut short and neat, was actually just long enough on top that it was mussed from the fight. He smoothed the hair in place, while he gave me serious eyes.
“Besides, the captain shouldn’t be wrestling suspects even if he’s the biggest guy here,” I said with a smile.
He nodded, and let me go first. Once he would have protected me and gone first, but he knew that I was harder to hurt than anyone in the room except the vampire. I could take a beating and keep on ticking, and he also understood without having to say anything else that I was blaming myself for it all getting out of hand. Protocol was that you left vampires completely shackled. I’d taken his cuffs off so he would talk to me. I’d been convinced I could handle a baby vampire like Barney with his hands free. We were lucky no one was dead.
Dolph understood all of that; he’d have felt the same way, so he let me move forward with the heavy metal contraption. He waved the uniform back and he stayed at my back, just in case. When you have someone who is six foot eight and keeps himself in good shape, I’ll take him as backup. There’d been a time when Dolph hadn’t trusted me because of my dating the monsters, but he’d worked out his issues, and I’d gotten a real federal badge. I was a real cop according to the paperwork, and Dolph had wanted a reason to forgive me for consorting with the monsters. The new badge had been reason enough, that and the fact that he had behaved badly enough toward me and others that he almost let his hatred of the preternaturally challenged cost him his badge, and his self-respect. Some long talks with the local vampires, especially one ex-cop named Dave, of the bar Dead Dave’s, had helped him make peace with himself.
I walked around the edge of the cool, white glow of Zerbrowski’s cross. The vampire had stopped yelling and was just whimpering in the corner. I’d never asked any of my vampire friends what it felt like to face a cross like this; did it really hurt, or was it just a force they couldn’t stand against?
“Barney?” I made his name a question. “Barney, I’m going to put the cuffs on you so that Sergeant Zerbrowski can put the cross away. Say something, Barney. I need to know you understand me.” I was kneeling beside him, but not close enough to touch him. It was still way too close if he went apeshit again, but someone was going to have to get that close and I’d picked me for the job. I couldn’t have stood there and watched while he hurt someone else, knowing that I’d given him the space to do it. Arrogance had made me uncuff him; guilt made me kneel there and try to get him to hear me.
There was movement behind us. I kept my attention on the vampire in the corner; I knew better than to look away from one danger to another. I trusted the other policemen to have my back. My world had narrowed down to the suspect in the corner. But Dolph spoke low to someone, and then he leaned over me and said, “We found the location, but we’ve lost contact with the first officers on sight.”
“Shit,” I whispered. It could be that the officers were having to stay off their radios to search for vampires, or they could be hurt, or dead, or hostages. We were out of time to mess with this vampire; others had our people. I needed him to hear me. I needed him to do what I wanted him to do. “Barney,” I said, “hear me.” And there was a thread of power in my voice now, a faint vibration of my necromancy. I was a vampire executioner as a job, but I’d started life raising zombies. My psychic gift was with the dead, or the undead. I hadn’t meant to, but my desire to control him had found a part of my own natural gifts that might do just that. Was it illegal to use psychic gifts on a suspect? Not after what he’d just done, and not with a fifteen-year-old girl maybe dying at this minute, and at least two officers gone into radio silence. We were out of time, and we needed any help he could give us. The law did allow for psychic force to be used if it would save lives, or if the suspect had proven uncooperative with more normal means. The same new laws that had made it so I couldn’t just shoot Barney also allowed me to do things that would have been iffy before they were in place. The law giveth, and the law taketh away.
Barney whimpered, and then his voice came small and almost childlike: “Don’t.”
“Don’t what, Barney?” But my whisper held that echo of power. In the middle of the fight there hadn’t been time to think of it, because it took concentration to work with the dead. I could have put the power back in its box, but I wanted him to let me cuff him. I wanted him to talk to me. I wanted it enough that I was willing to go all “witchy” in front of the other cops.
“You aren’t my master,” he said, “and your master isn’t my master. We’re free vampires and we won’t let you control us.”
He was one of the new vampires, ones that didn’t want to follow a Master of the City. They wanted to be free like humans were, free to make decisions and be just people, but no matter how many vampires I might love, and protect, what Barney had done in the few minutes he’d been free proved why freedom from the control of the masters was a bad idea. Sometimes you had a bad master and the system went bad, very bad, but you couldn’t let people with this level of strength and power out there without a power structure. They needed someone to hold their leashes, because you give most people this kind of power and you find out that they aren’t nice people at all; they’d been nice because they were weak. It takes a truly good person to gain power, strength, and mystical abilities and not misuse them. Most people weren’t that good, or sometimes they’re just too stupid to not hurt someone by accident. Think about waking up one night strong as a superhero. There is a learning curve, and people can get hurt while you learn. How do you balance one section of the population’s right to be safe against the freedom of another? We were still struggling for that answer, but today, this moment, I knew my answer. I would take Barney Wilcox’s free will in trade for the safety of a fifteen-year-old girl and the officers that his vampire friends were holding hostage. If I could take it, that is. He wasn’t blood-oathed to Jean-Claude; if he had been, then I could have made him behave through my links to Jean-Claude. He was a free vampire with no master to answer to, or no master he knew about. We’d found that most of the “free” vamps followed their group leader. Vampires are just like most other people; they want to follow, they just don’t want to admit it.
I called my necromancy and aimed it at this one very young vampire. He pressed himself into the corner, as if he could push himself through the wall. “You can’t do necromancy on me with the cross there.”
“I raise zombies every night with my cross on, Barney,” I said, voice still low and with slightly deeper power. There had been a time when I’d believed my power was evil, but God didn’t seem to feel that way, so until He changed His mind, I just had faith that my power came from the right side.
“No,” he said, “no, please don’t.”
“Let me cuff you, Barney, and then maybe I won’t have to.”
He held his hands out, but the remains of the first cuffs were still on his wrists. I had to lay the heavier cuff set on the floor and have someone hand me a key, because my keys with the cuff key on them were in my purse, which
