“I’m just tired of hearing you say Anita Blake. I feel like I’m in trouble with a teacher at school.”
He smiled and nodded. “I understand; very well, Anita, and thank you for letting me use your given name.”
“You’re welcome. So, you and your master decided to try to free the little vampires from the control of the master vampires?”
“Exactly.”
“I believe that vampires are people, Weiskopf, or I wouldn’t be dating them; I wouldn’t be in love with one, or two.”
“Then how can you continue to execute them?”
I sighed, and felt my shoulders slump. I made myself sit up straight again. “I’ve actually been having a little crisis of conscience for a while.”
Dolph stirred beside me, a minute involuntary movement. I fought not to glance at him, but to pay attention to the man in front of me.
“So you believe you murder them?”
“Sometimes,” I said.
“All the time,” he said.
I shook my head. “I’ve seen vampires do horrible things. I’ve walked through rooms so thick with the blood of their victims that the carpet squished underfoot and the room smelled like raw hamburger.”
He flinched at that.
“I don’t believe killing the animals that did that was murder.”
He looked down at his hands on the table, then back up at me. “I can see that. Just as the one who tried to kill his wife, Bores, was in the wrong and had to be stopped.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Would you kill a human who had done awful things?”
“I have,” I said.
Weiskopf glanced up at Dolph. “Do your fellow officers know that?”
I nodded. “Sometimes the bad guys aren’t all vampires. I’ve helped the police hunt down and execute them, too.”
He narrowed his eyes at me, so cynical. “Humans have more rights; you can’t just kill them.”
“Do you consider shapeshifters human?” I asked.
“The law gives them the right to trial, unless the warrant has been issued for their deaths. Once the death warrant has been issued, they are as much a pariah of human society as a vampire.”
“So, is Benjamin trying to free the wereanimals from their pack leaders?”
He looked startled for a moment, as if the thought had never occurred to him.
I smiled, but knew it wasn’t pleasant. “All the old vamps think the shapeshifters are lesser beings. You think of them as animals, not people.”
He truly looked disturbed. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then said, “I cannot dispute your accusation. It did not occur to us to try to free them of their oppression, because they are animals, and animals need discipline, a leash of sorts to keep them from running amok and slaughtering the innocent.”
“Vampires need the same thing,” I said.
He shook his head. “That is not true.”
“Bullshit,” I said, “the newly risen can be just as animalistic as any first-time shapeshifter.” I pulled my shirt collar to one side to expose the collarbone scar.
“That was no vampire,” he said.
“You have my word of honor on that.” I slipped out of my jacket, and since I’d had to give up all my weapons to enter the interrogation room, I could show off the scars really well, no sheaths to hide them. I showed him the bend of my elbow where the same vampire that did my collarbone had torn at my arm like a terrier with a rat.
“You have a cross-shaped burn scar.”
“Yeah, some human Renfields thought it would be funny to brand me with it.”
“And the scar that pulls the skin so it’s crooked, what made that?”
“A witch that had shape-changed.”
“Not a shapeshifter?” he asked.
“No, it was a witch that used magic to steal the animal of a real lycanthrope.”
“I was there for that one,” Dolph said. “Anita helped save one of my officers.”
It had been Zerbrowski with his guts spilling out. I’d held them in with my hands while uniforms refused to help, because they thought the witch was a real lycanthrope and they might catch it. I’d held pressure on his wound, and screamed at them that they were fucking cowards, but Dolph and I had gotten Zerbrowski out of there alive. I’d been the one who held Katie when she fainted at the hospital. There were reasons that Zerbrowski and I partnered, and that Katie made sure I and my sweeties were invited to the barbecues and dinners. She wasn’t comfy with the vampires visiting, but she let my furry sweeties come visit. She’d made sure the other cops knew that if they couldn’t deal with it, they could leave. Katie seemed so soft, but there was steel under that silk, and she’d used it to defend me and Nathaniel and Micah at the last summer cookout. I loved Katie for that day.
“The vampire that tore at you, he was the newly risen?”
“No,” I said.
He shook his head. “No vampire that had been undead for any length of time would do that, unless it was one of the revenants, those poor things that are little better than ghouls.”
“The vampire that did this to me was over a hundred years old, and no revenant. He chose to hurt me like this; he wanted to make me suffer.”
“Why?” he asked.
“That’s something he’d have to answer,” I said.
“Is he alive to answer it?”
“No,” I said.
“There are bad vampires, as there are bad people, I suppose,” he said.
“They’re people, Weiskopf, just people, and like all people, some of them are good, and some are bad, but now they’re bad people with super-strength, super-senses, and bloodlust. Without a master to hold their leash, they’re like most people, power drunk.”
“No,” he said.
“They’ve killed two police officers. It was a trap to kill me.”
He looked at the table. “They had talked of slaying you and Jean-Claude. We had told them no, but apparently they went ahead without us.”
“If you’d really been their master, you could have prevented that, and all of this.”
“But that would defeat our purpose, Anita. We wanted them to be free, to prove that vampires did not need to be herded and controlled like animals.”
“You mean like the wereanimals,” I said.
“They are part animal, Anita.”
“I have more lovers who turn furry once a month than sleep in coffins.”
He shuddered, actually shuddered, as if it made his skin crawl. “That is your choice, but vampires have no taint of beast in them.”
“No, just like human serial killers, they’re just people that do unspeakable things.”
Dolph said, “We found bombs at the last house we raided.”
That was a partial lie; we’d found the makings, or leavings, after bombs had been made, according to Alvarez, but the look of shock and horror on Weiskopf’s face made the white lie worth it.
“Oh, no, no.”
“What do they plan on doing with the bombs?” Dolph asked.
“How many did you find?”
And there is the problem with lying, you have to keep doing it.
“Two,” Dolph said.
Weiskopf looked pale. “No, they can’t.”
“What are the targets?” Dolph said, and he leaned on the table, using his size to intimidate, but it was lost on
