Hit List ab-20 Read online

  “Then you know I can pretty much lift weight until the mass of the weight to be lifted exceeds my body mass. Any other questions?”

  He looked at me and tapped his finger on the edge of the file that had held the photos. “Not right now.”

  “Good.” I stood up.

  “The preternatural branch of the service is becoming more and more its own unit; did you know there’s talk of forming a new branch of service altogether?”

  “I’ve heard the rumor,” I said, looking down at him.

  “Some of the preternatural branch marshals are just killers with badges.”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “Why do you think the powers that be let you all run wild like this?”

  I looked down at him. It seemed like a real question. “I don’t know for sure, but if I had to guess I’d say they’re making us into a legal hit squad. They give us badges to placate the liberal left, but they give us enough room in the law to kill the monsters the way the not-so-liberal right wants us to.”

  “So you think the government is turning a blind eye to what the preternatural branch is becoming.”

  “No, Marshal Raborn, I think they’re setting themselves up.”

  “Setting themselves up for what?” he asked.

  “Plausible deniability,” I said.

  We looked at each other. “There are rumors that the laws are going to change again, and vampires and shapeshifters will be easier to kill legally, with less cause.”

  “There are always rumors,” I said.

  “If the laws change, which side will you be on?”

  “The side I’m always on.”

  “Which is?” He studied my face as he asked.

  “Mine.”

  “Do you think of yourself as human?” he asked.

  I went for the door then, but stopped with my hand on the doorknob. I looked back at him. “Legally, shapeshifters and vampires are human; that you’d even ask that of me is not only insulting, but probably illegal.”

  “I’ll deny I said it,” he said.

  “Well, that answers my question.”

  “What question?”

  “If you were honest, or a lying bastard.”

  His face darkened, and he stood up, sort of looming on the edge of his desk. “Get out of my office.”

  “My pleasure,” I said. I opened the door, shut it firmly but calmly behind me, and walked out through the desks of the other marshals. They’d watched the “talk” through the glass windows of Raborn’s office. They’d seen the body language, and they knew the talk had ended badly. I didn’t care. I was just walking, because my throat was tight, and my eyes burned. Was I really going to cry because Raborn had asked me if I thought I was human? I hoped not.

  3

  EDWARD FOUND ME leaning against the cleanest part of the alley wall I could find. I was crying, not a lot, but still doing it. He didn’t say anything. He just leaned against the wall beside me, having to tip his cowboy hat forward so it didn’t bump the wall. He looked very Marlboro Man with the hat hiding most of his upper face.

  “I still can’t get used to you doing the whole Ted cowboy thing.” My voice was steady; if the tears hadn’t been visible you couldn’t have told I was crying.

  He grinned. “It makes people comfortable around him.”

  “Talking about Ted in the third person, when he’s you, is a little creepy, too.”

  He grinned wider, and drawled in that Ted voice, “Now, little lady, you know Ted isn’t real. He’s just a name I use.”

  “He’s your legal identity. I think it’s your birth name.”

  The grin began to fade around the edges, and I didn’t have to see his eyes to know they were going cold and empty. “If you want to ask a question, ask it.”

  “I’ve asked before and you wouldn’t answer.”

  “That was then, this is now.” His voice was very quiet, very Edward.

  I tried to read what I could see of his face. “Okay, is Ted, or rather Theodore Forrester, your birth name?”

  He moved the hat so he could look me in the eye as he said, “Yes.”

  I just blinked at him. “Really, just like that, you finally give me a yes?”

  He gave a small shrug, his mouth quirking.

  “It was because I was crying, wasn’t it?”

  “Maybe.”

  Then I just went back to the fact that I finally had confirmation that Edward had been born Theodore Forrester. In a way, Ted was the real person, and Edward the secret identity.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “For finally answering the question?”

  I nodded and smiled. “And for giving a shit that I was crying.”

  “What did Raborn want?”

  I told him, ending with, “I know it was a stupid reason to cry. You’d think I’d get used to being called a monster.”

  “It’s only been a month since you had to make the hardest kill of your life, Anita. Give yourself a break.”

  Edward hadn’t been with me for the kill, because it hadn’t been a legal monster hunt. It had been Haven, our local Rex, lion king, going apeshit and shooting Nathaniel, my live-in sweetie, wereleopard to call, and one of the loves of my life. Haven had meant to kill him, but Noel, one of the weakest of our werelions, had put himself between Nathaniel and that bullet. He’d lost his life to save Nathaniel’s, and I’d barely known Noel. Haven had been jealous, and wanted to hurt me as badly as possible; that he’d chosen Nathaniel’s death as the most painful thing he could do to me was something I still hadn’t looked at too closely. I had enough pain, because Haven had been one of my lovers. I’d never killed anyone that I’d cared about before. It hadn’t felt very good. In fact, it had sucked.

  “You’re saying I’m still raw from killing Haven?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever had to kill a lover?”

  “Yes.”

  I glanced at him. “Really?”

  He nodded. “Now ask me if I cared about her.”

  “Okay, did you care about her?”

  “No.”

  “And I cared about Haven, so it hurts more.”

  “I think so,” he said.

  We leaned against the wall some more in companionable silence. Edward and I didn’t need to talk—we could talk, but we didn’t need to. “We’re going about hunting these killers all wrong. Even if we didn’t know what was killing them, and sort of why, we’re still doing it ass-backward.”

  “We need to consolidate the warrants of execution from the first three cities and just make it one hunt,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “But the first three warrants are all in the hands of marshals who were book-and-classroom trained. They were cops, but no one has a violent crimes background. I’m not sure why they’re recruiting some of these kids.”

  “We were all kids once, Edward, but we need to take over the warrants before some of the other marshals get themselves killed. Raborn said that you, me, Jefferies, and Spotted-Horse are the cleanup crew. We come onto a warrant after other marshals have been killed or injured.”

  “It’s the law, Anita. The warrant is theirs until they are unable to execute it, through death or injury, or they sign it over to another marshal for some other reason.”

  “Let’s make them sign it over to us now.”

  “How?” he asked.

  “We could just ask,” I said.

  “I asked two of the marshals. They both refused.”

  “You asked the men,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “So I’ll ask the female marshal,” I said.

  “A little girl talk?” he asked.

  I frowned at him. “I don’t really do girl talk, but I’ll try to persuade her to sign the warrant over to me. If just one of them signs off, then we can hunt the monsters. Stop the crimes by killing the criminal, not by solving them.”

  “I like it,” he said.

  “You know and I know that we’re legal as
sassins, not cops. Sometimes we solve crimes and catch the bad guys, but at the end of most days we kill people.”

  “You sound like that bothers you,” he said. He looked at me as he asked it.

  I shrugged. “It does, and we already discussed that it doesn’t bother you. Well, fucking bully for you, but it’s beginning to get on my nerves.”

  “I think I’ve figured out a way to use you as bait to lure them out, if it’s really you they’re wanting.”

  I studied his unreadable face. “But first we’ll need someone to sign a warrant over to us, right?”

  “That would help, and you getting some bodyguards from home, and maybe calling in Bernardo and Olaf now, before anyone’s dead, as backup wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  “Olaf still thinks I’m his girlfriend or something.”

  “The couple that slaughters people together stays together.”

  “That wasn’t really very funny,” I said.

  “Yes, it was, but I apologize anyway. We both know that someday you, or I, will have to kill Olaf because he’s decided to kill you.”

  “If he really plans on killing me he’ll kill you first, Edward, because he knows that you won’t rest until he’s dead.”

  “You’d do the same for me.”

  “True, so he’d kill us really close together, so neither of us could go all revenge on his ass.”

  “Probably,” Edward said.

  “And yet, you’ll call him in to back us up on this case.”

  “He’s a good man in a fight.”

  “He’s a crazy psycho killer, is what he is,” I said.

  “Technically he’s not psychotic.”

  “So just a crazy killer,” I said.

  “Yeah.” He smiled and it actually reached his eyes; it was a real smile, not Ted’s smile, but Edward smiling. I didn’t get to see the smile often, so I valued it when I did. I had to smile back.

  I shook my head, still smiling. “Fine, I’ll try to get the other marshal to sign off, and then you call in Bernardo and Olaf, but I can’t get bodyguards from home to come help us. We’re marshals, they aren’t, and being able to deputize people isn’t a power the Marshals Service has been granted in a very long time.”

  “You haven’t been keeping up on current events.”

  I frowned at him. “What?”

  “Last month a marshal died, because backup didn’t arrive in time, but a soldier just home from Iraq was able to take the marshal’s weapons and finish the shapeshifter off.”

  “I did hear about that. It was tragic and brave and, so what?”

  “You really don’t check the official emails, do you?”

  “Maybe not as often as I should; what’d I miss?”

  He got his phone out of his pocket and used his finger to roll through emails, then held the tiny screen up to me. I read it through twice. “You’re joking me.”

  “It’s official.”

  “We have the right to deputize not only if we are without backup, but if we feel that an individual’s skill set is of benefit to the execution of our warrant and will save civilian lives. Mother of God, Edward, this gives us carte blanche to form a fucking mob.”

  “There’s potential for abuse, yes.”

  “Potential for abuse, there’s potential for pitchforks and torches,” I said.

  “Anita, come on, no one would use pitchforks or torches anymore. It’d be flashlights and guns.”

  “This isn’t funny, Edward; this is a civil rights problem waiting to happen.”

  “I didn’t know you cared about that, or did that change when you helped get the law passed to spare little vampires when their master is the bad guy?”

  “I’m just saying that this little amendment to the law could get out of hand really fast.”

  “It could, it probably will, but for us, right now, it’s useful.”

  “Are you saying we deputize some of the bodyguards from St. Louis?”

  “It’s a thought,” he said.

  I opened my mouth, closed it, thought about it, then said, “Damn, great for us right now, but . . .”

  “Take that it helps us right now, Anita. We’ll worry about legal rampaging mobs later.”

  I nodded. “Deal.”

  “Get her to sign the warrant over to you and I’ll call Olaf and Bernardo in, and you pick bodyguards from home.”

  “You know most of them now; you want to help pick?”

  “I trust your judgment,” he said.

  “High praise coming from you.”

  “Deserved,” he said.

  I tried not to look too pleased, and probably failed. “Thanks, Edward.”

  “Don’t mention it, but first you need her to sign the warrant over to you. Get the warrant, and then I have a plan.”

  He wouldn’t tell me the plan, but since he’d actually admitted his “real” name to me, I could let him keep his secret plan—for now.

  4

  THE MARSHAL I needed to sweet-talk out of her warrant was female, so we got to split a hotel room. Marshal Laila Karlton was five-six and built solid. I don’t mean she was fat, I mean she was all muscle and curves. In too much clothing she looked like it might be fat, but when you saw her just in a T-shirt and jeans, you realized the “bulk” was half curves and half solid muscle. It wasn’t lean muscle and that was the reason it could fool the eye, but when she picked up her backpack of vampire-hunting gear, which probably weighed the same fifty pounds that mine did, her biceps bulged, and you realized it was all camouflage for the fact that she was strong. She didn’t see it that way, though.

  “God, you’re tiny. I bet I can put my hands around that little white-girl waist, and you still have boobs and an ass. That is not fair, girlfriend.”

  She’d taken the I’ll-cut-myself-down-and-compliment-you-beforeyou-beat-me-to-it tack. I had the choices of ignoring it, complimenting her in some way, or agreeing that I looked good without complimenting her back. The last choice would make her dislike me more. She’d already let me know, nicely, that my being a few sizes smaller than her made her predisposed not to like me. One of the good things about working with men was that they didn’t do this shit.

  I tried, but I sucked at these games. “I know men who prefer your body type to mine.”

  “Bullshit,” she said, and was ready to be angry.

  “I hang around with a lot of older vampires. They don’t like the really thin girls. They like women to look like women, not preadolescent boys with boobs sort of stuck on as an afterthought.”

  “You don’t look like that,” she said, her voice a little less angry, but still not friendly.

  “Neither do you. We both look nice and curvy the way God intended grown-up women to look.”

  She thought about it and then grinned at me. It lit her whole face up, and I knew we’d be okay. “Ain’t that the truth. But that booty is not white-girl booty.”

  “I’m told I look like my mother, except paler. She was Hispanic.”

  “That explains it. I knew you were too round in the right places to be white bread.” She laid out her clothes in a neat line on the bedspread, and then said, “What do you mean, ‘told you’ you look like your mother?”

  “She died when I was eight.”

  “I’m sorry.” And she sounded like she meant it. In fact, there was an awkward pause as we each unpacked on our side of the room. I had the bed nearest the bathroom and farthest from the door. We hadn’t discussed it; I’d just entered the room first.

  “It’s okay,” I said, “it was a long time ago.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “German, as in his was the first generation born in this country.”

  “What does he think of you being a marshal and vampire hunter?” she asked, as she dumped her clothes in a pile on the bed and began to sort them.

  “He’s okay with it. My stepmother, Judith, on the other hand, doesn’t like it much.” I must have smiled because Laila laughed, a deep, throaty laugh. It was dark, and s
ensual like Guinness in a glass. It was a good laugh.

  “Oh, yeah, I’ve been my mom’s despair since I could walk. My dad’s a football coach and I just wanted to be like my brothers and my dad.”

  “No sisters?”

  “One and she’s the girl.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a stepsister; she was the girl. I went hunting with my dad.”

  “No brothers?”

  “One half brother, but he’s a little too gentle for hunting. I was my dad’s only boy.” I made quote marks in the air with my fingers.

  She laughed again. “I was always competing with my brothers and losing. They’re six feet and up like my dad. I’m short like Mama.”

  “I’ve always been the smallest kid in class.”

  “I’m not the smallest, just not as tall as I wanted to be.”

  “So, does your dad like your job?”

  “He’s proud of me.”

  “Mine, too,” I said. “He just worries.”

  “Yeah, mine, too.” She looked at me sort of sideways and then said, “They talk about you in the training. Anita Blake, the first female vampire executioner. You still have the highest kill count of any marshal.”

  “I’ve been doing it longer,” I said.

  “There’s only eight of you from the early days,” she said.

  “There were more of us than that,” I said.

  “They either retired early like your friend Manny Rodriguez, or they . . .” She was suddenly very interested in getting her clothes in a drawer. “Is it okay if I take the top drawer?”

  “Fine, you’re taller.”

  She smiled, a little nervous around the edges. “It’s okay, Karlton,” I said. “I know the mortality rate was high when the vampire executioners first started serving warrants.”

  She put her clothes in the drawer, closed it, and then looked at me, sort of sideways, again. “Why did the mortality rate among the executioners go up after the warrant system was put in place? The books all say it went up, way up, but it doesn’t explain why.”

  I knelt down and she gave me enough room to put my clothes in the bottom drawer. I thought about how to answer her. “Before warrants, vampire hunters weren’t always particular about how they killed. We didn’t have to defend it in court, so we were a little more trigger happy. After the warrant system some hunters hesitated, worried about what would happen if they couldn’t defend it in court and ended up on murder charges. Remember, back then we had no badges. Some of us went to jail for murder even though the vampire killed was confirmed as a serial killer. It made some of us hesitate to kill. Hesitation will get you killed.”