7

"Have fun visiting your boyfriend?" Maiden asked as he followed me down the hall.

I waited at the second locked door. "He's not my boyfriend."

"Everyone keeps saying that." Maiden unlocked the door and held it open. "Maybe it's a case of the lady protesting too much."

"Take your library card and shove it, Maiden."

"Ooh," he said, "that was nasty. Wonder if I can think of a comeback half that good."

"Let me have my gun, Maiden."

He locked the door behind us. Jason was sitting in the little row of chairs across from the desk. He looked up. "Can we go home now?"

"Wasn't Officer Maiden entertaining?" I asked.

"He wouldn't let me play with his handcuffs," Jason said.

Maiden went behind the desk and unlocked the drawer. He brought out the Browning, slipped the clip back in it, and pulled the slide back, which jacked a shell into the chamber. He checked the safety and handed it to me, butt first.

"You think Myerton's dangerous enough to need to carry one in the chamber?" I asked.

Maiden looked at me. It was a long look as if he were trying to tell me something. "You never know," he said finally.

We stood staring at each other for a few frozen moments, then I put the Browning in the holster with the bullet ready to go, though I checked the safety twice. Didn't usually go around with a live round in the chamber. Made me nervous. Made me more nervous that Maiden might be trying to warn me. Of course, he might just be yanking my chain. Some cops, especially small town ones, tended to give me grief. Being a vampire executioner made some of them want to trade macho shit with me, like getting me to carry a live round in the chamber.

"Have a nice day, Blake."

"You, too, Maiden," I said.

I had the door open, Jason at my back, when Maiden said, "Be careful out there."

His eyes were guarded. There was nothing to read on his face. I am not a subtle person, big surprise. "You got something to say, Maiden?" I asked.

"I'm going to be taking my lunch break after you leave."

I looked at him. "It's ten o'clock in the morning. Little early for lunch, don't you think?"

"Just thought you'd like to know I won't be here."

"I'll try and squelch my disappointment," I said.

He flashed a quick grin, then stood. "I gotta lock the door behind you, since I'm leaving the desk unattended."

"Locking Belasarius in with Richard?"

"I won't be gone that long," he said. He opened the door for us, waiting for us to go outside.

"I don't like games, Maiden. What the fuck is going on?"

He wasn't smiling when he said, "If the fancy lawyer gets bail for your boyfriend, I'd leave town."

"You're not suggesting he jump bail, are you, Officer?"

"His family has been here almost from the first night he was taken into custody. Before that, it was the scientists that he's been working with. A lot of nice, upstanding citizens standing around for witnesses. But the nice upstanding citizens won't be here forever."

Maiden and I looked at each other. I stood there for a minute, wondering if he'd stop hinting and just tell me what the hell was going on. He didn't.

I nodded at him. "Thanks, Maiden."

"Don't thank me," he said. He locked the door behind us.

My hand wasn't on the butt of the Browning, but it was sort of close to it. It'd be silly to draw the gun on a nice August morning in a town with a population lower than most college dorms.

"What was that all about?" Jason asked.

"If we don't get Richard out, he's going to get hurt. The only reason he hasn't been yet is that there have been too many witnesses. Too many people to ask questions."

"If the cops are in on it," Jason said, "why would Maiden warn us?"

"He's not happy about being in on it, maybe. Oh, hell, I don't know. But it means that someone wanted Richard in jail for a reason."

A pickup truck pulled across the street in front of the little grey house that Shang-Da was camped out in. Four men jumped out of the back. There was at least one more in the cab. He slid out of sight, and they formed a semicircle at the base of the porch. One of them had a baseball bat.

"Well, well," Jason said. "You think if we bang on the doors and yell for police help, we'll get it?"

I shook my head. "Maiden did help us. He warned us."

"I'm all warm and cozy with the effort," Jason said.

"Yeah," I said. I started walking across the street. Jason followed a couple of steps behind. I was thinking as hard as I could. I had a gun and they might not.

But if I killed somebody, I'd be bunking with Richard. Myerton's legal system didn't seem to take to well to strangers.

Shang-Da stood on the porch, looking down at the men. He'd taken off the billed cap. His black hair was cut very short on the sides and longer on top. The hair was shiny with gel but squashed flat from the cap. He stood balanced on his bare feet, long arms loose at his sides. He wasn't in a fighting stance yet, but I knew the signs.

His eyes flicked to us, and I knew he'd seen us. The thugs hadn't yet. Amateur thugs. Didn't mean they weren't dangerous, but it meant you might be able to bluff them. Professional muscle tended to call a bluff.

A small, elderly woman came through the screen door to stand next to Shang-Da. She leaned heavily on a cane, her back bowed. Her grey and white hair was cut very short and permed in one of those tight hairdos that elderly women seem so fond of. She wore an apron over a pink housedress. Her knee-high hose were rolled down over fuzzy slippers. Glasses perched on a small nose.

She shook a bony fist at the men. "You boys get off my property."

The man with the baseball bat said, "Now, Millie, this has got nothing to do with you."

"This is my grandson you're threatening," she said.

"He ain't her grandson," another man said. He was wearing a faded flannel shirt open like a jacket.

"Are you calling me a liar, Mel Cooper?" the woman asked.

"I didn't say that," Mel said.

If we'd been someplace more private, I'd have just wounded one of them. It would have gotten their attention and called the fight off. But I'd have bet almost any amount of money that if I shot one of them, the mysterious sheriff would ride to their rescue. Maybe the plan was to get more of us in jail. I was too new on the scene to even make an educated guess.

Jason and I walked up onto the grass. Mel was the closest to us. He turned, showing a stained undershirt and a beer gut beneath the flannel shirt. Ooh, charming.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked.

"Well, aren't you just Mr. Smooth."

He took a menacing step towards me. I smiled at him. He frowned at me. "Answer the fucking question, girlie. Who are you?"

"Doesn't matter who she is," the one with the baseball bat said. "This isn't any of her business. Leave it alone, or you'll get what he's going to get." He motioned with his head at Shang-Da.

"I get to the beat the crap out of you, too?" I said. "Oh, goody."

Baseball Bat frowned at me, too. I had two of them puzzled. Confusion to my enemies.

The woman shook a bony fist at them again. "You get off my property, or I will call Sheriff Wilkes."

One of the men laughed, and another said, "Wilkes will be along. When we're finished."

Baseball Bat said, "Come down off that porch, boy, or we're coming up after you."

He was ignoring me. He was ignoring Jason. They weren't just amateur muscle. They were stupid amateur muscle.

Shang-Da's voice was surprisingly deep, very calm. There was no fear in it -¨C big surprise -¨C but there was an undercurrent of eagerness, as if under that calmness he was itching to hurt them. "If I come down off this porch, you will not enjoy it."

The man with the baseball bat wheeled his weapon of choice in a quick, professional circle. He used it like he knew how. Maybe he'd played ball in high school. "Oh, I'll enjoy it, China boy."

"China boy," Jason said. I didn't have to see his face to know he was smiling.

"Not very original is it?" I commented.

"Nope."

Mel turned towards us, and another man moved with him. "Are you making fun of us?"

I nodded. "Oh, yeah."

"You think I won't hit you because you're a girl?" Mel asked.

It was tempting to say, "No, I think you won't hit me because I have a gun," but I didn't say it. Once you pull a gun in a fight, you've pushed the violence level to a height where death is a very real possibility. I didn't want anyone dead with the cops waiting to ride down and sweep us up. Didn't want to go to jail. I have a black belt in judo. But Mel's companion was almost as big as Officer Maiden, and not half as pretty. They both outweighed me and Jason by a hundred pounds apiece, or more. They'd been big most of their lives. They thought it made them tough. Up until this moment, it probably had. In fact, it still might. I wasn't going to stand there and trade blows with them. I'd loose. Whatever I was going to do had to be quick and take my opponent out immediately. Anything less, and I stood a very good chance of getting seriously hurt.

I'd bet on me against any bad guy my size. Trouble was, as usual, none of the bad guys were my size. There was a tightness in my gut, a nervous tremble. I realized with something close to shock that I was more afraid right now than I had been with Jamil in the truck. This wasn't a dominance game with rules. No one was going to say uncle when someone was bleeding. Scared? Who, me? But it had been a long time since I'd stood up to the bad guys without pulling a weapon. Was I becoming too dependent on hardware? Maybe.

Jason and I moved back, sliding a little away from each other. You need room to fight. The thought occurred that I'd never really seen Jason fight. He could have thrown the pickup truck they came in across the street, but I didn't know if he knew how to fight. If you throw human beings around like toys, people can get badly hurt. I didn't want Jason in jail, either.

"Don't kill anyone," I said.

Jason smiled, but it was just a baring of teeth. "Gee, you're no fun." That first prickle of energy that said shapeshifter breathed along my body.

Mel had been moving forward in a flat-footed, untrained movement. No martial arts, no boxing, just big. The other guy was in a stance. He knew what he was doing. Jason could heal a broken jaw in less than a day; I couldn't. I wanted Mel. But he'd stopped moving forward. There were goose bumps on his hairy arms. "What the hell was that?"

He was big and stupid, but he was psychic enough to feel a shapeshifter. Interesting.

"Who the hell are we? What the hell was that? Mel, you need better questions," I said.

"Fuck you," he said.

I smiled and motioned him forward with both hands. "Come and get it, Mel, if you think you're man enough."

He let out a roar and ran at me. He literally ran at me with his beefy arms wide like he was going to do a bear hug. The bigger guy with him rushed Jason. I had a sense of movement and knew Shang-Da wasn't on the porch anymore. There was no time to be afraid. No time to think. Just to move. To do what I'd done a thousand times in practice in the dojo, but never in real life. Never for real.

I ducked Mel's outstretched arms and did two things almost simultaneously: I caught his left arm as he went past and swept his legs out from under him. He fell heavily to his knees, and I got a joint lock on his arm. I really hadn't decided to break the arm. A joint lock on an elbow hurts enough that most people will negotiate after you prove just how much it hurts. Mel didn't give me time. I caught a flash of the blade. I broke his arm. It made a thick wet sound, flopping loose like a chicken wing bent backwards.

He shrieked. Screaming didn't cover the sound. The blade was in his other hand, but he seemed to have forgotten it for the moment.

"Drop the knife, Mel," I said.

He tried to get to his feet, one knee hyperextended to the side. I kicked the knee and heard it give a deep, low pop. A bone breaking is a crisp, sharp sound. A joint doesn't break as clean, but it breaks easier.

He fell on the ground, writhing, screaming.

"Throw the knife away, Mel!" I was yelling at him.

The knife went airborne, lost across the fence into the next yard. I stepped away from Mel, just in case he had another surprise. Everybody else had been busy, too.

The big one that had attacked Jason was lying in a heap by the pickup truck. There was a fresh dent in the side of the truck, as if he'd been thrown into the side of it. He probably had.

A third man lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the porch steps. He wasn't moving. Another man was trying to crawl away, one leg dangling behind him like a broken tail. He was crying.

Shang-Da was trying to break through the man with the baseball bat's defenses. Jason was fighting a tall, thin man with muscles corded along his bare arms. He was in a low fighting stance, Tae Kwon Do or jujitsu.

Shang-Da took two blows on each arm from the baseball bat, then he took the bat away from him. He broke the bat into two large pieces. The man turned to run. Shang-Da started to stab him in the back with the broken end of the bat.

I yelled, "Don't kill him."

Shang-Da flipped the broken wood in his hand and smashed the unbroken end against the man's skull. He went to his knees so suddenly it was startling.

The tall man fighting Jason crept forward in a fast crab movement that looked sort of silly, but his foot lashed out and Jason had to throw himself back onto the ground. Jason kicked at him, but the tall man leaped over the kick so high and so gracefully that he seemed to float in the air for a moment.

Sirens wailed, coming quickly closer.

Baseball Bat fell forward onto his face. He never tried to catch himself. He was out for the count.

The only one of the bad guys standing was the tall man. Jason scrambled to his feet quickly enough to stay just ahead of the punches and kicks, but not well enough to hurt him back. Super strength does not mean super skill.

Shang-Da started to move in to help.

Jason looked at Shang-Da, and that was all the tall man needed. He landed a kick to the side of Jason's head that stunned him and left him on his knees on the ground. The man turned and I saw the roundhouse kick coming. It was a kick that could snap someone's neck. I was closer than Shang-Da. I didn't even think about it. I moved forward and knew it wouldn't be in time. But the tall man saw the movement. He switched his attention from Jason to me.

I was suddenly in a defensive stance. He reversed the kick, and I managed to avoid it because he was off balance. There were two police cars skidding down the street towards us. Shang-Da stopped moving forward. I think we both thought the fight was over. The tall man thought otherwise.

The kick was just a blur of motion. I got one arm up in a partial block. My arm went numb and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back staring up at the sky. It didn't even hurt.

He could have moved in and killed me, because for a second, I couldn't move. There was no sound for that frozen second, just me on the grass, blinking upward. Then I could hear my blood pounding in my ears. I took a deep gasping breath and I could hear human voices again.

A man's voice yelled, "Freeze, motherfucker!"

I tried to say, "Colorful," but no sound came out. I could taste blood in my mouth. My face didn't hurt that much yet; I was sort of numb. I opened my mouth just to see if I could. I could. My jaw wasn't broken. Great. I raised one arm upward and managed to say, "Help me up."

Jason said, "They've got guns pointed at us."

Millie came down off the porch with her cane. She looked funny from my angle, like a fuzzy-footed giant. "Don't you be pointing guns at my grandson and his friends. These men attacked them."

"Attacked them?" said a man's voice. "Looks like your 'grandson' and his friends attacked them."

I fumbled my ID out of my jacket pocket and held it up in the air. I could probably have sat up on my own, but since I'd taken a hit, I might as well use it. I was hurt, and the more hurt the cops thought I was, the less likely we'd be going to jail. If only the bad guys had been hurt, then we'd have all ended up in jail on assault charges or worse. I hadn't checked for pulses in at least two of the thugs. They'd been lying awfully still. This way we could all press assault charges. They could put us all in jail, or none in jail. Or that was the plan. As plans go, I'd had better ones. I was lucky my jaw wasn't broken.

"Anita Blake, vampire executioner," I said. The announcement would have had a little more oomph if I hadn't been flat on my back, but hey, you do what you can. I did roll onto one side. My mouth had filled with enough blood that I either had to spit or swallow. I spat onto the grass. Even rolling onto my side made the world spin. I wondered for a second or two if I was going to spit up more on the grass than just blood. The nausea passed, leaving me worried about a concussion. I'd had them before, and they usually made me sick to my stomach.

I couldn't see Millie anymore, but I could hear her. "You put up those guns, Billy Wilkes, or I will tan your hide with my cane."

"Now, Miss Millie," the male voice said.

I repeated who I was and said, "I need some help to stand. Can my people help me up, please?"

The male voice, Sheriff Wilkes I presumed, sounded a little uncertain, but said, "They can move."

Jason grabbed the arm that was holding my ID up in the air. He looked down at me and pulled me to my feet. It was too quick and I didn't have to pretend that the world went spinning. When my knees buckled, I didn't fight it. I slid to my knees and Shang-Da took my other arm. Between the two of them, they got me standing and facing the cops.

Sheriff Wilkes was about five foot eight, and he was wearing a pale blue Smokey the Bear hat and a matching uniform. He looked trim and in shape like he worked out and took it seriously. The gun at his side was a ten mil Beretta. It was holstered. The day was looking up.

He stared at me with eyes a dark, solid, trustworthy brown. He took the hat off and wiped sweat from his forehead. His hair was a pale salt and pepper and made me put his age at over forty. "Anita Blake, I've heard of you. What are you doing in our town?"

I spat another mouthful of blood into the grass and managed to stand more than sag between Shang-Da and Jason. Truth was, I could have stood on my own. But all the bad guys were on the ground. Even the one that had kicked me was down for the count. Shang-Da must have stepped in after I went down. I knew Jason couldn't have taken the tall man.

"I came to see a friend in your jail -¨C Richard Zeeman."

"Friend?" he made it a question.

"Yeah, friend."

There were two deputies behind Wilkes. They were both over six feet tall. One of them had a scar that went from eyebrow to jaw on one side. Jagged; more a broken bottle than a knife. The other deputy had a shotgun in his hands. It wasn't pointed at us, but it was there. Scarface snickered at me. The one with the shotgun just stared with eyes as empty and pitiless as a doll's.

Maiden was standing behind the others, hands in front, one hand clasping his opposite wrist. His face was blank, but there was an edge around his mouth that said he was trying not to smile.

"We've got to run you all in for assault," Wilkes said.

"Great," I said, "I can't wait to press charges."

He looked at me, his eyes just a touch wide. "You're the only ones standing, Ms. Blake. I don't think you have grounds to press charges."

I leaned a little heavier against Jason. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of my mouth. I could feel my eye already starting to swell. I've always been a bleeder if you hit me in the face. I knew I looked pitiful. "They attacked us, and we were forced to defend ourselves." I let my knees slide out from under me. Shang-Da caught me and lifted me easily in his arms. I closed my eyes and curled against his chest.

"Shit," Wilkes said.

"Look at that poor little girl, Billy Wilkes," Millie said. "You going to take her before Judge Henry. What do you think he's going to do to the rest of these hooligans? He's got a daughter about her age."

"Shit," Wilkes said again with more force. "Let's get everybody down to the hospital. We'll sort it out there."

"Ambulance is on its way," Maiden said.

"One won't be enough," Wilkes said.

Maiden laughed low and deep. "There aren't enough ambulances in the county for this many bodies."

"There would have been enough for three," Wilkes said.

I tensed in Shang-Da's arms. He tightened around me, one hand pressed against the side of my head firmly enough that raising up would have hurt my face. I let the breath ease out of my body and concentrated on being still, but I'd remember what Wilkes had said. We'd see who got the ambulance ride next time.