"Cross your ankles."

"What?"

"One ankle over the other, cross your ankles."

He did it. Which meant it was time to actually pat him down. I hate patting down someone who's alive, so much easier to search the dead for weapons. How can you tell when you've been killing maybe a little too much? When you think it's a pain in the ass having to pat down someone who can still move.

I put the barrel of my gun against his head. "If you move, I shoot. Is that clear?"

"Yes," he said in a strained voice.

The other nice thing about only touching them after they're dead is that you don't hear the fear in their voices, or feel that fine tremble in their hands and arms. You don't have to know that what they're afraid of is you. You don't have to think about the fact that the person you're touching is going to have to die, and that nothing they can do, or you can do will stop it. The law isn't about justice or mercy. The law is about the law, and law didn't give Jonah NoLastName, or me, options.

He had another knife, this one was at the small of his back in a sheath on the inside of his belt. He had a wrist sheath, empty, and a larger sheath at his neck, hidden by the jacket's collar. I'd never known a vampire to carry that many weapons. When he dropped the knife, I thought I'd been wrong about seeing the knife in the other vamp's chest, but no, the bastard had stabbed him and had plenty of knives left. I remembered the knife like an exclamation point in the vamp's chest.

It made me wonder. I looked at one of the knives, hefted it, touched the flat of it with my thumb. "Shit, it's silver." I didn't run back to the vampire. I waited and helped them get Jonah the vampire handcuffed, though I knew that they would only slow him down, if he really wanted free. We just hadn't come up with anything that could hold up against a vampire's strength. It was one of the reasons that they were killed instead of held over for trial. One state had tried cross-wrapped coffins, but it had been shot down as cruel and unusual. If I'd been asked, I would have asked the legislators that decided the coffins were too cruel, if they, themselves would rather be held in a small confined space until trial, or just killed. I'd have bet they'd have chosen the coffin, but then, no one asked me. I'd been invited to speak before a Senate subcommittee on undead rights, but the date kept being switched, or the committee chairperson kept changing, or... it was almost as if someone didn't want the committee to finish its report. Probably political, but whatever, I hadn't been called. I'd just been asked, a date to be specified later. Funny, but I think the committee would have liked my testimony better if they'd let me come talk when they first issued the invitation. Lately, I had nothing comforting to say.

"Sit him in a chair. If he tries anything funny, shoot him."

"Where are you going?" Zerbrowski asked.

"The knives are silver."

"So?"

"So, our good Samaritan vampire may be dead, or dying." I was already moving for the door. "If he's going to survive, we've got minutes to save him."

"Save him how?" Zerbrowski asked.

I just shook my head and went for the door.

"Go with her, Smith."

Smith just changed his grip on his gun so it was pointed two-handed at the floor. "I got your back."

I didn't argue with Smith coming along. Zerbrowski and I were partnering tonight. We trusted each other to watch the bad vamp, but I had to check on the wounded vamp, so Zerbrowski stayed on the suspect and gave me backup. Because neither of us trusted anyone else to cover Jonah the vampire. Zerbrowski got the murderer, and I got the hero. Life had been so much simpler when vampires didn't come in hero-flavor.

68

I couldn't see our hero for the broad back of his friend. The blond was still kneeling there, holding his hand. The blond's shoulders were slumped, and he turned a tear-stained face up to me. Faint reddish-pink tracks down his face where the blood in his own tears had marked him. The tears made me fear the worst, until I moved around the feet of the other vamp. The hero lay on his back, but he blinked wide gray eyes up at me. The eyes were the only thing pale about him. Longish dark hair, and the beginnings of a beard around a wide mouth. I almost said out loud what I was thinking, Oh, good, you're not dead, but I managed not to. Point for me.

I knelt on the other side of him, across from his friend. The knife was sticking out of his chest like an exclamation point. I'd stabbed my share of vamps in my time, and I knew a heart blow when I saw one. Blood welled out around the blade, soaking into the dark-haired one's clothing. It was bleeding a lot. Which meant either he'd fed tonight, or it was a bad injury, or both.

"I didn't realize the knife was silver until we disarmed him. I'd have come back sooner."

Smith said, "We got company."

"Sooner or later," a voice said behind us, "it matters not." Malcolm was behind us. Other church members were behind him. You always get gawkers, I guess.

"It matters," I said.

"He is dying, Anita, and nothing we can do will save him."

I looked back at the hurt man and caught the look in his friend's blue eyes. Blue eyes framed by the blue of his shirt collar. "I've seen vampires survive worse."

"You have seen master vampires survive worse. He is not a master."

"He gets power from his line, his master," I said, "it isn't always about personal power."

"Truth and Wicked have no masters, do you?"

The blond looked at Malcolm, and there was such hopelessness in his face. I couldn't even make remarks about the names. I mean, who gets named Truth and Wicked? But in the face of such raw pain, I couldn't do anything but say, "If you have something important to say, Malcolm, say it."

"They are masterless, Anita. The master that made them died, and the sourdre de sang that created their line was destroyed, too. They survived the destruction of their line, but it weakened them."

I looked up at the blond's face, Truth or Wicked, I didn't know which he was. He was staring at Malcolm, but the look in his eyes said it was the truth. "If you had blood-oathed them, they'd have a master right now."

"I allowed them into my church. Most masters would kill them."

"Why?"

The vampire on the ground answered, "They fear us," in a strangled voice.

The blond said, "Don't talk, brother, I will talk for you. They fear that if other vampires knew we survived the slaying of our entire bloodline, then others might wonder if they could kill those that enslave them, too, and survive."

"Brother?" I said.

The blond looked up at me, fresh tears giving his blue eyes a reddish cast. "Truth is my brother."

Shit, I thought. "Is Malcolm right, if we remove the knife will... Truth not heal it?"

"Once, yes, but the death of our line did weaken us. When a silver weapon is used, we heal like a human."

I looked down at the hilt sticking out of the vampire's chest. "If he was human, he'd be dead already, he's not."

"He is dying, Anita, can you not feel it?" Malcolm said.

I put my hand on the vampire's chest, near the blade, in the cooling blood in his clothes, and I concentrated. I felt his energy, for lack of a better word, fading.

He took a deep gasping breath and had trouble getting the next breath.

"Shit, he's bleeding to death." He was losing so much blood his body was beginning to shut down. Shit. I looked at the blond. "If we just sit here, he will die. If we pull the blade out, I may be able to save him."