THERE WAS ONLY one bathroom in the sheriff’s station, so that was where I went to clean the blood off my hands and dab cold water on the knees of my pants. I was hoping the blood wouldn’t set. I liked these pants. Not all the blood had come off my hands either, because some of it was fresh and mine. I’d managed to cut my hand on one of the surprise bones underneath Bobby’s skin. Normally hitting under the chin isn’t where you cut your hand in a fight. It’s usually the cheekbone or the teeth that are the problem. Hell, maybe it had been one of those moved down into his chin, or maybe it had been leopard bones out of place when I hit them. I stared at the cut on my knuckle and didn’t know what part of Bobby and his beast that I’d cut myself on. And just like that, I started to shake. The emergency was over. I could have my moment now. I’d been arrogant thinking I could control Bobby. When you’re hunting, you want the target to be as powerless and animalistic as possible, but when you’re trying to talk to them, you don’t want to talk to the animal. You need a human being in there who can hear you and think about what’s happening.
I found tears in my pants where Bobby’s claws had poked through. I hadn’t even known it happened in the heat of the fight. Even if my hand hadn’t been bleeding, I’d have been forced to get tested for lycanthropy, except that there was no need. I’d popped as having leopard-based lycanthropy years ago. Lucky it hadn’t been Newman in there, but of course he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to let them lock him inside once Bobby’s bones started sliding around. No, just me being so abysmally stupid.
I rested my hands on the cool edges of the sink and watched the blood begin to well up in the chunk I’d taken out of my knuckle. I let out a breath and stared at myself in the mirror. My skin was paper white; the dark brown of my eyes looked black, like holes burned into paper. I’d always thought that my hair was what made me look so pale afterward, but my hair was still back in its braid. Maybe it wasn’t the hair after all. Shock is what happens when your mind decides that it needs to protect you from experiencing everything around you, or when your body begins to shut itself down for the same reason. As far as I could tell, Bobby’s claws hadn’t cut anything but my clothes. Lucky for me he’d been in manacles. If he hadn’t been . . . No, don’t even think it. Well, don’t think too hard about what might have happened if I’d been just a little slower or less well trained. Nope, just don’t think about it too hard.
We still had a few hours until Edward would get here to back me up, but even he couldn’t protect me from my own arrogant stupidity. I’d never have taken such a terrible chance once upon a time before . . . before what? The only psychic ability I’d started with had been the ability to raise the dead as zombies. Of the eight of us old-time vampire hunters who had transitioned to being U.S. Marshals, three of us were animators, as in could animate the dead, which probably meant that our ability to raise the dead had given us more help against vampires than we’d first thought. Before I had fallen under Jean-Claude’s spell and eventually in love with him. Before he’d shared his vampire marks with me and I’d become more than human. Before I’d caught lycanthropy and held a rainbow of beasts inside me. We weren’t even sure why I didn’t shapeshift completely, but we thought it had something to do with the vampire marks getting to me first. Now I was going to marry Jean-Claude. Yes, we were in love, but he was also technically my master, which made me his human servant, though due to my own abilities with the dead, there was some debate on who was in charge of whom. Last year I’d raised a zombie army to combat one raised by an ancient evil vampire. So what was my short list? Necromancer, vampire slayer, Mistress of Beasts, Queen of the Dawn were all titles I’d earned among the supernatural community. It was a lot of power, a lot of magic. I’d let it give me delusions of grandeur, and those delusions had almost gotten me killed. All the wedding plans and any other plans I had almost went up in bloody ruins, because I thought I was the biggest, baddest thing in the pool. Fuck.
There was a soft knock on the door, and Newman said, “You all right in there?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” I got more paper towels and pressed them to the wound on my hand. I needed the bleeding to slow more before I could put a bandage on it.
“Can I come in, or would you prefer Kaitlin?”
“Why would I prefer Kaitlin?” I asked and saw myself frown in the mirror.
“She’s a girl. Some women prefer other women when they’re hurt.”
“I don’t know her,” I said.
“So, can I come in?” he asked again.
I glanced back at the mirror, but knew I wasn’t going to look better anytime soon. “Sure.”
He opened the door and had about as neutral an expression as I’d seen on him. “Are you hurt?”
I shook my head.
“Then why are you holding pressure on your hand?”
I think I gave him an unfriendly look, because he held up his hands in a little push-away gesture.
“What’d I say wrong?”
“Why ask if I’m hurt if you already know the answer?”
“That’s fair, but I already asked if you were all right, and you said yes.”
“Then stop asking me questions I’ve already answered.”
“Okay. Are any of the all-right, not-hurt parts of you needing a doctor?”
I almost smiled at his wording but fought it off. “No, thank you.”
He smiled then and stepped a little farther into the room. “Can I help you with your all-right and not-hurt hand?”
“Yes, once the bleeding slows enough for a bandage.”
“How badly are you bleeding?”
I tried to motion toward the wastebasket, but since I was using one hand to press paper towel to the other hand, it was an incomplete gesture at best. “I thought one paper towel was enough, but apparently not.”
He walked to the wastebasket so he could see what I was talking about. “That’s not bad,” he said.
“Like I said, I’m all right.”
“I think your definition of all right may not match mine.”
I smiled and shook my head. “It’ll match Ted’s when he gets here.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if either of you decides to slug it out with another shapeshifter.”
I sighed and looked at the floor before I made myself meet his eyes. I hadn’t been this embarrassed on a case in years. “There won’t be another time. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“Aren’t I the one who’s supposed to learn lessons when I’m working with you?”
“Don’t rub it in, rookie,” I said.
He grinned at me. “If it’s any comfort, it was impressive as hell to watch you beat a lycanthrope unconscious in the middle of shapeshifting.”
“It was arrogant and stupid, and if my reflexes weren’t more than human normal, I’d probably need that doctor.”
“I’ve never seen anyone move that fast in a fight.”
“Don’t you ever watch the new shapeshifter MMA fights?”
He shook his head. “I see them when they’re trying to kill people. That’s enough.”
“The fighters aren’t like Bobby. They have more than one shape, and they’re in control of their change.”
“I’ve heard it’s a hell of a show,” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Are the fighters on TV scarier than what I saw Bobby do in that cell?”
“No, but they fight a hell of a lot better than he does.”
“He didn’t fight you at all that I saw.”
“Yeah, there was enough of Bobby still in there somewhere that he didn’t want to hurt me.”
“I think you nearly broke his jaw with your first punch, and he never recovered enough to hurt you before you knocked him out.”
“Or that,” I said. The paper towel stuck to the wound a little as I pried it off gently. I didn’t want to jerk it off and stop the blood from clotting this time. I threw the paper in the wastebasket with the first one.
“What did you cut your hand on?” Newman asked.
“A bone that was someplace it wasn’t supposed to be.”
“Is it always like that, fighting them while they’re in the middle of changing?”
“I don’t know. This was my first time doing it.”
Newman stared at me, and I watched the blood begin to drain out of his face. “Sweet Jesus, Blake. I don’t know if you’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met or the stupidest.”
“Today I’ll vote stupid,” I said. “Now, help me bandage my hand.” When my hand was bandaged, I went out to Newman’s Jeep for more of my gear. This was an active warrant and I needed to start treating it like one.