"If you want a call sign for me, Nolan, just call me Death."
"Yeah, I know the other Marshals nicknamed you after one of the Four Horsemen."
"Yeah, he's Death, and I'm War, and why does Van Cleef scare both of you so much?"
"I'm not scared of him. That's Ted's issue. I stayed in when he got out; this isn't one of Van Cleef's pet projects, but I've worked with him over the years, while Ted here was trying to hide from him."
"If you didn't hide from him, Nolan, then you must have said yes when I told him to go fuck himself."
"And yet you called for his help in New Mexico to save your family, and he sent the help you needed, ungrateful bastard that you are."
"Bootlicking toady," Edward said.
"Put the weapons back on the plane, Forrester. I'm not letting you into my country with an arsenal."
"Stop it, both of you. I don't know what sort of pissing contest we walked into, but I will not let your history together hurt this investigation."
"You're free to join the investigation and let your pet vampire give all the information he has on the locals, but not with the weapons in those bags, because without my help they're illegal as hell."
"You haven't changed a bit, Nolan," Edward said, and it wasn't a compliment.
"You have, Forrester, but not for the better."
"Guys, guys." I finally waved my hand at them and they both gave me unfriendly stares. I didn't care if they got mad at me. "I thought vampires were killing people in Dublin."
"They are," Ted said.
Nolan nodded.
"Ted said that there are new missing people almost every night now--is that correct, Captain Nolan?"
"That's correct."
"Then why the hell are we not on our way to Dublin? We can help you find the rogue vampires. We can help you kill them."
"Not without your weapons, you can't."
"Are you really willing to have more people die because you and Ted are old friends turned old enemies? Or because you're both being horses' asses?"
"He's still working with Van Cleef, Anita. Don't you understand what that means for not just you, but all the people with you? Once you come up on his radar, you never really get off it."
I looked back at the men and women with me, then called them over to us.
"What are you doing?" Nolan asked.
"Unlike the military, I run a more democratic house," I said.
"What the fuck does that mean?"
When everybody was there, I looked from Nathaniel to Nicky, and then the others, and did what I thought was right. "You all know the name Van Cleef," I said.
"Sweet Mary, Mother of God, Forrester, did you tell all of them?"
"His name came up in another case," I said.
"What case?" Nolan asked.
"We'll talk in detail later, promise, but right now we need this settled." I turned to my people, looked at them one by one. "There's a chance that this assignment could bring us up on Van Cleef's radar again. He is one of the few men that I've ever seen spook . . . Ted, so if you want to get back on the plane and go home, I won't hold it against you."
"Are you coming home with us?" Magda asked.
"No, I came to save lives and hunt vampires. I'm going to stay and do that."
"Then I will stay, too," she said.
"None of us will leave you unguarded," Kaazim said. The rest of the Harlequin shook their heads.
"I know you think I failed you once," Domino said. "I won't make it twice."
Nicky said, "You know it's not an option for me, Anita."
"I'm making it an option."
He gave me the look, and I moved on. "Dev, Ethan?"
Dev grinned at me. "Even if I were willing to leave you here, how would I ever explain it to the rest of the men back home? No, I'd rather take my beatings here than explain to Jean-Claude and Micah that I left you and Nathaniel here facing some scary top secret spook without me."
"Do you really think I would run away and save myself but leave you in danger?" Ethan asked.
"No, but I wanted you to know that I wouldn't hold it against you."
"You say that, but you don't mean it," Domino said.
"He's right," Dev said. "You say you don't hold it against us if we aren't as brave as you are, but you do. I panicked a little in Colorado with all the zombies, and you decided I wasn't as strong and brave as you needed me to be."
"I asked you to come this time, didn't I?"
"Only because some of your favorites couldn't come along, like Bobby Lee."
I didn't know what to say to that, because he was right.
"We're staying," Dev said.
"We're all staying," Fortune said.
"Nolan says that Van Cleef isn't directly involved in this one; do you believe him?" I directed this question at Edward.
"Yes, I do," he said, but not like he was happy about it.
"Then we stay, solve the vampire problem, and we help Nolan work the kinks out of his new unit, and then we go home."
"You don't understand, Anita. Just because this isn't Van Cleef's unit doesn't mean it's not his handiwork."
"What difference does that make?" I asked.
"It means nothing is simple, nothing is what it seems, and the monsters won't be the only ones we're fighting against."
"Come on . . . Ted, you know I bring my own monsters to the party."
"If half of what I read in your file is true, Blake, you are one of the monsters."
"Don't believe everything you read, Nolan."
"I thought monsters were taller," Donahue said, smiling at me.
"The rest of us are all taller than Anita," Dev said, smiling back at her.
Donahue frowned, then looked at all of them. "So you're all monsters?"
"Oh, yes," Kaazim said, "we are all monsters."
Everyone nodded, including me, and finally Edward joined us. "There's only one way to find out if your new unit is good enough to fight monsters, Nolan, and that's to fight some."
Nolan stopped arguing with Edward and with us. I wasn't even sure what had convinced him to stop being pissy, but I didn't care. If we were going to hunt vampires here, I wanted the guns, and that meant we needed Nolan and his weird clout. Thanks to Nolan and maybe even the mysterious Van Cleef, we were allowed to load our potentially illegal firepower into the vehicles, and divided our people up between the three vans. We were in Ireland; we had the firepower we needed to hunt vampires and win. Winning meant saving lives. Winning meant we survived. Winning meant the monsters died. It was simple math and anyone who didn't understand that vampire hunting was just that simple wasn't going to be very good at the job. Not being good at most jobs meant you got fired; not being good at my job meant you died. I hadn't come to Ireland to die or get any of my people killed; I'd come to win.
36
BRENNAN DROVE OUR van but didn't like the fact that Nolan got in back with Edward, me, and some of our people. He pushed the point up to arguing with Nolan about it, but one of the pluses to being military is that when your Captain tells you to do something, eventually you just do it. Period.
"What's his problem?" Dev asked, as he settled down on the other side of Nathaniel, who was snuggled up against me. Damian was at our feet, still curled up in the lightproof bag. It felt almost like there was more than just him in the bag, as if Nathaniel had stuffed in padding. I'd ask later when we were more alone. Right now we were about as not alone as we could possibly be. Nicky sat on the other side of me, so that I was snuggled between him and Nathaniel, something I normally enjoyed, but not at work, and not with Dev on the other side of Nathaniel. It was the broadness of the shoulders of all three of them that made us all have to sit very close to each other. I didn't mind, though it probably would have made more sense to have either Nicky or Dev change places with Kaazim or Jake, who were slender in comparison. Pride was on their side of the van, too, but his shoulders wouldn't help the issue. I wanted Nathaniel beside me and I knew that Dev preferred
to sit beside either me or Nathaniel. Nolan was watching me too closely for me to want to get into an explaining match with Dev about why he couldn't sit beside either of his sweeties.
Dev repeated, "What is Brennan's problem?"
"He is afraid we'll lose control of our beasts," Kaazim said as he found a seat beside Jake.
The van doors were closed from the outside and I heard a click, almost like we'd been locked inside. If Nolan hadn't been inside with us, I'd have been more suspicious. Apparently, I should have been, because Edward looked at Nolan.
"And you're back here with us, because . . ." Edward said.
"To let you know I trust you."
"But you still locked us in."
The energy in the van flared. I was suddenly sitting in the middle of Nicky's beast. I could smell heat and sun and that heavy musk that meant male lion. My lioness lifted her head in the dark and gazed up the long tunnel of my body with eyes that were so dark an amber they were almost orange. I started doing my deep, even breathing exercises, because the last thing I needed was to have an issue with my own inner beasts with Nolan right there. Nathaniel's energy rose, but not like Nicky's did, but then if it came to fighting our way out only one of them would be helping do that. Dev's lion responded to Nicky's, not just because they both held lion in them, but because Nicky was his Rex, his king. They were pride together, and that meant a lot to the two of them.
My lioness started padding up that long, dark corridor inside me, attracted to all the male lion energy. Damn it.