Cerulean Sins (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 11)

Zerbrowski said his out loud, "Shop it somewhere else, Anita, we're not buying."

I raised the sleeves on my shirt and showed my own healing scratches. "When I was afraid I'd hurt him more, I scratched myself."

Zerbrowski's eyes went wide. "Jesus, Blake, you always this rough?"

"You'll never find out Zerbrowski."

"If that was a yes, then I'm okay with that." He almost touched some of the deeper scratches on my arm, then stopped and almost touched the scratches on Jason's arms. "I hope the sex was good."

Jason looked down at the tabletop, and did his best impression of an aw'shucks look. He managed to look coy and pleased with himself all at the same time.

"That's answer enough," I said.

Jason flashed me a grin that made his baby blues sparkle. "Whatever you say, mistress."

I gave him a very mean look, that didn't dim his enjoyment one bit.

Dolph pushed away from the wall to peer over the table at my arm. "I don't buy this, Anita. Maybe you scratched your own arms up on the way here to give him an alibi."

"The scratches aren't that fresh, Dolph."

He started to grab my arm, but I stepped out of reach. "I don't want to be manhandled again, thanks anyway."

He leaned across the table at me, and Jason began to ease his chair back, as if he didn't want to be in the middle.

"You're lying," Dolph said. "A shape-shifter heals anything but silver and wounds from another monster, real quick. You taught me that, Anita. He should be healed by now, if you really were the one who hurt him."

"Wouldn't that same logic dictate that if the scratches were from the female victim then they'd already have healed?"

"Not if they come from the second victim." Dolph slapped that bit of information down as if it were a blow, and in a way it was.

I looked at Zerbrowski. "I can't debate the healed scratches thing if I don't know the time line. I need a time."

He opened his mouth, but Dolph answered, "Why, so you can give the perfect alibi?"

"Gee, Zerbrowski, I don't see your hand up Dolph's ass, but it must be, because every time I ask you a question, the answer comes out his mouth." I was leaning across the table now, too.

"His scratches are older than yours, Anita," Dolph said, voice almost a growl of its own, "more healed. You'll never prove in court that they happened at the same time."

"He's a shape-shifter. He heals faster. I taught you that. Remember?"

"Are you really admitting that you fucked him?" Dolph said.

I was too angry to flinch at his choice of words. "I prefer the term made loveto fucked, but yeah, we did the nasty."

"If that was true, the marks would have healed completely by now. If you're only human, like you keep telling me."

The headache between my eyes felt like something was trying to stab its way out of my skull. I really wasn't in any mood for this. "What I am, or what I am not, is none of your damn business. But I'm telling you that I marked him up in the heat of passion. More than that, chances are good he was with me when the second murder took place. We can give you times, if you want."

"Times would be good," Zerbrowski had scooted his chair a little farther down the table, but he hadn't deserted his post. He'd stayed closer to all that quivering rage than most people would have.

I had to think about it, but I managed to give him approximate times for the last two days. Truthfully, I wasn't much good on alibiing Jason for the first murder, but on the second, I was pretty sure I had him covered.

Zerbrowski was doing his best to give blank cop face while he wrote down what I said. The entire interview was being recorded, but Zerbrowski, like Dolph, liked to write things down. I hadn't really thought about it before, but Zerbrowski might have learned that habit from Dolph.

Dolph stayed standing near the table, looming over all of us, as I spoke. Zerbrowski asked small questions to nail the times as clearly as possible.

Jason stayed as quiet and still as he could through all of it. His hands clasped together on the table, head down, eyes taking small quick glances at all of us, without moving his head or body. He reminded me of a rabbit hiding in the long grass, hoping that if he just stayed quiet enough, still enough, that the dogs wouldn't find him. The analogy should have been laughable. I mean, he was a werewolf. But it wasn't funny, because it was accurate. Being a werewolf didn't protect you from the human laws, most of the time it hurt you. Sometimes it even got you killed. We weren't in that kind of danger, yet, but that could change.

A shape-shifter accused of murdering a human got a speedy trial and an execution. If a shape-shifter was declared rogue, one that was actively hunting humans, and the police couldn't capture it, then you could get a court order of execution, just like for a vampire. It worked almost the same way. A vampire that was suspected of murder but was still eluding capture and deemed a danger to the public could have an order of execution issued by a judge. Once you had the order of execution in hand you could kill it when you found it. Just insert shape-shifter for vampire into the formula and it worked the same way. There was no trial, no anything--just hunt it down and kill it. I'd done a few jobs like that. Not many, but a few.

There'd been a movement a few years ago to make a magic-using human subject to orders of execution, but too many human right's organizations had kicked a fit. As a magic-using human, I was happy. As someone who had executed people on orders of the court, I wasn't sure how I would have felt about hunting a human being down and killing them. I'd killed humans before when they threatened my life, or the lives of those I held dear. But self-defense, even proactive self-defense wasn't quite the same thing. A human witch or wizard got a trial, but if they were convicted of using magic for murder, it was an automatic death sentence. Ninety-nine percent of the time the witch or wizard was convicted. Jurors just didn't like the idea of people who could kill by magic walking around free. One of my goals in life was to stay the hell out of a courtroom.

I knew Jason hadn't done anything wrong, but I also knew enough about the way the system worked to know that for those of us who weren't exactly human, sometimes innocence didn't matter much.

"Can anyone else verify these times?" Zerbrowski asked.

"A few people, yeah," I said.

"A few people," Dolph said. He looked disgusted, and I didn't understand this emotion either. "You don't even know who the father is, do you?"

That made me give him a deer in headlights blink. "I don't know what you mean."

He gave me a look, as if I'd already lied to him. "Detective Reynolds told us her little secret."

I looked at him across the table. He was still leaning over, and I was still standing, so we were almost eye-to-eye. "So?"

He gave a sound between a snort and a cough. "She wasn't the only one who passed out at the murder scene, and she wasn't the only one who threw up." He looked as if he'd made a great point, driven it home with a surgeon's precision.

I frowned and blinked at him. "I'm sorry, what are you talking about?" I let myself look as confused as I felt.

"Don't be coy, Anita, you're not good at it."

"I'm not being coy, Dolph, you're making no fucking sense." Then an idea popped into my head, but that couldn't be it. Dolph wouldn't think . . .

I looked at him, and thought, maybe he would think that. "Are you implying that I'mpregnant?"

"Implying, no."

I relaxed a little. I shouldn't have.

"I'm asking, do you know who the father is, or have there been too many to guess?"

Zerbrowski stood, and he was close enough to Dolph that it forced him to move a little way from the table. "I think you should go now, Anita," Zerbrowski said.

Dolph was glaring at me. I should have been angry, but I was too surprised. "I've thrown up at murder scenes before."

Zerbrowski moved a little back from the table. He had a resigned look on his face, like someone who saw the train coming down the track and knew nobody was going to get off in time. I still didn't think things were that bad.

"You've never passed out before," Dolph said.

"I was sick, Dolph, too sick to drive myself."

"You seem fine now," he said, voice low and rumbling, filled with that anger that seemed always just below the surface lately.