Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 27)

I thought about the feel of Bobby’s skin, how warm he was, how alive he was, and I shook my head. “I came up here to help Newman get as much truth, justice, and the American way as possible. I did not come up here to take over the execution because he’s gone squeamish.”

“I’m not squeamish,” Newman said, and he looked really unhappy with me as he said it.

“I know that, Newman. I just meant that I’m not up here to take over the warrant. I stopped pinch-hitting on warrants of execution a few years back. The only reason I’ll take over a warrant now is if the first marshal is too injured to continue.”

“Or dead,” Newman said.

I nodded. “Or that.”

“I won’t talk to Dale about abuse of the corpse,” Leduc said. “If you want to talk to him about shit like that, call him yourself.”

“I will,” Newman said.

“Good luck, because he won’t believe you either, not about this.”

“You’ll believe that Bobby clawed his uncle to death, but not that he might have abused him either before or after death?” I asked.

“Death is clean and over. What you’re hinting at is neither.”

“I’ll call Dale from the car when we follow you over to the crime scene,” Newman said.

“You were right earlier, Win. You know the way.”

“No, I think you were right the first time, Duke. I think you should take us.”

Leduc looked from one to the other of us and then studied Win’s face longer. Whatever he saw there made him stamp out his second cigarette and say, “I’d like to promise you I’m not a danger to Bobby anymore.”

“You can’t promise that, Duke,” Newman said.

“No, and neither can Frankie or my other deputies. If he shifts in his cell, we will have to shoot him, because nothing inside there is strong enough to hold him, not even the bars.”

“If he does a complete change of form, then it will be a justified shooting,” Newman said.

“I didn’t see any cameras in the cell area,” I said.

“There aren’t any,” Leduc said.

I opened my mouth to say something that Newman obviously thought we’d all regret, because he said, “Let’s get out to the crime scene. The faster Blake and I make up our minds, the faster we get this settled.”

“Have it your way, Win.” Leduc got in his SUV, rolled down the window, and was already lighting another cigarette. Apparently, he’d decided that quitting twenty years ago had been a mistake, and he was going to make up for lost time.

Newman and I got into his car and followed the sheriff out of town. It felt a little bit like we were being escorted out of town like in an old Western movie. I wasn’t sure why I thought of that. Maybe too many Western-movie marathons with my dad when I was a kid, or maybe I’d had too many guns pointed at me since I got into town. Maybe.

7

WE FOLLOWED THE sheriff’s taillights in silence for a few minutes. We sat in the darkness of the car with only the faint glow of the instrument panel to chase back the darkness. Once we left the town behind, it got seriously black, with the trees like half-seen giants on either side of the road. This far from the full moon on a cloudy night, the headlights seemed to carve tunnels out of the darkness.

“Damn, it’s dark up here this far from the full moon,” I said.

“Stargazing is good, and sometimes you can see the aurora borealis.”

“Wow, that is dark,” I said.

“What did you do to calm down Bobby’s animal half?” he asked.

I don’t know why, but the question caught me off guard. “Magic,” I said.

“Really?” he said, and glanced at me.