Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 27)

Olaf and I looked at each other. “They needed to keep as many of us as possible until they could get you newbies trained and in the field, so the physical requirements were the regular ones for the Marshals Service.”

“Same for me,” Newman said.

“They were talking about doing a physical-training program that would help prepare new recruits for the job. Are you telling me that they didn’t do that?” I asked.

“Once we become marshals, as long as we keep meeting physical requirements, there’s no forced PT.”

“That’s typical of most law enforcement,” Livingston said.

“They don’t force us to train,” Olaf said.

“Well, no, but”—I tried to think how to put it into words—“but if you don’t train and train hard, you won’t make it in this job.”

“Do you mean you’ll fail when you get retested?” Kaitlin asked.

“No, I mean if you can’t run, fight, just have the stamina to make it through a hunt, you’ll get hurt or worse.”

“It’s not just that, Anita,” Olaf said. “The new executioners lack mentorship. They have only classroom experience with the monsters and no one to show them how to stay alive in the field.”

“They are sending the newest marshals out with older marshals now,” Newman said.

“They haven’t asked me to babysit anyone, so who are they asking?” I said.

“They contacted me,” Newman said.

“You’ve been doing this barely two years.”

“I know. That’s why I told them that I didn’t feel I had the experience to help anyone newer than myself. I told them that I’d found you, Forrester, Jeffries, and Spotted-Horse to be the most help to me. They didn’t like me crediting working with all of you as a reason I was better than most of the marshals that joined at the same time I did.”

“Why don’t they send out the Four Horsemen with the new recruits?” Livingston asked.

“They do not trust us,” Olaf said.

I nodded and said, “Yeah, what he said.”

“Don’t trust you how?” Kaitlin asked.

“They think we will corrupt the recruits,” Olaf said.

I glanced up at him. “Not the word I’d have chosen, but yeah, that’s sort of it. They think we’ll train the new marshals to be as independent and lone wolf as we are.”

“Will you?” Livingston asked.

“Probably. Almost all of us that were grandfathered in were freelance operatives that were only marginally with the police. I was a consultant with the police, but a lot of the other marshals were bounty hunters before they got badges. Those of us that passed fitness training and the firearms test were grandfathered in, but that didn’t make us police officers. We don’t have the training, and most of us don’t even have a police background.”

“What background do you have?”

“Military,” Olaf said.

“Magic,” I said, “or technically psychic gifts that made us good with the undead or shapeshifters or both.”

“So none of the people grandfathered in was a cop first?” Livingston asked.

“Not to my knowledge.”

“No,” Olaf said.

“Surely some police were hunting vampires before the laws changed and made them legal citizens,” Livingston said.