She looked back at Vadim's remains for a moment and then continued. “I will miss his instruction, though.”
I'm not real good with emotional stuff, my family being just Gramps and myself, so I was at a loss of what to say. Senka saved me by stepping back over to our location and fixing me in her gaze.
“I trust Officer that you will allow us to handle this mess,” she said.
I hadn't thought about the aftermath and my responsibilities as a police officer until she said that.
On the one hand, I was sworn to uphold the laws of the city, the state and the country. On the other, Roma had made it clear that the leaders of the human society preferred that the supernaturals police themselves to the greatest extent possible. So the dead vampires were a no-brainer. The Hancers that Tatiana had chopped her way through had been human though. That was harder to sort out. But then I reasoned that Hance was a supernaturally derived drug and the Hance addicts had become part of the supernatural world. The fact that Anton had controlled them lent this line of reasoning greater support.
At the end of this elegant line of bullshit rationalization was the awareness that human courts and law enforcement were, at present, completely incapable of dealing with the shadowy world of vampires, demons and weres. To a degree it was like trying to impose human laws on the natural world. Trying a pack of timber wolves for coyote killing in a human court of law wasn't any more ridiculous than pressing charges on a vampire for killing a werewolf. In fact, from my limited experience with Special Situations and the D.O.A.A. unit, they were more like monitors than law enforcement. A vampire or were that came to the attention of human authorities for killing humans would be treated like a dangerous wild animal or rabid dog; hunted down and killed. And there most likely existed a federal black ops unit that wanted specimens for weapons research. My own work hunting demons had no basis in human law. So I looked back up at Senka after the several moments it took me to process this train of thought and gave her a nod. I got the impression that she was curious about my internal resolution of this dilemma, but she just smiled and turned to my girl and said, “You and Lydia need to take Chris to Dr. Singh and make sure whatever was pumped into him is gone. And clean him up, he's a bloody mess.” she said in her cultured Oxford accent. Then she was gone, back to organizing a cleanup that I didn't want to know about.
Lydia wouldn't let me in her car, her new car, until I put on one of the cleaning crews’ white tyvex coveralls. I sat in the back seat, looking like a lean Michelin Tire man and examined the links of the handcuffs that Tanya had removed from my wrists. She had simply pulled the hardened steel bracelets apart like taffey until they tore. I was interested in the laser clean cuts that Okwari's claw had made through the steel links. Bear claws are like meat hooks, with no real inner edge to cut with, yet his claw had sliced the tough metal like a chef's knife would cut a cucumber, better even. I was going to have Chet analyze the cuts. Any information I could get would help in figuring out my giant invisible friend. A thought occurred to me and I voiced the question to the vampire ladies in the front seat.
“I'm kinda foggy about how I ended up with Fedor and company. What happened at the club – “ I looked at my watch, “-- three hours ago?” I asked.
Tanya turned to look back at me as she answered, her blue eyes glowing from the dark front seat.
“Vadim hustled you and the demon's body off the dance floor and into the back, or so we thought. We think he must have just kept going right out the fire door and then met Anton before going to the shipping yard.”
“And Fedor delayed us from heading back to check on you, by saying we had to bow out first to keep the club patrons believing it was all an act,” Lydia added. “ Your fight was a huge hit by the way. I'll be surprised if it doesn't get mentioned in a half dozen of this morning’s newspapers.”
I yawned as it was now past two AM and long past my normal bedtime. Tanya was still watching me, concern written across her face. “I'm just tired.” I said. She shook her head. “I've only known you for a week and I've almost lost you a half dozen times.”
I didn't have a good answer so I just shrugged.
“I'll try to be more careful.”
Lydia laughed and Tanya smiled a little.
“Honestly, though, I've gotta think with the demise of Fedor and the others, that things will possible calm down,” I said.
“Regardless, you will be more careful, because you will be training with me!” Tatiana said.
I gulped, remembering her brutal treatment of Vadim and the Hancers. As much as I enjoyed bedroom wrestling with her, training at her level promised to be painful.
Lydia’s green eyes sparkled with amusement in the rearview mirror as she watched my reaction.
Chapter 20
Lydia parked in front of Dr. Singh’s house/office and we hustled into the entrance to the lower level. The doctor and his creepy assistant met us at the door, alerted to our arrival by Tanya’s cell call from the car. The assistant led me to a bathroom with shower, tersely directing me to leave my destroyed clothes in a black garbage bag and leaving me a set of blue hospital scrubs to wear. With one last sidelong glance at me, she left me to get cleaned up.
Dr. Singh’s water pressure was excellent and the steaming hot water sluiced away Fedor’s blood and gore. The fact that the shower floor was equipped with an industrial sized drain that would have been at home in a car wash or slaughter house was a little disturbing. I didn’t want to think of the number of other gruesome cleanups this bathroom had seen.
When I emerged twenty minutes later, my skin red from the harsh scrubbing I had put myself through, Assistant spooky was waiting to lead me to the Doctor’s exam room. Dr. Singh and the girls were there discussing the night’s events. A plastic zip lock baggie, with a used syringe inside was on one of the countertops, an oily black residue remaining in the mostly empty tube. “So Chris, how are you feeling?”
“A little cleaner.”
He smiled briefly. “I was wondering more about your physical well-being.”
“Well, I still feel a little woozy from whatever the demon shot me up with and I’m not up to full power aura wise. But overall, I feel pretty good. Hungry, though.”
Lydia rolled her eyes, Tanya smiled and the Doctor nodded.
“I’ve taken the liberty of ordering a pizza from a late night establishment. I will need to do a complete workup on the contents of the hypodermic, but I feel confident in theorizing that it is demon blood.”
“Demon blood?” I questioned.
“Yes, I’ve had the opportunity to analyze the body of the demon you neutralized at Tatiana’s residence the other day. The body’s blood was drastically changed by the demon’s habitation. I think it would have a pretty nasty effect on your abilities. In fact, I believe demon blood is the other ingredient in the production of the Hance drug.”
Dr. Singh had begun an examination of me while he talked, checking my blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and other basic factors. He made notes on a clipboard, and then handed it to the assistant who typed it into a laptop computer.
“Chris, how’s your appetite been lately?”
“Strong, but less than it was. Maybe two thirds of what it was.”
He nodded. “I would expect it to slow considerably as your body completes more of the transformation.”
“Ah, what transformation?” I asked
“Well, let’s back up and start with the process by which vampires are created,” he said.
Lydia and Tanya both leaned forward, obviously very interested in the topic.