I shook my head. “You know the answer to all of that.”
“Humor me.”
“No,” I said.
They both sort of stiffened in their chairs. Owens, the shorter, rounder one, smiled. “Now, Marshal Blake, it’s just procedure.”
“Maybe, but it’s not my procedure.” I pushed back my chair and stood up.
“Sit back down,” Preston said.
“No, I am a federal officer, so you guys aren’t the boss of me. If I were SWAT, I might have to sit here and take this, but I’m not, so I don’t. I’ve answered all the questions, and the answers aren’t going to change, so…” I waved at them and started for the door.
“If you ever want to work with SWAT again, you will sit here as long as we want you to sit here, and you’ll answer any question we ask,” Preston said.
I shook my head, and smiled.
“I fail to see the humor,” Owens said.
“Last I heard, Brice and Hermes are both going to heal up just fine.”
Preston stood up, using that tall, gangly height to look down on me. I so didn’t care. “Hermes is over six feet tall, and you shoved him into a wall, left a fucking imprint of his body, and shoved a vampire halfway through the wall by throwing Hermes into her. That’s not standard operating procedure, Blake. We want to understand what happened.”
“You have my blood tests somewhere. I’m sure that’ll help you figure it all out.”
“You carry six different kinds of lycanthropy, but you don’t shapeshift, which is a medical impossibility.”
“Yeah, I’m just a medical marvel, and I’m taking my marvelous ass home.”
“Which home?” Owens said.
I looked at him, eyes narrowing. “What?”
“Your house, or the Circus of the Damned and the Master of the City of St. Louis; which home are you going to tonight?”
“Circus of the Damned tonight, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Why there tonight?” he asked.
I was tired, or I wouldn’t have answered. “Because we’re scheduled to sleep there tonight.”
“Who are we?” Owens asked, and something about the way he said it made me suspect that it was my personal life more than my professional life they were after.
I shook my head. “I don’t owe you my personal life, Detective Owens.”
“There are people on the force who believe your personal life compromises your loyalties.”
“No one who’s ever put their shoulder next to mine and gone into a dangerous situation with me questions my loyalty. No one who went in to that house today with me questions my loyalty, and frankly that’s all I care about it.”
“We can recommend that you are too dangerous and unpredictable to work with SWAT here in St. Louis,” Owens said.
I shook my head, shrugged. It was easier to do now that I wasn’t in the vest and all the weapons. “You’re going to do whatever the fuck you want to do. Nothing I say will make a damn bit of difference. You’ve obviously decided to use my sexual orientation against me.” I said it that way deliberately; I knew the rules, too.
“We haven’t questioned your sexual orientation, Marshal Blake,” Owens said.
“I’m polyamorous, which means loving more than one person, and what I heard was you saying that the fact that I wasn’t white-bread, missionary-position monogamous compromised my loyalty. Isn’t that what they used to say about homosexual officers, too?”
“It’s not the number of men you live with that we object to, it’s that they’re all wereanimals and vampires,” Preston said.
“So, you’re discriminating against my boyfriends because they have a disease?”
Owens touched Preston’s arm. “We aren’t discriminating against anyone, Marshal Blake.”
“So, you aren’t prejudiced against vampires or wereanimals?” I asked.
“Of course not, that would be illegal,” Owens said. He pulled on Preston’s arm until the taller man sat down.
I stayed standing. “Good to know that you aren’t prejudiced on the basis of illness, or sexual orientation.”
“Poly-whatsit isn’t a sexual orientation; it’s a lifestyle choice,” Preston said.
“Funny, I thought it was my sexual orientation, but if you’re a psychologist with a background in sexuality, by all means, you’re right.”
“You know full well I’m not,” Preston said, and the first hint of real anger was creeping into his voice. If I kept poking at him, maybe I could get him to yell and that would be on the video, too.
“I have no idea what your areas of professional expertise are, Detective Preston. I thought since you were speaking like an expert about my sex life, you must know something I don’t.”
“I did not say a damn thing about your sex life.”
“I’m sorry, I thought you did.”
“You know damn well I didn’t.”
“No,” I said, and gave him the full unhappiness in my eyes, and the beginnings of anger in my cold, controlled voice, “no, I don’t know that at all. In fact, I thought I heard both of you question my loyalty to my badge and my service, because I’m sleeping with monsters, and that must mean I’m a monster, too.”
“We never said that,” Owens said.
“Funny,” I said, “because that’s what I heard. If that’s not what you meant, then please, enlighten me. Tell me what you actually meant, gentlemen. Tell me what I misunderstood in this conversation.”
I stood there and looked at them. Preston glared at me, but it was Owens who said, “We would never question your home life, your sex life, or imply that people who suffer from lycanthropy, or vampirism, are less worthy of the rights and privileges accorded to everyone in this country.”
“When you run for office, let me know, so I won’t vote for you,” I said.
He looked surprised. “I’m not running for office.”
“Huh, usually when someone talks like a politician they’re running for something,” I said.
He flushed, angry at last. “You can go, Marshal. In fact, maybe you better go.”
“Happy to,” I said, and I left them to be angry together, and probably still angry with me. They could recommend that I not be allowed to go out with SWAT anymore, but it would be just that, a recommendation, and the other officers didn’t like these guys any better than I did. They could recommend all they wanted; they could go to hell for all I cared. I was going home.
29
WHAT I WANTED was a shower, a good cuddle, food, good sex, and sleep. What I got was two of my lovers arguing so loudly that I could hear it through the curtains that made up the living room walls in the underground of the Circus of the Damned. Nicky was behind me carrying one of my equipment bags; Claudia had the other bag. She was taller than Nicky by inches, one of the tallest people I’d ever met, and definitely the tallest woman. Her long black hair was back in its usual high, tight ponytail. It left her face dark and bare, and strikingly beautiful. It wasn’t the beauty of dainty female things, but one of strength and high, sculpted cheekbones. She was a knockout with not a touch of makeup, dressed in the black pants and black tank top of the guards’ unofficial uniform. The shoulders and arms that showed were muscled and ripped, so that doing the smallest motion made her arms flex and ripple with muscle. Nicky was broader through the shoulders, but Claudia didn’t look small beside him. She looked tall, strong, and dangerous. The shoulder holster and guns were almost not necessary, like an extra rose on top of your birthday cake when the icing was already thick and deep. The fact that she was a wererat, which made her faster and stronger than I was, meant looks were totally accurate. Claudia was dangerous, but she was on our side, so it was all good. Besides, she had a conscience, unlike Nicky, who had to borrow mine. A conscience will get in the way of you being as deadly as you could be.