'Yes,' I said.

'He'll get a trial. His lawyer will go for an insanity plea and get a reduced sentence.'

'No lawyer can help anyone connected to this,' I said.

'What do you mean?' she asked.

'She means that the warrant of execution doesn't differentiate between perpetrators.'

Hatfield frowned. 'I don't understand.'

'The language of a warrant of execution allows me to kill anyone who participates in the crime, Hatfield.'

'You mean you can just kill a human just like that, no arrest, no trial, just bang?'

I nodded.

She gave me wide eyes. 'If they're trying to kill me, or someone else, I could pull the trigger, no problem, but you're saying that if they were handcuffed, chained down like a vampire in the morgue, you'd just kill them.'

'No, I'm saying I could legally.'

'Humans don't go dead at dawn. They'd be staring up at you, begging for their lives.'

'Yeah, just like vampires do if they're awake.'

'You really don't see a difference between taking human life and the undead, do you?'

'No,' I said.

'Did you see a difference once?'

'I believed sincerely that vampires were evil and I was saving the world by killing them, but that was a few years ago. I haven't believed that for a while.'

'If I start seeing vampires as people, I don't think I could keep killing them.'

'Then stay away from Anita's friends,' Edward said. 'You can't keep seeing them as monsters once you see them as people.'

Hatfield shook her head. 'I don't know.'

'Let's have the rest of this discussion outside, where it smells better,' Lisandro said.

'Wererats have one of the most sensitive noses in the animal kingdom,' I explained to Hatfield.

She looked at Lisandro. 'Wererat?' she asked.

'I know I'm too handsome to be a wererat you were thinking werewolf, or wereleopard but no, I'm just a great, big, giant rat.'

Hatfield fought her face, and finally lost and showed her disgust. She even shuddered.

'You afraid of rats?' he asked.

She gave a little nod.

He smiled, but it was more a snarl, a curl of lips that didn't match the handsomeness. 'Then you do not want to see me in animal form.'

'No,' she said in a small voice.

I hadn't thought that she might literally be phobic of rats. Snakes, spiders, I might have thought of, but not rats. Funny, how you get used to things and it just stops occurring to you that it might bother someone else.

We all trooped out onto the porch again. The view was refreshing, but there was still that smell of corpses. 'Is the fridge working?' I asked.

'I know what you mean,' Lisandro said. 'The smell shouldn't be this strong, but I checked, and the food is fine.'

'Then why does that little bit of flesh smell this bad?' I asked.

'It's almost as if there are more bodies we haven't found,' he said.

I looked at Edward. He said, 'There's a basement.' He pointed to the side of the deck. I went to look where he pointed, and there were stairs leading down to a door tucked up under the deck.

'I didn't see a door into the basement from the inside of the house,' I said.

'I didn't either,' Hatfield said.

I looked around at everyone. 'Anyone see a way down besides this outside door?'

They all shook their heads.

Edward walked back into the house, and we trailed him. He was standing in the back bedroom looking at the huge dresser. It towered up over the window, but the room was so small that it effectively blocked the entire corner of the room from view. He got one side and Nicky got the other. There was a shorter-than-average door in the wall.

'They weren't blocking the window. Someone else was blocking the door,' I said.

'Were they blocking something in, or out?' Hatfield said.

'Or were they just hiding the door from this end?' Nicky asked.

'Don't know,' I said.

'The smell is worse near the edge of the door,' Edward said.

'You can't usually find zombies just by the smell of the rot,' I said.

'Not usually.'

He and I looked at each other. 'It's either a hell of a lot of zombies, or more bodies,' I said.

He nodded. 'I have my flamethrower in the truck,' he said.

I smiled. 'Not yet; let's see what's down there first. If it's zombies you can barbecue it all.'