'Vampires don't tear at you like a terrier with a rat,' Burke said. 'They kill neat, almost clean.' He didn't sound happy when he said it, but he sounded sure.

I tried to remember if I'd touched anything in the morgue that I wouldn't want touching my bare skin. I thought and just couldn't be a hundred percent sure. 'I'd have to take my gloves off and reglove, but after we're all done here I can show scars where a vampire did just that to me.'

Burke's serious cop eyes let me know he wasn't sure he believed me.

'I know the literature, and most of the databases treat vampires as sort of organized serial killers, methodical planners, and wereanimals as the disorganized serial killers, making a mess, choosing their victims more by chance like a wounded antelope that falls behind the herd. But I've known vampires that slaughtered and wereanimals that were more organized.' I thought about it for a minute and then shook my head. 'Okay, I've known more vampires that went all slaughterfest than shapeshifters that were methodical in their kills, but trust me, the antelope doesn't always leave the herd by accident. It may look like happenstance, but most predators cause things to happen that will isolate or test the herd, so they get to see who's weak or careless. It's so not accidental most of the time.'

'Predators are all the same, I guess, two legs or four,' Burke said.

'Human, vampire, shapeshifter, a predator is a predator,' I agreed.

'There's nothing in the federal database about vampires eating their victims like a shapeshifter does,' Rickman said. 'I thought they couldn't eat solid food.'

'The commander said worry at a wound like a terrier with a rat, not eat it,' I said.

Rickman looked blank.

'Didn't you ever see a dog savage something just for the hell of it, not to eat it?' I asked.

He shrugged. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

Gonzales said, 'Did you ever play tug-of-war with a dog that was serious about it?'

Rickman shrugged again. 'Never had a dog.'

We all looked at him. 'Never?' Gonzales asked. 'Ever?' Al asked. 'Are you a cat person?' Shelley asked.

'No, but I hear that Blake is.' The words were innocent, but the tone was not, and neither was the look that went with it.

'Is that some kind of clever reference to Micah Callahan being a wereleopard?' I asked, and made sure that my voice held all the disdain I could manage, which was a lot.

'If the furry slipper fits ...' he said.

'Detective, I've been called the whore of Babylon to my face more than once; do you really think calling me a "cat person" is going to insult me?' I made little quote marks around cat person.

'Yeah, Ricky,' Gonzales said, 'for a ten-year veteran officer that was weak.'

'It was weak,' Al said.

'That was a pathetic insult, Detective,' Commander Burke said.

'Come on, Ricky,' I said, 'at least call me a blood whore since I'm sleeping with vampires. Oh, wait, that's not an original insult either; in fact, Micah's crazy aunt and uncle already called me that today.'

'Fine, fine, you've made your point.'

'No,' I said, 'I haven't begun to make my point. The vampire that tore me up the most broke my collarbone gnawing at me. The bend of my left arm has so much scar tissue that they said I'd lose the use of it, but enough weight lifting and stretching has kept me whole.'

'So, you're big and tough, we get it.'

'Shut up, Ricky,' Gonzales said.

Burke said, 'If the vampire wasn't trying to eat your flesh like a wereanimal, then why did he tear at you?'

'Because he meant to hurt me, because he wanted me to suffer before he killed me. You can see what human teeth can do to bodies on these.'

'I saw a ninety-pound cheerleader on PCP tear out a man's throat with her teeth once,' Burke said. He shuddered, and his professional cop look slipped a little and let the haunted look show through. Most cops had a haunted look; they hid it, but we all had it if we'd been on the job long enough. There were always things that happened that left stains on your mind, your heart, your soul. You saw the great, terrible thing and you couldn't forget it, you couldn't unsee it, unknow it, and you were never the same afterward. We had a moment of everyone's eyes remembering something bad, it didn't matter what, different memory, but same effect. We were all haunted; even Rickman's eyes had the look.

I turned and looked at Rogers and Shelley, and the two doctors looked just as haunted. Cops; emergency medical personnel; hell, emergency personnel; firemen; ambulance drivers; all of us ... you don't need ghosts to be haunted. Memory does that just fine without any supernatural help at all.

CHAPTER 16

The woman's bite had been neater, but it had also been in her face, as if the zombie had tried to tear off her cheek. 'I can't tell how much damage was bite and how much was excised afterward.'

Rogers answered, 'The patient wouldn't sign off on the surgery to excise her wound. It was only after the patient realized that the disease was going to do more damage to her face than the surgery that she agreed to it, but it was too late. The disease had made its way to her brain and there was nothing we could do. I cut away as much of the infected tissue as I could, but when I realized that it wouldn't save her life, I did what I could to make her comfortable. Once this thing gets into a major organ that is needed to sustain life there isn't anything we can do, except pump them full of painkillers and make them comfortable until the end.'

I stopped looking down at the woman's ravaged face and back up at him. 'Is that why Sheriff Callahan is pumped up on pain meds? Has it reached a major organ system?' My pulse sped a little, but outwardly I was calm, my best blank cop face forward.

'No, the disease is also incredibly painful, and since we can only slow it, not stop it, we make the patients as comfortable as possible.'

'You swear,' I said.

He nodded. 'I swear, Rush was lucky it was an arm wound. I was able to take a lot of the flesh. I thought I'd gotten it all, honestly, but it's as if you can't cut fast enough to stay ahead of it. If we hadn't had the earlier patients to treat so we knew to put him on massive full-spectrum antibiotics and use the hyperbaric chamber, it would have spread everywhere by now, but we're learning more with every patient.'

'Why didn't you excise flesh from the man's shoulder wound?' I asked.

'He was the first we found alive. The emergency room doctor tried treating it as less virulent than it turned out to be. In his defense, you see the mess that the wound was. The thing really tore at him, so it was treated as a regular zombie bite, since they carry their own types of infection. By the time the attending doctor called me in it was simply too late. The infection had reached the man's heart, and there was nothing we could do.'

'Are you saying that his heart was rotted away?' I asked.

Dr Shelley answered that question. 'Yes, it was quite decayed. I'd never seen anything like it. You can see that the flesh on most of the chest is clean and looks healthy, but when I did the autopsy the heart looked more like the area around the initial wound.'

'Why did his heart rot? Why her brain? Why didn't it eat the outer healthy flesh first?' I asked.

'We aren't a hundred percent certain,' Rogers said, 'but we think that this infection enters the bloodstream through the bite and rides the blood into a major organ system and rots from both ends, so to speak.'

'So, bad luck about the face bite hitting the brain,' I said.

'Yes,' he said.

'And if you'd known to excise the shoulder wound on the man, then he might have been able to hold on,' I said.

'If he'd been a later victim instead of one of the first, I believe his odds would have been as good as the sheriff's,' Rogers said.