'Are you telling me that the engagement to Callahan's son is real?'

'Something like that, yeah.'

'It's not just so the sheriff can die knowing his son is okay, and not gay?'

I laughed; I couldn't help it. She obviously knew nothing about the sheriff's domestic arrangements.

'What's so funny?' she asked.

'Hatfield,' Jonas said, 'you may be our local vampire executioner, but you haven't been here long. You don't know all the local PD all that well yet.'

She looked from him, to me, to Edward, and back to Jonas. She knew she'd stepped in something, but not exactly what. I had no intention of enlightening her. I wasn't sure that Edward even knew about Micah's dad's love life, but no one living did better poker face than Edward, so it seemed like the only one in the room who didn't know that Sheriff Callahan was living with another man, and a woman, was Hatfield.

She decided to go back to something she was certain of and said, 'This is my warrant and I don't need Forrester or Blake looking over my shoulder. It's just two vampires to execute.'

'There were more than two vampires in the woods,' I said.

'You saw them die, Blake. From what I hear you helped blow some of them away with that arsenal you carry.'

I turned to Edward and said, 'Please tell me that someone burned the remains of the rotting vampires that we blew to hell with the guns?'

'Ask Hatfield; she was the marshal in charge by the time I got here.' Ted's cheerful voice was wearing around the edges so that Edward's coldness was leaking out. He didn't like Hatfield either.

'They all either were decapitated or had their chests blown open, and all of them had their spines damaged. That's dead enough,' she said.

'Didn't you follow what happened in Atlanta when the Master of the City went crazy?' I asked.

'Yeah, the police used flamethrowers on the vampire lair and ruined most of the evidence. They still haven't identified all the victims' remains. Local police say you were the one who told them they had to use fire to cleanse it, which is bullshit and overkill.'

'Fire is the only surety with rotting vampires,' I said.

'There are still people waiting for news of their loved ones, thanks to your suggestions in Atlanta,' she said.

'Anita's right,' Edward said, and his voice was cold now. 'Fire is the only way to make sure the rotters don't heal and rise again. Tell us you burned their bodies, Hatfield.'

She was looking from one to the other of us. 'Nothing keeps moving after a decapitation except zombies.'

'Exactly,' I said, 'and rotting vampires are a lot more like zombies than most vampires.'

'The Master of Atlanta may have needed fire, but that's a master vampire. They're all harder to kill. These were all newly risen, right?'

'New makes them easier to kill,' I said, 'but I burn all rotting vampires regardless of age just to be safe, and then sometimes I do the whole scattering of the ashes in different bodies of running water.'

'You are just trying to spook me now,' she said.

'I travel with a flamethrower when I drive,' Edward said, 'and sometimes I can even get it on the plane if I promise there's no fuel in it.'

'I heard you liked fire, Forrester. Were you a bed-wetter and terror to the neighborhood pets?'

Edward ignored the insult. 'Captain, where did the bodies from the woods get transferred?'

'The hospital morgue has a special room for vamp and lycanthrope undead.'

'Is it more heavily armored so they can't get out?' I asked.

'No, it's just separate so that the human dead don't get ... contaminated.' He sounded a little apologetic when he said the last word.

'To my knowledge normal dead just stay dead even if you mix them with a whole bunch of vampire and lycanthrope bodies, but are you telling us that all the dead from the woods are now in the morgue in the basement of the hospital where Micah and Nathaniel are? Where Sheriff Callahan is?' Jean-Claude and the rest of the vampires had gone for the hotel because dawn was only two hours away, and traffic accidents happened, and there was no saving throw between a vampire and sunlight, so he was safe, but he also had some of the most dangerous guards with him, so it was a mixed blessing, damn it!

'Yeah,' Jonas said, 'tell me for real, can these things heal enough to attack people again?'

'Rotting vampires are really rare, but I wouldn't trust anything short of burning them up like zombies,' I said.

'Agreed,' Edward said.

'You did burn up all the zombie parts from the woods, right, Hatfield?' I asked.

'We couldn't burn them in the woods; the fire danger's too high.'

'What did you do with the parts?' I asked.

'Once dawn came, they stopped moving,' she said.

I wanted to grab her and shake her, but I forced myself to be calm and dig my fingernails into my palms as I made fists so I wouldn't do it. 'What-did-you-do-with-the-zombie-parts?'

'They're in the morgue with the vampire bodies.'

'Shit,' I said.

'It's been dark for hours, Blake; if anything was wrong we'd have heard by now,' Hatfield said.

'Call the morgue,' I said to Jonas. 'If they say everything is hunky-dory, then Ted and I are wrong. I'm good with that. I'd love to be wrong.'

The captain called, because calling didn't cost him anything. I'd never actually seen a rotting vampire this young in undead terms, so maybe they got their uber-healing powers after a few years. Maybe a few weeks wasn't enough time to be that scary?

The phone rang a long time; I was getting nervous, and Jonas was looking worried.

'See,' Hatfield said, 'you've both been on the job too long; it's made you paranoid.'

'Crap,' Jonas said, and Hatfield and I looked back at the captain. 'No one answered at the morgue,' he said to whoever was on the phone. 'No, I do not want you to send someone down to check. This is Captain Jonas of Boulder PD, and I want all the hospital staff to stay away from the morgue until I have some officers check it out.'

Whoever was on the other end of the line was talking, and he was trying to tell them, no, he didn't want any of the staff to go down to the morgue. They wanted to know why and Jonas didn't want to tell them, because in case it wasn't vampires and killer zombies, but just a bad phone line, he didn't want to scare everyone at the hospital.

We didn't have time for this. I got my cell phone out and dialed Micah. It went to voice mail. I dialed Nathaniel's phone without letting myself think about why Micah hadn't answered. He was in with his dad, had turned off the ringer, that was it, that had to be it. Nathaniel would answer. When he picked up I thought my heart was going to choke me, so I sort of croaked out, 'Nathaniel, everything all right there?'

'Micah's dad is struggling in his sleep like he's having a nightmare. The nurse says he shouldn't be able to move with all the drugs in him.'

'Is he saying anything?'