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I looked up at him, and my voice ripped out of me. "He was your friend!"
Carl was shaking; it showed as a trembling in his arms. "He shouldn't have challenged me."
"He didn't challenge you! He was going to walk away!" I bared my teeth, a grimace of contempt. "He's worth a hundred of you. Killing him doesn't change that."
Glaring down at us, Meg joined Carl. She was a mess, her face and arms dripping blood. She wouldn't last in a fight. But standing behind Carl, she acted like it.
Almost spitting the words, she said, "Finish her. Leave her with him."
I met Carl's gaze. Held it for a long time. He looked hopeless as well. It was like we both wondered how it could have been different. That all of this should have been different. Starting with the night that I never should have been made one of them.
He shook his head slowly. "No. She won't fight now." When Meg looked like she was going to argue, he took hold of the back of her neck, and she stilled. To me he said, "You have a day to leave town. I want you out of my territory."
He could have his territory.
Before standing, I buried my nose in T.J.'s hair and took a deep breath, to remember the smell of him. The oil and grease of his bike, the heat of his kitchen. His soap, his jacket, a faint touch of cigarette, a stronger scent of pine. His wolf, sweaty and wild. He smelled like wind at the edge of the city.
I straightened, looking away. Never look back.
His tone hateful and biting, Carl said, "T.J. paid for your life. Remember that."
I swallowed a sob and ran.
EPILOGUE
"Okay, we're back with The Midnight Hour. We have time to take a couple more calls for my guest this evening, Senator Joseph Duke, Republican from Missouri. Evan from San Diego, you're on the air."
"Yeah, hi," Evan said. "Senator Duke, first off I want to thank you for being one of the few members of our government willing to stand up for his beliefs—"
Inwardly, I groaned. Calls that started this way always ended with Bible thumping.
Duke said, "Why, thank you, Evan. Of course it's my God-given duty to stand for the place of moral rectitude in the United States Congress."
"Uh, yeah. And for my question, what I really want to know: In your knowledgeable opinion, what is the best method for punishing the minions of Satan—burning at the stake or drowning in holy water? If the federal government were to institute a code of mandatory punishment, which would you advocate?"
Why did people like this even listen to my show? Probably to collect quotes they could take out of context. The answers I gave to vampire orgy questions always came back to haunt me later.
The senator had the good grace to look discomfited. He shifted in his seat and pursed his lips. "Well, Evan, I'm afraid I'm not the expert on punishing the unrighteous you think I am. In this day and age, I believe the current penal system addresses any crimes for which the minions of Satan might be convicted, and the just punishments for those crimes. And if they come up with new crimes, well, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it, won't we?"
That was what made guys like Duke so scary. They were so articulate in making the weirdest statements.
Senator Joseph Duke, a fifty-something nondescript picture of Middle America, like the guy in the American Gothic painting but twenty pounds heavier, sat at the other end of the table, as far away from me as he possibly could and still reach the microphone. He had two suited bodyguards with him. One of them had his gun drawn, propped in the crook of his crossed arms. The senator refused to be in the same room with me without the bodyguards. I asked about the gun—silver bullets? Of course.
After all the people declaring that the show and my identity had to be hoaxes, part of some elaborate ratings scheme, or a sick joke played on my gullible fans, Duke's unquestioning belief in my nature was almost refreshing. He almost refused to come on the show at all—originally he'd been scheduled to appear the week after Cormac invaded. We'd had to postpone. I'd had to agree to the bodyguards.
"Next caller, please. Lucy, hello."
"Hello, Kitty. Senator, I want to know how after all your talk about smiting heathens and ridding the country of the nefarious influences of the unrighteous, which you have openly stated include werewolves, can you sit there in the same room with Kitty like nothing's wrong?" I couldn't judge Lucy's tone. It might have been the height of sarcasm, her trying to get a rise out of him; or she might have been in earnest.
"Lucy, the Lord Jesus taught us not to abandon the unrighteous. That even the gravest si
In my experience, becoming a werewolf had more to do with bad luck than with being a si
Lucy said, "So, Kitty, has he reached out to you?"
A couple of impolite responses occurred to me, and for once I kept them on the inside. "Well, as I've said before, while I may not be the most righteous bitch on the airwaves, I certainly don't feel particularly unrighteous. But I'm probably using the word differently than the senator. Let's just say I'm listening attentively, as usual."
The sound engineer gestured through the window to the boom, giving me a count of time left. Not Matt. I was in Albuquerque this week, at a public radio station that carried the show. It wasn't my booth, or my microphone, and the chair was too new, not as squishy as my chair back at KNOB. I missed that chair. I missed Matt.
"All right, faithful listeners—and mind you, I'm probably using the word 'faithful' differently than Senator Duke would use it. We've got just a couple of minutes left for closing words. Senator, I have one more question for you, if you don't mind."
"Go right ahead."
"Earlier in the show we discussed the little-publicized report released by a branch of the NIH, a government-sponsored study that made an empirical examination of supernatural beings such as werewolves and vampires. I'd like to ask you, if I may: If the U.S. government is on the verge of labeling lycanthropy and vampirism as diseases—by that I mean identifiable physiological conditions—how does that reconcile with the stance taken by many religious doctrines that these conditions are marks of sin?"
"Well, Ms. Norville, like you, I've read that report. And rather than contradicting my stance on these conditions as you call them, I believe it supports me."
"How?"
"I said before that I want to reach out to people suffering from these terrible afflictions—just as we as a society must reach out to anyone suffering from illness. We must help them find their way to the righteous path of light."
And what did the vampires think of being led to the path of light?
"How would you do this, Senator?" I said, a tad more diplomatically.
He straightened, launching on a speech like he'd been waiting for this moment, for this exact question. "Many diseases, such as lycanthropy and vampirism in particular, are highly contagious. Folklore has taught us this for centuries, and now modern science confirms it."
"I'd argue with the highly, but go on."
"As with any contagious disease, the first step should be to isolate the victims. Prevent the spread of the disease. By taking firm steps, I believe we could wipe out these conditions forever, in just a few years."
A vague, squishy feeling settled on my stomach. "So you would… and please, correct me if I've misinterpreted… you would round up all the werewolves you could and force them into, what? Hospitals, housing projects—" Dare I say it? Oh, sure. "—ghettos?"