And us.
Vampires caught in a human system for a bloody crime we didn’t commit. The twistedness of it all was remarkable, but it did nothing to alleviate our current situation.
With our hands tied behind our backs, a young policeman marched Damon and me up several flights of worn wooden stairs and into the chief’s office. He commanded a small square of the larger floor. Sketches of wanted men lined his walls, one man’s eye struck through with a large nail. The chief himself was a grizzled veteran with a full black beard, except for where a smooth, diagonal scar cut through his skin.
He looked at our rap sheet and let out a low whistle. “The whole Sutherland family? That’ll be in the papers tonight.”
I flinched at hearing such insensitivity coming from the lips of a normal human. What sort of monsters did he deal with that the death of an entire family was no more than a news item?
“We didn’t do it,” I said.
“No, of course you didn’t,” the chief said gruffly, running a finger along his scar. “No one who ends up here has ever done it. But the courts will get it sorted out, and everyone will get what they deserve.”
We were unceremoniously dumped into a holding cell that was larger than the entire one-person jail back home, where Jeremiah Black spent many a night sleeping off his drunken stupor. I never expected to see the inside of a cell myself.
“We didn’t do it,” Damon whined, imitating me and shaking his head, as soon as the guard left. “Could you make us sound any more ridiculous?”
“What, are you afraid of us coming off as sissies?” I asked. “Would you rather I just bared my fangs at him?”
A rasping chuckle came from the corner of the cell, where another prisoner sat slumped against the wall. His hair receded from his forehead in a deep V and he had the arms of a dockworker.
“Nice clothes,” he said with malicious growl, eyeing our formal suits and clean-shaven cheeks. “What are you in for, rich boys?”
“Killing a family,” Damon answered without pause. “You?”
“Beatin’ in the heads of the likes of you,” he answered back just as quickly, cracking his knuckles.
He took a swing at Damon, but my brother reached up and, with hands faster than the human eye, deflected the blow, and pushed the man against the wall with a loud crack.
The giant didn’t so much topple as just crumple straight down, falling into an unconscious puddle around his own feet. None of the officers came running, and I wondered if fighting in the cells was an ordinary occurrence.
Damon sighed as he stepped around the man. He sat down on the floor in a moment of exhaustion that was almost human, almost like the old brother I used to know. “Why is it we always end up locked behind bars with each other?”
“Well, at least this time you’re not being starved,” I answered drily.
“Nope. No chance in that,” Damon said. His eyes surveyed the police standing on the other side of our bars, taking in each person. Then he leaned his head up against the wall and gave the peeling paint a grudging sniff. “And I think there’s more than a chance that there are a couple of rats in here for you, too.”
I sighed, sliding down the wall and sitting next to him. I did not understand this new Damon. His shifts in mood were frightening. One moment he was the soulless vampire who killed without remorse, the next he was someone who seemed like my old childhood companion again.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“You’re looking at it,” he said, getting up and indicating the dead man at our feet. “Guard! Man down in here.”
When the guard approached and saw the body on the ground he seemed annoyed, but not surprised. The guard didn’t lean too close—he had survived long enough to know not to. But it was close enough. Damon flared his eyes.
“Forget we were ever here. Forget what we look like. Forget who brought us in, our names, and everything about us.”
“Who’s us?” the guard asked, hypnotized but slow on the uptake.
“The man I came in with,” Damon snapped, pointing at me. The guard nodded faintly. “Forget everything about us. And then—send over the other guard, all right?”
The guard wandered back to his post, somewhat dizzily at first, then cocked his head as if he had just remembered something. He went to one of the guards on patrol and pointed at the jail cell. Not at Damon, through Damon. It was like Damon didn’t exist anymore in his reality.
“One down,” Damon muttered. He looked tense. Again I wondered how many people he really could control at once.
The second guard approached. He had a scar across his face that twisted one eye shut, and he smacked his billy club as he walked. But before Damon could compel him, he said the absolute last thing we expected.
“Your lawyer is here.”
I looked at my brother. He looked back at me in equal surprise. He raised an eyebrow as if to say: Did you arrange this somehow?
I very slightly shook my head. Damon straightened his shoulders as a clang sounded and the door to the stockade opened. The smell of rotten eggs and death filled the room as another man walked in—the lawyer.
He was huge. Larger than the prisoner Damon had knocked out, with long arms and a huge chest. His hands were monstrous, with stubby fingers that gripped a leather portfolio.
He came into the room slowly, with the careful tread of someone or something too large and dangerous for its surroundings, like the pace of a panther around its tiny circus cage.
His clothing was of a foreign cut, comfortable, rich linen and silk that allowed his massive body to move easily beneath its folds.