“Besides, the captain shouldn’t be wrestling suspects even if he’s the biggest guy here,” I said with a smile.

He nodded, and let me go first. Once he would have protected me and gone first, but he knew that I was harder to hurt than anyone in the room except the vampire. I could take a beating and keep on ticking, and he also understood without having to say anything else that I was blaming myself for it all getting out of hand. Protocol was that you left vampires completely shackled. I’d taken his cuffs off so he would talk to me. I’d been convinced I could handle a baby vampire like Barney with his hands free. We were lucky no one was dead.

Dolph understood all of that; he’d have felt the same way, so he let me move forward with the heavy metal contraption. He waved the uniform back and he stayed at my back, just in case. When you have someone who is six foot eight and keeps himself in good shape, I’ll take him as backup. There’d been a time when Dolph hadn’t trusted me because of my dating the monsters, but he’d worked out his issues, and I’d gotten a real federal badge. I was a real cop according to the paperwork, and Dolph had wanted a reason to forgive me for consorting with the monsters. The new badge had been reason enough, that and the fact that he had behaved badly enough toward me and others that he almost let his hatred of the preternaturally challenged cost him his badge, and his self-respect. Some long talks with the local vampires, especially one ex-cop named Dave, of the bar Dead Dave’s, had helped him make peace with himself.

I walked around the edge of the cool, white glow of Zerbrowski’s cross. The vampire had stopped yelling and was just whimpering in the corner. I’d never asked any of my vampire friends what it felt like to face a cross like this; did it really hurt, or was it just a force they couldn’t stand against?

“Barney?” I made his name a question.