I would take Barney Wilcox’s free will in trade for the safety of a fifteen-year-old girl and the officers that his vampire friends were holding hostage. If I could take it, that is. He wasn’t blood-oathed to Jean-Claude; if he had been, then I could have made him behave through my links to Jean-Claude. He was a free vampire with no master to answer to, or no master he knew about. We’d found that most of the “free” vamps followed their group leader. Vampires are just like most other people; they want to follow, they just don’t want to admit it.

I called my necromancy and aimed it at this one very young vampire. He pressed himself into the corner, as if he could push himself through the wall. “You can’t do necromancy on me with the cross there.”

“I raise zombies every night with my cross on, Barney,” I said, voice still low and with slightly deeper power. There had been a time when I’d believed my power was evil, but God didn’t seem to feel that way, so until He changed His mind, I just had faith that my power came from the right side.

“No,” he said, “no, please don’t.”

“Let me cuff you, Barney, and then maybe I won’t have to.”

He held his hands out, but the remains of the first cuffs were still on his wrists. I had to lay the heavier cuff set on the floor and have someone hand me a key, because my keys with the cuff key on them were in my purse, which was in my locker with my weapons and cross.

The light from Zerbrowski’s cross began to fade. One of the younger officers asked, “Why is the glow fading?” First, he shouldn’t have asked that in front of the vampire, and second, he shouldn’t have asked until the emergency was over.

Another cop called out, “I’m surprised that Zerbrowski could make it glow at all.”

“Yeah, Sarge, didn’t know you were that goody-two-shoes.”

The vampire in the corner began to be visible again as the light faded, almost as if the glow had made him partially invisible, and he became more solid as the holy fire receded.