“Did you get the vamp?”

“We got it. Open the door.”

“Why?”

There was a small pause. “Open. The. Door.”

“No.” They were hot from killing the vampire and still trigger-happy. There was no telling what they would do if I let them in.

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

He seemed genuinely puzzled.

“Why do you need me to open the door?”

“So we can apprehend the sonovabitch who dropped a loose vampire in the middle of the city.”

Great. “You just killed one member of the People in the cross fire, wounded another, and you want me to let you have the rest of the witnesses. I don’t know you well enough to do that.”

The PAD generally stuck to the straight and narrow, but there were certain things one didn’t do: you didn’t turn over a cop’s killer to his partner and you didn’t surrender a necromancer to the First Response Unit. They were all volunteer, and sanity was an optional requirement. If I gave Ghastek and his people to them, there was a good chance they would never make it to the hospital. The official term was “died of their injuries en route.”

The male voice huffed. “How about this: open the door or we’ll break it down.”

“You need a warrant for that.”

“I don’t need a warrant if I think you’re in immediate danger. Say, Charlie, do you think she’s in danger?”

“Oh, I think she’s in a lot of danger,” Charlie said.

“And would it be our duty as law enforcement officers to rescue her from said danger?”

“It would be a crime not to.”

One person dead, one painting the floor with her blood. I guess it was time for jokes.

“You heard Charlie. Open the door or we’ll open it for you.”

I leaned a touch farther from the peephole. If they tried to break in, I could probably take them, but I could also kiss any sort of future cooperation from the PAD good-bye.