Page 6 of Lime Gelatin and Other Monsters
“How can something smell hard?”
“I don’t know,” Loveless muttered irritably. “Amanda, I can’t do this. Please.”
Kyle glanced up at Zacchini, realizing with some irritation that everyone present was taller than he was. “You picking up anything, Amanda? And is he drama queening?”
Zacchini shrugged. “I got nothin’. Water flowing. Things living in the mud. And no. He can’t fake that gray color. I’d better get him in the car before he face-plants in the mud. You need piggyback, Carr?”
“No, no.” Loveless tucked his hand into the crook of her offered arm. “I’ll make it, thank you.”
A quick survey of the ground nearby didn’t turn up any more of the strange prints and when Kyle turned to suggest they go back up, he found Vikash staring after Loveless and Zacchini.
“What?”
Vikash hesitated before asking, “Are they a…thing?”
Christ on a cracker, is Mr. Perfect embarrassed?“Why, ’cause she’s so careful with him?”
“Does she need to be careful?”
Kyle shrugged. “He’s a little delicate, our vamp. Wasn’t always, I hear. Decorated officer, amateur boxing titles before he was turned. But no, they’re not a thing. He’s more into Neanderthal jocks and she’s into artistic, brooding women. They both get their hearts stomped on.”
“Ah.” Vikash started up the slope and Kyle thought that was the end of a long conversation for them until his partner spoke again, still in that puzzled tone, “I asked because I thought maybe she feeds him. If he does so badly in daylight.”
“Ha. No. Remember, we’re all kinda broken. Loveless can only drink skim blood. That’s what he calls it. The packets he gets from the blood bank are labeledwashed RBC’s. No platelets, no plasma, low on the white blood count. He gets really sick on whole blood.”
“I think I need a program. With footnotes.”
“Nah. Small squad room. You’ll know too much about everybody inside a week.”
Chapter Two
“All the other Philly stations are districts. Why is this one a precinct?”
Back at the 77th, a shabbily converted brick manufacturing building from the neighborhood’s better days, Kyle thought he was beginning to understand the long silences. Vikash seemed to process that way, turning things over and over before he asked questions.
“We’re special. Don’t really have one part of the city we’re assigned to.” Kyle eyed the building with renewed dismay as they walked up the partially crumbling steps.Yeah, we’re special all right. “So they can’t call us a district.”
Too small to have a police captain in charge, with no motorcycle units, no dispatch, no real holding cells, they were on the bottom rung of any funding. He’d heard rumors that Loveless had donated the funds for extra squad cars and computers when there weren’t enough to go around.
A whoosh of air ruffled Kyle’s hair as he opened the door, Edgar’s claws barely missing his scalp as he zipped by to perch on the old iron grillwork over the door.
“Ass dandruff!” Edgar croaked, fluffing his feathers to make himself twice as large and presumably menacing, though the effect was sadly more like a ratty piñata.
“He seems upset,” Vikash said with a frown, somehow managing to twist his head to look back and still walk forward without stumbling.
Disgustingly graceful. Really, who does that?“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Kyle grumbled.
Krisk snorted and thumped his tail on the wall as they passed him on the way in, Wolf hurrying after.
“Hey, careful in the squad room,” Wolf growled, half turning as he rushed past. “Virago’s brought in some trouble.”
The door slammed shut behind them and Kyle hesitated, listening. “Thanks for the specifics,” he muttered.
“I think it’s probably safe to go in.” Vikash slid past him to continue down the grimy hallway. “No sounds of chaos.”
While calm, the scene in the squad room was one of the more bizarre things Kyle had witnessed over the past few months. Virago sat in his chair, a vivid bruise starting on his cheek, typing up what could only be an arrest report, with Gatling perched on the edge of their shared desk. Between them, in the chair a suspect would take while he was being booked, was a leather jacket. Not odd if the jacket had behaved normally and stayed draped over a chair arm like a good, proper jacket, but this one was sitting up with the buckled strap on one sleeve cuffed to the chair arm. Virago asked the jacket something and Kyle could have sworn it made a gesture that was an approximation of flipping someone off.
“Um, what’s this about?” Kyle called over from a safe distance.
