“What happened?”

“I don’t know what killed the others, but we’re looking for a weretiger that’s probably under six feet in human form, or has abnormally small hands. This one is powerful enough to be able to do claws and teeth only, with no fur and no other outward change.”

I felt Olaf and Bernardo close, before I looked up and saw them. Edward kept them back, which was probably just as well.

“Only the most powerful can do that,” Edward said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You learned all that from smelling?” Bernardo said.

I looked up, and was pretty sure it wasn’t a friendly look by his reaction. “No, I learned most of that from the body, but tiger was smell.” I looked past him to Olaf now in his black assassin gear, stripped of the hazmat suit. I pointed a finger at him. “I couldn’t think with you in there with me. I didn’t know how useless you make me until you weren’t there.”

“I did not mean to make you work less efficiently.”

“You know, I believe that. But from now on you work with someone besides me. No more alone time on the case.”

“Why is being alone with me so distracting?” he asked, and his face was neutral enough.

“Because you scare me,” I said.

He smiled then, a little curl of lips, but his caveman eyes gleamed with satisfaction.

I stood up then, and Edward was smart enough not to help me. “You know, big guy, most men who really want to date a woman don’t want her afraid of them.”

His smile faltered a little, but not much. He looked puzzled for a moment, then the smile returned larger and more satisfied. “I am not most men.”

I gave a sound that might have been a laugh, if it hadn’t been so harsh. “Well, that is the fucking truth.” I started stripping off the protective gear.

“Where to?” Edward said.

“We visit the weretigers.”

“Aren’t they the animal to call of the Master Vampire of Vegas?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“So we go visit the Master of the City and his wife.”

I nodded. “Yep, Max and his wife, the queen tiger of Las Vegas. Though the actual title is Chang and her name. Chang-Bibiana, in this case.”

“Wait,” Bernardo said. “Are we walking in there and accusing one of their tigers of killing a police officer and helping massacre three more?”

I looked at Edward; he looked at me. “Something like that,” I said.

Bernardo looked unhappy. “Can you please not get me killed until after I’ve had a date with Deputy Lorenzo?”

I smiled at him. “I will do my best.”

“To get us all killed,” he said.

“Not true,” I said. “I always do my best to keep us alive.”

“After you endanger us all,” he muttered.

“You whine like a baby,” Olaf said.

“I’ll whine any way I damn well please.”

Memphis came out and asked, “Marshal, are you well?”

I nodded. “I’m fine.”

“What animal did you sense?”

Did I lie, or tell the truth? “Tiger.”

“Our Master of the City will not like that.”

“No, but truth is truth.”

“You will need a warrant to enter their home.”

“We had this talk already, Memphis. We’ll call up and have one faxed to us, but I think I’ll try just asking for a visit first.”

“You think he’ll just let you waltz in and accuse his people of murder?”

“I think Max told Sheriff Shaw to invite me to come play and that I’d sort things out.”

Memphis’s eyes went wide. “Did he now?”

“So I’m told.”

“It doesn’t sound like our master.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I said, “but if he invited me, why wouldn’t he want to help me sort things out?”

“You won’t get in without a warrant. The Master of Vegas is old-time mob; it makes him cautious,” Memphis said.

“We’ll apply for several,” Edward said.

Memphis looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“We have a lycanthrope kill confirmed. Nevada still has varmint laws on the books. We’ll be able to get a warrant of execution on the lycanthrope that did this.”

“But you don’t have a name for the lycanthrope,” Memphis said.

Edward smiled, I smiled, even Bernardo smiled. Olaf just looked sinister. “You know we don’t need a name. The warrant will read a little vague. I keep forgetting about the varmint laws in the western states; it makes it actually easier to get a vague warrant for a shapeshifter than for a vampire,” I said.

“I still believe it’s a legal excuse for murder,” Memphis said.

I stepped close to the doctor, and he held his ground. “Randall Sherman was your friend, not mine. Don’t you want his murderer caught?”

“Yes, but I want to make sure it’s the right weretiger, not just the one that pisses you all off.”

I grinned at him, but could feel it was more a snarling flash of teeth. The tigers were still a little close. “If you don’t like the way I do my job, then file a complaint. But in the dark when the big bad monsters come to get you, you always want us. You see us standing here. You know what we are, what we do, and it makes you feel uncivilized. Even with your friends on gurneys in the morgue, you flinch. Well, we don’t flinch, doctor. We do what the rest of you are afraid to do”-I leaned in close and whispered-“we’ll be your vengeance, doc, so you can keep your lily-white hands clean.”

He stepped back as if I’d struck him. “That’s not fair.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want vengeance for what it did to your men? Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t look forward to weighing their murderer’s liver on a scale?”

His eyelids flickered behind his glasses. He opened his mouth, closed it, licked his lips. He finally said, “You are a hard woman, Blake.”

I shook my head. “No such thing as a hard woman, Memphis, just soft men.” With that, I turned, and the others followed me. We went for the doors, and a phone, and a judge who would give us warrants.

Edward said, “What did the doctor do to piss you off that badly?”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing.”

“Then what’s with the super bitch act?” Bernardo asked.

I laughed. “Who was acting, Bernardo, who the fuck was acting?” The tigers swirled inside me, happy that I was angry, looking forward to more anger, more emotion. They wanted out. They wanted out so badly.

I GOT OUTSIDE in the breath-stealing heat, and Edward grabbed my arm, swinging me around to face him.

I stared up at him.

“Anita, are you all right?”

I started to say Fine, but Edward didn’t ask questions like that unless something wasn’t right.

I looked at his hand on my arm until he let me go. “I’m fine.”

He shook his head. “No, you’re not.”

I opened my mouth to argue, then I forced myself to stop and take a few deep breaths. I tried to think past the feeling of eagerness and anger. I was angry. Why? Memphis had done nothing to piss me off that much. So he was a liberal who didn’t approve of DPEA; so what? There were lots of people who felt that way. So why had I pulled him up by the short hairs?

Why was I angry? Okay, scratch that, I was almost always angry. Rage was like fuel for me. It always bubbled just below the surface. It was probably one of the reasons that I could feed on other people’s anger. It was my drink of choice. The real question was, why was I being a shit to someone who hadn’t earned it? That wasn’t like me.

I was about to run off and see the weretigers; a lot of them. The tiger energy inside me was happy about that and just a little too eager. Just because I hadn’t shapeshifted for real didn’t mean I wouldn’t. The only other person I’d met with this many different kinds of lycanthropy in his body had been able to shift to all the forms. He’d also been insane, but that may have been from other things.

What would happen if, with my tigers that close to the surface, I suddenly found myself surrounded by a whole bunch of weretigers? I wasn’t sure, and that was reason enough to take it slower.