For half a moment, he sort of wanted to take the credit for his part at least, but finally, he smiled.
“Mainly Carlos. It’s real enough. Yeah. Give the arrest to the other guy though. Good plan. Glad you reminded me of that. It’s going to be hard enough running our division without the distractions.”
That decided and planned out, in what was actually an illegal conspiracy, they moved back to the station. It was going to be a long day. Then he’d get to come home and spend all night scrubbing the concrete in front of his place. That was what had to happen, though. He could whine about it, or worry, or he could figure out how to use magic to make the elbow grease he was going to be putting into the cleanup work for him.
Nothing came to mind for the moment. Or, actually several things did. He just didn’t think that dissolving the stone like an acid was on it, or burning the blood away with fire would actually be a brilliant idea. Both could work and neither really would. Teleporting the blood away would be better, but incredibly complex to pull off. It was, he knew, beyond his skills level, yet. That made it the best thing to try. That and figuring out how to block people out of his head. If nothing else, no one should be subjected to that for the time being.
Not that he was going to be moody about what had taken place. The rage was still an issue though. When he didn’t stop it, in unguarded moments, it hit him like a wall. A sea of shattered thoughts and incoherent madness. They’d killed his people, tried to kill him and then stole his victory from him at the end.
Even the win of the world not exploding wasn’t enough to wash that loss away.
Troy was a big boy though. At least that was what he liked to tell himself when he had the chance.
At the station, everyone acted glad that they’d lived, but no one celebrated it. Roy didn’t even expect them to stay for long. He was being optimistic it turned out, since a regular police department taking down a team of blood mages was kind of national news. Chief Benson, actually being good at his job, followed their lead. Sergeant Lewet and Leslie Hampton were credited with the whole thing on the ground. Along with Forest Hampton. That was what they called him. It was the name that he’d chosen, after all.
The man cried when he spoke about that part. How the boy, a teen, had taken his own life, to save tens of thousands or more. That the action, for some reason, was the right one. The very thing that had held reality together in the moment. How that worked, no one spoke about.
Then, after that, Chief Benson had to field calls from a lot of people. Several of them were Presidents. Troy and Detective Tran just stood by and didn’t speak, if they could help it. After all, that wasn’t their job. They were the ones that mopped up the supernatural things, when possible.
It was enough. For him at least. For now.
When he finally got back to the office, his partner smiled at him tiredly.
“We’re so going to have our heads shrunk for this. All of it. Months and months worth, I bet. So, what’s next?”
Troy looked at her, her Asian features less lined than they had been when they’d first met. As if the healing had taken a stab at making her younger, not just healthy again.
“We have that picnic. I need to get with… Everyone on that. This doesn’t stop that. We need to… I don’t know. Get someone to stay with Leslie for a bit. They have a community here. How we get in touch with them, I don’t know at all. They came to help me, when I needed them. I don’t know how that happened.”
There was a wink then.
“I called them. You needed backup, so it was my job to provide it. I can’t sling spells around. They came right out, though. Even if the blood mages were freaking them the hell out. I can see why now. I… I don’t know, I’ve been thinking of the mages as weak, really. They don’t seem to do much. Love potions and little charms. Wards. They nearly ended our world today. I know that I probably wouldn’t have survived what they were doing. How about you?”
He shook his head.
“Nope. That would have killed me too. It was… Like a vast nuclear explosion, I think. A death sacrifice of proportions that would have changed the world. We stopped it today, but… I don’t know, Denise. I don’t know. This was four people. Four mages. How many can they send at us? We won, I guess, but can we do it again?”
His partner, Detective Denise Tran, smiled at him then.
“We have to. We’re the police. It’s what we do.” She looked at the door, though there was no one there. “Things get hard and we stand there, while we send everyone else away. When the smart money runs, it’s our job to give them that chance. We aren’t perfect and we surely screw things up. Sometimes we manage to pull off a win though. Like we did today. It isn’t enough, but nothing ever can be. We just have to try and keep trying. That’s all. We aren’t special, just the idiots that plan to get in the way. In the end, that’s enough.”
He hoped so.
“So, we file the paperwork, make sure our people are taken care of and do the next thing?”
She smiled at him then.
“Yep. That’s about it. Good plan. Great one. We should get out of here. Need me to come and help you wash things up?”
He was almost certain she meant the blood in front of his apartment and not his hands or his soul.
Smiling and not meaning it, he shook his head.
“I’m good, for now. I’ll be here in the morning.”
“That’s how jobs work. See you then, Rookie. Keep this kind of crap up and I might even have to stop calling you that.”
He nodded, then left, walking away without saying anything more.
It was time for him to go home and stop being a cop for a while.
Except it didn’t really feel like he could.
It was a bit like being a vampire. It wasn’t the job he was doing for a while, it was what he was becoming. A part of him. Not a thing he really loved.
It was needed though.
That meant he was, as well.
Heading out for the night, he smiled. It was that or cry, and he wasn’t alive. That kind of thing didn’t happen with the dead.
Then he spent the next several hours harvesting power and setting up a spell, the first of such things he’d really tried. It just collected up the blood from his stoop. Moving it a few inches into a little box. It wasn’t powerful and still took a long time to work, but when he was finished, things were clean again. They looked new and fresh.
If he could figure out how to do that for himself, he might even be able to keep going.
Not that anyone would care. Even his own people probably thought he was being an idiot, doing the work he was. The only thing that got him to stop for a moment, was that, without him having been there, a lot of people might have died that day.
That thought in mind, he went inside, to wait until the new day came. Playing videogames, to help him forget. There were parties to plan and all that. One party at the very least.
He smiled. It was worth doing. As much as anything.
So, he would. Then he’d go to work and see if anyone was willing to help him get it done at all. Even if they wouldn’t he’d make it happen. It was all he had, anymore.
That thought was a bit stark but wasn’t totally false. Barb had been there for him, with him, for a long time. Now he was alone. More than he had been in decades. Before his ex, it had been Zack looking out for him and sharing a life. Not in a gay way, but it had been real enough to keep him from despair. Now he had… Greater demons.
All over the place, apparently.
So, he faked a smile and played his games, not stopping until the morning light peeked through the window. Before work he turned on the news, wondering if it would be all about how the vampire cop had screwed up. Instead it was about the next congressional race, with no one talking about Lincoln Arizona at all.
He’d take that. It was good enough.
“Now, clean up and go get that head shrunk. No doubt Tran was right on that one. Well, one week down. Now I can start on we
ek two. It will be interesting, if nothing else.”
Troy hoped so, at least.
As it was, he really wasn’t certain how much more of this he could take.
“All of it.” It was the only answer that worked. A thing that he’d always kind of known. “I can take all of it.”
That was, after all, the trick to surviving. Taking it all and coming out on the other side.
Troy Ounce (Lopez Time Book 1) Page 28
