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The extra shitty part, of course, was that I was never entirely sure which side the person in uniform next to me was going to be on, although I hoped the badge would at least give me some amount of protection. I wasn’t terribly confident about that, though. I knew the kinds of looks I got on a pretty much daily basis from my supposed brothers and sisters in blue.
My current problem was that Taavi wanted to come with me, and there was no fucking way on earth that shit was happening.
“I do not own doggy Kevlar, and even if I did—” because K9 did, and I could probably get some if I asked “—youare not a trained officer of the law, so no fucking way.”
Another bark.
“No.”
He looked annoyed.
Iwasannoyed.
“Look, doggo, I’m going to win this one because I can fucking hog-tie you if I have to. I’m bigger, my arms are longer, and you’ve got a broken fucking leg.” I specifically didn’t say I was stronger—because shifters are fucking strong. So are elves, mind you, but I wouldn’t have laid down money on which one of us would actually win in the strength department. But I fight dirty as fuck, and I absolutely would use his leg against him.
Of course, he had teeth and claws. But I wasn’t going to point out that particular advantage.
I took it as a concession when the little fucker took a shit on my floor and kicked it back at me.
“You suck big blue donkey balls, Taavi Camal!” I called after him. “And if you pee on my bed or my couch, I will fucking make you sleep in a closet!”
He pouted all the way to Beyond the Veil, giving me plenty of opportunities to identify what it looked like when a Xolo dog was pointedly not speaking to you—sitting upright in the seat, his nose raised and directed diagonally away from me.
If he was gonna be pissed, fine. He still wasn’t coming with me.
I didn’t even have to lift him out of the car—the minute I opened the door in the BTV parking lot, he’d half-fallen, half-jumped out, then tripod-trotted straight up to the rear entrance and hit the accessibility button with one front paw. The door swung open and he walked in.
I snorted, my arms crossed over my Kevlar. “You gonna be that way, I’ll just leave you here,” I told his butt.
He paused, then looked back at me over his shoulder, his face the picture of doggy hurt.
“Fucking hell,” I muttered under my breath, before raising my voice loud enough that Taavi could hear me. “I’ll get you either here or from their house when it’s over,” I told him.
He let out half a chuff, then disappeared down the hallway.
I pretended it didn’t make my chest feel constricted and chalked it up to having cinched the Kevlar too tightly.
* * *
“Hart!”
I turned, then waited for Dan Maza to catch up to me, his Kevlar vest bulky under his unzipped winter coat. I hadn’t wanted to wreck my coat, again, so I’d layered under the Kevlar instead of over it.
“Fuckin’ A, man,” he muttered under his breath.
“You know any more than I do?” I asked.
“Probably not. Brass is worried we’ll have another all-out riot on our hands if we don’t keep this shit under control.”
I grimaced. “I can think of a good way to do that that doesn’t involve us in Kevlar and riot gear.”
Dan snorted. “We can’t just arrest all the MFMs, Hart.”
“The fuck not?” It was mostly a rhetorical question. Much as I thought the ideology was a load of horse shit, I knew that not every MFM was in favor of murder, or even eugenics. Just a lot of them. Maybe half. The rest just thought I didn’t deserve to live in the same society they did, or at least not with the same rights.
I do mostly believe in that whole freedom of speech thing, even if there are a hell of a lot of people who use it to say some fucking stupid and hateful shit.
We rounded the corner, and someone caught sight of me and my elven ears.
