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“Fuck you, point ear! Let the real cops do the job!”
Oh, goodie. It was going to be that sort of day.
“Ignore the bastards,” Dan advised.
“They keep it up for too long, I’m going to get real fucking cranky, Dan.”
“Deep breath, pretty boy.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Every night, Hart.”
I snorted. I liked Dan Maza. He did the job, wasn’t gunning for rank or promotion beyond detective, and treated me as though I were as short and round-eared as everybody else. Which was apparently a pretty big ask these days.
“The fuck arewesupposed to do here, anyway?” I asked him.
Dan shrugged, his sunglasses obscuring dark eyes. “Fuck if I know,” he replied. “Be visible?”
“I’m feelingrealvisible right about now, and I can’t say I’m a fan.”
“Looks good for PR.” His tone told me exactly how he really felt about that—I couldn’t say I disagreed.
I flinched and threw up an arm as something flew at me, and a smallish rock ricocheted off my forearm. “Fucking hell. Does it look good for PR if the elf ends up bloody at the end of it?” I hissed.
Dan moved me to his other side—away from the riot line and barriers. “Shit. This is going south, fast.”
I rubbed at the spot on my arm. I’d have a small bruise in a few hours, but I didn’t think the rock had managed to break the skin through the sleeve of my thermal turtleneck. I checked my fingertips for blood, just in case. Nope. Still good. At least for now.
I had the feeling that wasn’t going to be the only thing that somebody shit-chucked at me today.
We slipped around another corner, and I felt my eyes widen. There had been a couple rows’-worth of MFM counter-protestors on the block leading up to Monroe Park, but when we hit the park itself, it was suddenly painfully clear that if things went badly, we’d have a lot more than a riot on our hands.
We’d have a fucking battle.
The area around the center of the park, spreading back toward the theater and VCU, was packed with people—these were the pro-Arcanid rights protestors, and I could see several Arcanid-Arc-human Rights League posters and t-shirts among them. I spotted quite a few homemade signs, including one that read “Friend of Fur and Fangs” and another that declared “Nid and Proud!” in bright pink letters.
But beyond them—with a six-foot strip of empty space between sets of barriers occupied by a line of cops in riot gear—was another sea of people. From here, it looked like just as many, spilling out into Belvedere and blocking the southbound traffic.
Fucking hell.
“Shit,” Dan breathed beside me.
My stomach churned.
People were going to die today. It wasn’t a question of if. It waswhenandhow many.
Dan and I threaded our way through the pro-Arcanid crowd, my eyes constantly skimming the angry faces around us for some indication that they were particularly unhinged or had mayhem planned.
The truth was that violence was far more likely to break out on the other side of this shit-show. For some reason, the people who start the violence tend to be the ones who want to take away somebody’s rights rather than the people who want to give or protect those rights. Almost like there’s something about being a bigoted asshole that makes people… well, assholes.
We heard it before we saw it. An increase in volume and pitch, angry yells turning to screams, a surge of movement that wasn’t just milling, but trying to go towards or get away.
Dan and I pushed our way toward the barriers and the pathetically small gap between the MFMs and the pro-Arcanids.
Except there wasn’t any space left by the time we got there, and, more than once, Dan and I had to plant our feet and haul a fallen protestor back to standing before they were crushed by the weight of the crowd.
Beside me, Dan staggered, and I kept him up.
