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One

“Hope you two don’t have any exciting plans this weekend because I’ new for you Fresh homicide” Captain Perkins handed Detective Stonev—Stone for short—a new dispatch

Watching her partner of two years take the paper, Detective Cassandra Steel couldn’t hold back a groan She and Stone had plans to go see Lady A perforht-only perfor forward to it for et the to do with his Kindred connections, she assumed—but now it looked like their seats would be vacant and Lady A would play without them

“You have a problem, Steel?” Captain Perkins shot her trade your job, maybe?”

Cassie lifted her chin

“Of course not, Captain It’s just that Stone and I have plans and it’s alular Homicide department handle it? I ot crossith soe-killed for his trouble, right?”

Back when the Tampa PD had decided to be the first police department in the world to put a Kindred warrior on their force and open a special branch devoted to Kindred-related crimes, Cassie had been elated to be chosen Not that she was crazy for the Kindred like soappointed to the Human-Kindred-Relations or HKR Force, as it was called, was a step up from beat cop—a chance to finally make detective

Two years later, however, and the HKR Force seemed less like a step up and more like a dead end That was because the cris, which hat happened when a Kindred warrior felt like his human fiancée or as threatened

The Kindred were, on the whole in Cassie’s opinion, extreuys—soly in the equality of males and females But any Kindred—be they Beast, Blood, Twin, or soo into a murderous fit of berserker fury when the woer Woe be to the would-be rapist or assailant who attacked a female attached to a Kindred—they were liable to end up in a puddle of their own blood, gasping their last before they even knehat hit them

Because the World Council had ruled that a Kindred warrior could not be prosecuted for protecting his woe kills” as they were commonly called, were completely justified Whichand then releasing the Kindred warriors involved and then closing each and every case

There were occasionally a few variations—so that a Beast Kindred was trespassing on his land But it had turned out that the warrior had siirlfriend’s cat out of a tree that was on the very border between her lawn and the neighbor’s Aside from rare calls like that one, ninety-nine percent of their cases were the justified Rage-kills

Besides those, the Kindred just didn’t coet drunk and get into fights with their wives or slap their kids around or kick their dogs In fact, they were alood to be true—honorable and kind to a fault And, as long as you left their woood citizens

Cassie knew that any other hoiven her left ovary to have a case load that was one hundred percent cleared, but the sad fact was, she was bored There was never any mystery to the crimes she and Stone “solved”

There was always souy trying to rape a Kindred’s girlfriend—and then a justified killing where the Kindred in question went into Rage and ripped the rapist’s head off As far as Cassie was concerned, the rapist got as co to him, but it still didn’t make the open and shut cases she dealt with on a daily basis any

Which was one reason she wasn’t exactly ju forward to for months in order to “solve” another one

“Sorry to inconvenience you, Steel, but a regular Homicide unit isn’t equipped to deal with this one,” Captain Perkins told her, bringing Cassie back to the present “And you and your partner are”

“How ?” Cassie asked, frowning “They’re open and shut, by the numbers all the way A rookie uniform could deal with it”

“This is different,” the Captain assured her “This is no Rage-killing—at least, we don’t think it is Or if it is, the warrior in question killed the wrong one”