“It means that the quote from Nietzsche wasn’t just me trying to avoid answering your questions.”
“So you’re saying that to be good at this job, you have to become one of the monsters?”
“Yeah, most of the time. Yeah.”
Newman leaned over the wheel, hands gripping it so tight they mottled. I let him sit there like that without saying anything. This was his moment of crisis, and I’d known it was coming. He needed out of this branch of the Marshals Service, but he needed to decide for himself.
He looked up and his face was so raw with emotion that I had to fight not to look away, but if he could feel it, I could look at it. “I don’t want to become one of the monsters, Blake. I don’t want to have to kill people any more as my job. I liked being a cop. I liked helping people, protecting people. I never had to draw my gun on the job until I joined the preternatural branch.”
“I didn’t start out wanting to be one of the monsters, Newman. I just did what was necessary to finish the job.”
“I don’t want to kill Bobby,” he said.
“I don’t either.”
“If I sign the warrant over to you, will you do it?”
I thought for a minute and then finally shook my head. “If I was the only one here besides you, I’d do it, because it’s my job. But I’ve got Ted and Otto, so I don’t have to take this one for the team.”
“But if you had to do it, you could look Bobby in the eyes and do it?”
I let all the air out in a long sigh and then nodded. “I could if there was no other choice.”
“But it would cost you, hurt you to do it?”
“A little piece of my soul would be cut off, yeah.”
“I would never ask you to do that for me.”
“Like I said, Ted and Otto are here. It won’t cost either of them what it would cost me.”
“I wouldn’t sign it over to Jeffries. He enjoys the kill too much for me to give Bobby to him.”
“Agreed,” I said.
&n
bsp; “Do you want me to sign it over to Forrester or you?”
“Me. I can give it to him later if it comes to that.”
“It’s going to come to that unless someone else finds a clue or someone confesses,” Newman said.
“Then we pray for a clue.”
“You prayed in there, and it worked. How can you be able to use your eyes like a vampire and still have your cross glow and work?”
“I’m a special snowflake.”
“That’s not an answer,” he said.
“It’s the only answer I have. God doesn’t see my abilities as evil, and my faith is strong enough that my cross works just fine.”
“Then you can’t be a monster.”
“Pretty to think so,” I said.
“‘If God be for me, then who can be against me?’” he said.