Banshee Hunt by Greg Curtis Page A

conversation with your colleagues.”
     
    “I know how to take care of myself. I was a cop for a long time.” And grief, did he wish he could go back to those days. Life hadn't been easy. Money had been tight. The strains of raising a family and working all the hours he could had been crushing. And his case load had been immense. But in hindsight it had been a golden time for him. At least compared to his current life.
     
    “And police officers have partners.” The German was quick to pounce. “You had a partner.”
     
    He had had a partner – Watkins. And they had worked well together. They had brought down a lot of bad guys. Shared their lives. It had been a good relationship. But he could never have told Watkins what he did these days. Not just because it was all secret. But because what he was doing was one step over the line between legal and not. And what wasn't legal was never something Watkins or anyone else could know about. The gifted he worked with – for them it wasn't an issue. They didn't see the law in the same way. They didn't understand that what they were doing was against the law. He did. And he hated it. Besides which he didn't trust them.
     
    “A partner would only slow me down. And that girl would have been dead by now if I'd been any slower.”
     
    Nor was the girl the only one to have been used and abused by the magical. Besides his wife, daughter and parents others had been hurt. Many others. Some had died. When the gifted went bad too often they went very bad. He got to see that through his work. The old saw was that power corrupted and absolute power corrupted absolutely. Magic it seemed to him was worse still. There were just too many temptations.
     
    “But equally you might be dead along with her, and no one would ever know what happened.”
     
    “Doc, if things ever get that hairy I'll pull out the super-dooper ray gun you guys gave me. Promise.”
     
    The promise though was a bald faced lie and he knew the doctor knew it when he saw the German’s face fall. His bosses didn’t like the fact that he didn’t use it. But he didn’t use it because past practice with it had shown that it failed too often. It fired spells instead of bullets. Spells that would incapacitate an enemy. So they considered it a humane weapon. The problem was that many witches and wizards had immunities. So what worked on one didn't work on another. Instead of wasting time with it he'd pulled out his ten mm Sig and shot people in the leg when he had to. They hated the fact that he still carried his old weapon. His barbaric cannon as they called it. But at least he could trust it to do its job.
     
    Then again, he supposed he was very old school and didn’t adapt to change easily. He had a simple flip over notebook of the same type he'd used as a detective, for taking notes. He could have used a tablet but it was what he was used to. He still had a vest in the car, simply because he didn't trust the protective spells they'd given him. In fact the only reason he wore them was because they'd magically tattooed them into his skin. He was stuck with them.
     
    They had offered him a car too, but instead he'd kept his old BMW. But that was somewhat different. He told them it was because the car was grey and low profile in a city where everyone had a BMW. But the truth was that he liked it. It was comfortable, had a big V8 and perhaps most important of all reminded him of a simpler, happier time before his little brother had set about destroying his life. A time when he had been a cop with a loving wife and a young daughter. A time that would never return.
     
    “Somehow that doesn't fill me with confidence Mr. Henderson.” The German stared at him, clearly unimpressed.
     
    “You've been treated with a hands off approach until now. It was thought at first that you were dealing with a powerful emotional trauma and that in time you'd get over it. That you were new to this world, but that in time you'd adjust.