I shook my head. “They can’t feed on old blood, only fresh.”

   “We can get rats to put in the cell.”

   “First, the vampires are still at some level going to be who they were in life, so I don’t think that shoving live rats in a room with a mother and two kids is the best idea.”

   “You mean they’ll be afraid of the rats?” Donnie asked.

   I nodded.

   “I know where we can buy rabbits,” Flannery said.

   “They would drink the blood of animals, but it won’t sustain them.”

   “What does that mean, it won’t sustain them?”

   “It means that animal blood fills their stomachs, but it’s missing some ingredient that keeps the bodies from rotting. The brain stays intact and working, but the body starts to rot like a zombie’s does. They still have eternal life unless they’re killed, but the looking-just-like-they-did-at-death rots away.”

   “How do you know that?” Donnie asked.

   “I’ve seen a master vampire that tried to give up feeding on people. It was pretty horrible.”

   “Is there any way to reverse the process?” Flannery asked.

   “Yes, but not without literally sacrificing other people’s lives to replace the energy the vampire has lost through trying to go their version of vegetarian.”

   “You mean they have to consume enough blood to kill people?”

   “No, literally the ritual that might fix the damage requires human sacrifice. I’ve never heard of it being done successfully, but I was approached by someone who wanted me to help them do it.”

   “They wanted you to perform the ritual?” Flannery asked.

   “No, they wanted me to be one of the human sacrifices.”

   His eyes went wide. “Cheeky buggers.”

   “I thought so.”

   “What did you do to stop them?” Nolan asked.

   “I’ve already told you what stop means to me, Nolan.”

   We looked at each other for a long minute, and then he nodded. “Yes, you have.”

   I felt Magda move beside me, and something about it made me turn and look. She was watching Brennan walk up the hallway toward us. We were also standing in the way of the only exit from the cell block, so he had to come this way to leave, but it had still put Magda on alert. I didn’t blame her.

   Mort stepped a little in front of her, so that Brennan would have to pass in front of him and not Magda. I had a moment to see how much smaller Mort was than the werelion. He wasn’t just shorter; he also was one of those men who muscled but didn’t bulk up much, so that he looked almost delicate standing in front of her. Since Mort was three inches taller than me, it let me understand just how tiny I must appear to everyone else.

   Brennan stopped his six feet of tall, dark, and brooding handsome in front of Mort. “Would you actually protect her against me?”

   “Magda did what we asked her to do: point out the flaws in our system.”

   “Would you stand with her against me?”

   “She didn’t point a gun at me, Brennan. You did.”

   “I wasn’t aiming at you. I was aiming at her.” And he pointed a finger at Magda as he said it.

   “Do you really think that you could have hit her without hitting me?”

   “Yes,” he replied, but he was a little too defensive about it. He’d gotten spooked by Magda and he’d let his fear make him foolish.

   Magda took a step forward and Brennan took one back; even with Mort between them he didn’t want to be closer to the werelion. Crap, we might have broken him for this duty; if he couldn’t get over being this afraid of wereanimals, not only couldn’t he work with us but he’d be a deficit working with any of the preternaturals.

   “Donnie, escort Brennan to medical. I want him checked out.”

   “I’m fine, sir.”

   “I didn’t ask your opinion, Brennan. I gave Donnie an order,” Nolan said.

   “Do you actually believe that I would do anything to endanger a member of my own team?”

   “I’ll review the recording and then we’ll revisit this topic. For now, I want you to go with Donahue to medical.”

   “Sir . . .”

   “I gave you an order, Brennan.”

   “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

   “Are you going to make me repeat myself again?”

   Brennan took a deep breath and stood up a little straighter. “No, sir.”

   Donnie was standing up with us now. “I’ll see he gets to medical, sir.”

   “Go with her to medical, now.”

   “Yes, sir.” He saluted, and after a moment’s hesitation, Nolan saluted him back. Donnie saluted him and then herded Brennan toward the door. He looked back and it was almost hate. I wasn’t sure if it was aimed at Magda or all of us, but either way it wasn’t a good look.

   When the door closed behind them, Nolan went closer to inspect the door of the cell that Magda had torn open. “If this had been a real prisoner escaping, could we have used Tasers effectively?”

   “They would work, but their effectiveness would depend on the type of lycanthrope,” I said.

   “Why does it depend on that?” he asked.

   I shrugged. “It’s just like how some humans go down instantly and some need a second or third hit of electricity to stop coming at you.”

   “But if a wereanimal keeps coming, you won’t have time to squeeze off three Taser hits,” Edward said.

   “What about tranquilizer darts?”

   “It might work short term if you could get the right dosage, but all drugs work through their system a lot faster than they do through a human, or the real-animal equivalent. If the lycanthrope is already starting to shift, then their metabolism works even faster, so once they go down you have no way to judge how long until they wake up.”

   “Have you ever used tranquilizers on them in your job?”

   Edward and I both shook our heads. I said, “The dose needed to make it work also runs the risk of stopping their heart. Heart damage is one of the few ways to kill almost everything, and you don’t want to be in the middle of giving a were-anything CPR when it wakes up angry with you.”

   Flannery laughed, but it was more nerves than humor, I think.

   “You have something to add?” Nolan asked.

   “No, sir . . . I mean, yes, sir.”