Fang and Claw

"You want me to do WHAT?" Lacey Anderson stood stiffly at attention, the hands clasped behind her back vibrating with anger. Despite the precaution of the closed office door, she was sure the sound of their voices was apparent to whomever was still at their desks in the bullpen. "What is this, some way to get me to quit so you don't have to fire me?"

Her commander, George Wilson, was a big, burly man with black hair shot with silver. He sat behind his pristine oak desk, hands folded together and resting on the blotter. The huge window behind him offered anyone standing in front of the desk with a breathtaking view of the city below. The tawny colors of dusky sunset sparkled in the spaces between city skyscrapers. With a somewhat bemused expression on his face, he began to explain the new assignment to her.

Finally, she could remain still no longer, and started to pace as he outlined the duties of the newly-formed specialty unit within the elite ranks of the Dallas Police Department. Though he gave no outward attention to her angered movements, she watched as his eyes tracked her, back and forth, back and forth. The more she heard, the more she paced.

"And of all the people you could pair me with, why on Earth would you put me with HIM?" Her voice was full of venom.

"Both you and Colton were up for promotion. But you're the one that got it."

She spun around to face him. "But, he's a Wolf, for God's sake!" She pointed out what was, to her, obvious.

Lacey didn't have anything against the Undead, society's generalized term for anyone of Immortal persuasion that included werewolves, vampires, shapeshifters, zombies, and several other species. After all, she was herself a vampire.

She'd really never worked closely with Colton Scarber, so she had nothing against the man himself. But vampires didn't, as a rule, trust easily, and had long been mortal enemies of werewolves, due to some dispute of which the true origins had been lost over the centuries.

Lacey's coven of origin had been destroyed five decades earlier by a lawless Wolf pack. She alone had survived, with the long, erratic scars left over from teeth and claws permanently marring the pale cold flesh of her right arm and shoulder as a constant reminder.