I sat in my chair not moving.
15 minutes later the court was back in session. Elijah had them play the black drive. The first video played showed Linda. I walked up as a UPS driver carrying a giant package on a hand truck. She opened the door. I had used the laser trick that had blinded the doppleganger. At the same time, my not so portable gauss cannon disguised as a package on the hand truck launched silver plated hollow iron spikes into her head and chest. Launched via electromagnets there was no gunpowder to provide warning to a smell sensitive werewolf. The hollow parts also carried silver powder. Linda twitched for 10 seconds while her body figured out she was dead. I threw a tarp over her and with the addition of a few straps she fit on top of the hand truck as I wheeled it back to the truck. Some members in the gallery rushed out after seeing that.
The rest played out mostly the same way. I set up the ambush point or initiated contact and then killed them quickly. The exceptions were the first time I killed a vampire. Werewolves I knew just needed silver and the test for that killed the creature quickly.
The video for my first vampire murderer showed him as he entered into a room at night. It took about a minute as several countermeasures activated. In the end he broke the door and my last ditch thermite option brought him down.
“Sorry about him. I wasn’t sure the cleanest way to kill a vampire at the time. This drive also contains the location of the bodies I had to dispose of. I cremated most of them.”
“The prosecution rests,” Lucas ground out, sitting down looking at his broken table. “I need no closing statement.”
Elijah stood and I saw his fangs retract. “Justice can mean the administration of the law. But it also means to be just. To be morally right and fair. The judge will inform you of the laws and how they can be applied. You will decide how justice is to be defined.”
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I blinked. I could understand him. He sat down looking pleased with himself. Even the judge looked at him strangely.
The judge gave the jury their instructions and they left the room. I was to be tried on 40 counts of murder, tampering with a body, and assault with a deadly weapon. No weapons charges. Most of the creatures were living walking weapons so they never bothered with that section of the legal code. The judge reported this to me in a small aside as the jury left. Lucas didn’t look at me. I felt my chair drag backwards to the railing that separated me from the rest of the courtroom. I then felt a crushing hug.
“I’m sorry,” Gabby’s voice was thick with emotion. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Just take care of the open file for me. You’ll be better at it. Sorry about the injuries. I hope they heal soon.”
Gabby sat back still looking miserable.
“She’ll be fine.” Her companion commented. “You only shot her in her chest. Lucky her, it’s mostly adipose tissue. Once the silver toxicity is gone, she just needs a cow or two and she’ll be right as rain. It’s the ankle she wanted to kill you for. She won’t be able to transform for two weeks until the tendons heal so they won’t break during the shift. The conversation was left hanging awkwardly. What else was there to say?
We didn’t wait long. The notice that the jury had reached a decision happened in twenty minutes.
They filed back in. The man who had harrumped earlier stood as the jury foreman.
“We the jury find the defendant not guilty.”
“Yes!! I won, I won, I finally won one.”
Lucas looked stunned. Hell, I was stunned.
“Jury nullification.” Elijah danced around. 18th century waltz, not twerking or disco. He looked toward me. “I just repeated the same speech the lawyer used against me when I represented the fae who were collecting contracts on people who sold their first born.”
I felt my right eye twitch. I leaned over to be able to see around the dancing vampire and get Lucas’s attention. “Do I get my weapons back?”
Lucas narrowed his eyes. “Let me get back to you on that.”