Kiss the Dead (27 page)

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

“We know,” Micah said.

“We’re scheduled with Jean-Claude tonight,” Nathaniel said, reminding me of the time split.

“Thanks, I’d have forgotten and wondered where you guys were.” I started out the door. Micah let me take both bags from him. You didn’t let the other cops see your guys carrying your bags; you just didn’t.

“Do whatever it takes to come home safe to us, Anita,” he said.

I looked into those eyes and said, “Always.” And I had to go, but now that Brice was calling at me from his SUV, and the SWAT van was already
pulling away, there was that edge of excitement in me. I loved my guys, but a part of me still loved this, too. How do you divide yourself between killing people and loving them? The best I had on that one was just to kill the bad guys, and love the good guys, and hope the two lists never crossed.

I
THREW MY
gear in Brice’s truck and had barely buckled in when he spun gravel and away we went. I caught movement by the woods near the house. It was Nicky, barely visible in the green of the leaves and trees. It must have been his turn on guard duty. I didn’t wave, didn’t do anything to draw more attention to him—he and the others had taught me that—but I watched him as we drove away, until the first curve hid him from view. I hadn’t kissed him good-bye, and I hadn’t thought about him until I saw him in the woods. When I could forget about someone as yummy in bed, and as dangerous, as Nicky, it just confirmed that I had too many men in my life. The trick was, what the hell to do about it?

“Would you be insulted if I said that those are two of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen?” Brice said, as we skidded around a corner trying to keep up with the SWAT van.

“Say anything you want, just don’t put us in the ditch!” I held on to the oh-shit handle for dear life.

“Sorry!”

“And thanks for the compliment,” I said.

“Was the one in the woods one of yours, too?” He braked sharply around the next curve and I thought we were going in the ditch, but he managed to pull it out with a spray of gravel and a whish of leaves catching in the windshield wipers.

“Shit, Brice,” I said. “And yes, he’s mine.”

“Sorry,” he said again. “I can’t find one gorgeous boyfriend to live with me; how did you manage this many?”

“I was just thinking that,” I said.

“What?” he asked. The windshield got another slap of tree limbs, and I yelled at him, “Slow down or I will hurt you!”

He gave a quick darting glance at me, then slowed down; maybe it was the look on my face, or maybe the fact that I had a death grip on the oh-shit handle and my Browning BDM. I wouldn’t have shot him, not while he was driving, but by the time we skidded up behind the SWAT van I was motion sick. I never got motion sick.

“I am so driving the truck home,” I said, as I got the last of the gear from the back.

“You look a little green, Blake,” Hill said.

“Brice’s driving sucks,” I said.

“Hey,” he said.

I just looked at him, and he finally nodded. “Sorry, I’m not used to hills.”

We split into two teams, to take the two entrances to the house. Brice would go with one, me with the other. We’d clear the house by shooting things, and if there was anything in the house that was awake in the daylight, if it ran, it would have to run toward one group or the other. SWAT normally liked more time to scout, plan, but the light was dying, there was no time. Our choices were to go in after dark with the vampires awake, or go in early with less planning. Hunting monsters is full of moments when you have bad choices, and worse choices, and no choices. I wanted our bad choice, before it turned into no choice, and the team had worked with me enough to trust my judgment. We geared
up, we divided up, we had a plan, and we’d work the plan, until something big and bad changed the plan. I glanced up at the darkening sky and prayed, “God, let us be done before the vampires rise for the night.” I didn’t believe God would slow the sun in the sky for us, but just because you probably won’t get something doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask for it, because you never know, sometimes the angels hold hands.

I
ENTERED THE
house behind Hill’s tall black armored figure, with Killian, only inches taller than me, and Jung, a bit taller than that, behind and to the side of me. Saville, who towered over all of us, had used the battering ram to open the door, and brought up the rear. I didn’t glance behind and see him; I just knew that he’d be there. I trusted everyone in the room to do their jobs. His job was to cover the whole room, so that nothing came running into the room and surprised us while we executed the vampires. Jung and I, our job was to divide the ten kills visible in the room between the two of us. Hill stayed at my shoulder with his AR-15 covering me, in case one of the “kills” got too lively. Killian stayed at Jung’s side to do the same for him.

The living room was just a normal living room with a couch, a love seat, and a beanbag chair deflating in front of a small television set, except for the vampires lying in a row. Most of them were in mummy bags fastened up completely over the body shapes. Two of them were just wrapped in sheets. In the movies it’s all Dracula, Prince of Darkness, all coffins and candlelight, but most modern American vampires’
lairs are more like slumber parties than dungeons. There was just no sense of presentation.

Saville opened the big drapes of the picture window behind us to let in the late-day sunlight. Most of these vampires were probably too young to move until full dark, but if any of them were old enough to move before that, sunlight in the room would prevent it. One, sunlight hitting the “coffin” substitute would simply keep them dead to the world. Two, if they were powerful enough to wake with the light hitting the outside of their hiding places, then feeling the heat of the sunlight would make them think long and hard about coming out early. Of course, once we started shooting them they might risk it, but it was the best precaution we had. When you hunt vampires, sunlight is always your friend.

The thick afternoon light filled half the room, letting us see that the sleeping bags were all different colors, as if they’d bought them all together at some kind of sale, or just wanted not to match so no one would use the wrong bag by mistake. One set of sheets was covered in cartoon characters. I hoped the sheets had been on sale, but worried that it was more than that. The figure underneath them looked small, but it was the fourth one on my side and fifth on Jung’s side; we had a lot of shooting between us and it. I snugged my rifle to my shoulder and nodded at Hill. He knelt at the top of the mummy bag and opened it. It was a two-handed job to open most good mummy bags; that Hill was willing to have no active weapon in his hands and trust me to cover him was the highest praise that any of these men had for anyone. I concentrated like a son of a bitch and did my best to be worthy of that praise.

The hair was pale, but not as pale as the face. The face was young and probably female, but it didn’t matter, and honestly I tried not to think about it. Hill snapped a picture of the face with a point-and-shoot camera; I sighted between those blessedly closed eyes, and pulled the trigger. The impact rocked me back a little, but it turned the vampire’s face into a red ruin. It wasn’t decapitation, but it was damn close, and
with just one shot. Jung’s rifle echoed mine. Sounds of distant rifles came from farther into the house: Brice and the others clearing the back bedrooms where the rest of the vampires were nesting.

Hill and I moved down to the next bag. Dark hair, pale skin; bang! African American, bigger, male; bang! Long blond hair, female; bang! Bald, older male; bang! The cartoon sheets were next.

Hill tried to just pull them back, but they were wrapped too tight. Jung was to his own sheet-wrapped figure, and Killian knelt beside Hill as they both tried to unwrap the little undead bundles.

Hill got ours unwrapped first, and the face was so young. No more than eight or nine when he died. Vampires that young are illegal; it’s treated as child molesting, and bringing over someone that young will earn a vampire a death sentence. Most vampires would kill anyone that brought over a child this young themselves; no human laws were needed to tell them how wrong it was to do this shit. I had to believe this body had been dead for decades, long before the new laws, but as Hill snapped the picture, we didn’t know that. This could be someone’s missing child. Some little boy on a milk carton somewhere right there under my gun. Vampires are still the people they were before they died, for good or ill, so if this was someone’s lost child, then they could have him back, but he’d never age, never grow… I’d never met a vampire that was under twelve at death that didn’t eventually go mad.

Hill said, “Blake.”

I blinked, and I pulled the trigger on that dewy, fresh, dead face. It exploded in a red ruin, as if it had been an overly ripe melon, except melons didn’t bleed, or leak skull and brains. Jung’s vampire was older, at least in its teens. He pulled the trigger, and her head just became a fine red mist.

I prayed that both the kids had been the oldest vampires in the room. I did not want the photos we just snapped to be the last image the parents had of their darlings.

I looked down the line and every one of them was bloody. The sunlight behind us was fragile, and almost gone. We could go back down
the line and put a bullet in each chest, but if they rose early now none of them had eyes to do vampire gaze shit with, or mouths to bite with, and just like that the vampires’ main weapons were gone.

Jung and I started where we were, Hill and Killian peeling back the sheets and bags so we could see what we were aiming at. I was pretty secure with the heads blown to hell that they were dead enough, but when you’re taking out a vampire’s heart, it’s better to see exactly what you’re aiming at. It’s
always
better to see what you’re aiming at.

We went body by body outward, taking out the hearts this time. Even through the special earplugs my ears were ringing by the time we finished. The sun went down a breath later; I felt it go, like a hand through my heart, and a second after that I felt a vampire. I felt it wake.

“We’ve missed one!” I yelled.

Hill looked at the bodies. “They’re dead.”

“Not this room.”

Killian got on the radio and said, “Blake says you missed one.”

“Everything’s dead over here but us,” Derry said.

Then the yelling started, and fresh gunshots. We fell back into formation, Hill first, me, Jung, Killian, Saville. We did it without asking, or needing to question each other. We fell back into the plan, except now we ran for the other rooms, our other men, toward the sound of guns and screaming, because that was our job, to run toward the trouble.

H
ILL DUCKED INTO
the first small bedroom but was barely in the door before he yelled, “Clear!” which meant we all did our best to back up, turn on a dime, and go for the last bedroom. The yelling was coming from there anyway, and if SWAT hadn’t been with me I might have just gone for it, but there was method to the madness of not leaving the chance of a bad guy behind us. If Hill said the first room was clear, it was, and we just had the mess in the second room. I’d have still gone for the second room first; right, wrong, truth.

Hill and I entered; he peeled off right, and I stayed with him. Jung and Killian tried to come in at our backs, but there wasn’t room for anyone else in the bedroom. The three men had to stay outside, because every inch of floor space had an armed man already standing on it. Derry was actually kneeling on the bloody bed, on top of two gory body shapes, because there was no room. Brice was at the foot of the bed, in front of a pile of bloody sleeping bags. Hill had taken us right, because Montague’s broad back was standing left, rifle to his shoulder. We aimed where they were aiming, but it was Hermes, standing in the corner between closet and nightstand, that everyone
was pointing at, because he was aiming at everyone else. What the hell?

I caught movement behind the big guy, caught a glimpse of pale hand, and knew there was a vampire behind him. In the movies Hermes’s face would have been bare so I could have seen his eyes and known he’d been mind-rolled by a vampire, but in real life the face is covered, and the helmet sits low. He had his rifle snugged up tight like the rest of us did, so his face was pretty much invisible, but he was aiming at his teammates; he’d been mind-fucked.

I wanted to ask what had gone wrong. How had this happened? But there’d be time later for questions; right now, we needed solutions. Solutions that didn’t end with any of our people dead.

Montague was trying to talk calmly. “Hermes, I helped you build your kid’s swing set. Do you remember?” Protocol was that you tried to help the bespelled person remember himself, on the idea that he was still in there somewhere and fighting to break free. It wasn’t a bad idea.

“Why’d you shoot this woman, Monty?” Hermes asked, and he sounded genuinely puzzled.

“She’s a vampire,” Montague said, making his words slow, calm. The time for yelling was over; we needed to de-escalate the situation.

“No, you’re wrong. She’s human and you shot her.” He sounded confused, which was good. Hermes knew something was wrong; maybe he was in there somewhere?

“Hermes, you know me, you know all of us, we would never shoot an innocent woman.”

“No…” Hermes said slowly, “no, you wouldn’t.”

She spoke from behind the shield of him. “Please don’t let them kill me! Please!”

“You wouldn’t, but someone shot her,” Hermes said, and his shoulders moved just a fraction. “I don’t know him.” He was aiming at Brice.

“He shot me,” the woman said, and there were tears and trembling in her voice.

Brice’s barrel wavered, and I heard him say, “I’m sorry…” and then the holy objects flared to life. She’d used her voice, and that was fresh
vampire powers. The eye trick didn’t always flare the holy objects except on the one being targeted, but voice, voice with ill intent did.