Kiss the Dead (5 page)

“No, I knew they were vampires.”

“How?” he asked.

“Look at the wounds,” I said.

He did, and said, “What?”

“The blood’s wrong,” I said.

“It looks the same to me,” he said.

“It’s too thick. Human blood is a little more watery than that, even heart blood.”

His eyes flicked to me, then back to watching our prisoners. “You know, Anita, it’s just fucking creepy that you know that.”

I shrugged. “If you’d been in front, would you have hesitated because you thought they were human teenagers?” I asked.

“Maybe; they’re not much older than my oldest,” he said.

“Good that I was in front, then,” I said.

He glanced down at the dead kids. “Yeah,” he said, but not like he was sure.

I walked away to get closer to our prisoners, one, to help watch them better, but two, to stop the talk with Zerbrowski about my decision to shoot the vampires when I thought they were flesh-and-blood teenagers. I didn’t regret my choice in that split second of life and death, but a small part of me wondered how I could be all right with the choice. It bothered me that it hadn’t bothered me to gun down two kids neither of whom could have been more than fifteen. It didn’t bother me as I looked at the kneeling figures, and I knew without doubt that if any more of the vampires tried to attack us I’d kill them, too, regardless of apparent age, race, sex, or religious affiliations. I was an equal-opportunity executioner; I killed everybody. I let them see that in my face, in my eyes, and watched fear leak through the toughness on their faces. One of the women started to cry softly. What does it mean when the monsters are so afraid of you that you make them cry? That maybe
monster
depends on which end of the gun you’re on, or that I was just that good at my job. Looking at the twenty or so frightened faces staring at me, I felt bad that they were afraid of me, but I knew that if they attacked us, I’d kill them. They should have been afraid—of me.

T
HE AMBULANCE TOOK
Perry away with his arm as immobilized as they could get it. We’d found the other officer dead with a host of vampire bites on his torn and bloody clothes. They’d take bite impressions of the surviving vampires, and if their bite marks matched the wounds it was an automatic death sentence. They’d be morgue stakings, which meant they’d die at dawn, be chained down, hung with holy objects, staked and beheaded while they were “dead” to the world. They were already caught, so there was no need for a hunt. I wondered if they understood that they were as good as dead; I doubted it, or they wouldn’t have given up. They’d have fought, right? I mean if you’re dying anyway, wouldn’t you go out fighting?

Once we had more police on site than we knew what to do with, I found a spare room to change and put on all my vampire hunting gear. I trusted Zerbrowski to alert me in case the captured vampires got out of hand, but I had to change in order to keep the Preternatural Endangerment Act in effect. Another U.S. Marshal of the Preternatural Branch had ended up on trial for murder because he invoked the act, but then didn’t change into his gear when he had the opportunity. The
idea behind the act is that the Marshal can, in effect, create his own warrant of execution on the fly in the middle of the action. The act came into law after lives were lost because several Marshals who had been trying to get a warrant of execution, but hadn’t been granted one yet, had hesitated to kill vampires for fear of being brought up on charges. They could have faced serious charges, or at least lost their badges, for killing legal citizens who just happened to be vampires without some judge telling them it was okay. With the vampires shooting at us, and a hostage, we would probably have been in the clear on the shootings, eventually, but while the investigation was ongoing we might have had to turn in our badges and guns, which meant that I wouldn’t have been able to do any monster hunting or executions for the duration of the investigation.

There weren’t enough Marshals in the Preternatural Branch to spare us every time we had to kill someone; it was, after all, our job. But more than that, the Preternatural Endangerment Act covered the police with me just like a warrant of execution. As long as I invoked, and was with the police, then it was green-light city for all the bad guys. They’d tried to enact it so that only the vampire executioner, personally, could kill without a warrant, but that had made local police reluctant to be backup for the Marshals, and since most of us work solo a lot, that got people killed, too. Law is almost always made by people who will never see that law in action in a real-world situation; it makes it interesting.

One of the first cases to test the use of the act in the field had come down to the fact that the Marshal involved had not put on all his gear, which he was legally forced to wear once he was actively hunting monsters with a warrant of execution in effect. The lawyers had successfully argued that if the Marshal had truly believed the situation merited a warrant of execution, then why hadn’t he geared up appropriately once he had time and access to his gear? He obviously hadn’t felt it was the same as a real warrant of execution; he had simply invoked the act so he could play Wild West and kill everything in the room. The police with him had also been charged, but were declared free before the trial started, because they had acted in good faith, believed the Marshal’s
judgment to be sound, and didn’t have the preternatural expertise to make any other choice. The Marshal had been found guilty and the case was in appeals, but he was in a cell while the lawyers argued.

It did mean that I always had a change of clothes with me—pants, T-shirt, socks, jogging shoes, underwear, and bra. The undies were for those moments when I got enough blood on me that it soaked my clothes to the skin. I had a coverall, too, but that was more for official morgue stakings. I put the protective vest on over the T-shirt, because otherwise it rubbed. The vest had MOLLE attachments, because the weapons came next. The 9mm Browning BDM went to my side with a holster attached at my waist and around my thigh so it didn’t move. In an emergency you wanted your gun to be absolutely where your body memory could kick in—seconds counted. I had the Smith & Wesson M&P9c in a holster attached across my stomach, canted to the side so I could grab and pull it smoother and faster. I had a new sheath attached to the back of the vest with the MOLLE grips for the big knife that had enough silver content to slice anything, man or monster, and was as long as my forearm. Wrist sheaths held two more slender knives, again with high silver content. Extra ammo for all the handguns was on my left hip, strapped down like the Browning on my right. I had one AR on a tactical sling. I still had my MP5, but now that I had a badge I didn’t have to sweat the barrel length restrictions for carrying, so I had an AR modified to be a door-kicker for close indoor action.

I had warned our prisoners that I was going to change into my full vampire hunting gear, because the law forced me to do it, not because I was upping the violence. The first time I’d had to change at a scene and come out in full gear the vampire prisoner had totally freaked, because he’d thought I was going to kill him then and there. I’d ended up having to do just that, when I probably could have brought him in alive. So many laws sound like a good idea until you try them out in real life, and then you find the flaws, and sometimes people die because of it.

The vampires had wide eyes, and some looked pretty spooked, but they didn’t freak. I’d warned them. I’d helped take the first handful of them down in the ancient elevator to the reinforced transport van that
we had for preternatural criminals. We had one van that could hold up to the kind of strength vampires and shapeshifters could use to pound their way through metal—one. Which meant we still had fifteen vampires on their knees in regular handcuffs and shackles, just like the ones that Barney the vampire had broken easily in the interrogation room. Technically I was supposed to take the heads and hearts of the four dead vampires in a heap on the floor, but doing it while the other vampires watched was a disastrous idea. It was just asking for them to realize they had nothing to lose, and that now was the best chance they had to fight their way free, so I was waiting. Not everyone seemed to understand why I was waiting.

Lieutenant Billings was taller than me, but then in my combat/hiking boots, so was everyone in the room, except for some of the vampires. I was just glad I had the boots with my vampire kit in the car. They didn’t exactly match the skirt suit, but I was still happy not to be barefoot. Billings seemed to think his being six feet and built like a hard, muscular square would impress me, because he was looming over me now, snarling into my face. “I want you to do your job, Marshal Blake!”

“I did my job, Lieutenant,” and I motioned at the piled bodies on the ground beside us.

“No, you did part of your job, Blake.” He was so close to me that his upper body was actually curving over and down above me. Most people would have been totally intimidated by a guy this big up in their face like this; me, not so much. I spent too much time with vampires and wereanimals snarling up in my face. A human, no matter how angry, just didn’t have the same impact. Also, there was a part of me that was attracted to the anger, the way a wine enthusiast could be attracted to a fine bottle of wine. I could taste his rage on the roof of my mouth, like I’d already drunk a bit of it, and all I had to do was move my tongue and I’d be able to swallow it down. I’d acquired the ability to feed on the energy of anger; it was a type of energy vampirism, but the laws hadn’t caught up to it, so it wouldn’t have been illegal to drink down all
that rage, but if any of the supernormal cops in the room had sensed what I was doing, it might have raised questions. And Billings would certainly have noticed that his emotions had been messed with. I behaved myself, but my fascination with anger helped me keep my own temper, and not mind his so much.

My voice was calm, almost matter-of-fact, as I spoke into his reddening face. I gave him back peaceful, because I didn’t want to feed into his rage, and I didn’t want to be any more tempted to feed on his anger than I already was. Both the dead officers had been his men. He had a right to his anger, and I knew that as long as he was raving at me he could push back the grief. People will do a lot to keep that first rush of true, stomach-churning grief at bay, because once you feel it, it’s like it never really leaves, not until the process is complete. There are five stages to grief. Denial is the first stage. When you’ve seen the bodies dead at your feet, it’s hard not to skip that one, but you don’t always go to the next step in order. Grief isn’t a neat series of stages. You can jump around in the stages, you can get stuck at one point or the other, and you even get to revisit stages you’ve already finished. Grief isn’t a neat, orderly kind of thing. It’s messy, and it sucks. Billings wanted to yell at someone, and I was just convenient; it was nothing personal, I knew that. I stood in the face of his yelling and let it flow over me, through me. I didn’t buy into it, I truly didn’t take it personally. I’d had too many people scream in my face over the years with their loved ones dead on the ground. People wanted revenge, they thought it would make them feel better; sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t.

“I’ll finish the job, Billings, but we need to clear out the prisoners first.”

“I heard you’d gone soft; guess it’s true.”

I raised an eyebrow at him.

Zerbrowski left the uniforms that he’d been giving instructions to, so they could guard the vampires. He was the ranking RPIT officer on site. He called out, almost cheerfully, “Billings, Anita killed the three vampires while they were shooting at us. I got a piece of one, but it was
her shots that were the kills for all three. How much harder do you want her to be?” His face was as open and friendly as his tone. He understood what it was like to lose people, too.

Billings turned on him; any target would do. “I want her to do her goddamn job!”

“She will,” Zerbrowski said, and made a soothing gesture with one hand. “She will, just as soon as we clear out some of the crowd.”

“No,” Billings said, pointing a finger at the chained vampires. “I want them to see what’s going to happen to their friends. I want them to know what’s coming! I want them to see it! I want them to fucking see what’s coming to each and every damned one of them. No goddamned bloodsuckers can kill cops in St. Louis and not die for it! Not here, not in our town. They are fucking going to die for this, and I want Blake to do her fucking job and show those motherfuckers what they have to look forward to!” He finished the last sentence bent into Zerbrowski’s face, so close that spittle got on his glasses.

“Come on, Ray, let’s go for a walk.” Zerbrowski touched his arm, tried to get him to move away from the bodies and the vampires, and me.

Billings, whose first name was apparently Ray, jerked back from the touch and stalked toward the chained and kneeling vampires. They reacted like humans, recoiling, faces showing fear. God, they were all so recently dead that it was like watching human faces.

One of the uniforms on guard stepped in front of him, a little unsure, but trying. “Lieutenant…”

Billings pushed him out of the way hard enough that the smaller officer stumbled. His hand went to his baton, but he couldn’t use it on a lieutenant, and with five inches of height and at least fifty pounds of muscle in Billings’s favor, short of harsh physical measures the officer was out of options. Fuck.

Billings grabbed one of the closest prisoners in his big hands and dragged him to his feet. It was one of the teenage boys, and Billings didn’t believe he was a kid any more than I did. I yelled, “Billings!” If he heard me, he didn’t show it. Zerbrowski yelled, “Ray!” There was
other yelling, but he didn’t seem to hear any of us. His big arm came back, fist cocked, and I was just suddenly there, grabbing his arm. I don’t know who was more startled that I’d managed to get there in time to stop the blow—him, or me. I was fast enough to get there before he hit the prisoner, but I wasn’t fast enough to get in front of the punch, and I didn’t weigh enough to stop him from swinging. I was airborne as I held on to him, moving with the force of his swing the way small children swing on their father’s arms. I threw his balance off, so that he didn’t hit the boy. He let go of the boy, who fell to the floor, unable to catch himself in the chains. Billings turned, with me still dangling from his arm. His other hand grabbed a handful of my hair as if he meant to fling me across the room, and I just reacted. I let myself do what I’d been tempted to do since the fine, red burn of his rage touched me—I ate his anger. I sipped it through the muscled bunch of his arm under my grip, through the twist of his fingers in my hair, through the bulk of his body, so big and solid beside my so much smaller one. I drank down his anger as he breathed heavy and loud, through the pounding of his heart, the pulse and beat of his blood, and as I swallowed the thick, red fire of his rage, I smelled his skin so close: sweat, and the scent of his fear, which was what lay under all that anger. Beyond that I smelled his blood beating just under the bitter sweetness of his anger, so that Billings was like a piece of cupcake with dark bittersweet chocolate icing that could be licked away, to the warm, moist cake, and then the hot, liquid center where the sweetest, thickest chocolate lay waiting like some hidden treasure that would make the anger even tastier. All I had to do was bite through that sweet, slightly salty skin of his wrist that was just above my mouth, that beating pulse so close to my hands, where they encircled his arm.