Kiss The Dead

3

THE 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.

His hand let go of my hair, and he lowered me to the ground. His eyes were open wide; his face tried to frown as if he were struggling to remember something. He looked confused as he set me gently on the floor.

“Where are we?” he asked.

I was still holding his arm, though now it was more like holding hands than holding on. “We’re at the old brewery,” I said, and I didn’t like that he didn’t know where he was; it made me wonder what else he didn’t remember. What had I done to him? I’d fed on anger before and never had anyone forget things.

He wrapped his big hand around one of my small ones, and blinked at the vampire that was crumpled at his feet. “Why are these people shackled?”

Jesus, he didn’t remember they were vampires, which meant… “Lieutenant Billings, what’s the last thing you remember?”

He frowned at me, and the effort of concentration was visible on his face and in the pressure of his hand, tense around mine. His eyes were a little scared, and he just shook his head. Shit.

Zerbrowski was there with Smith and some uniforms at his back. “Ray,” Zerbrowski said, “we need to go for a walk.”

“A walk?” Billings made it a question.

“Yeah,” he said, and touched Billings’s arm where he was still holding my hand.

Billings just nodded, but he didn’t let go of me.

Zerbrowski pulled on his arm, just a little, to get him to come along, and Billings moved, but he also kept my hand in his. “Can she come with us?”

“Not right now,” Zerbrowski said, and he looked at me; the look said, clearly, what had I done to him? I shrugged, and I knew he understood my expression, too. He might even believe that I didn’t know what I’d done to the big lieutenant.

Billings was reluctant to let go of my hand, and that wasn’t good either. I’d done more than feed on his anger, and way more than I’d intended.

Zerbrowski managed to get Billings to let go of me and go with him, but he mouthed, Later. We’d talk later, I knew we would. Double shit.

The vampire on the floor said, “Thank you.”

I looked down at him. His eyes were blue-gray, grayer at the moment. His short blond hair was almost shaggy, as if when it was a little longer it would be wavy, and was struggling to do it even short, so that his hair looked messy when it wasn’t exactly. The hair seemed too big for his face or his face too thin for the thick hair. His jean jacket and rock band T-shirt untucked over jeans and jogging shoes made him look like a hundred other teenage boys, except for the odd haircut, and the strangely too-thin face. I realized it seemed hungry, as if he hadn’t been eating enough, and then I realized what it was; he hadn’t fed tonight. He was so recently dead that his skin hadn’t lost the human tan he’d died with, so he didn’t look too pale, but I could feel that he hadn’t fed on blood tonight. This one, at least, hadn’t had a piece of the cop we’d found eaten by dozens of fangs.

I looked past him to the other kneeling vampires and I felt their hunger. None of them had fed tonight. They were all hungry, and they were all very recently dead, their skins still kissed with the sun. Fresh-risen vampires could look like everything from corpse-like to nearly human. The more powerful the vampire that brought you over, the more human you could look, depending on the bloodline that your master descended from. Whoever had brought these guys over was powerful, very powerful. The vampire that had been holding the girl hadn’t been, not even close, and all the vampires were hungry. I could feel it; in fact, I’d been picking it up without realizing it. It had made me feed too strongly on Billings. That shouldn’t have been able to happen unless someone connected to Jean-Claude had made them. Was their master being of Jean-Claude’s bloodline enough, or had one of our people fully blood-oathed to us done this horrible thing? And it was horrible. Six of the surviving vampires were teens, or younger, tweens. They were all children, all too young for that secondary growth spurt. They’d all been brought over before they finished puberty. It was forbidden to bring children over, and their faces staring up at me were all borderline, and all recently dead. Fuck, and double fuck.

I looked beyond the kids in front and found that the grown-ups weren’t much better. Some of the women looked like they should be baking cookies for scout meetings and packing for family vacations, not kneeling here in cuffs with fangs. Some of the people were a little out of shape or overweight. It was a myth that being a vampire made you thin. Some low-level vampires stayed the same size they were at death, frozen in whatever shape they’d been forever, so if you were going to become a vampire you should drop that extra few pounds first. Some lines of vampires could change their body after death. I’d seen them put on more muscle in the gym, but I wasn’t sure how much they could change after they were dead. Had these people chosen to be vampires, or had they been forced? If forced, then it was a truly horrible crime. I’d cheerfully kill the vampire that made them.

Then my metaphysics got out of the way of my cop brain, and I realized I was being stupid, distracted by the metaphysics-which was why the cops had started partnering one normal with a supernormal, so you had a mundane double check. Fuck!

I turned from the vampires and hurried to the knot of uniforms with Smith. “The vampires are all hungry! They haven’t fed tonight.”

One uniform looked at me, with all the cynicism you gain in police work. He was about forty pounds too heavy around the middle, but his eyes held the years of experience that can make up for speed and athleticism if you paired him with a rookie who could run. “They have to have fed. You saw what they did to Mulligan.”

Smith said, “If Anita says they haven’t fed, she’ll be right. She knows the undead.”

I checked the nameplate and said, “Exactly, Urlrich; if these guys didn’t feed, then we’re missing the ones who did.”

“I don’t understand,” the younger uniform said, and shook his head. He had short brown hair, matching eyes, and a slim, runner’s build. The brawn for the brains of his partner.

Urlrich understood. He undid the snap on his gun and rested his hand on the grip. “The body was warm; are they still here, Ms. Vampire Expert?”

“I don’t know. With this many vampires, my spider-sense is on overload, and they have to have a vampire master with them powerful enough to possibly hide them.” In my head I added, Powerful enough to hide this much activity from Jean-Claude, the Master of St. Louis. You gained a lot of power over a piece of real estate as master, and over the vampires in it, so at this point the rogue would have to be either fucking powerful, or so good at hiding in plain sight that it was a type of power.

“Is it a trap?” Smith asked.

“I don’t know, but they left these vampires here to take the blame for the crimes. Master vamps don’t waste this much manpower without a good reason.”

“Maybe they thought we’d believe it,” Smith said, “and they’d be in the clear.”

“Only if we killed them all on sight,” I said.

Urlrich said, “You do have a reputation for shooting first, Marshal Blake.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Was that what the vampires had counted on, that I’d just kill everyone in the building? If that was the plan, then my reputation was even worse than I thought. I wasn’t sure whether I was sad or happy about that. You’re only as tough as your threat is good; apparently my threat totally rocked.

Zerbrowski came back up as we were talking. “We need to talk about Billings, Anita.” He looked very serious.

I nodded. “Agreed, but later.” I told him that the vampires hadn’t fed.

“Is it like the serial killer who left his wee little vamps to take the blame for his kills, a few years back?”

I nodded. “Maybe, but the laws were different back then; SWAT and I had the green light and had no legal option but to use it. We have options now.”

“Tell that to Mulligan’s wife,” Urlrich said.

I nodded again. “If they helped kill Mulligan and the other officer, then I’ll happily end their lives, but I’d like to make sure I’m putting a bullet between the right pair of eyes.”

“You don’t shoot ’em between the eyes,” his partner said.

I checked his nameplate. “Stevens, is it?”

He nodded.

“Yeah, you do, and one in the heart, and then you take the heart and decapitate them.”

He gave me wide eyes. “God.”

“Would you want to put a bullet in their brains while they were looking at you, and chained up?”

He looked at me, a soft, growing horror in his eyes. “Jesus.” He looked past me at the vampires. “They look like my grandparents, and kids.”

I turned and looked at the vampires, too, and Stevens was absolutely right. Except for the two male bodies that were with the two teens we’d killed, everyone looked like either a kid, or a grandparent, or a soccer mom. I’d never seen a more ordinary-looking bunch of vampires in one place at one time. Even in the Church of Eternal Life, the vampire church, you didn’t have this many older people and children. No one wanted to be trapped forever in a child’s body, or an elderly one; it was too early, or too late, to want to live forever in the bodies that were kneeling on the floor.

I leaned in and whispered to Zerbrowski, “I’ve never seen this many elderly vampires ever, and this many kids in one place, also never.”

“And that means what?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“For a vampire expert, you don’t know a hell of a lot,” Urlrich said.

I’d have liked to argue with him, but I couldn’t.