Kiss the Dead (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #21)

RULE ONE OF trying to break someone down: Isolate them. Zerbrowski separated the vampires, and divided officers up to guard them. SWAT was on the scene now, not the team that had gone to back up Marshal Larry Kirkland, but a second team. Normally I had mixed feelings about having SWAT with me, but tonight I was just glad to see the manpower, and the skill level. I needed some of the vampires alive enough to talk. I spoke with Sergeant Greco and explained what I needed. He passed it on to his men, and I knew that they would do their best to wound and not kill. Not every shooter, no matter how good, can aim to wound when the monsters are coming at them. You've got to have nerves of steel and the marksmanship to go with it; SWAT would have that or they wouldn't be on the team in the first place. There were other police officers in uniform and plainclothes that had what it took, but those were officers I knew had that set of nerve and skill; with SWAT there was no guesswork, they had to have that set of skills or they wouldn't stay on the team.

Zerbrowski had the dead vampires divided up into five rooms, which was how many live, uninjured vampires we had to question. I went to my Jeep for the rest of my gear. Zerbrowski would spend the time it took me to outfit myself looking at our suspects, so he could make a call on which ones might break first. My only job was to scare the hell out of them. I was the threat, the monster in the closet. Zerbrowski would be the good cop, or at least the less scary cop.

To be as scary as needed, I had to get my second bag of gear from my Jeep. I got to walk through the bodies that were lying on the uneven bricks. On TV they cover the bodies with white sheets, but in real life sheets do not magically appear to drift down effortlessly on the dead. We'd had only two ambulances on site when it all went down, and their resources of sheets, blankets, everything had gone to the living and wounded, the ones that could be saved. They'd thrown out a few body bags, but hadn't had time to bag the bodies. Some of the police on site had spread the bags like dark plastic blankets over the youngest-looking vampire dead, the ones that looked like children. Maybe they'd been old enough to be everyone's grandparents agewise, but the bodies looked junior high age, high school at best. The adult-looking dead stared up, sightless, unmoving, as I walked through them. Most of the cops moved through the field of bodies with their eyes averted, as if looking at the dead bothered them. I looked at the dead, because they were dead vampires and I hadn't shot them all myself. I hadn't made certain that every last body was safely dead. Vampires are tricky; even hospitals with full equipment have trouble being certain when final death occurs. Brain scans were the only close certainty, and even that tech was in its infancy for vampire use. How do you tell when the undead are dead?

I stopped beside a man that looked like the perfect grandfather, as if some Hollywood casting agent had picked him to look sad and pitiful dead on the uneven bricks. Maybe I'd feel sympathy for him later, but right that second I was more worried that I couldn't see much damage on the body. The bullet wound on him looked too low for a heart shot, and his head seemed completely intact. What I was seeing so shouldn't have killed a vampire.

"It doesn't bother you to look at them, does it?" Urlrich came to stand beside me.

I answered without looking away from the body. "No."

He gave a low, very masculine chuckle. It was a sound I'd heard before; it was a sound of approval, and surprise. Men never expected me to be able to keep up with them, especially older men. I looked younger than I was; I was female, and petite. It was a triple threat to either men's egos or their expectations. Urlrich's ego was fine, but his expectations had been given a kick in the ass.

"They're saying you're going to cut the bodies up in front of the other vampires; that true?"

I nodded, still watching the body on the ground.

"I'll help you carry your equipment inside."

That made me look at him. What I saw in his face had me turning my head to the side, as if I were trying to get a better view of the shine in his eyes. He was angry, but it was the kind of anger that filled the eyes with light and gave a little color to the face. If he'd been a woman, I might have told him, You're beautiful when you're angry.

"Your partner is going to heal, right?"

He nodded, but his eyes had narrowed and now the anger looked like what it was: hatred. He had a hard-on for, or against, vampires, and it hadn't started today. I knew long-standing hatred when I saw it. I debated asking him about it, but it was against the guy code to question it that bluntly. I could do that with officers I knew well - they gave me room to poke at things, to be the girl - but with new officers I had to be one of the guys. Guys didn't ask about emotions unless they had to; I didn't have to, I just wanted to, so I let it go - for now.

"I want to watch their faces," he said.

"You mean the vampires' faces?"

"Yes."

"I don't," I said.

He looked puzzled and frowned at me. "Why not?"

"Because all that fear, all that loathing, will be directed at me. It's not cozy being the monster, Urlrich."

"They're the monsters," he said.

"You try being chained up in a room, and watch me tear out a heart and decapitate a body in front of you, while you know that legally I could do the same to you, and probably will; would you think I was a monster?"

"I'd think you were doing your job."

"You know, legally I don't have to kill a vampire before I start taking out the heart, or cutting off the head. I can do it while they're alive and aware."

"Have you ever done it that way?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, and I left it at that. I didn't tell him that years ago it had been because I was young and stupid and thought vampires were monsters, and didn't realize that I had the right to wait until the vampires died at dawn to take them out. Killing them while they were "alive" had been the beginning of my realizing that maybe there was more than one side to the whole monster question. I'd done it once as a way of getting information out of a vampire, as legal torture; I hadn't done it a second time. Some things you can do and live with yourself, but that doesn't mean they don't leave a stain on your soul.

I started walking for my Jeep again. I'd get my equipment and I'd put a stake through the hearts of any of the dead vampires that didn't have an obvious hole in the heart or brain. I didn't use the stakes much, but legally I had to carry so many with me in my kit. I'd use them as place markers until I had time to remove the hearts from the bodies; as long as no one was stupid enough to take the stake out of the body the vampire would be down for the count, and they'd lie there until I got around to them, or dawn came and the sunlight did my job for me. Though that last was illegal now, ruled cruel and unusual, equated to burning a human alive. I couldn't argue with the cruelty part, but this was a lot of bodies to destroy before sunrise. I was going to need help.