Laurell Hamilton - Kiss The Dead

“Are you calling me immoral?” I asked.

“No, I’m just saying we have a different standard, that’s all. We both believe we’re right.”

“No, Larry,” I said. “I don’t believe I’m right. I’ve done things that give me nightmares. I’ll probably dream about this tonight, too.”

“That means you know this is wrong; it’s your conscience talking to you-yelling at you.”

“I know that.”

“Then how can you do it?” he asked.

“Because I’d rather have new nightmares than look a family in the eyes because their father, their brother, their mother, their daughter, their grandfather, is dead because we didn’t get these vampires in time.”

“I’d rather make the condolence call than do something that I know is this wrong, this…” He stopped.

“Say it,” I said, and whispered it then, “Say it.”

“Evil,” he said, “I’d rather do the condolence call than do something this evil.”

I nodded, not agreeing, just nodding. “Good that we have me here, then, so I can be evil, because I’d rather cut up the bodies, terrify the prisoners, than have to see one more grieving family, or explain to anyone why these bloodsuckers killed again, because we were too good, too righteous to get the information we needed.”

“You and I are never going to agree on this,” he said, voice quiet but very firm.

“No,” I said, “we’re not.”

“You go be Zerbrowski’s bogeyman, and I’ll stake the bodies down here.”

“I’m not the bogeyman, Larry. He’s not real and I am.”

“Just go, Anita, just let’s stop this.”

I shook my head. “Not yet,” I said.

“Anita…” he said.

I stopped him by holding up my hand. “I’m the monster, Larry, not the bogeyman.”

“Same thing,” he said.

“No, it’s not. Like I said, the bogeyman isn’t real, but the monsters are real, so I’m the cop’s pet monster.”

“You’re no one’s pet, Anita; if anyone makes you a monster, it’s you.”

And to that, there was nothing to say. I got my equipment and I went for the building, because when a friendship breaks this badly it doesn’t turn to hatred; it turns to pain.

THE ROOM LOOKED like a set for a slasher flick, with dirty walls; pale paint that might have started as white had flaked away from the bricks, so that the paint debris lay at the base of the walls as if something big had clawed at the walls. The question was, had it been clawing to get in, or get out? There seemed to be a layer of grit and dust on the floor, crunching underfoot, clinging to the walls, and coating the huge pillars that decorated the room and held up the soaring rise of the ceiling. There were a few windows very high up, almost touching the ceiling, but they were small windows, and probably weren’t much good for light, let alone for escape. The room was huge and echoing with only a handful of police and two members of SWAT decked out for battle, holding their AR rifles at ease, but strangely ready, too, that combat ready, so that “at ease” is never really the truth. I nodded to them; they gave a slight nod back. The two uniforms on either side of the prisoner stared straight ahead, their cross-shaped tie tacks visible. Once the police officers had a reasonable fear for their lives, as in dead policemen, we could all wear our holy objects visibly without getting shit about them being an implied threat to the prisoner.

Zerbrowski had picked the vampire he thought was the weakest link, and I trusted his judgment, but it wouldn’t have been the prisoner I would have chosen. The vampire was one of the ones that looked like she should be asking Chad to go to the junior high dance. She was thin, body barely starting to have a figure, hands small and very childlike. Her yellow hair was cut short and badly, in one of those feathered cuts that were popular somewhere in the seventies, but her hair was too thick for the cut, so that it didn’t quite work. Did she know the haircut looked bad on her, that it made her thin face look even thinner, more childlike, rather than less? If she did, why didn’t she cut it? Because if she was like most vampires, she couldn’t grow her hair out; once cut, it would never grow longer again. She was dead, frozen forever at that point. Her almost bird-thin arms and legs had stopped at one of the most awkward moments, where you’ve just hit that growth spurt, and the legs and arms are gangly and your balance is bad, and that was it-forever.

Jean-Claude and some of his vampires could put on muscle, grow their hair out, but I’d learned just a few months ago that it was because he was powerful enough to do it. He was the Master of the City of St. Louis, which meant his power helped all the vampires blood-oathed to him in his territory rise at dusk. His will, his power; and with his death some of them would die at dawn and never rise again, or that was the theory. I knew two vampires that had killed the head of their bloodline and survived. I’d been told that Jean-Claude took power from his lesser vampires and shared it with those he valued. The person who told me had been an enemy, but still… I had asked him about it. His answer, “I am Master of the City, ma petite ; that comes with a certain amount of power.”

“You told me once that you wasted power to grow your hair out for me, because I like men with long hair, but Asher’s hair is longer, too, and the vampire dancers at your clubs have put on extra muscle in the gym. Are you sharing power with them, too?”

“Oui.”

“Do you take it from the other vampires?”

“I gain power from every vampire that is mine, but I do not steal from them. Individually they do not have enough power to grow a single hair upon their heads, or add an ounce of muscle to their backs. I do not change their level of power, but I gain from it, and I can share that gain with those I choose to.”

So, like a lot of things about vampires, it was true and it wasn’t. The girl vampire prisoner’s name was Shelby, and she wasn’t one of Jean-Claude’s chosen few; she was like most vampires stuck with how she’d died-she’d been about fourteen, a young, skinny, barely adolescent girl. None of the new manacles and shackles fit her, so she was in regular cuffs, chained to her waist, but none of the ankle shackles fit her. She was just too small. Which meant she potentially had enough strength to pop the chains, just as the one back at the police station had done, but his body had been six feet of muscled grown man, and Shelby was a very petite, very fragile-looking young girl. I was hoping that meant she didn’t have the strength to break free, especially since I was about to scare her within an inch of her undead life.

She watched me with huge eyes, fear plain in them. The older vampires could hide almost any emotion behind centuries of practice, but when you’re only about thirty years dead, you’re just like someone who’s that age, except you’re dead and trapped in the body you wanted to leave behind in junior high. Being a vampire doesn’t automatically give you great acting abilities. Just like it didn’t give you instant martial arts skills, money, or sex appeal, or make you great in bed-that came with practice, and some vampires never learned how to manage money. Shelby the vampire didn’t look like she’d gained much from being undead, or maybe it was a trick? Maybe she was playing to her pitiful exterior, and the first chance she got she’d kill us all? Maybe. One of the scariest vampires I’d ever met had looked like a twelve-year-old girl-she’d been a monster and over a thousand years old.

Urlrich had come with me, carrying the second bag, the one I kept for more official executions. When I was on a vampire hunt I killed them any way I could, and didn’t worry about the mess, but when the body is already “dead” and we’re using property that belongs to a taxpaying citizen, we have to mind the mess. I unzipped the first bag and took out the big folded tarp with its one plastic-coated side. Urlrich helped me spread it on the floor.