Лорел Гамильтон - Incubus Dreams

Zerbrowski gave me a look. I gave him one back. It was his turn to sigh. “Smith, take his other arm. We’re going to escort him outside.”

Smith was looking at us sort of funny, but he helped Zerbrowski lift the vampire to his feet. Cooper made small protesting noises and hissed curses under his breath. Maybe I hadn’t broken his jaw, or at least not badly.

Zerbrowski and Smith got him on his feet and started him for the door. I got my gun out and followed them. One of the uniforms said, “What are they going to do?”

“Go outside if you want to see the show,” Marconi said, “I’ve seen it.” He sounded tired.

Roarke and the other uniform, whose name I couldn’t remember, followed me. It was like a parade. I’ve got over eighty kills. Most of them actually legal. But I usually whack the bad guys when they’re dead to the world. I usually haven’t had to question them, touch them.

I usually don’t know who they were in life, or if I do, I feel like I’m putting them out of their misery, or did once, when I believed vampires were truly dead. Jonah Cooper had been what I am, and he had betrayed everything he stood for. He’d sacrificed law enforcement officers that had gone in as his backup. He’d murdered innocent women for kicks. I knew all that, but I’d have liked it better if I didn’t know that his hair had nice texture, or that he’d gotten a hero’s funeral. There’s a reason that executioners through history usually only come in at the end when it’s time to kill. If he’d run for it or fought, then the other cops could have shot him, killed him for me.

But he wasn’t going to run now, and no one else here had the legal authority to do what I was about to do.

We were outside in a small side area near the far parking lot.

Cooper had figured out what was happening, because even with an injured jaw he was trying to talk to me. The words started out stiff, but got faster as he talked. Fear will override pain. “You’re Jean-Claude’s human servant. How is what I’m doing any different from that?“

“I haven’t killed innocent civilians because my master doesn’t like strippers.”

“I killed more people as a hunter than I’ve killed as a vampire,” he said. He tried to turn around and look at me, but apparently that hurt too much.

We were on a plot of grass, with flowers to one side and the parking lot to the other. “Good enough,” I said.

Zerbrowski turned, and Smith moved with him. They turned the vamp around so I could see his face. “I kill because the law says I can, not because I want to,” I said.

“Liar.”

“Knees,” I said.

He fought them, and I didn’t blame him. I shot him in the leg, and he collapsed to the ground. I hadn’t expected to have to shoot him so soon, or for wounding. The echo of the gun up my arm thrilled through my body, like the gun was where all the adrenaline came from, tingling up my arm.

Smith looked pale. Zerbrowski grim. But they still had his arms, even with him on the ground.

“I can make this quick, Cooper, or I can make it slow. Your choice.” My voice was empty. Nothing showed on my face. I just looked at him and knew that if he struggled I would shoot him by inches, until he was too wounded to get away, and I could let Zerbrowski and Smith move away without risking Cooper getting away.

He struggled, and I shot him again.

Smith let go of the arm. “I can’t do this. This isn’t right.”

“Then get the fuck away from him,” I said, and there was anger in my voice now, because I agreed with Smith. “Zerbrowski.”

“Yeah.” His voice was very careful.

I had the gun on Cooper, and my body had gone quiet, the anger sliding away on the nice white static in my head. “Move.”

He moved. Cooper tried to levitate. I figured he would. I put two shots into the center of his body, and he collapsed back to earth. He hadn’t been able to fly in the church when he was healthy, I hadn’t expected him to get better wounded. He didn’t.

I walked up to him, gun in a two-handed grip, aimed on the center of his forehead. “You’re enjoying this,” he said, and he made a sound in his throat. There was blood on his lips, his blood.

“No,” I said, “I’m really not.”

“Liar,” he said again, and tried to spit blood at my feet, but apparently his jaw hurt too much, and it made him writhe on his knees.

“I don’t want to kill you, Cooper, and I don’t enjoy it.”

He looked up at me, puzzled. “You feel empty inside. I enjoyed killing.”

“Bully for you,” I said, and I knew I should have pulled the trigger, should have ended it. Never let them talk.

“You really don’t enjoy this, do you?” he asked.

“No,” I said, looking into those brown eyes.

“Then how do you stay sane?”

I let all the air ease from my body, as the world narrowed down to the center of his forehead. But I could still see his eyes, so alive, so… real. I answered him, “I don’t know.” I squeezed the trigger, and the impact knocked him backward. He fell on his side, and I moved up on him, gun still held two-handed, because whether he was dead or whether he wasn’t, I wasn’t done.

He had a smallish hole in the middle of his forehead above his surprised eyes. I fired into his forehead until the top of his head exploded in brains and bone. Decapitation was nice, but spilling the brains all over the grass works, too. I switched my aim to his chest, and fired until my gun emptied. Then I got a second clip from my belt, reloaded and fired into his chest until I could see light through his body. Legally I could not carry my vamp executioner kit in the car unless I had a current warrant. I’d left home without a warrant, so my sawed-off shotgun was at home with my stakes and machete. Handguns will do the job, but it takes longer, and it wastes a hell of a lot of ammo.

The last gun shot echoed into the night. My ears were full of that ringing silence that happens when you’ve fired that many shots from that close a range without ear protection. I was standing over the body, one foot on its shoulder, pinning it to the ground. I must have kicked him over onto his back sometime during the chest shots. I didn’t remember doing it, but shooting into the ground was a hell of a lot safer than shooting out into the night. Not all the bullets would stop in his body, not when you were trying to punch a hole through the person.

The first sound that came back was the sound of my blood in my ears, the pulse of my own body. Then some sound made me turn. Malcolm had brought his flock to watch, or maybe they had come on their own, and he couldn’t stop them, so he’d come with them. Whatever, they were there held back by the uniforms. The vampires and the few humans among them stood staring at me. There was a little girl in front, and for a second I thought, what the fuck are her parents thinking, then I realized she was a vamp. I had trouble concentrating, but she was old.

Older than the woman holding her hand and pretending to be her mommy.

I popped the clip in my gun and checked how much ammo I had left.

I couldn’t remember how many shots I’d fired. I’d only brought two clips with me. Silly me. I needed to load up. I needed my Jeep, or home. I put the clip back in and slammed it home with my hand. Some of the vamps jumped at the small sound it made. Somehow with all of them standing there staring at me, I didn’t want to put the gun up. I didn’t think they’d really rush us, but it was definitely not a friendly crowd.

Zerbrowski came up to me. “Let’s get you out of here,” he said, and either he whispered, or my hearing wasn’t all the way back. But I didn’t argue. I let him take me to his car, and I let Smith and Marconi watch our backs.