Laurell Hamilton - Hit List

He wouldn’t tell me the plan, but since he’d actually admitted his “real” name to me, I could let him keep his secret plan—for now.

THE MARSHAL I needed to sweet-talk out of her warrant was female, so we got to split a hotel room. Marshal Laila Karlton was five-six and built solid. I don’t mean she was fat, I mean she was all muscle and curves. In too much clothing she looked like it might be fat, but when you saw her just in a T-shirt and jeans, you realized the “bulk” was half curves and half solid muscle. It wasn’t lean muscle and that was the reason it could fool the eye, but when she picked up her backpack of vampire-hunting gear, which probably weighed the same fifty pounds that mine did, her biceps bulged, and you realized it was all camouflage for the fact that she was strong. She didn’t see it that way, though.

“God, you’re tiny. I bet I can put my hands around that little white-girl waist, and you still have boobs and an ass. That is not fair, girlfriend.”

She’d taken the I’ll-cut-myself-down-and-compliment-you-beforeyou-beat-me-to-it tack. I had the choices of ignoring it, complimenting her in some way, or agreeing that I looked good without complimenting her back. The last choice would make her dislike me more. She’d already let me know, nicely, that my being a few sizes smaller than her made her predisposed not to like me. One of the good things about working with men was that they didn’t do this shit.

I tried, but I sucked at these games. “I know men who prefer your body type to mine.”

“Bullshit,” she said, and was ready to be angry.

“I hang around with a lot of older vampires. They don’t like the really thin girls. They like women to look like women, not preadolescent boys with boobs sort of stuck on as an afterthought.”

“You don’t look like that,” she said, her voice a little less angry, but still not friendly.

“Neither do you. We both look nice and curvy the way God intended grown-up women to look.”

She thought about it and then grinned at me. It lit her whole face up, and I knew we’d be okay. “Ain’t that the truth. But that booty is not white-girl booty.”

“I’m told I look like my mother, except paler. She was Hispanic.”

“That explains it. I knew you were too round in the right places to be white bread.” She laid out her clothes in a neat line on the bedspread, and then said, “What do you mean, ‘told you’ you look like your mother?”

“She died when I was eight.”

“I’m sorry.” And she sounded like she meant it. In fact, there was an awkward pause as we each unpacked on our side of the room. I had the bed nearest the bathroom and farthest from the door. We hadn’t discussed it; I’d just entered the room first.

“It’s okay,” I said, “it was a long time ago.”

“What about your dad?”

“German, as in his was the first generation born in this country.”

“What does he think of you being a marshal and vampire hunter?” she asked, as she dumped her clothes in a pile on the bed and began to sort them.

“He’s okay with it. My stepmother, Judith, on the other hand, doesn’t like it much.” I must have smiled because Laila laughed, a deep, throaty laugh. It was dark, and sensual like Guinness in a glass. It was a good laugh.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve been my mom’s despair since I could walk. My dad’s a football coach and I just wanted to be like my brothers and my dad.”

“No sisters?”

“One and she’s the girl.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a stepsister; she was the girl. I went hunting with my dad.”

“No brothers?”

“One half brother, but he’s a little too gentle for hunting. I was my dad’s only boy.” I made quote marks in the air with my fingers.

She laughed again. “I was always competing with my brothers and losing. They’re six feet and up like my dad. I’m short like Mama.”

“I’ve always been the smallest kid in class.”

“I’m not the smallest, just not as tall as I wanted to be.”

“So, does your dad like your job?”

“He’s proud of me.”

“Mine, too,” I said. “He just worries.”

“Yeah, mine, too.” She looked at me sort of sideways and then said, “They talk about you in the training. Anita Blake, the first female vampire executioner. You still have the highest kill count of any marshal.”

“I’ve been doing it longer,” I said.

“There’s only eight of you from the early days,” she said.

“There were more of us than that,” I said.

“They either retired early like your friend Manny Rodriguez, or they . . .” She was suddenly very interested in getting her clothes in a drawer. “Is it okay if I take the top drawer?”

“Fine, you’re taller.”

She smiled, a little nervous around the edges. “It’s okay, Karlton,” I said. “I know the mortality rate was high when the vampire executioners first started serving warrants.”

She put her clothes in the drawer, closed it, and then looked at me, sort of sideways, again. “Why did the mortality rate among the executioners go up after the warrant system was put in place? The books all say it went up, way up, but it doesn’t explain why.”

I knelt down and she gave me enough room to put my clothes in the bottom drawer. I thought about how to answer her. “Before warrants, vampire hunters weren’t always particular about how they killed. We didn’t have to defend it in court, so we were a little more trigger happy. After the warrant system some hunters hesitated, worried about what would happen if they couldn’t defend it in court and ended up on murder charges. Remember, back then we had no badges. Some of us went to jail for murder even though the vampire killed was confirmed as a serial killer. It made some of us hesitate to kill. Hesitation will get you killed.”

“We have badges now.”

“Yeah, and officially we’re cops, but make no mistake, Karlton, we are still executioners. A policeman’s main job is to prevent harm to others. Most of them go twenty years and never draw their gun in the line of duty, not matter what you see on television.” I laid shirts on top of bras and underwear in the drawer. “Our main job is to kill people; that’s not what cops do.”

“We don’t kill people, we kill monsters.”

I smiled, but knew it was bitter. “Pretty to think so.”

“What does that mean?”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four, why?”

I smiled, and it still didn’t feel happy. “When I was your age I believed they were monsters, too.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“You’re only six years older than me, Blake.”

“Cop years are like dog years, Karlton, multiply by seven.”

“What?” she asked.

“I may only be six years older than you chronologically, but in dog years I’m forty-two years older.”

She frowned at me. “What the hell is that even supposed to mean?”

“It means, how many vampires have you executed?”

“Four,” she said, and it was a little defensive.

“Hunted them down and killed them, or morgue stakings where they’re chained to a gurney and unconscious while you do it?”

“Morgue, why?”

“Talk to me after you’ve killed some of them awake, while they’re begging for their lives.”

“They beg for their lives? I thought they’d just attack.”

“Not always; sometimes they’re scared and they beg, just like anybody else.”

“But they’re vampires, they’re monsters.”

“According to the law we uphold they’re legal citizens of this country, not monsters.”

She studied my face. I don’t know what she saw there, or wanted to see, but she finally frowned. I think a blank face wasn’t what she’d been hoping to see. “So you really do believe that they’re people.”