Kiss The Dead

“I don’t know you well enough to answer that question, Brice.”

“Sorry; have you answered it for Zerbrowski?”

“He hasn’t asked.”

Zerbrowski held his fist out sideways to me. I touched it gently as I drove. In all the years I’d known Zerbrowski, he’d never asked as many questions as Brice had asked in one evening. I wasn’t sure Brice was going to stay on my top-ten list of people I wanted to hang out with, not if he was always this nosy. My life worked, it made me happy, but I didn’t owe anyone a diagram of how it worked. Especially not a brand-new U.S. Marshal who had just ridden into town days ago. I realized that it wasn’t just Arnet I didn’t know much about backgroundwise, but I could fix that. Was Brice just being friendly, or was he fishing? I realized that just by his saying he was gay, I’d let down a lot of my defenses. Zerbrowski and I both had. What if he’d lied? Was I being overly suspicious? Maybe, or maybe until I saw Brice in bed with a man, I’d never really know if he was lying to me, or to Arnet. The only thing I knew for certain was he was lying to somebody.

16

ZERBROWSKI’S PHONE RANG. It was a twangy country song, the kind I didn’t think they made anymore. He picked it up and cut the down-home song mercifully short. “Hey, Dolph,” he said.

Brice and I listened to Zerbrowski say, “Hostage situation?” The rest of his end was mostly ums, and Shit, and SWAT is en route. “Okay, give me the address.” He repeated it out loud to me, and I looked for a side street so I could turn us around without asking questions. If Dolph and Zerbrowski wanted us at a crime scene, there’d be a reason. Zerbrowski hung up and said, “They need us sooner than later.”

I hit the switch under the dash, and I suddenly had flashy lights. It was a recent addition to my car, and I kept forgetting I had had it installed. It still felt weird to be able to have lights and even sirens. I wasn’t too fond of the siren option. I did the lights but would hit sirens only if Zerbrowski insisted, or the traffic got stupid about getting out of the way.

“Why are we doing hostage negotiations?” Brice asked.

“Vampire or lycanthrope involved,” I said.

“She’s right,” Zerbrowski said, “but Keith Bores is also one of the vampires that Shelby gave up when we questioned her. This vamp is so recently dead he’s got an ex-wife, a name, a last known address, and two kids under the age of ten.”

“Is that where we’re going, to their house?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“How long dead is Bores?” I asked.

“Less than two years,” Zerbrowski said.

“Good,” I said.

“Why good?” Brice asked.

“The younger the vampire, the less powerful it is, generally,” I said.

“Generally, so not always?”

“No, not always. I know one vampire that’s nearly a thousand who will never be a master vampire no matter how long he lives as undead, but then others that hit master vampire power level at around a hundred years.”

“Why the difference?” he asked.

“Strength of will, character, dumb luck, no one knows for sure.” I had us going in the right direction.

“Are all the vampires we’re looking for holed up with him?” Brice asked.

“It looks like it’s just Keith Bores, the vampire ex-husband. He and his wife divorced over domestic abuse charges. She has a restraining order against him.”

“Had he stayed away from her up to this point?” I asked.

“Looks like,” Zerbrowski said.

“Shit,” I said.

“What?” Brice asked.

“The vampire doesn’t have anything to lose now. He knows he’s wanted for murdering the police officers, and that means no trial, no jury, and no lawyer, just one of us hunting him down and killing him. We can’t kill him more than once, so he can finally kill the ex-wife and know that he doesn’t get punished for it; he’s already going to die for killing the cops.”

“So he’ll take the ex with him,” Zerbrowski said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do any of the other missing vampires have police records, or a history of violence? If Keith Bores has nothing left to lose, then neither do the rest of them,” Brice asked.

Zerbrowski and I exchanged a look. He called Dolph back. I started to pray, silently, Dear God, don’t let the rest of them have the same idea. Because if they did, they could all choose different people to kill, take hostage, or just decide to do the great-bad-thing that they’d always wanted to do, but never did, because they were afraid of getting caught. Now it didn’t matter; there was nowhere to go, nothing they could do to save their lives. Once a vampire killed someone, they were the walking dead in so many ways.

17

I PULLED UP at the staging area, which is almost always blocks away, well out of the danger zone, and prepared to wait and be briefed. Brice and I were at the back of the Jeep suiting up when Hill came jogging up to us. “Blake, as soon as you’re suited, I’m taking you up.”

“What about me?” Brice asked.

Hill looked at him, just a flick of dark eyes. “We know Blake, and what she can do. We’ve got a spot for her. Don’t know you.” Under less tense circumstances Hill would have been friendlier to Brice, but we were in the middle of the shit; there was no time.

Zerbrowski said, “Don’t feel bad, Brice, she gets all the cute guys.”

Brice frowned at him, but let it go.

“Brief me,” I said, as I fastened the vest in place and made sure it was tight enough that once I strapped on weapons and ammo they’d be where I left them, not an inch to one side, but exactly where I strapped, holstered, or slid them.

“Keith Bores, thirty when he died, two years past that. He’s taken his ex-wife and family hostage. Says he’s going to kill her. Says he’s got an order of execution on him, so he has nothing to lose, is that true?”

“It’s true,” I said. “The hostages?”

“Emily Bores, twenty-six, five months pregnant. Her doctor says a sudden shock, being shaken, hit, being dropped to the floor, and she could lose the baby.”

I muttered, Shit, but kept putting everything in place. At times like this there seemed to be too many guns, too much ammo, too many blades, but later I might need it all.

“Is it Bores’s baby?” Brice asked.

We both glanced at him, and then I went back to strapping everything into place. Hill answered for me. “Doesn’t matter.”

“He’ll be less likely to hurt her if it’s his,” Brice persisted.

“Second husband’s baby, but still doesn’t matter.”

“But…”

“Shut up, Brice,” I said. To his credit, he did.

“Boy, seven; girl, four; one small dog. Everyone is in the kitchen at the back of the house. He had the wife close the drapes.”

“So you’re blind, except for infrared,” I said.