Kiss The Dead

was standing in the doorway, gun pointed at the fallen vampire. I wasn’t sure if he’d shot him, or… Smith was kneeling behind a huge industrial-sized metal cog that was to one side of the door. His gun was pointed that way, too. I caught a glimpse of Perry lying on the ground beside him. Smith had him behind cover, which was more than Zerbrowski and I had. Another gunshot made Zerbrowski duck back through the doorway, but I was too far away; I turned and found a boy with a gun in his hand. He was standing there, so straight, so tall, so arrogant, as he took his time and aimed at me. I shot him in the chest before he could finish. He crumpled around the wound and then fell to his side. Another teenager rushed forward to grab the gun from his hand.

I slid to a one-knee shooting stance and shot him, too. Smith was yelling, “They’re kids, Anita, they’re just kids!” He was still behind cover; I wasn’t.

I yelled out, “Touch a gun, you die! Hurt anyone, you die! Are we clear?”

There were sullen murmurs of yes, yeah, and one fucking murderer. Some of them looked scared, eyes wide. There were a few more teenagers in the group, but there were also adults. In fact, we had vampires of all shapes and sizes in the large group. “Hands where we can see them, now!”

They raised their hands up, some ridiculously high, others barely out. “Hands on your head.”

Some of them looked confused by the request. Zerbrowski said, “Hands on your heads, just like you see on TV, come on, you know how to do it.”

I stood up, keeping my gun aimed in their direction, but I was keeping a peripheral eye on the first one I’d shot. The girl was whimpering, trying to get his hand off her arm, but either his hands had seized up in death or he wasn’t quite dead. One silver-plated nine-millimeter bullet in the chest doesn’t always kill a vampire.

The vampires in the shadows did what Zerbrowski told them. Smith came out from behind his cover, and I saw Perry moving a little. He wasn’t dead-good-and he wasn’t hurt enough for Smith to feel he needed to keep pressure on the wound, or whatever had happened to him, even better.

I eased toward the girl and the first vampire. She looked up at me, tearstained face, eyes wide. “He won’t let go,” she said. She was trying to peel just one finger back so she could get away. His hand stayed closed. Vampires died weirder than humans; sometimes they seized up, but… I went slow and careful, my bare feet making almost no sound on the dirty floorboards. But he was a vampire; he’d hear my heartbeat. There was really no way to sneak up on them, not yards away, not feet away… He sat up, gun coming with him. I put a bullet in his forehead before he had the gun aimed at me. The girl was screaming again, but she was able to get away now and ran away from the vampire into my arms, trying to get comfort, but I needed to make sure he was well and truly dead, and unarmed, so I pushed her away, told her, “Go to the others. Go!” I pushed her too hard, and she fell, but I was moving to the fallen vampire. The gun was still in his hand. I needed it not to be.

I crept up on him with my gun held two-handed. If he’d twitched I’d have shot him again. I kicked the gun out of his hand and he never reacted. His eyes stared wide and sightless like the officer on the stairs. The vampire might actually be dead, but… I put a second bullet beside the hole in his head, and another one just a little lower than the other hole in his chest. I could have shot holes through both head and heart with the handgun, but it was messy, and it might eventually go through the body and into the floor beyond. Smith or Zerbrowski would have called for backup by now. It would be bad to accidentally shoot cops on the other floors. Bullets weren’t always a respecter of floors and walls. I needed my vampire kit from the car.

Smith was yelling at me, “You shot kids!”

I didn’t want to walk away with the vampire’s head and chest still intact, so I reached down, grabbed the dead vampire by the back of his jean jacket, and started dragging him over toward the other dead bad guys. Smith followed me, still trying to pick a fight, or something. I let the man drop beside the two teenagers’ bodies. Now I could keep an eye on all of them. If they moved I’d shoot them some more.

Smith actually pushed my shoulder, moving me back a little. “You fucking shot them! You shot kids!”

I glared at him, but knelt down by the teenagers and pulled the lips back on the first boy, exposing the fangs. I showed Smith fangs on the second teenager.

“You knew they were vampires,” Smith said.

“Yeah.”

All the anger just leaked away, and he looked confused. “They jumped us at the door. They threw Perry into the wall.”

“How hurt is he?” I asked, standing up from the pile of dead.

“Shoulder and arm may be broken.”

“Go see to your partner, Smith,” I said.

He nodded and walked away to do that. Zerbrowski joined me, his gun still on the kneeling teenagers. There wasn’t an adult face in the kneeling group. Zerbrowski leaned in and whispered, “You told me once that when your necromancy is on full power you can’t always tell vampire from human servant in a room.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You didn’t know they were vampires when you shot them,” he said quietly.

“No,” I said.

“Were you checking for fangs when you showed Smith?”

“No, I knew they were vampires.”

“How?” he asked.

“Look at the wounds,” I said.

He did, and said, “What?”

“The blood’s wrong,” I said.

“It looks the same to me,” he said.

“It’s too thick. Human blood is a little more watery than that, even heart blood.”

His eyes flicked to me, then back to watching our prisoners. “You know, Anita, it’s just fucking creepy that you know that.”

I shrugged. “If you’d been in front, would you have hesitated because you thought they were human teenagers?” I asked.

“Maybe; they’re not much older than my oldest,” he said.

“Good that I was in front, then,” I said.

He glanced down at the dead kids. “Yeah,” he said, but not like he was sure.

I walked away to get closer to our prisoners, one, to help watch them better, but two, to stop the talk with Zerbrowski about my decision to shoot the vampires when I thought they were flesh-and-blood teenagers. I didn’t regret my choice in that split second of life and death, but a small part of me wondered how I could be all right with the choice. It bothered me that it hadn’t bothered me to gun down two kids neither of whom could have been more than fifteen. It didn’t bother me as I looked at the kneeling figures, and I knew without doubt that if any more of the vampires tried to attack us I’d kill them, too, regardless of apparent age, race, sex, or religious affiliations. I was an equal-opportunity executioner; I killed everybody. I let them see that in my face, in my eyes, and watched fear leak through the toughness on their faces. One of the women started to cry softly. What does it mean when the monsters are so afraid of you that you make them cry? That maybe monster depends on which end of the gun you’re on, or that I was just that good at my job. Looking at the twenty or so frightened faces staring at me, I felt bad that they were afraid of me, but I knew that if they attacked us, I’d kill them. They should have been afraid-of me.

3

THE AMBULANCE TOOK Perry away with his arm as immobilized as they could get it. We’d found the other officer dead with a host of vampire bites on his torn and bloody clothes. They’d take bite impressions of the surviving vampires, and if their bite marks matched the wounds it was an automatic death sentence. They’d be morgue stakings, which meant they’d die at dawn, be chained down, hung with holy objects, staked and beheaded while they were “dead” to the world. They were already caught, so there was no need for a hunt. I wondered if they understood that they were as good as dead; I doubted it, or they wouldn’t have given up. They’d have fought, right? I mean if you’re dying anyway, wouldn’t you go out fighting?