Kiss The Dead

handsome, and happily married. Almost a year ago, in the summer, he’d gotten shot helping us defeat the Mother of All Darkness. There’d been a horrible moment when I thought he’d made the ultimate sacrifice and died, but he was too big a dog, or wererat, for that, and he’d lived. I hadn’t had to explain to his wife and kids why I brought their dad back in a box. I was glad of that, but since that moment I’d rejected him from my bodyguard detail. I didn’t want the responsibility of making a widow of his wife, or half-orphans of his kids. Standing out in the thin spring sunshine, I remembered that by my side wasn’t the only dangerous detail.

We were surrounded by SWAT, with Dolph and Zerbrowski in the mix. All of them were paying me and my people the ultimate compliment by letting them be here.

“How the hell did you let someone wearing a bomb get into the club, and then let them take Nathaniel hostage?” I demanded.

Lisandro looked down, took a deep breath, set his shoulders, then met my eyes and reported. “Clay was on the door; he’s never been real military, or seen real violence. With the higher alert I shouldn’t have had him on the door. The young man was here with two others to apply as wait staff.”

“Were the other two in on it?” I asked.

“They ran like hell, so I don’t think so. It seems to have been just the one man.”

“How did he get Nathaniel with Nicky and you here?”

Dolph said, “Anita, these aren’t the questions you need to be asking.”

I looked up at him and started to argue, then swallowed it. I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and nodded.

Hill said, “Let me find out what we need to know, Blake.”

I wanted to say that I could do it, but we didn’t have time for me to lie to myself. I just nodded.

“We’ve got blueprints of the club. Blake gave a rundown of the interior on the way in. Who’s inside? Where exactly is the hostage being held?”

“Inside: Nicky, Nathaniel, Mephistopheles, and Cynric.”

“Wait,” I said, “why’s Sin here? He’s not a guard, or a dancer.”

Lisandro looked uncomfortable. “Nathaniel’s brought him a couple of times before. He watches the practice, works out some.”

“Why is Sin inside, but you’re safe out here?”

“He wouldn’t leave Nathaniel; neither would Nicky.”

“And Dev?”

“He knew Mephistopheles was your golden tiger. He wanted him to stay. I think he plans to take you and two of your cats.”

“Sin is one of my cats, too.”

“He seemed bothered by how young Cynric is.”

“Blake,” Hill said, “we don’t have time. Is Sin someone important to you, too?”

“Every name he mentioned is a lover, and most of them live with me, most of the time.”

The look of sympathy in Hill’s eyes almost undid me. “I’m sorry, Blake.”

“I’ve lived with Nathaniel for three years, four in June.”

Hill nodded solemnly. “We’ll get him out.”

“I know,” I said, and that was a lie. I didn’t know. I hoped, but in this instance, hope didn’t seem enough.

Hill and the others began to ask Lisandro questions about the bomb, and he knew way more about it than I would have. I’d have been stopped at bomb vest, and I knew what a dead man’s switch was, but not exactly what it looked like. Lisandro reported clearly, quickly.

Hill and a couple of the others nodded. They approved. Hell, I approved, but there was a little song playing in my head: Nathaniel’s in there with a bomb. Nicky’s in there. Sin is in there. Dev is in there. With a bomb. That was the refrain in my head while they asked their good questions and got their answers. It was like an evil song stuck in my head, with the beat of Bomb, bomb, bomb. Fire was the only thing that wereanimals couldn’t heal. Silver could kill them, and other preternaturals’ claws and teeth could cut them up, but if they lived they could heal most if not all of the damage. Fire was the only thing that was permanent damage. In fact, some preternaturals burned faster and more completely than a human.

I had an image in my head of a werewolf I’d seen burn last year from being too close to a rocket when it launched. The human form had gone up in flames and tried to shift to animal in an attempt to heal, but it had ended up burned to death, frozen in between both forms, just a blackened, nightmare shape. I did everything I could not to picture Nathaniel like that, or Sin, or Nicky, or Dev.

“Anita can do it.” I heard the voice and had to concentrate to realize it was Pride.

I blinked up into his handsome face, so like Dev’s; they were cousins, after all. “What? What can I do?”

“You can open your link between you and Mephistopheles, or Nathaniel, or Cynric. You can see the room that way. We don’t have to guess.”

Hill studied my face. “Can you really do that?”

“If I drop shields and concentrate, yes.”

“You’ll be able to see inside the club through at least three different sets of eyes, no guesswork?” he asked.

“Yeah, should work exactly that way.”

“Damn,” he said, “does this work with all of your lovers?”

“No, it won’t work with Nicky, just the others.”

Hill frowned. “Later, I want to understand how this works, and see if we can use it. Right now, work your magic, Blake. Give us eyes; give us the location of everyone in the room.”

“I’ll try.”

Zerbrowski said, “Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

It took me a second to realize that he had just quoted Star Wars to me. It made me smile, and in that moment I loved him, just for that.

47

I SAT ON the shallow curb in the weak spring sunlight in my vest and weapons, and had all the SWAT guys, plus Marshal Arlen Brice, Zerbrowski and Dolph, and a lot more of RPIT than I thought gave a damn, plus my bodyguards, huddling around me to keep everyone else back while I did the psychic dream of every hostage negotiator. We didn’t need to call the suspect or get eyes into the club; I had eyes in the club already. I just had to “open” them.

I sat on the curb, and I was small enough that it was like sitting at the bottom of a well of very tall people, but that was okay. I was used to being the smallest kid in school. I opened the blocks I had put in the way of Dev first. Pride had suggested starting with Dev, because he was trained as a warrior, a spy, a guard, and an assassin, though he didn’t say all that out loud to the police; he said guard, just guard. I lowered my shields for Mephistopheles, my Devil. He hadn’t come into my life until I’d had a lot of practice keeping my psychic and emotional distance from the people connected to me. I’d never let him in as far as Nathaniel could get, or Micah, or Jean-Claude, or… I’d kept him at a distance, because I knew how, because I could. Now, I tore down all that careful work and reached out to him.

I thought about making love to him. The feel of his body in mine, his skin under my hands, his… And just like that I was in. Most of the time it was like floating just above the people I was talking to, but the ties that bound me could get closer, much closer. I let that happen now, and I could see out of Dev’s eyes for a moment. It was disorienting, and I drew back.

He blinked up at me where he could “see” me above him. He gave his version of blank cop face and then went back to staring across the room. I thought, What do you see? And just like that, I could see what Dev was looking at.

Sin was standing just a little farther toward the stage, ahead of everyone else, in the midst of all the little tables, most of them with their chairs put up on the tabletops, waiting for business that night. Nicky was the closest to the door, on the other side of Dev. Nathaniel stood against the wall on the far side of the stage, away from the