Kiss The Dead

doors. A man I didn’t know had an arm around his neck. His other hand held something that looked like a cylinder with a button that he’d already pressed, and that startled me, except Dev thought at me, It’s armed, but won’t blow until he lets go. Pressing down armed it, letting go blew it.

I moved my perception to Sin. He did startle.

I heard the bomber say, “What’s wrong? Where is Anita Blake? Where is she?”

Sin said, “Let my brother go.”

“He’s not your brother!” He yelled it.

“Yes, he is.”

“Shut up! You, lion! Call her again!”

Nathaniel said, “Cynric, leave, please.”

I felt Sin shake his head, felt the depth of his stubbornness, and knew he wouldn’t leave. It wasn’t a death wish, it was just a decision. He wouldn’t leave Nathaniel. He just wouldn’t.

I thought about Nathaniel, and I could feel the man’s arm across my shoulders. I was looking at Sin, seeing his blue eyes too wide, his face pale, visibly scared, but not leaving. I felt Nathaniel’s fear for him, tasted his pulse in my own throat, or was it my throat? I had a moment in which I could taste three pulses in my body, and none of them were mine. One of the reasons I had learned to shield like a son of a bitch was that I didn’t want to end up like Weiskopf and his master, just one mind in two bodies, or three bodies, or four, or… When it had just been Jean-Claude, Richard, and me, we’d had moments of being almost a group mind floating between three bodies. I felt it for the first time with all of them, only Nicky was left out of this level of intimacy, if that was the right word for having someone else’s heart beating in your head.

I felt their emotions like cards fanned out in my hand. I caught bits of thought. Dev seemed better at complete sentences, and just thinking about it let me know that the same people who had trained him to fight had trained him psychically. The gold tigers had been raised to be the perfect instrument of whatever master finally claimed them. That master had been me, though technically according to vampire law, Jean-Claude.

Nicky moved closer to Dev; he felt my energy, I knew he did. “I’ll call her, just be cool, okay?” he said.

“Call her!” The bomber screamed it this time.

I pulled back, but it was like folding clothes in a suitcase. You never quite got them all put back as neatly and completely the second time. I could feel bits of the connection to all the men inside the club.

My phone rang, and Pride had to help me get it out of its pocket. I was having trouble telling my hands from much bigger ones in that other room. Crap, I had to do better than this, and then I realized I didn’t want to close the door completely. If I lost Nathaniel, lost them all, this might be the last touch of them I had. I didn’t want to give it up.

Dev thought in my head. Cut ties, Anita, we can’t function like this.

I did what he asked, but it was Nathaniel I left last, drawing away like I was caressing him from the inside out. I brought the scent of his hair and skin with me, as I spoke into my phone. “Nicky.”

“He wants you inside.”

A spurt of fear from Nathaniel broke through the newly raised shields. He was afraid, and I felt a thought in his head that he would set it off before I got there, because he thought the bomber meant to blow him, me, and Dev up; two animals to call and me at the same time upped the chances of my really dying.

“Nathaniel is thinking about blowing the bomb before I get there. He’s convinced the bomber is trying to kill me with my two cats, so I’ll die for sure.”

“Probably true,” Nicky said in a very matter-of-fact voice. I could almost picture the smile on his face: pleasant, unreadable.

I thought at Nathaniel, thought hard, Don’t you dare!

The bomber screamed, “What is that? If you shift, you die!”

“The energy in here just spiked. We’re all nervous enough that our human friend here felt it.” It was his way of warning me off.

The bomber was more sensitive than I’d hoped. Damn it!

“Where are you?” Nicky asked.

“Just down the road,” I said.

“Traffic sucks, huh?”

“You don’t want me to come inside,” I said.

“No.”

“You think he’ll blow it as soon as I step inside?”

“I think so.”

“Crap.”

“Yes.”

“Tell him I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Not sure that’s a good idea.”

The bomber started screaming, “Tell her she has ten minutes, that’s it, that’s it!”

“Hear that?” Nicky asked.

“I heard. Tell him thirty,” I said.

“I’ll try.” He hung up.

“Tell us what’s happening,” Hill said.

I told them where everyone was, and that the bomber’s nerve seemed to be failing him. “He’s starting to panic.”

“If it weren’t a dead man’s switch that’d be good news,” Hill said.

“How quick are Nathaniel’s reaction times?” Zerbrowski asked.

I glanced at him. “Fast.”

“Faster than you were in the warehouse when you stopped Billings from hitting the kid vampire?”

I thought about that. “Yes, he’s faster. They all are.”

“Everyone in there?” Zerbrowski asked.

I nodded.

Claudia said, “Anita’s fast, but she’s not as fast we are.”

“She’s still human,” Pride said.

“What are you thinking?” I asked Zerbrowski.

“I think your boyfriend is right. I think this guy will blow you and them up as soon as he thinks you’re close enough to die with him.”

“Not helpful,” I said.

“Hear me out. There was a group of men playing ball in Israel when a guy in a bomber vest with a dead man’s switch came in; they jumped him, held his hand pressed on the button until the police got there and shot the bomber.”

“He’s human,” Dolph said, “you can’t just kill him.”

“He’s a human involved with the group that killed two cops. Anita’s warrant of execution allows her to kill anyone who is involved in the crime that the warrant pertains to.”

“That’s when you’re on an active hunt,” Dolph said. “It was never intended to allow a police officer to shoot a human being in cold blood.”

“If it was your wife with an arm around her neck and a bomb pressed to her back, would you be shooting in cold blood?” I asked.

“No,” he said, finally.

“Wait,” Hill said, “you’re saying we let Anita go in there, and hope that all of them figure out that they’re supposed to jump the bastard and hold him until we get in and kill him?”

“Yeah,” Zerbrowski said.

“Nathaniel isn’t trained in hand-to-hand combat,” Claudia said.

“Dev and Nicky are,” Pride said, “and Sin isn’t bad for a beginner, and he’s wicked fast.”

My pulse was in my throat again, but my skin was cold in the sunshine. “I can ‘tell’ three of them what we plan to do.” I made air quotes for the tell part.

“Nicky’s good,” Claudia said, “he’ll move when they do.”

“You mean when I do,” I said.