Kiss the Dead (18 page)

Brice said, “I was just asking Marshal Blake here, and Detective
Zerbrowski, which of you had boyfriends and such. I had a bit of trouble at one of my posts with a beautiful woman who failed to mention she had a fiancé. I don’t poach other men’s girlfriends, or fiancés.”

“Why ask Anita?”

“Well, I wanted a woman’s opinion, because they pay more attention to that sort of thing than men do, and it needed to be a woman that I wasn’t interested in, so there’d be no conflict of interest.”

Arnet looked at him then. “Did she warn you off some of us?”

“She said you were all available, and charming.”

Arnet looked at me. “You didn’t say I was charming, did you?”

“No, but it’s not me that’s standing in front of a handsome, eligible bachelor and getting all pissy at another woman in front of him. That’s all on you, Arnet.”

That seemed to get through to her, because she blinked and looked at Brice as he moved around her and started talking directly to some of the other women. They let him flatter them, and flattered right back. Arnet watched them for a moment as if she couldn’t figure out how to join in, and then Brice turned and looked at her. He smiled and said, “Was wondering if you would do me the honor of being my first date here in St. Louis, Detective Arnet?”

“I’d be happy to,” she said, but her voice didn’t sound happy. I could no longer see her face, but I was betting she didn’t look as gaga for him as the others.

“Let’s get these bad guys and we’ll talk about details.”

She gave him her cell phone number. He took her hand and actually kissed it, and made it all seem charming. The only man who’d ever been able to do that without looking like a fool to me had been Jean-Claude, but he was over six hundred years old, and had come from a time when kissing the hand of a lady was a lot more popular. Most modern men couldn’t pull it off.

“You ladies enjoy your food, and we’ll see you back at the squad room.”

Zerbrowski and I took that as our cue and got up to follow Brice. Arnet caught my arm as I went past her. I fought the urge to push her
hand off me. She whispered, low and harsh, “Stay away from this one, Blake.”

“Happy to,” I said, and kept on walking. She had to either let go, or hold on tighter. She let go. Zerbrowski and Brice were looking back at us, waiting for me to join them. I caught up with Zerbrowski and we followed Brice through the tables to the parking lot.

“What did she say to you?” Zerbrowski asked.

“I’ve been warned off Brice.” I moved toward the Jeep and the men followed me.

“Have I made your problem with Arnet worse?” Brice asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, as I beeped the keys. I took a deep breath of the fresh late-spring air, and let it out slow.

Brice spoke over the roof of the car. “I’m sorry, Blake, I didn’t mean to make it worse.”

I climbed behind the wheel. Zerbrowski was already in the passenger seat, buckled up and ready to go. Brice got in the back. “You have to go on a date with her; that’s punishment enough,” I said, as I started the car.

“How did I start the evening trying to avoid Arnet, and end up having a date with her?”

“Welcome to my life,” I said, “though it’s usually men for me.”

“What do you mean?” Brice asked.

I backed up slowly, waiting for someone behind us to vacate their parking space and not hit us. “Most of the men I’ve dated have been ones I tried not to date. The ones I love the most, I fell in love with kicking and screaming.”

“Really?” Brice said.

“Really,” Zerbrowski and I said together. We looked at each other, and then he grinned. I smiled back. “Zerbrowski said it earlier: I used to hate being in love.”

“Why?” Brice asked.

I finished easing us out past the idiot driver behind us. They couldn’t seem to decide if they were parking or leaving. “Not sure, something about giving up too much control, fear of being hurt, pick something.”

“I like being in love,” Brice said.

“I like being in love with Katie,” Zerbrowski said.

I smiled and eased out into the late-night traffic, which was pretty sporadic in St. Louis. “I like being in love with who I’m in love with now,” I said.

“Too many men to list?” Brice asked.

“No, just can’t honestly list all the men that are living with me on the
I love you
list, so I’d rather not say the names, in case I hurt someone’s feelings.”

“We won’t tell,” Zerbrowski said.

“Neither will I,” I said.

“How did you end up living with men you aren’t in love with?” Brice asked.

“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.

Z
ERBROWSKI’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.

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.

“Yeah, and he hasn’t fed, so he’s not showing up well.”

“You need me to spot him.”

“Yes,” Hill said.

“Spot him how? How can Blake see better than the infrared?” Brice asked.

“Explanations later,” I said to Brice; to Hill I said, “Has he got control of the hostages using vampire mind tricks?”

“Doesn’t seem to; we’re hearing crying and some small screams from the wife and kids. They sound aware and unhappy.”

“Good that they’re not on his side, so they won’t fight us, but shooting him in front of the wife and kids is going to be traumatic. She could lose the baby; the kids could be fucked up.”

“It’s a last resort.”

“Why isn’t he controlling them with his eyes and mind?” Brice said.

Yes, I’d told him to shut up, but that wasn’t the most diplomatic thing to say, so I answered a question as I tightened the last few straps. “It doesn’t work automatically, and extreme emotion can keep you safe
from mind tricks. She probably hates and fears him. He’s a baby vamp; he can’t control the situation.”

“But…”

“Enough.” To Hill I said, “I’m suited up, let’s do it.”

Hill didn’t bother to question; he just trusted that I had everything I needed, and he trusted in something else. He started out at a jog down the street. I paced him easily. We were both carrying between twenty-five and fifty extra pounds of equipment, depending on the kind of operation, the speed at which you needed to move, and dozens of variables. He glanced over at me, smiled, and started to run. That was why they’d sent Hill. They were all in damn good shape, but Hill was in exceptional shape, and he ran, not just for exercise, but for endurance. If I’d been human, just human, female and my size, no matter how good a shape I was in, I probably couldn’t have kept up with him, but I wasn’t human. I was one of the monsters, and my jogging partners were wereanimals. Hill was good, but he was only human. My pulse and heart rates were still even, a bit faster, but not much. We ran down the lighted street together, me having to push my pace only because his legs were inches longer than mine.

Hill led me into the first yard. I just turned with him, following the minute tells his body gave for the movements. It was the same way a lion follows a gazelle on the plains, or the way a fighter knows that the next fist is coming at his head; you see micromovements that tell you what the next big movement will be. The grass was harder footing than the road, but I dug in and kept with him. There was a light in the yard, but the yards beyond were more shadows than light. He vaulted the first fence, one-armed. I used two, and had plenty of breath to say, “Show-off.”

He gave a low, growly laugh. It wasn’t a beast rising, but the testosterone rising. He was male, and he was in an adrenaline rush, and he was finally able to really push his body physically and expend some of that waiting energy. There are things besides lycanthropy and sex that make a man’s voice go lower. He hit the fence on the other side of the yard. We went over it, and we kept going over them. We left the lights
behind and ran, and climbed, in the suburban dark. I trusted that this was the best way in, and that Hill knew any obstacles, and that we could handle any surprises. I trusted that SWAT had cleared all the houses that needed clearing. I trusted that everyone had done their job before I got there, and all I had to do was mine.