Read Anita Blake 20 - Hit List for Free Online

we were a little more trigger happy.
    After the warrant system some hunters hesitated, worried about what would happen if they couldn’t defend it in court and ended up on murder charges. Remember, back then we had no badges. Some of us went to jail for murder even though the vampire killed was confirmed as a serial killer. It made some of us hesitate to kill. Hesitation will get you killed.”
    “We have badges now.”
    “Yeah, and officially we’re cops, but make no mistake, Karlton, we are still executioners. A policeman’s main job is to prevent harm to others. Most of them go twenty years and never draw their gun in the line of duty, not matter what you see on television.” I laid shirts on top of bras and underwear in the drawer. “Our main job is to kill people; that’s not what cops do.”
    “We don’t kill people, we kill monsters.”
    I smiled, but knew it was bitter. “Pretty to think so.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “How old are you?”
    “Twenty-four, why?”
    I smiled, and it still didn’t feel happy. “When I was your age I believed they were monsters, too.”
    “How old are you?”
    “Thirty.”
    “You’re only six years older than me, Blake.”
    “Cop years are like dog years, Karlton, multiply by seven.”
    “What?” she asked.
    “I may only be six years older than you chronologically, but in dog years I’m forty-two years older.”
    She frowned at me. “What the hell is that even supposed to mean?”
    “It means, how many vampires have you executed?”
    “Four,” she said, and it was a little defensive.
    “Hunted them down and killed them, or morgue stakings where they’re chained to a gurney and unconscious while you do it?”
    “Morgue, why?”
    “Talk to me after you’ve killed some of them awake, while they’re begging for their lives.”

    “They beg for their lives? I thought they’d just attack.”
    “Not always; sometimes they’re scared and they beg, just like anybody else.”
    “But they’re vampires, they’re monsters.”
    “According to the law we uphold they’re legal citizens of this country, not monsters.”
    She studied my face. I don’t know what she saw there, or wanted to see, but she finally frowned.
    I think a blank face wasn’t what she’d been hoping to see. “So you really do believe that they’re people.”
    I nodded.
    “You believe they’re people, but you still kill them.”
    I nodded again.
    “If you really believe that, then it would be like me killing Joe Blow down the block. It would be like me putting a stake through a regular person’s heart.”
    “Yeah,” I said.
    She frowned and turned back to unpacking. “I don’t know if I could do my job if I thought of them as people.”
    “It does seem a conflict of interest,” I said. I began debating on where to put the weapons I’d want easy access to, just in case. Knowing that the Harlequin might be planning to try to kidnap or kill me made me more than normally interested in being well armed.
    “Can I say something without you taking it wrong?” she asked, and sat on the edge of her bed.
    I stopped with one gun and two knives laid out on the bed. “Probably not, but say it anyway.”
    She frowned again, putting that little pucker between her eyes. If she didn’t stop frowning so much she’d have lines there before too many years. “I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot with you.”
    I sighed. “What I mean, Karlton, is anytime someone asks me, ‘Can I say something without you taking it wrong?’ it usually means it will be something insulting. So say it, but I can’t guarantee how I’ll take it.”
    She thought about that a minute, serious as a small child on the first day of school. “Okay, I guess that was a stupid thing to say, but I want to know the answer enough to be stupid.”
    “Then ask,” I said.
    “We had some of the other vampire executioners come and give lectures. One of them said you’d been one of the best before you got seduced