Read Kiss the Dead for Free Online

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