Kiss the Dead by Laurell K. Hamilton Read Free Book Online

asking for them to realize they had nothing to lose, and that now was the best chance they had to fight their way free, so I was waiting. Not everyone seemed to understand why I was waiting.
    Lieutenant Billings was taller than me, but then in my combat/hiking boots, so was everyone in the room, except for some of the vampires. I was just glad I had the boots with my vampire kit in the car. They didn’t exactly match the skirt suit, but I was still happy not to be barefoot. Billings seemed to think his being six feet and built like a hard, muscular square would impress me, because he was looming over me now, snarling into my face. “I want you to do your job, Marshal Blake!”
    “I did my job, Lieutenant,” and I motioned at the piled bodies on the ground beside us.
    “No, you did part of your job, Blake.” He was so close to me that his upper body was actually curving over and down above me. Most people would have been totally intimidated by a guy this big up in their face like this; me, not so much. I spent too much time with vampires and wereanimals snarling up in my face. A human, no matter how angry, just didn’t have the same impact. Also, there was a part of me that was attracted to the anger, the way a wine enthusiast could be attracted to a fine bottle of wine. I could taste his rage on the roof of my mouth, like I’d already drunk a bit of it, and all I had to do was move my tongue and I’d be able to swallow it down. I’d acquired the ability to feed on the energy of anger; it was a type of energy vampirism, but the laws hadn’t caught up to it, so it wouldn’t have been illegal to drink down allthat rage, but if any of the supernormal cops in the room had sensed what I was doing, it might have raised questions. And Billings would certainly have noticed that his emotions had been messed with. I behaved myself, but my fascination with anger helped me keep my own temper, and not mind his so much.
    My voice was calm, almost matter-of-fact, as I spoke into his reddening face. I gave him back peaceful, because I didn’t want to feed into his rage, and I didn’t want to be any more tempted to feed on his anger than I already was. Both the dead officers had been his men. He had a right to his anger, and I knew that as long as he was raving at me he could push back the grief. People will do a lot to keep that first rush of true, stomach-churning grief at bay, because once you feel it, it’s like it never really leaves, not until the process is complete. There are five stages to grief. Denial is the first stage. When you’ve seen the bodies dead at your feet, it’s hard not to skip that one, but you don’t always go to the next step in order. Grief isn’t a neat series of stages. You can jump around in the stages, you can get stuck at one point or the other, and you even get to revisit stages you’ve already finished. Grief isn’t a neat, orderly kind of thing. It’s messy, and it sucks. Billings wanted to yell at someone, and I was just convenient; it was nothing personal, I knew that. I stood in the face of his yelling and let it flow over me, through me. I didn’t buy into it, I truly didn’t take it personally. I’d had too many people scream in my face over the years with their loved ones dead on the ground. People wanted revenge, they thought it would make them feel better; sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t.
    “I’ll finish the job, Billings, but we need to clear out the prisoners first.”
    “I heard you’d gone soft; guess it’s true.”
    I raised an eyebrow at him.
    Zerbrowski left the uniforms that he’d been giving instructions to, so they could guard the vampires. He was the ranking RPIT officer on site. He called out, almost cheerfully, “Billings, Anita killed the three vampires while they were shooting at us. I got a piece of one, but it washer shots that were the kills for all three. How much harder do you want her to be?” His face was as open and friendly as his tone.