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

He understood what it was like to lose people, too.
    Billings turned on him; any target would do. “I want her to do her goddamn job!”
    “She will,” Zerbrowski said, and made a soothing gesture with one hand. “She will, just as soon as we clear out some of the crowd.”
    “No,” Billings said, pointing a finger at the chained vampires. “I want them to see what’s going to happen to their friends. I want them to know what’s coming! I want them to see it! I want them to fucking see what’s coming to each and every damned one of them. No goddamned bloodsuckers can kill cops in St. Louis and not die for it! Not here, not in our town. They are fucking going to die for this, and I want Blake to do her fucking job and show those motherfuckers what they have to look forward to!” He finished the last sentence bent into Zerbrowski’s face, so close that spittle got on his glasses.
    “Come on, Ray, let’s go for a walk.” Zerbrowski touched his arm, tried to get him to move away from the bodies and the vampires, and me.
    Billings, whose first name was apparently Ray, jerked back from the touch and stalked toward the chained and kneeling vampires. They reacted like humans, recoiling, faces showing fear. God, they were all so recently dead that it was like watching human faces.
    One of the uniforms on guard stepped in front of him, a little unsure, but trying. “Lieutenant…”
    Billings pushed him out of the way hard enough that the smaller officer stumbled. His hand went to his baton, but he couldn’t use it on a lieutenant, and with five inches of height and at least fifty pounds of muscle in Billings’s favor, short of harsh physical measures the officer was out of options. Fuck.
    Billings grabbed one of the closest prisoners in his big hands and dragged him to his feet. It was one of the teenage boys, and Billings didn’t believe he was a kid any more than I did. I yelled, “Billings!” If he heard me, he didn’t show it. Zerbrowski yelled, “Ray!” There wasother yelling, but he didn’t seem to hear any of us. His big arm came back, fist cocked, and I was just suddenly there, grabbing his arm. I don’t know who was more startled that I’d managed to get there in time to stop the blow—him, or me. I was fast enough to get there before he hit the prisoner, but I wasn’t fast enough to get in front of the punch, and I didn’t weigh enough to stop him from swinging. I was airborne as I held on to him, moving with the force of his swing the way small children swing on their father’s arms. I threw his balance off, so that he didn’t hit the boy. He let go of the boy, who fell to the floor, unable to catch himself in the chains. Billings turned, with me still dangling from his arm. His other hand grabbed a handful of my hair as if he meant to fling me across the room, and I just reacted. I let myself do what I’d been tempted to do since the fine, red burn of his rage touched me—I ate his anger. I sipped it through the muscled bunch of his arm under my grip, through the twist of his fingers in my hair, through the bulk of his body, so big and solid beside my so much smaller one. I drank down his anger as he breathed heavy and loud, through the pounding of his heart, the pulse and beat of his blood, and as I swallowed the thick, red fire of his rage, I smelled his skin so close: sweat, and the scent of his fear, which was what lay under all that anger. Beyond that I smelled his blood beating just under the bitter sweetness of his anger, so that Billings was like a piece of cupcake with dark bittersweet chocolate icing that could be licked away, to the warm, moist cake, and then the hot, liquid center where the sweetest, thickest chocolate lay waiting like some hidden treasure that would make the anger even tastier. All I had to do was bite through that sweet, slightly salty skin of his wrist that was just above my mouth, that beating pulse so close to my hands, where they encircled his arm.
    His