KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER ONE, PART ONE
Nov. 29th, 2013 02:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_rat- Dad showed me this local magazine that has ads for all the festivals and what going on in Georgia right now...and there's an ad for "BOOfest". Bet you children of all ages are invited omnom nom! Also, I know this is horrible but recently there was a case where someone stole a baby from a hospital, just dressed up as a nurse and walked out with it....all I could think was "Shit, Boo strikes again!"
- My brother and his family have come to stay with us for Thanksgiving week. At first I thought my brother was just trying to bait me with claiming he didn't like Miss Blatz because of her red eyes, but it turns out he's genuinely freaked out by her. Even his seven year old son says that he's "stupid" and "don't you know she's an albino?" I plan, of course, to exploit this muchly.
- Sam was in her ball and started going towards my brother, then he walked towards her and she FLIPPED OUT and started SPEEDING away from him. We have NEVER seen her haul ass like that before. She's all agitated and upset now. SHE DOESN'T LIKE YOU, DUDE
- Brother's family includes new baby. He doesn't want the rats near the baby but his girlfriend and I have secretly been introducing her to Miss Blatz. SHE SMILED AT MISS BLATZ! TWICE!
KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER ONE, PART ONE
Anita begins by telling us how real police interrogation rooms aren't like on TV, where it's a big room with a big window and how real police footage is in grainy B&W. She then tells us that the interrogation room she's in is painted "pale beige, or maybe it was taupe" and how she doesn't really know the difference between those two colors "either way it was a bland color described by real estate agents as a warm neutral; they lied. It was a cold, impersonal color." LKH, it does not matter *where* you begin a story, even in a police station where Bad Things happen, you do NOT hook the reader on the first page by DESCRIBING THE BEIGE/TAUPE/WARM-BUT-NOT NEUTRAL WALL PAINT! She then tells us how the small table and chair in the room are made of metal so that prisoners (interesting how she says prisoners rather than suspects or even just people) can't scratch words and such into it "but whoever thought that had never seen what a vampire, or a wereanimal, could do to metal" and thus it's covered in scratches.
I hate coming back to this same old rant, but LKH is the one who keeps fucking this up...vampires and therians have been around for all of human history. And they have been OPENLY around. People always knew. There was never any masquerade. They may only be considered citizens with rights recently, but their existence was always a sure thing, and people have been dealing with them *very* harshly throughout history as a threat. And if there is one thing that humans are good as, it's making things to deal with their enemies, which vamps/therians have up until now been regarded as en masse. Everyone should full well know that metal is going to scratch "with just fingernails, superhuman strength, and the boredom of hours of sitting" and the RPIT squad, whose interrogation room I presume this vamp is in given that Dolph and Zerbrowski show up, should most certainly know this. I can only conclude that Anita is just presuming they must not know that supernaturals can fuck up metal, and that actually they do it's just that metal is the best thing they've got on their budget.
Sitting at this table is a vampire who is crying. He has black hair that Anita thinks is dyed, and a widow's peak that she thinks is a haircut rather than natural. He mumbles that Anita hates him because he's a vampire. Anita spends a paragraph telling us that her jacket is in jewel-tone blue (given how she mentioned jewel-tone blue in Shutdown, I wonder if someone recently pointed out to her itexists and looks good on her), she's got her nails painting crimson because she was on a date before, that she's U.S. Marshal Blake, and then counts to ten inside "to keep from yelling at our suspect again. That was what had started the crying; I'd scared him. Jesus, some people don't have enough balls to be undead." Okay, I liked this line. Yes, it equated testicles with emotional fortitude and toughness, but the delivery worked, and it genuinely sounded 'hardboiled' to me. Anita tells "Mr. Wilcox" that she doesn't hate him, and then tells us how her voice is "smooth, even friendly" because dealing with clients at Animators, Inc. every day has given her a "customer voice". Your voice might be good with customers, Anita, but you sure aren't. Everyone remember how in Flirt she was sure to tell two clients YOU CAN'T HAVE SEX WITH THE ZOMBIES even though neither of them had showed any interest in that at all?
She then tells him some of her best friends are vampires and shifters. Hahahah, oh my god, it's the monster version of "I have black/gay/etc. friends!" Not to mention it's not true. She doesn't have friends. She has sex slaves. Wilcox counters that "You hunt and kill us" and Anita notes that "his tears were tinged pink with someone else's blood." A lot of vampire media has them cry blood tears, such as Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and True Blood, and I remember I did a small rant once on why that doesn't work scientifically but I didn't save it, and I can't remember said reasons on why it wouldn't work, alas. She then tells us how he has "perfectly arched black eyebrows" and a "dull blue metal" eyebrow ring above his left eye that she thinks he had put it "to bring out the blue in his eyes, but best they were a watery, pale blue that didn't work with the dyed black hair" and how the ring just emphasizes that and how she figures his real hair color is "white-blond, or maybe pale, nondescript brown." I can understand why Anita is going over the details of his appearance (though omitting that he's white because, like, that's the the NORMAL color why mention it right? /sarcasm) like this in her head in this situation, given that it's in the context of police work. However, note that she seems to be doing it in a way that's not just cataloging his looks, but judging them. I am pretty clearly getting the message that she finds this guy unattractive and is sneering at him for it...because interrogations are totally the place to be looking for the next hottie to put in the harem, right?
She tells him she's a legal vampire executioner and that you have to break the law to get her after you. Which makes it sound just until you remember that vampires can be executed for pretty much any infraction, including petty shoplifting (though of course Anita told us in Skin Trade that she has some pull with higher-ups that let her only have to deal with cases where the vamp is a killer or the like and thus never sully her hands with such mundane criminals and the moral dilemma of killing them). Wilcox is surprised that Anita can look him in the eyes. Anita smiles and mentions her own eyes are dark brown, and tells him that "Mr. Wilcox, Barney, you haven't been dead two years yet. Do you really think your weak-ass vampire mind tricks will work on me?" and Barney whispers that "He said people would be afraid of me" and Anita asks who said and he says Benjamin and she's like Benjamin who and he says "Just Benjamin. The old vampires only have one name." Anita nods, and then gives us a paragraph-long infodump of stuff we already know from previous books about how "Old vampires had one name, like Madonna, or Beyonce" actually, Madonna and Beyonce are the actual first names of those women, not just made-up stage names, so calling them Madonna and Beyonce is just like calling Britney Spears "Britney" for short, and who the hell DOESN'T know that the latter's last name is Knowles? "but what most people didn't know was that they fought duels to see who got to use the name." Because vampires clearly like to fight over petty things, I guess. "A powerful vampire could demand that another lesser vampire give up the use of a name he'd had for centuries, or fight for the right to keep it." And so upstart little Byron-loving runt-vamps keep coming to Ruthven's door with a challenge, and he keeps pounding them into the ground, not so much because he's attached to a name he only won by accident himself but because backing out of a fight with a lesser vamp will probably lose him political face with other vamps/make him look weak to vampires in the cities surrounding his moors, and then *they* might start looking to fuck with him too and he has better things to do than bash skulls in all day...er, night.
But Anita chooses not to say any of this not because it's something Barney Wilcox here already likely knows but because "most people, even us vampire experts, didn't know it." What? Why is that a reason not to tell him that? Are you trying to fake him out into thinking you know less than you really do, maybe? Okay, I could understand that, but then why don't most people, including experts, know it? It's clearly not a big secret, since Barney just told you with no apparent hesitation, and considering we've met more vampires with just one name than not, I'm sure most people who know a few vamps would notice that pattern and be like "hey how comes most of you guys don't have a surname and you're all called hokey shit half the time?" She then tells us this old custom is dying out because modern vampires kept their last names (well, yeah, you just said only the old ones get the one-name deal, so of course modern vamps can't be in on that yet, they were turned recently!) and because the duels over names are now illegal since vampires became legal and "Dueling was looked on the same under the law regardless of whether the participants were alive or undead." She then smugly bets to herself that "this Benjamin wasn't old enough to know the history behind vampires having only one name." I have no idea why she would think this besides that she's just dumb and smug and likes to think that everyone else, even actual vampires, even actual vampires she's never met, can't possibly know more about vampire cultural practices than she does.
Anita asks where she can find Benjamin. Barney says with sullen anger that he thought Anita was so powerful no vampire could resist her. She tells him that "I would need a connection with him, someone who was metaphysically joined with him in some way, so I could follow the psychic connection. Someone like you." She tells us that this is indeed a threat. Barney tells her no one can do that. LOL, DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO? THIS SUE EATS HER OWN CANON FOR BREAKFAST! Anita asks if he's sure about that, he says that as a US Marshal she can't use magic against him, and Anita tells him "It's not magic, Barney. It goes under psychic skills" Okay, after her conflating witches and psychics as basically the same thing in Skin Trade and Flirt, I am really happy to see them go back to being separate things and separate skill sets, as was previously canon in the series "and law enforcement officers are allowed to use psychic abilities in the performance of their duties if they think that is the only way to prevent further loss of life."
Barney frowns, rubs his face, sniffles, Anita passes him some Kleenex, he takes one and uses it and gives her what is "probably his hard look, but as hard looks go, it wasn't." He proclaims that he has rights and that she can't hurt him without an execution warrant. Anita says that he was worried a minute ago that she'd kill him, so he needs to make up his mind if she is a danger to him or not. She accompanies this with gestures that makes her come across as explaining this in the most condescending way possible, which, knowing her, she probably is. Considering how many unlawful kills she has, and that the vampire populace probably knows this, I expect Barney was just reminding her because he knows she is indeed liable to kill him if she forgets she's in a police station...and even then, at this point, I'd not be surprised if she got out of that without so much as a slap on the wrist. He just tells her that he's not sure either way.
Anita says that Benjamin and others took a girl who is only fifteen and therefore can't legally agree to become a vampire. Barney slams his hands on the table and says "We didn't take her." Anita says that it's still a kidnapping since she's a minor whether she went willingly or not, so adding the possibility of turning her makes it kidnapping and attempted murder, and "if we find her too late, it's murder, and I'll get that court order of execution for you and Benjamin, and every other vampire that may have touched her." Now I'm really curious about this girl; why these vampires want to turn her so badly that they'd risk all that? And if they want something else, what is it and why? Because it's surely more than food since, again, this is a big risk they're taking. Barney has a nervous twitch and says he doesn't know where they took her. Anita says to stop lying because as soon as Zebrowski comes in to give her an order of execution "I'll be able to legally blow your head and heart into bloody ribbons." You know, legal or not, cop or not, kidnapping or not, I just really can't get on the side of someone making gruesome death threats to someone who thus far seems about as threatening as a wet noodle, especially since we've not been told WHY she thinks that Barney had anything to do with this.
Barney points out that if he's dead he can't tell her where the girl is, Anita is like AHA SO YOU DO KNOW WHERE SHE IS...nevermind that he could just be scrambling for reasons she might not want to kill him. Of course she's right though, because he looks all scared then, and he squeezes the Kleenex with his hands so much that "his fingers mottled with the pressure" which indicates there's enough blood in him to do that "He'd drunk deep of someone". Like your lovers are surely doing every day in order to get up and walk around and stuff? She's trying to make this sound bad, like he definitely victimized someone, but we all know from the first book that there is an entirely subculture of people who enjoy getting bitten by vampires, and we know vampires can have human partners/lovers/family, and since Barney was a recent turning he probably does, so one of them could be donating to him, and any other wide number of options.
"The door opened. Barney Wilcox, the vampire, made a small yip of fear." WHOA, BARNEY WILCOX IS A VAMPIRE? IT TOTALLY MISSED THAT UP UNTIL NOW! It's Zerbrowski, so we get a rundown on what he looks like: curly salt-and-pepper hair that falls around his half-open color, half-mast tie with a food spot on it, brown slacks and white shirt that looks like he slept in 'em, mention of how his wife Katie can make him look neat but he's still a mess by the time he gets to the squad room, and new tortoiseshell glasses. He holds a piece of paper out to her that she assures us "looked very official." She's just so adolescently caught up in the appearance of importance and authority, it's both alarming and embarrassing. Barney yells that he'll tell them everything, just please not to kill him. Zerbrowski jokingly asks if he's cooperating. Yeah, joke when a man is afraid for his life, so endearing and cute. I was all ready to like you with your perma-messy charm and not having seen you in forever too. Anita thinks that if he grins at her she'll kick him in the shins but "he stayed serious; there was a missing girl."
Anita tells Barney to cooperate because "once I touch that piece of paper I am out of legal options that don't include lethal force." I thought it meant she COULD kill him, not that she HAD to? And then "Barney told us where the secret lair was" but we the reader are NOT told where he said it was. If this were another book I'd figure it's so the reader could be surprised by it when they got there, but considering we were never told where the red tiger lair or Harlequin prison were in Hit List, even when the protagonists were there, I'm not sure. Zerbrowski gets up, goes to the door and says that he will "start the ball". Barney gets up and tries to go towards Zerbrowski but his leg shackles, which are standard with vamps, won't let him go far, though Anita says she's removed his handcuffs to "try to gain his trust, and because I didn't see him as a danger." Barney asks where Zerbrowski is going, Anita says to give the lair location to the other police and that he'd better hope the girl is found before she's turned. Why is Anita so certain they want to turn this girl?
Barney asks if Anita isn't going. Anita says other cops are closer so they'll go. Barney says that "But you're supposed to go. In the movies it'd be you." What? Who says this? I know LKH loves to have Anita bang on, like she herself does on her blog, about how IT'S NOT LIKE IN MOVIES/TV but that is just silly. Does she really think everyone else is dumb enough to think movies = fact? Anita tells him this isn't the movies and she's not the only marshal in the city. DAMN, COULD HAVE FOOLED ME! Barney then whispers "It's supposed to be you" while staring into space "like he was listening to some voice I couldn't hear." Oh god, why do they have to make it so obvious? Why? Anita swears, grabs Barney by the shirt, gets in his face, and demands to know if this is a trap for her. AND THE PLOT IS ALL ABOUT ANITA YET AGAIN! God, I really miss the days when cases could be about somebody else and her only involvement was solving it. One case or two about her would be okay but it's become the only type of case that shows up. It was doubly gross in Hit List when it was made ALL ABOUT HER despite the fact it was other people being killed; I hope that does not repeat here.
Barney's wide eyes blink fast, and Anita tells us how "the unblinking vampire stare took decades to perfect" and then "the pale watery blue bled over his entire eye" And finally I understand what vampire eyes mean! I've been trying to figure it out since Skin Trade! Apparently they look like normal human eyes most of the time, but when they start using their vampire powers, their eyes become solid color of whatever their iris color is! Glad that's cleared up. He hisses at her, snaps his fangs, and "I should have backed off, but I didn't. I was so used to dealing with vampires who wouldn't hurt me that I forgot what it meant that he was a vampire, and I wasn't." Okay, I really, really like this idea here. I love it, in fact. But it doesn't work. Anita may have vampire lovers, but she has also consistently been dealing with dangerous vampires up to and including the recent books: Vittorio in Skin Trade, the MOAD-posessed Council in Bullet, and the Harlequin in Hit List. As for her not being a vampire, she has immunity to vampire psychic abilities, is faster than they are, and has enhanced strength and healing like they do, not to mention is frequently described as being wholly or partly a 'living vampire' herself because of her other abilities...so the idea he's actually a threat to her by virtue of being a vampire while she's not doesn't really fly either.
Yet despite the fact it was established in Bullet that Anita moves faster than therians, who are as a species faster than vampires in Skin Trade, this vampire now moves too fast for Anita to stop him from grabbing her around the waist and lifting her off her feet to slam her down on the table. However, she still has time to complain to us about how back in the day she could have shoved a cross in his face "but it was in the locker with my gun, because a new law had declared it unfair intimidation against preternatural suspects." Well, if I remember right, Anita used to use it for just that in the early books (or was it in the prequel comic book?) so I have to wonder if she might not have been the very reason that law got passed. She also has a "split second" to ponder whether she puts her hands on the table to take the impact, or grab him by the throat. You know, vamps/therians (and Anita) may be super-fast, but time doesn't slow down for them. I don't see how she has the time to have this going through her head consciously, versus just doing something on reflex. She chooses to grab him by the throat as he slams her down on the table.
He "snarled in my face, fangs snapping" and only her grip on his throat keeps him from tearing hers out. "I was more than human-strong, but I was a small woman, and even super-strong, I wasn't as strong as the man pinning me to the table." So is how much super-strength you get from being supernatural dependent on your size and/or original strength, then? Like if two people of different strength levels get turned into vampires, will they still have the same proportional difference in strength even though they both get an upgrade? I've wondered about this for awhile, actually. They grapple a bit and "He didn't know how to fight, didn't understand leverage, he'd never grappled for his life--I had." I think it's a rule that every book or so she has to go up against someone with no fighting experience just so she can talk about how they suck and she rules. She hears the door open but is busy looking at Barney because "I couldn't afford to look away" for reasons unspecified. Then someone grabs Barney from behind, and with a snarl he gets off her to face them instead. "I was left lying on my back on the table, to watch the vampire hitting the men, careless blows with no training behind them, and my knights in uniform went flying." Is it just me or does it sound like she's looking down at the police somewhat for being beaten up by a guy with no formal fighting experience DESPITE THE FACT HE IS SUPER-FAST, SUPER-STRONG, AND JUST NEARLY ATE *HER* SMUG FACE?!
So she gets off the table and brags about her super-cool catlike landing and how "the heels of my Mary Jane-style stilettos didn't even touch floor as I crouched." SHE'S WEARING *WHAT*? Don't get me wrong, they sound cute-sexy in a fetish way, but they are the AMONG THE LAST THINGS A COP SHOULD BE WEARING ON-DUTY! She looks at the legs that are on her eye-level, identifies that shackled pair as belonging to Barney, the others as belonging to police. Damn, she's Sherlock! Two cops "went flying" and one doesn't get back up from having hit the wall, but two stay standing struggling with the vampire, and from the very polished shoes of one she concludes it's Dolph. Does only one guy in the department shine his shoes then? The vampire busts the shackle chain and "the fight was on" and Anita then complains about how she could also have once gotten her gun from her locker and "shot his ass" but now since she doesn't have a warrant of execution ("Zerbrowski and I had lied to him") she can't. Riiiight...the way the law works with vampires is that they can be executed for literally any infraction EXCEPT assaulting police officers, which I'm pretty sure you can shoot *humans* for? Yeah, no, that doesn't add up. Also I love how she complains about not being able to shoot someone. She never even considers, I must note, the idea of shooting the vampire non-lethally. It's either death or nothing, even though the law just forbids her from killing him without a warrant *and* it's canon that vampires feel pain just as much as a human, so she could easily just blow out his knee and he'd probably drop and, as long as the bullets weren't silver, be no worse for the wear after he healed. The cops would be safe and she'd have done nothing illegal. What I get out of this is that Anita doesn't see a gun as something to use to protect herself and others, she sees it as something to kill with, so the thought of taking it out without murdering something just doesn't even occur to her. That's really scary, especially considering LKH talks so much about her own guns, and I get the feeling from this bit with her avatar that LKH might be one of those people who *hopes* that she gets a chance to use her gun rather than hoping she never has to.
Dolph and the vampire fight. I learn that Dolph is six-foot-eight, which I did not know/remember, damn. Anita yells at him not to look in the vamp's eyes (since the head of the RPIT squad wouldn't know anything super-basic like that, right?) and rejoins the fight, while another officer struggles with one of his comrades who has been "mind-fucked by the vampire". More fighting. Anita kicks the vampire in the ribs and goes on about her training in judo and mixed martial arts but "I forgot two things: one, that I was more than human-strong now" you get that with the First Mark, which you've had since book one! "and two, that I was wearing three-inch stilettos." Her stiletto sinks into his sternum up and towards his heart and since "there was a strap on my shoe, and my heel was stuck in his chest" so when he moves away, she gets tugged along with him and she's so short that she has to put her hands on the floor to keep from just dangling off him. Her skirt falls and "the thigh-highs and thing were exposed to the room."
...LKH. Really. Please.
This ridiculous image could be a way of LKH showing the haters that Anita is not flawless, that she can make mistakes, etc. And I do appreciate that Anita is shown slipping up in such an epic way rather than just owning the whole situation while yammering about how incompetent everyone else is. But it doesn't work, and let me tell you why: This is not just a mistake. It is incompetent idiocy. And while Anita is an incompetent idiot, as I will be the first to tell you, LKH tries to portray her as the reverse. Therefore, when Anita makes mistakes, they should be mistakes that a tough, intelligent, competent person could and would believably make. This is not to say that these mistakes would not still be mistakes, would not still be her fault, etc., just that you could see someone fucking up in this particular way even with the training, power, and experience that Anita wields.
This situation, however, is something that is such an absurd level of inept that it would be outrageous even if she were the newbiest newb ever. It's as stupid and unrealistic as if she'd done the Mary Sue Badass PWNing instead, maybe even more so. Add to the fact that it involves flashing a room full of men, and I think this was basically set up in order to make Anita be sexy and hot and attractive to a bunch of guys without her intentionally trying, which would also explain why suddenly she's just a dainty little woman whose super-speed and super-strength are suddenly sub-par compared to what is clearly a very low-level vampire. And that bugs me a lot. If she's going to be stupidly overpowered, at least be consistent about that. Throwing all canon out the window just for her to be helpless and hot really, really makes me sick on a special level.
Oh yeah, and she grabbed his throat, making skin-to-skin contact. Remember in Hit List how much it was hammered on about how touch makes vampire and therian powers that much stronger, how Anita could practically control them with her touch? How come that didn't come up here? It's not even mentioned. Either LKH honestly forgot about it, or, like Anita's other abilities, is just pretending it doesn't exist for the sake of her being Damsel in Distress and getting saved by men she can show her thong to.
Moving on...
"A bright white light began to fill the room." Oh good, did Barney kill her? The vampire hisses and backs away, still taking Anita with him, but then her heel finally starts to slide out of his chest "as someone walked into the room with a holy object blazing white, strangely cool, as if the cold light of stars could be held in your hand." LKH, you should have stopped at the blazing white bit. That was fine. The rest was purple. And stars AREN'T cold. They're about as far in the opposite direction as you can get, actually. "I'd never seen a holy item glow this bright when I didn't have my own glowing along with it." How does she make EVERYTHING into a brag? And the person holding the cross is...Zerbrowski! No, seriously! He's lit up like a super-nova, but it's him, walking towards Barney and saving the goddamn day! Anita tells us that they're only allowed holy objects in the interrogation room if the vampire was under arrest for assault and murder...I guess that's the exception to the new law she mentioned just this chapter about them being considered unfair intimidation? Dolph offers Anita a hand to help her up and she takes it and assures us that Dolph totally doesn't mean it in a sexist way and would have done the same for Zerbrowski. Uh, okay, thanks? When someone helps up a long-time colleague from the floor during what is still a dangerous situation, my immediate thought is not that it must be due to their having a vagina. LKH is like one of those straw-feminists that people accuse of seeing sexism everywhere and whatnot...which is really weird considering how hugely sexist she is. Like, how does she miss her own huge gaping black pit of misogyny and gender essentialism yet get suspicious at things as simple as a literal helping hand?
Zerbrowski drives the vampire back into a far corner, and Anita fills us in on the same rules we learned in the first book: It's the faith that makes the holy object work, be it a cross or a Torah or a pentagram or a verve or even some non-religious item that the person still has some sort of faith in for what it represents (though sadly I've noticed we have, to my memory, only ever seen crosses in action on-screen). She also brings up something I think was touched on in Skin Trade: That a holy object can also work, even for a non-believer in that particular object, if it is blessed by "someone holy enough to make it stick" and tells us how "There were a few priests that I wouldn't let bless my holy water, because I'd had it not glow for me at critical moments." Hey, wait a second though, that doesn't make sense. Even if the priest failed to bless it because of his own lack of faith, shouldn't Anita's own faith still have made it glow? Hell, a priest should be able to give her a bottle of holy water that he didn't even actually bless and, if she really has faith in it, it should still glow because she has faith it will and faith in what it symbolizes. That totally doesn't add up. The idea of being able to reveal the real faith of a holy man in this way and that "The Church actually surveyed the vampire executioners around the country asking what priests had failed that test of faith" is interesting, but it falls through when you consider it should still work for Anita if crosses do. Also...which Church? LKH obviously knows there are multiple denominations just within Christianity alone, considering how she had Anita convert from one to another, but she always speaks as if it's a single monolith.
Barney hides his face, begging Zerbrowski to stop because "It hurts! It hurts!" and Zerbrowski says "I'll put it away after you're cuffed."
...can this book be about him instead?
- My brother and his family have come to stay with us for Thanksgiving week. At first I thought my brother was just trying to bait me with claiming he didn't like Miss Blatz because of her red eyes, but it turns out he's genuinely freaked out by her. Even his seven year old son says that he's "stupid" and "don't you know she's an albino?" I plan, of course, to exploit this muchly.
- Sam was in her ball and started going towards my brother, then he walked towards her and she FLIPPED OUT and started SPEEDING away from him. We have NEVER seen her haul ass like that before. She's all agitated and upset now. SHE DOESN'T LIKE YOU, DUDE
- Brother's family includes new baby. He doesn't want the rats near the baby but his girlfriend and I have secretly been introducing her to Miss Blatz. SHE SMILED AT MISS BLATZ! TWICE!
KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER ONE, PART ONE
Anita begins by telling us how real police interrogation rooms aren't like on TV, where it's a big room with a big window and how real police footage is in grainy B&W. She then tells us that the interrogation room she's in is painted "pale beige, or maybe it was taupe" and how she doesn't really know the difference between those two colors "either way it was a bland color described by real estate agents as a warm neutral; they lied. It was a cold, impersonal color." LKH, it does not matter *where* you begin a story, even in a police station where Bad Things happen, you do NOT hook the reader on the first page by DESCRIBING THE BEIGE/TAUPE/WARM-BUT-NOT NEUTRAL WALL PAINT! She then tells us how the small table and chair in the room are made of metal so that prisoners (interesting how she says prisoners rather than suspects or even just people) can't scratch words and such into it "but whoever thought that had never seen what a vampire, or a wereanimal, could do to metal" and thus it's covered in scratches.
I hate coming back to this same old rant, but LKH is the one who keeps fucking this up...vampires and therians have been around for all of human history. And they have been OPENLY around. People always knew. There was never any masquerade. They may only be considered citizens with rights recently, but their existence was always a sure thing, and people have been dealing with them *very* harshly throughout history as a threat. And if there is one thing that humans are good as, it's making things to deal with their enemies, which vamps/therians have up until now been regarded as en masse. Everyone should full well know that metal is going to scratch "with just fingernails, superhuman strength, and the boredom of hours of sitting" and the RPIT squad, whose interrogation room I presume this vamp is in given that Dolph and Zerbrowski show up, should most certainly know this. I can only conclude that Anita is just presuming they must not know that supernaturals can fuck up metal, and that actually they do it's just that metal is the best thing they've got on their budget.
Sitting at this table is a vampire who is crying. He has black hair that Anita thinks is dyed, and a widow's peak that she thinks is a haircut rather than natural. He mumbles that Anita hates him because he's a vampire. Anita spends a paragraph telling us that her jacket is in jewel-tone blue (given how she mentioned jewel-tone blue in Shutdown, I wonder if someone recently pointed out to her itexists and looks good on her), she's got her nails painting crimson because she was on a date before, that she's U.S. Marshal Blake, and then counts to ten inside "to keep from yelling at our suspect again. That was what had started the crying; I'd scared him. Jesus, some people don't have enough balls to be undead." Okay, I liked this line. Yes, it equated testicles with emotional fortitude and toughness, but the delivery worked, and it genuinely sounded 'hardboiled' to me. Anita tells "Mr. Wilcox" that she doesn't hate him, and then tells us how her voice is "smooth, even friendly" because dealing with clients at Animators, Inc. every day has given her a "customer voice". Your voice might be good with customers, Anita, but you sure aren't. Everyone remember how in Flirt she was sure to tell two clients YOU CAN'T HAVE SEX WITH THE ZOMBIES even though neither of them had showed any interest in that at all?
She then tells him some of her best friends are vampires and shifters. Hahahah, oh my god, it's the monster version of "I have black/gay/etc. friends!" Not to mention it's not true. She doesn't have friends. She has sex slaves. Wilcox counters that "You hunt and kill us" and Anita notes that "his tears were tinged pink with someone else's blood." A lot of vampire media has them cry blood tears, such as Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and True Blood, and I remember I did a small rant once on why that doesn't work scientifically but I didn't save it, and I can't remember said reasons on why it wouldn't work, alas. She then tells us how he has "perfectly arched black eyebrows" and a "dull blue metal" eyebrow ring above his left eye that she thinks he had put it "to bring out the blue in his eyes, but best they were a watery, pale blue that didn't work with the dyed black hair" and how the ring just emphasizes that and how she figures his real hair color is "white-blond, or maybe pale, nondescript brown." I can understand why Anita is going over the details of his appearance (though omitting that he's white because, like, that's the the NORMAL color why mention it right? /sarcasm) like this in her head in this situation, given that it's in the context of police work. However, note that she seems to be doing it in a way that's not just cataloging his looks, but judging them. I am pretty clearly getting the message that she finds this guy unattractive and is sneering at him for it...because interrogations are totally the place to be looking for the next hottie to put in the harem, right?
She tells him she's a legal vampire executioner and that you have to break the law to get her after you. Which makes it sound just until you remember that vampires can be executed for pretty much any infraction, including petty shoplifting (though of course Anita told us in Skin Trade that she has some pull with higher-ups that let her only have to deal with cases where the vamp is a killer or the like and thus never sully her hands with such mundane criminals and the moral dilemma of killing them). Wilcox is surprised that Anita can look him in the eyes. Anita smiles and mentions her own eyes are dark brown, and tells him that "Mr. Wilcox, Barney, you haven't been dead two years yet. Do you really think your weak-ass vampire mind tricks will work on me?" and Barney whispers that "He said people would be afraid of me" and Anita asks who said and he says Benjamin and she's like Benjamin who and he says "Just Benjamin. The old vampires only have one name." Anita nods, and then gives us a paragraph-long infodump of stuff we already know from previous books about how "Old vampires had one name, like Madonna, or Beyonce" actually, Madonna and Beyonce are the actual first names of those women, not just made-up stage names, so calling them Madonna and Beyonce is just like calling Britney Spears "Britney" for short, and who the hell DOESN'T know that the latter's last name is Knowles? "but what most people didn't know was that they fought duels to see who got to use the name." Because vampires clearly like to fight over petty things, I guess. "A powerful vampire could demand that another lesser vampire give up the use of a name he'd had for centuries, or fight for the right to keep it." And so upstart little Byron-loving runt-vamps keep coming to Ruthven's door with a challenge, and he keeps pounding them into the ground, not so much because he's attached to a name he only won by accident himself but because backing out of a fight with a lesser vamp will probably lose him political face with other vamps/make him look weak to vampires in the cities surrounding his moors, and then *they* might start looking to fuck with him too and he has better things to do than bash skulls in all day...er, night.
But Anita chooses not to say any of this not because it's something Barney Wilcox here already likely knows but because "most people, even us vampire experts, didn't know it." What? Why is that a reason not to tell him that? Are you trying to fake him out into thinking you know less than you really do, maybe? Okay, I could understand that, but then why don't most people, including experts, know it? It's clearly not a big secret, since Barney just told you with no apparent hesitation, and considering we've met more vampires with just one name than not, I'm sure most people who know a few vamps would notice that pattern and be like "hey how comes most of you guys don't have a surname and you're all called hokey shit half the time?" She then tells us this old custom is dying out because modern vampires kept their last names (well, yeah, you just said only the old ones get the one-name deal, so of course modern vamps can't be in on that yet, they were turned recently!) and because the duels over names are now illegal since vampires became legal and "Dueling was looked on the same under the law regardless of whether the participants were alive or undead." She then smugly bets to herself that "this Benjamin wasn't old enough to know the history behind vampires having only one name." I have no idea why she would think this besides that she's just dumb and smug and likes to think that everyone else, even actual vampires, even actual vampires she's never met, can't possibly know more about vampire cultural practices than she does.
Anita asks where she can find Benjamin. Barney says with sullen anger that he thought Anita was so powerful no vampire could resist her. She tells him that "I would need a connection with him, someone who was metaphysically joined with him in some way, so I could follow the psychic connection. Someone like you." She tells us that this is indeed a threat. Barney tells her no one can do that. LOL, DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO? THIS SUE EATS HER OWN CANON FOR BREAKFAST! Anita asks if he's sure about that, he says that as a US Marshal she can't use magic against him, and Anita tells him "It's not magic, Barney. It goes under psychic skills" Okay, after her conflating witches and psychics as basically the same thing in Skin Trade and Flirt, I am really happy to see them go back to being separate things and separate skill sets, as was previously canon in the series "and law enforcement officers are allowed to use psychic abilities in the performance of their duties if they think that is the only way to prevent further loss of life."
Barney frowns, rubs his face, sniffles, Anita passes him some Kleenex, he takes one and uses it and gives her what is "probably his hard look, but as hard looks go, it wasn't." He proclaims that he has rights and that she can't hurt him without an execution warrant. Anita says that he was worried a minute ago that she'd kill him, so he needs to make up his mind if she is a danger to him or not. She accompanies this with gestures that makes her come across as explaining this in the most condescending way possible, which, knowing her, she probably is. Considering how many unlawful kills she has, and that the vampire populace probably knows this, I expect Barney was just reminding her because he knows she is indeed liable to kill him if she forgets she's in a police station...and even then, at this point, I'd not be surprised if she got out of that without so much as a slap on the wrist. He just tells her that he's not sure either way.
Anita says that Benjamin and others took a girl who is only fifteen and therefore can't legally agree to become a vampire. Barney slams his hands on the table and says "We didn't take her." Anita says that it's still a kidnapping since she's a minor whether she went willingly or not, so adding the possibility of turning her makes it kidnapping and attempted murder, and "if we find her too late, it's murder, and I'll get that court order of execution for you and Benjamin, and every other vampire that may have touched her." Now I'm really curious about this girl; why these vampires want to turn her so badly that they'd risk all that? And if they want something else, what is it and why? Because it's surely more than food since, again, this is a big risk they're taking. Barney has a nervous twitch and says he doesn't know where they took her. Anita says to stop lying because as soon as Zebrowski comes in to give her an order of execution "I'll be able to legally blow your head and heart into bloody ribbons." You know, legal or not, cop or not, kidnapping or not, I just really can't get on the side of someone making gruesome death threats to someone who thus far seems about as threatening as a wet noodle, especially since we've not been told WHY she thinks that Barney had anything to do with this.
Barney points out that if he's dead he can't tell her where the girl is, Anita is like AHA SO YOU DO KNOW WHERE SHE IS...nevermind that he could just be scrambling for reasons she might not want to kill him. Of course she's right though, because he looks all scared then, and he squeezes the Kleenex with his hands so much that "his fingers mottled with the pressure" which indicates there's enough blood in him to do that "He'd drunk deep of someone". Like your lovers are surely doing every day in order to get up and walk around and stuff? She's trying to make this sound bad, like he definitely victimized someone, but we all know from the first book that there is an entirely subculture of people who enjoy getting bitten by vampires, and we know vampires can have human partners/lovers/family, and since Barney was a recent turning he probably does, so one of them could be donating to him, and any other wide number of options.
"The door opened. Barney Wilcox, the vampire, made a small yip of fear." WHOA, BARNEY WILCOX IS A VAMPIRE? IT TOTALLY MISSED THAT UP UNTIL NOW! It's Zerbrowski, so we get a rundown on what he looks like: curly salt-and-pepper hair that falls around his half-open color, half-mast tie with a food spot on it, brown slacks and white shirt that looks like he slept in 'em, mention of how his wife Katie can make him look neat but he's still a mess by the time he gets to the squad room, and new tortoiseshell glasses. He holds a piece of paper out to her that she assures us "looked very official." She's just so adolescently caught up in the appearance of importance and authority, it's both alarming and embarrassing. Barney yells that he'll tell them everything, just please not to kill him. Zerbrowski jokingly asks if he's cooperating. Yeah, joke when a man is afraid for his life, so endearing and cute. I was all ready to like you with your perma-messy charm and not having seen you in forever too. Anita thinks that if he grins at her she'll kick him in the shins but "he stayed serious; there was a missing girl."
Anita tells Barney to cooperate because "once I touch that piece of paper I am out of legal options that don't include lethal force." I thought it meant she COULD kill him, not that she HAD to? And then "Barney told us where the secret lair was" but we the reader are NOT told where he said it was. If this were another book I'd figure it's so the reader could be surprised by it when they got there, but considering we were never told where the red tiger lair or Harlequin prison were in Hit List, even when the protagonists were there, I'm not sure. Zerbrowski gets up, goes to the door and says that he will "start the ball". Barney gets up and tries to go towards Zerbrowski but his leg shackles, which are standard with vamps, won't let him go far, though Anita says she's removed his handcuffs to "try to gain his trust, and because I didn't see him as a danger." Barney asks where Zerbrowski is going, Anita says to give the lair location to the other police and that he'd better hope the girl is found before she's turned. Why is Anita so certain they want to turn this girl?
Barney asks if Anita isn't going. Anita says other cops are closer so they'll go. Barney says that "But you're supposed to go. In the movies it'd be you." What? Who says this? I know LKH loves to have Anita bang on, like she herself does on her blog, about how IT'S NOT LIKE IN MOVIES/TV but that is just silly. Does she really think everyone else is dumb enough to think movies = fact? Anita tells him this isn't the movies and she's not the only marshal in the city. DAMN, COULD HAVE FOOLED ME! Barney then whispers "It's supposed to be you" while staring into space "like he was listening to some voice I couldn't hear." Oh god, why do they have to make it so obvious? Why? Anita swears, grabs Barney by the shirt, gets in his face, and demands to know if this is a trap for her. AND THE PLOT IS ALL ABOUT ANITA YET AGAIN! God, I really miss the days when cases could be about somebody else and her only involvement was solving it. One case or two about her would be okay but it's become the only type of case that shows up. It was doubly gross in Hit List when it was made ALL ABOUT HER despite the fact it was other people being killed; I hope that does not repeat here.
Barney's wide eyes blink fast, and Anita tells us how "the unblinking vampire stare took decades to perfect" and then "the pale watery blue bled over his entire eye" And finally I understand what vampire eyes mean! I've been trying to figure it out since Skin Trade! Apparently they look like normal human eyes most of the time, but when they start using their vampire powers, their eyes become solid color of whatever their iris color is! Glad that's cleared up. He hisses at her, snaps his fangs, and "I should have backed off, but I didn't. I was so used to dealing with vampires who wouldn't hurt me that I forgot what it meant that he was a vampire, and I wasn't." Okay, I really, really like this idea here. I love it, in fact. But it doesn't work. Anita may have vampire lovers, but she has also consistently been dealing with dangerous vampires up to and including the recent books: Vittorio in Skin Trade, the MOAD-posessed Council in Bullet, and the Harlequin in Hit List. As for her not being a vampire, she has immunity to vampire psychic abilities, is faster than they are, and has enhanced strength and healing like they do, not to mention is frequently described as being wholly or partly a 'living vampire' herself because of her other abilities...so the idea he's actually a threat to her by virtue of being a vampire while she's not doesn't really fly either.
Yet despite the fact it was established in Bullet that Anita moves faster than therians, who are as a species faster than vampires in Skin Trade, this vampire now moves too fast for Anita to stop him from grabbing her around the waist and lifting her off her feet to slam her down on the table. However, she still has time to complain to us about how back in the day she could have shoved a cross in his face "but it was in the locker with my gun, because a new law had declared it unfair intimidation against preternatural suspects." Well, if I remember right, Anita used to use it for just that in the early books (or was it in the prequel comic book?) so I have to wonder if she might not have been the very reason that law got passed. She also has a "split second" to ponder whether she puts her hands on the table to take the impact, or grab him by the throat. You know, vamps/therians (and Anita) may be super-fast, but time doesn't slow down for them. I don't see how she has the time to have this going through her head consciously, versus just doing something on reflex. She chooses to grab him by the throat as he slams her down on the table.
He "snarled in my face, fangs snapping" and only her grip on his throat keeps him from tearing hers out. "I was more than human-strong, but I was a small woman, and even super-strong, I wasn't as strong as the man pinning me to the table." So is how much super-strength you get from being supernatural dependent on your size and/or original strength, then? Like if two people of different strength levels get turned into vampires, will they still have the same proportional difference in strength even though they both get an upgrade? I've wondered about this for awhile, actually. They grapple a bit and "He didn't know how to fight, didn't understand leverage, he'd never grappled for his life--I had." I think it's a rule that every book or so she has to go up against someone with no fighting experience just so she can talk about how they suck and she rules. She hears the door open but is busy looking at Barney because "I couldn't afford to look away" for reasons unspecified. Then someone grabs Barney from behind, and with a snarl he gets off her to face them instead. "I was left lying on my back on the table, to watch the vampire hitting the men, careless blows with no training behind them, and my knights in uniform went flying." Is it just me or does it sound like she's looking down at the police somewhat for being beaten up by a guy with no formal fighting experience DESPITE THE FACT HE IS SUPER-FAST, SUPER-STRONG, AND JUST NEARLY ATE *HER* SMUG FACE?!
So she gets off the table and brags about her super-cool catlike landing and how "the heels of my Mary Jane-style stilettos didn't even touch floor as I crouched." SHE'S WEARING *WHAT*? Don't get me wrong, they sound cute-sexy in a fetish way, but they are the AMONG THE LAST THINGS A COP SHOULD BE WEARING ON-DUTY! She looks at the legs that are on her eye-level, identifies that shackled pair as belonging to Barney, the others as belonging to police. Damn, she's Sherlock! Two cops "went flying" and one doesn't get back up from having hit the wall, but two stay standing struggling with the vampire, and from the very polished shoes of one she concludes it's Dolph. Does only one guy in the department shine his shoes then? The vampire busts the shackle chain and "the fight was on" and Anita then complains about how she could also have once gotten her gun from her locker and "shot his ass" but now since she doesn't have a warrant of execution ("Zerbrowski and I had lied to him") she can't. Riiiight...the way the law works with vampires is that they can be executed for literally any infraction EXCEPT assaulting police officers, which I'm pretty sure you can shoot *humans* for? Yeah, no, that doesn't add up. Also I love how she complains about not being able to shoot someone. She never even considers, I must note, the idea of shooting the vampire non-lethally. It's either death or nothing, even though the law just forbids her from killing him without a warrant *and* it's canon that vampires feel pain just as much as a human, so she could easily just blow out his knee and he'd probably drop and, as long as the bullets weren't silver, be no worse for the wear after he healed. The cops would be safe and she'd have done nothing illegal. What I get out of this is that Anita doesn't see a gun as something to use to protect herself and others, she sees it as something to kill with, so the thought of taking it out without murdering something just doesn't even occur to her. That's really scary, especially considering LKH talks so much about her own guns, and I get the feeling from this bit with her avatar that LKH might be one of those people who *hopes* that she gets a chance to use her gun rather than hoping she never has to.
Dolph and the vampire fight. I learn that Dolph is six-foot-eight, which I did not know/remember, damn. Anita yells at him not to look in the vamp's eyes (since the head of the RPIT squad wouldn't know anything super-basic like that, right?) and rejoins the fight, while another officer struggles with one of his comrades who has been "mind-fucked by the vampire". More fighting. Anita kicks the vampire in the ribs and goes on about her training in judo and mixed martial arts but "I forgot two things: one, that I was more than human-strong now" you get that with the First Mark, which you've had since book one! "and two, that I was wearing three-inch stilettos." Her stiletto sinks into his sternum up and towards his heart and since "there was a strap on my shoe, and my heel was stuck in his chest" so when he moves away, she gets tugged along with him and she's so short that she has to put her hands on the floor to keep from just dangling off him. Her skirt falls and "the thigh-highs and thing were exposed to the room."
...LKH. Really. Please.
This ridiculous image could be a way of LKH showing the haters that Anita is not flawless, that she can make mistakes, etc. And I do appreciate that Anita is shown slipping up in such an epic way rather than just owning the whole situation while yammering about how incompetent everyone else is. But it doesn't work, and let me tell you why: This is not just a mistake. It is incompetent idiocy. And while Anita is an incompetent idiot, as I will be the first to tell you, LKH tries to portray her as the reverse. Therefore, when Anita makes mistakes, they should be mistakes that a tough, intelligent, competent person could and would believably make. This is not to say that these mistakes would not still be mistakes, would not still be her fault, etc., just that you could see someone fucking up in this particular way even with the training, power, and experience that Anita wields.
This situation, however, is something that is such an absurd level of inept that it would be outrageous even if she were the newbiest newb ever. It's as stupid and unrealistic as if she'd done the Mary Sue Badass PWNing instead, maybe even more so. Add to the fact that it involves flashing a room full of men, and I think this was basically set up in order to make Anita be sexy and hot and attractive to a bunch of guys without her intentionally trying, which would also explain why suddenly she's just a dainty little woman whose super-speed and super-strength are suddenly sub-par compared to what is clearly a very low-level vampire. And that bugs me a lot. If she's going to be stupidly overpowered, at least be consistent about that. Throwing all canon out the window just for her to be helpless and hot really, really makes me sick on a special level.
Oh yeah, and she grabbed his throat, making skin-to-skin contact. Remember in Hit List how much it was hammered on about how touch makes vampire and therian powers that much stronger, how Anita could practically control them with her touch? How come that didn't come up here? It's not even mentioned. Either LKH honestly forgot about it, or, like Anita's other abilities, is just pretending it doesn't exist for the sake of her being Damsel in Distress and getting saved by men she can show her thong to.
Moving on...
"A bright white light began to fill the room." Oh good, did Barney kill her? The vampire hisses and backs away, still taking Anita with him, but then her heel finally starts to slide out of his chest "as someone walked into the room with a holy object blazing white, strangely cool, as if the cold light of stars could be held in your hand." LKH, you should have stopped at the blazing white bit. That was fine. The rest was purple. And stars AREN'T cold. They're about as far in the opposite direction as you can get, actually. "I'd never seen a holy item glow this bright when I didn't have my own glowing along with it." How does she make EVERYTHING into a brag? And the person holding the cross is...Zerbrowski! No, seriously! He's lit up like a super-nova, but it's him, walking towards Barney and saving the goddamn day! Anita tells us that they're only allowed holy objects in the interrogation room if the vampire was under arrest for assault and murder...I guess that's the exception to the new law she mentioned just this chapter about them being considered unfair intimidation? Dolph offers Anita a hand to help her up and she takes it and assures us that Dolph totally doesn't mean it in a sexist way and would have done the same for Zerbrowski. Uh, okay, thanks? When someone helps up a long-time colleague from the floor during what is still a dangerous situation, my immediate thought is not that it must be due to their having a vagina. LKH is like one of those straw-feminists that people accuse of seeing sexism everywhere and whatnot...which is really weird considering how hugely sexist she is. Like, how does she miss her own huge gaping black pit of misogyny and gender essentialism yet get suspicious at things as simple as a literal helping hand?
Zerbrowski drives the vampire back into a far corner, and Anita fills us in on the same rules we learned in the first book: It's the faith that makes the holy object work, be it a cross or a Torah or a pentagram or a verve or even some non-religious item that the person still has some sort of faith in for what it represents (though sadly I've noticed we have, to my memory, only ever seen crosses in action on-screen). She also brings up something I think was touched on in Skin Trade: That a holy object can also work, even for a non-believer in that particular object, if it is blessed by "someone holy enough to make it stick" and tells us how "There were a few priests that I wouldn't let bless my holy water, because I'd had it not glow for me at critical moments." Hey, wait a second though, that doesn't make sense. Even if the priest failed to bless it because of his own lack of faith, shouldn't Anita's own faith still have made it glow? Hell, a priest should be able to give her a bottle of holy water that he didn't even actually bless and, if she really has faith in it, it should still glow because she has faith it will and faith in what it symbolizes. That totally doesn't add up. The idea of being able to reveal the real faith of a holy man in this way and that "The Church actually surveyed the vampire executioners around the country asking what priests had failed that test of faith" is interesting, but it falls through when you consider it should still work for Anita if crosses do. Also...which Church? LKH obviously knows there are multiple denominations just within Christianity alone, considering how she had Anita convert from one to another, but she always speaks as if it's a single monolith.
Barney hides his face, begging Zerbrowski to stop because "It hurts! It hurts!" and Zerbrowski says "I'll put it away after you're cuffed."
...can this book be about him instead?
