KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER TWO
Dec. 6th, 2013 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_rat- Do you know what I'm really looking forward to? When I'm done with Kiss the Dead, I'm deleting all the AB off my Kindle. It will be such a soothing cleanse. I don't care if eventually I want to go back and check something, I just hate having that tripe on my Kindle at all. The only thing worse would be having it on my bookshelf, which is why I refuse to buy "Blood Noir" even though it's at the dollar store and thus only a buck. I guess I *might* give in and get it to spork if it's still there the next time I go, then immediately donate it to Goodwill after.
- So, something has been bothering me ever since Yiyu and Ethan joined the harem...the idea with Anita and her Therian Servants is that she 'needs' a Therian Servant of each species that corresponds with her own inner beast. A wolf for her wolf, a lion for her lion, a leopard for her leopard, and a tiger of each color for each of hers. When Anita got Domino, his being half black tiger was stated as sufficient enough for him to be her black tiger to call (since she already had a white tiger to call in Crispin). But now Yiyu is her black tiger to call, so what is Domino? And what the hell is Ethan, since Anita already had a tiger of every color in his heritage before she made him hers too?
- A friend and I were talking last night about how silver must be the most expensive, most mined, most super-rare ANYTHING in the ABverse. Think about it: it's one of the few things guaranteed to permanently hurt or successfully kill therians and vamps, and people have known about said therians and vamps since the beginning of history and before, so they've probably been aware of the silver thing for just as long. While there's been no indication that LKH has even ever thought about this, it would be a decent in-universe explanation for why every police unit in the world isn't constantly armed with silver-plated bullets. Or is it that decent? Because as we discussed it further, we both agreed that scientists might have started synthesizing silver since they'd have had motivation to be working on since, well, the beginning of science, and what's more we know so very little about magic and witchcraft in this universe that silver might well be created by alchemy/transmutation (and thus probably enabling any witch who can do that to make a tidy living on this talent alone! At least until those pesky scientists started making it in mass quantities...I would totally have THAT be the setup if I were LKH)
- Blatz has positioned the food dish right in front of her house-box so all she has to do is poke her head out to eat. This has been going on all week and I see no sign of her changing arrangements. She will also keep her vest on for as long as she banana to eat. When the banana goes away, the vest comes off!
KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER TWO
Anita explains to us ignorant plebes about how police can go radio-silent for lots of reasons, though mention of words like "vampires" and "zombies" prior to the silence can get special teams like SWAT called out unless they're already busy with something. She then says some of those special teams like SWAT are currently with US Marshal Larry Kirkland, who is "delivering a warrant of execution on a vampire that had moved into our town with a live warrant from another state" after having killed the last Marshal who'd tried to serve said warrant. She then explains, as if we couldn't figure it out, that the warrant was then electronically transferred to the "next up in rotation, which made it Larry's warrant." She then says that these are no-knock warrants so you don't have to announce yourself before coming to the door, and yammers about she started Larry's training but the FBI had finished it and how "he was all grown-up now, married with a kid" Is he even that much younger than Anita? Oh, wait, cop years are like dog years, right *eyeroll* "and I'd learned to ignore the tight feeling in my gut when he went off on his own into something dangerous." Wow, condescending much? If she'd had a differently-written relationship with Larry, maybe it would have been sweet like LKH is going for, but from what I can recall via Dottie Smith's chapter-by-chapter reviews of the earlier books, she was always just kinda a patronizing ass to him, wasn't she?
And then she says there's also a warrant out on some murderous drug dealers and SWAT is also working on that. Honestly the entire Larry tangent was so uneeded. This entire first page is frankly uneeded, just take us to what YOU are doing and the goddamn action! Oh, no, but she she goes on about how St. Louis is a smaller city so while their SWAT has enough guys for one team they don't get it till they know something bad has happened and up until then it's just RPIT and the officers originally dispatched to the scene. WHY COULDN'T YOU HAVE JUST SAID THIS? Hell, I'll be honest, I wasn't even wondering about SWAT at all, I for one as a reader did not need over a page explaining to me why they weren't coming and what else they were doing. For those in the audience who are regular readers of police fiction, crime drama, etc., is that something that would immediately pop into your head so that's why LKH is trying to explain it, since these books are in theory detective novels at heart? Either way, Anita says she prefers it like this because "too many rules with SWAT." I wish you guys could see the very snarky, judgmental face that I am making.
Zerbrowski and Anita pull up to the lair. There are lights but no sirens. Anita tells us all about how there's lots of noise in movies but in real life it's not always like that. The lair is "huge brick buildings and empty brick courtyard" that was a brewery in the 1800s but had been abandoned for years except I guess it's not abandoned because she says someone had bought it and was trying to sell it as condos and office space but mostly rents it out for photo and video shoots. Maybe she thinks "abandoned" means nobody lives there? Because in that case, your local bustling shopping mall is abandoned too. She thinks how the two cop cars already there look empty and wonders where the cops are and why they weren't answering their radios. THAT IS WHAT YOU CAME TO FIND OUT, ANITA! Detectives Clive Perry and Brody Smith get out of their car. Anita describes them in terms of race (well, Clive is mentioned specifically as African-America, Brody is blond and pale and thus his whiteness is just inferred), hair color, height, build, style of dress, and they're opposite in most regards (short and tall, neat and messy, etc.) and she cites how the "opposites attract" lets them work well together and that Smith is a "supernormal--which sounded better than psychic, or witch." No, it doesn't. It sounds kinda stupid. Also I imagine some vamps/shifters could find it insulting that they're "supernatural" while humans get to be "supernormal".
She then says he's part of "an experimental program that St. Louis was trying in which cops with some psychic ability were trained up so they could use their talents for more than just following their gut." Why is this so new? People have had to fight the supernatural predators for all of history, you'd think they'd have long ago decided to put those of their own number with some supernatural ability of their own to work helping with that. Anita can yammer about how prejudiced the mundanes are all she wants, but oppressed groups have actually seldom been, to my admittedly limited knowledge, blocked from being allowed to put their lives on the line to protect the rest of the population. For instance, weren't African American soldiers allowed to fight in the Army long before they got most other rights? Anyway, she goes on for about half a page about how it turns out LOTS of cops are actually latent psychics and that's what their gut feelings really are, and then tells us that Smith's particular talents are that he can "sense the monsters once they used some sort of ability." Oh, so like if a vampire is hiding out of sight, he could sense it if they started to, say, summon their animals to call to attack the cops, and then point out where the vamp was hiding so the others could take it out before said animals got there? That would be usef---
"When a lycanthropy suspect" someone suspected of having lycanthropy? "started to shapeshift, Smiht would sense it and warn everyone" But...if the therian has already started to shift...wouldn't that be obvious? "He could sense vampires once they went all vampire-wiles on your ass." UM, THAT'S A LITTLE LATE! "He could sense when someone was using certain psychic abilities, like when I searched for the undead." This sounds the most useful of the lot. The other two...don't even seem like they would take a psychic at all. How hard is it to notice someone is CHANGING INTO A FUCKING GIANT PREDATOR?!
And then Anita spends half of the next page infodumping about Zerbrowski. First thing, she tells us how she and he are not officially partners because the Preternatural Branch marshals never have partners (~LONE WOLVES~) but she's worked with him more than any other cop over the years...okay, given how Anita is a raging asshole and Zerbrowski is the comical lech type who hits on her all the time, my theory is this because LITERALLY NO ONE ELSE WILL PUT UP WITH HER and Zerbrowski only does because he just stares at her ass the whole time. Maybe he imagines it's the one doing all the talking and cracks himself up with just how accurate that is and when she asks him what's the matter he just says something about how her booty is not white girl booty and thus jarring to see on such a petite little slim-waisted frame or whatever and she's satisfied/completely buys that's what's on his mind since how could 'Anita is hot' not be on ANY man's mind 24/7? Anyway, she tells us how "We knew each other" uh yes, I presume so, seeing as how you work together? And how she's been invited to his house for dinners with his wife and kids and how she brought "my two wereleopard live-in sweeties" to the last cookout (yeah, remember THAT novelette?) and how "two men who were "monsters" and I was living in sin with both of them" NO ONE THESE DAYS EVER LIVES WITH A SIGNIFICANT OTHER THEY'RE NOT MARRIED TO, HOW EDGY AND DARING AND UBER-MODERN "and he let me bring them to his house with his family and a bunch of other cops and their families" Who I'm sure were then comically jealous strawman haters to you over it, right?
...weren't we at the vampire lair? Kidnapped girl? Cops on radio silence? About to go in? Should be a tense scene getting you amped and building anticipation for what might be inside?
"Zerbrowski and I were friends. We might never confide our deepest darkest secrets in each other" because he's a cop and your secrets include rape and murder "but we were cop-friends. It's like work friends, but you get each other's blood on you, and keep each other alive." LIKE WORK FRIENDS BUT BETTER AND MORE EDGY! "But when I went out with RPIT they did try to pair me with normals." You'd probably go nuts trying to compete with and undermine anyone else who did have supernatural talent, so that's understandable "Zerbrowski had gut instinct, but not enough to score on the test." Which just makes start wondering where the line is drawn, what kind of tests those are, etc. It sounds interesting.
"We checked the two cars, found them empty" like you saw on the last page? "and I just said it" because of course the OTHER COPS are too SQUEAMISH to, right? "We have to assume that the officers are hurt, so I'm invoking." And then she explains to us how 'invoking' means that she's invoking the Preternatural Endangerment Act that is "the loophole in the new, more vampire-friendly laws that allowed Marshals of the Preternatural Branch to use lethal force if they thought human lives were endangered" Aren't human cops already allowed to do that against criminals to begin with? Human criminals included? "If we wanted anyone left alive, we needed to be able to shoot the vampires." This based on empty cars. It's not that I disagree that bad things are afoot, it's just Anita is soooo eager to start killing people and jumps on the most immediate justification she can for it as fast as she can. It's disturbing. She really, really should not be a cop. Not that this is the only reason, just one of many, the one that happens to be rearing its head and showing its ass right now.
I guess Clive Perry thinks so too, because he says that you're not supposed to invoke that till they know for sure someone is hurt or there's a hostage situation...sounds like how real cops do things, to my limited knowledge. "He was all about the rules, our Clive." Yeah, boo rules! Wait, Anita is a law officers...the rules are law...um, yay rules when they say she can shoot people, boo when they say she can't? Zerbrowski defends Anita's decision, saying that "we have to believe the officers are hurt or worse" and then seems to quote, word for word, what that law probably says on paper exactly, which sounds really unnatural, awkward, and lengthy. Anita then smirks to herself about how "Zerbrowski was the highest-raking officer on site, and he was backing me" and so Clive has to bow that because "Clive did what the rule-lovers did, he followed the rules." IS SHE LIKE EIGHT YEARS OLD? JUST CALL HIM A 'TEACHER'S PET' WHY DON'T YOU! "Later he could tell himself he'd tried to prevent the bloodshed." That sounds more like what YOU'LL do, Anita.
Clive nods and tells Zerbrowski that he's in charge. I like to think that's his way of saying that whatever happens is on him now that he's letting Anita off the leash. Zerbrowski says "Sic 'em, Anita" and Anita thinks he's joking but honestly, maybe he's just treating her like the rabid bloodthirsty brute she is. She says to give her a minute and says if they were trying to sneak up on the vamps she couldn't use her necromancy because they might sense the power but they're obviously not cuz they came in marked police cars so she can. She tells us it was an accident when she used it in the interrogation room (LOL NO IT WAS NOT WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE'S FOOLING IT WAS LAST CHAPTER AND SHE *TOLD* US IT WAS ON PURPOSE) but that it's not accidental now. She then brags about how most animators "have to do ritual to raise the dead. They need a circle of power, ointment, ritual tools, a blood sacrifice, and even then, they're lucky to raise one zombie a night" and how she uses a circle too (didn't she used to have the ointment and sacrifices too?) to "keep wandering bad powers out of my zombies" Oh man, remember when that happened in Flirt? It was soooo cool...so of course nothing came of it and they just looked/felt creepy before going back to their graves like Anita told them too. And then she says she only does the blood sacrifices so she can raise even more and better zombies and if she had used as much stuff as those lame other weak animators she could raise a whole damn cemetery but she doesn't tell anyone that because "no one, absolutely no one, should be able to do that--not even me." Oh wow, the "not even me" bit was the cherry on the smug sundae!
And then, finally, after that entire dump on how she's so much better than other animators, which took over a page, she turns on the necromancy, and she does describe it in some good, effective ways that I enjoyed: She says she doesn't so much conjure it as release it, that's it's always there "like a fist in my diaphragm, a fist that I kept clenched tight" so it doesn't get out and now she's unfolding the fingers of that fist and "letting go of the tension that was always there just under my ribs." My only complaint is I wish we heard more of this tension at the times when she's NOT using her necromancy, since she says it's always there and it's clearly not something she can just forget about. "Maybe for some it was magic and that was why they needed all the tools and ointments, but for me it was a psychic ability, and all I had to do was release it." Maybe? Maybe? Shouldn't that be something she knows for sure? I mean, she gets a magazine specifically for animators, wouldn't there be articles on that, debates on which is more effective, etc.?
Then she says it coming out is like a cool breeze but not, you know, a literal breeze. God, LKH will ever-fail at comparing things. And then comparing herself to a pebble being tossed in water except for this and this and this so...yeah. And she can sense stuff better in front of her than behind her, which is interesting. Smith shivers, Perry takes a step back, she tells us how Perry doesn't actually feel anything like Smith does "but I'd learned that his grandmother, like mine, had practiced as a Vaudun priestess, except his had been a bad person and mine hadn't been." Yes, because her faith must SURELY have been tied to how she was a bad person, since, as we have been shown in the past, it is a corrupting black magic and not, you know, a religion like any other. LKH totally does research, you guys! "It had made him skittish around me, but not have a problem with Smith." Because a psychic necromancy ability and the Vaudun religion have WHAT to do with each other, exactly? Oh, right, because Vaudun/Vodun/Voodoo/etc. is just ALL ABOUT ZOMBIES right? Research!
"I searched for the undead." Weren't you doing that before this little anti-Vaudun tangent? And she spends a big fat paragraph about how her power doesn't detect regular dead bodies, just undead, vampires or ghouls or zombies or a place where vampires had been recently and finally she gets a lead and says this way and "once my power found the vampires it was a race" to get to them before the vampires flee or come find them instead. They get their guns out and run, and Anita is still in those stupid stilettos. Maybe she didn't have time to go home and change, sure, but if she had any sense she'd keep better shoes in her locker at the station...but hey, she doesn't have any sense, so there ya go. She blames it on Nathaniel and how "I was going to have to stop let my stripper boyfriend dress me for work." Dress her for work. Does she get a kink out of this, maybe? Does LKH have a fetish for the idea of hot subservient men dressing her for every day, preferably in sexy clothes so she can wear said sexy clothes and have it not be her fault/choice? HOW ELSE CAN THIS LEVEL OF INFANTILISM BE EXPLAINED? Also, I like how she notes he's a stripper. I guess it's supposed to be a sort of "well, of course he put me in sexy shit, he's a STRIPPER you guys, they're all about sex 24/7 no matter what!"
Speaking of those stilettos, she realizes one still has Barney's blood on it and the vampires might smell it."I wondered if they'd think I killed him; I wondered if I cared." You should, stupid, that might cause them to attack you...oh wait, no, you want that, because then you get to kill them, right? There's a scream, and they run faster, and "somehow I knew the "feel" of vampires would be in the same direction as the scream." WOW, REALLY?
"I HATE IT when the bad guys are in the upper stories" She...she really has that in all caps, omfg, hahaha, wtf? So they go up the "narrow, dark, and dank" stairs and there's another scream and she kicks off her stilettos and slips on the steps because of her hose. Again, I like that she's making mistakes clearly meant to be mistakes, but it FAILS because these are NOT mistakes that she SHOULD be making, for reasons I've already explained. So she takes off her hose while Zerbrowski guards her and the other two go past her. If Anita were supposed to be an inept rookie with no clue how to do things and who had not expected to come to work while wearing this, I'd be okay with this. But she's not. She's constantly sold to us as beyond experienced and competent, and she *chose* to come be a cop while dressed like that, regardless of whether Nathaniel picked the outfit or not. She could have just said no and put on something sensible because BEING A COP MEANS NEVER KNOWING WHEN YOU MIGHT GET CALLED INTO THE FIELD AND SHE SURE AS HELL MUST KNOW THAT BY NOW. This goes beyond the character being stupid, it walks right into the writer being stupid for not considering all this about their own damn main character.
She and Zerbrowski go up the stairs. Anita can smell blood, and so she grabs his arm and gets right beside him so the narrow walls almost press them together. I guess she's trying to prompt him into making some pervy remarks to stroke her ego about how hot she is, since he hasn't made any thus far because he's actually a goddamn professional I guess. She indicates to him that she smells something and so he lets her go in front of him "as if I were the big bruiser of a guy, the meat shield." Or maybe he just hopes he'll get lucky and whatever is up there will eat you first. "I was small, but I had become fucking tough thanks to the vampire marks." Yes, you rhapsodized on both these things quite enough in the previous chapter, Anita. On the stairs there is a policeman lying in a pool of blood. "I was glad I didn't know him, and instantly felt bad about thinking it." This is a shockingly human reaction! I'm impressed. I'm not impressed by "His throat was savaged on one side so there was no way to check for a pulse; it was gone, torn out." Um, if the throat is torn out, it's true there's no way to check for a pulse, but that's a non-issue because you OBVIOUSLY DON'T NEED TO AT THAT POINT.
There's no way to get around the blood puddle. Perry and Smith have already left shoe prints in it. Anita has to walk through it in bare feet. I appreciate this disgusting health hazard of a consequence for her failure to come to the job in proper footwear. It doesn't make me forgive said failure, but I do like that she has to pay for it, so thank you LKH, you did that part right. She figures there's at least one more officer in here somewhere, maybe two. She bases this on the cars, but shouldn't they have a record of who went where and been able to tell her the exact number of missing cops before she left? She hears a girl scream and beg "Don't hurt them! Don't hurt anyone else!" and starts running up the stairs. Her low center of gravity, due to being so short, is mentioned. "I climbed up the steps like you'd go up a stone hill" and then "spilled out" into the room at the top. A gunshot goes over her head. She returns fire, hitting the shooter in the chest. Said shooter has a hold on the arm of a girl as she struggles to get away from him. Shooter falls, takes girl with him. Another man launches himself at Anita. There's the sound of another gun and said jumping man falls beside her, a hole in his chest. He's still alive though, and reaches for Anita, who puts a bullet in his head. She can now see Zerbrowski, who shot the vamp in the chest, in the doorway.
"Smith was kneeling behind a huge industrial-sized metal cog that was to one side of the door" with his gun drawn and Perry lying beside him. Zerbrowski ducks back into the doorway when another shot is fired by the bad guys, and Anita turns to see it came from a boy with a gun in his hand "standing there, so straight, so tall, so arrogant" Her phrasing is so weird. He aims at Anita, she shoots him in the chest and he "crumpled around the wound and then fell to the floor." That makes me think he turned into paper and folded up at the wound sight or something. Another teenager runs forward to grab the gun that the first one has dropped, and Anita shoots him too as Smith yells at her that they're just kids. Anita yells to the baddies that if they touch a gun or hurt anyone, they'll die. They respond with "sullen murmurs of yes, yeah, and one fucking murderer." Yeah, Anita definitely has a rep as just that with vampires, because she does routinely illegally murder them. Oh, sure, we're meant to think he's just saying that because she just killed his buddy, but I think there's no way the vamp community is ignorant of her activities. I doubt JC lets them be, he probably waves it in their face as a threat. All he has to do if they get out of line is feed her some bogus reason on why they 'deserve' to die!
They put their hands up. Anita tells them to put said hands on heads. They are confused by this. Zerbwoski tells them "Hands on your heads, just like you see on TV" because I guess LKH thinks people don't understand a basic instruction like this unless they're reminded they've seen it on TV. Anita keeps her gun aimed at them. The first vampire she shot still has a grip on the girl, who is whimpering and trying to get loose "but either his hands had seized up in death or he wasn't quite dead." Meanwhile, the other vamps obey Zerbrowski, Smith comes out, and Perry is moving so he's alive and he must not be badly wounded since Smith isn't attending to him. Anita goes towards the girl, who continues to try to get the vampire's grip off her. "His hand stayed closed. Vampires died weirder than humans, sometimes they seized up, but..." You know, as long as she does go off on info-dumping tangents anyway, I wish she'd done one here, I'd really like to know more about how vampires die and what way it's weird. Anita goes to check to be sure, being very quiet though "he was a vampire; he'd hear my heartbeat." And I guess he did, because he sits up, draws his gun again, and Anita shoots him in the head. The girl screams but can now get away and runs into Anita's arms "trying to get comfort, but I needed to make sure he was well and truly dead, and unarmed, so I pushed her away" If this were someone else, this wouldn't even register to me, but since it's Anita I can't help wondering if her real concern isn't just girl cooties and she'd totally have given some comfort if it'd been a hot dude. Bonus points for "I pushed her too hard, and she fell" which was totally not needed, thanks, LKH.
"I crept up on him" you just shot him, I think he knows you're there, if he's even still alive. She kicks the gun from his hand, he does not react, she shoots him in he head again and in the chest just to be sure. Smith yells at her that she's shot kids. Anita just grabs the dead vamp by his jacket and drags him toward "the other dead bad guys" and her use of 'bad guys' is always annoying, but the childishness of the term juxtaposed with what she just did is particularly chilling here. "Smith followed me, still trying to pick a fight, or something" while she drops the vamp with the other two and "Now I could keep an eye on all of them. If they moved I'd shoot them some more." Since they'd obviously be such a danger, what with being grievously injured and all, especially with bullets you specified earlier were silver and thus have made wounds that they wouldn't be healing from even if they did live. Smith then pushes her shoulder and repeats that she shot kids. Anita glares at him, then gets down and pushes up the lips on one of the boys to show him the fangs. Smith realizes "You knew they were vampires."
...she's a necromancer. And since Smith can sense when people are using psychic abilities, he should have sensed Anita doing that scan using said necromancy. Heck, Zerbrowski specifically commanded her to do just that with his "Sic 'em" comment. So they all know SHE CAN SENSE VAMPIRES so why is it a goddamn shock to Smith that she knew the vampires were vampires? And why is he surprised that they are vampires WHEN IT TOOK MULTIPLE SHOTS TO THE HEAD AND HEART TO KILL THEM?! Smith then chills out, and tells her that "They jumped us at the door. They threw Perry into the wall." And throwing a grown man through the air didn't tip you off that they were supernatural either? Smith, you may have tested positive for psychic ability, but you're clearly lacking when it comes to IQ points, aren't you? It's okay, that happens to all cops around Anita, not your fault. Anita asks how hurt Perry is, Smith says his shoulder/arm might be broken, Anita says "Go see to your partner, Smith." Last I checked she was not his goddamn commanding officer and is in no position to talk to him like she is. But he obeys because she's Anita.
Zerbrowski then whispers to Anita that she once told him that "when your necromancy is on full power you can't always tell vampires from human servant" and Anita is like yeah and he concludes that she didn't actually know they were vampires when she shot them, she's like nope, he asks if she was checking for herself when she showed Smith the fangs, and then Anita is like oh no wait actually I did know they were vampires, he asks how, she says to look at the wounds, he doesn't get it, she says the blood is "too thick. Human blood is a little more watery than that, even heart blood." and Zerbrowski says it's "just fucking creepy that you know that." No, it makes utter sense for her to know that, considering she's got a degree in Preternatural Biology, remember? No, what's bothering me is firstly that she wouldn't have had a chance to look at the blood of the men she shot with how fast this was happening, and secondly she couldn't judge the blood until AFTER she'd shot them, and all her shots were kill shots.
Anita asks Zerbrowski if he had gotten there first, would he have hesitated because he thought they were human teens, he says maybe, she says it's a good thing she was in front then. Anita steps away from him because she wants the conversation to stop, and then says (I think?) that she actually did think they were human teens (even though she referred to them as vampires when she was shooting them) and how she doesn't regret the choice but wonders how she can be all right with that, how it bothers her that it didn't bother her, but she would do it again if the vampires tried to attack. "I was an equal-opportunity executioner; I killed everybody. I let them see that in my face, in my eyes, and watched the fear leak through the toughness on their faces." Them being the vampire prisoners with their hands on their heads. One of the female vampires starts to cry, perhaps expecting to assaulted and raped like Anita did to the weretigers at JC's last little shindig in Bullet. Anita talks about how even the monsters are afraid of her and she's sorry for that (lol you are not, Anita) but if they attacked she'll kill them so "They should have been afraid--of me."
ugh.
- So, something has been bothering me ever since Yiyu and Ethan joined the harem...the idea with Anita and her Therian Servants is that she 'needs' a Therian Servant of each species that corresponds with her own inner beast. A wolf for her wolf, a lion for her lion, a leopard for her leopard, and a tiger of each color for each of hers. When Anita got Domino, his being half black tiger was stated as sufficient enough for him to be her black tiger to call (since she already had a white tiger to call in Crispin). But now Yiyu is her black tiger to call, so what is Domino? And what the hell is Ethan, since Anita already had a tiger of every color in his heritage before she made him hers too?
- A friend and I were talking last night about how silver must be the most expensive, most mined, most super-rare ANYTHING in the ABverse. Think about it: it's one of the few things guaranteed to permanently hurt or successfully kill therians and vamps, and people have known about said therians and vamps since the beginning of history and before, so they've probably been aware of the silver thing for just as long. While there's been no indication that LKH has even ever thought about this, it would be a decent in-universe explanation for why every police unit in the world isn't constantly armed with silver-plated bullets. Or is it that decent? Because as we discussed it further, we both agreed that scientists might have started synthesizing silver since they'd have had motivation to be working on since, well, the beginning of science, and what's more we know so very little about magic and witchcraft in this universe that silver might well be created by alchemy/transmutation (and thus probably enabling any witch who can do that to make a tidy living on this talent alone! At least until those pesky scientists started making it in mass quantities...I would totally have THAT be the setup if I were LKH)
- Blatz has positioned the food dish right in front of her house-box so all she has to do is poke her head out to eat. This has been going on all week and I see no sign of her changing arrangements. She will also keep her vest on for as long as she banana to eat. When the banana goes away, the vest comes off!
KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER TWO
Anita explains to us ignorant plebes about how police can go radio-silent for lots of reasons, though mention of words like "vampires" and "zombies" prior to the silence can get special teams like SWAT called out unless they're already busy with something. She then says some of those special teams like SWAT are currently with US Marshal Larry Kirkland, who is "delivering a warrant of execution on a vampire that had moved into our town with a live warrant from another state" after having killed the last Marshal who'd tried to serve said warrant. She then explains, as if we couldn't figure it out, that the warrant was then electronically transferred to the "next up in rotation, which made it Larry's warrant." She then says that these are no-knock warrants so you don't have to announce yourself before coming to the door, and yammers about she started Larry's training but the FBI had finished it and how "he was all grown-up now, married with a kid" Is he even that much younger than Anita? Oh, wait, cop years are like dog years, right *eyeroll* "and I'd learned to ignore the tight feeling in my gut when he went off on his own into something dangerous." Wow, condescending much? If she'd had a differently-written relationship with Larry, maybe it would have been sweet like LKH is going for, but from what I can recall via Dottie Smith's chapter-by-chapter reviews of the earlier books, she was always just kinda a patronizing ass to him, wasn't she?
And then she says there's also a warrant out on some murderous drug dealers and SWAT is also working on that. Honestly the entire Larry tangent was so uneeded. This entire first page is frankly uneeded, just take us to what YOU are doing and the goddamn action! Oh, no, but she she goes on about how St. Louis is a smaller city so while their SWAT has enough guys for one team they don't get it till they know something bad has happened and up until then it's just RPIT and the officers originally dispatched to the scene. WHY COULDN'T YOU HAVE JUST SAID THIS? Hell, I'll be honest, I wasn't even wondering about SWAT at all, I for one as a reader did not need over a page explaining to me why they weren't coming and what else they were doing. For those in the audience who are regular readers of police fiction, crime drama, etc., is that something that would immediately pop into your head so that's why LKH is trying to explain it, since these books are in theory detective novels at heart? Either way, Anita says she prefers it like this because "too many rules with SWAT." I wish you guys could see the very snarky, judgmental face that I am making.
Zerbrowski and Anita pull up to the lair. There are lights but no sirens. Anita tells us all about how there's lots of noise in movies but in real life it's not always like that. The lair is "huge brick buildings and empty brick courtyard" that was a brewery in the 1800s but had been abandoned for years except I guess it's not abandoned because she says someone had bought it and was trying to sell it as condos and office space but mostly rents it out for photo and video shoots. Maybe she thinks "abandoned" means nobody lives there? Because in that case, your local bustling shopping mall is abandoned too. She thinks how the two cop cars already there look empty and wonders where the cops are and why they weren't answering their radios. THAT IS WHAT YOU CAME TO FIND OUT, ANITA! Detectives Clive Perry and Brody Smith get out of their car. Anita describes them in terms of race (well, Clive is mentioned specifically as African-America, Brody is blond and pale and thus his whiteness is just inferred), hair color, height, build, style of dress, and they're opposite in most regards (short and tall, neat and messy, etc.) and she cites how the "opposites attract" lets them work well together and that Smith is a "supernormal--which sounded better than psychic, or witch." No, it doesn't. It sounds kinda stupid. Also I imagine some vamps/shifters could find it insulting that they're "supernatural" while humans get to be "supernormal".
She then says he's part of "an experimental program that St. Louis was trying in which cops with some psychic ability were trained up so they could use their talents for more than just following their gut." Why is this so new? People have had to fight the supernatural predators for all of history, you'd think they'd have long ago decided to put those of their own number with some supernatural ability of their own to work helping with that. Anita can yammer about how prejudiced the mundanes are all she wants, but oppressed groups have actually seldom been, to my admittedly limited knowledge, blocked from being allowed to put their lives on the line to protect the rest of the population. For instance, weren't African American soldiers allowed to fight in the Army long before they got most other rights? Anyway, she goes on for about half a page about how it turns out LOTS of cops are actually latent psychics and that's what their gut feelings really are, and then tells us that Smith's particular talents are that he can "sense the monsters once they used some sort of ability." Oh, so like if a vampire is hiding out of sight, he could sense it if they started to, say, summon their animals to call to attack the cops, and then point out where the vamp was hiding so the others could take it out before said animals got there? That would be usef---
"When a lycanthropy suspect" someone suspected of having lycanthropy? "started to shapeshift, Smiht would sense it and warn everyone" But...if the therian has already started to shift...wouldn't that be obvious? "He could sense vampires once they went all vampire-wiles on your ass." UM, THAT'S A LITTLE LATE! "He could sense when someone was using certain psychic abilities, like when I searched for the undead." This sounds the most useful of the lot. The other two...don't even seem like they would take a psychic at all. How hard is it to notice someone is CHANGING INTO A FUCKING GIANT PREDATOR?!
And then Anita spends half of the next page infodumping about Zerbrowski. First thing, she tells us how she and he are not officially partners because the Preternatural Branch marshals never have partners (~LONE WOLVES~) but she's worked with him more than any other cop over the years...okay, given how Anita is a raging asshole and Zerbrowski is the comical lech type who hits on her all the time, my theory is this because LITERALLY NO ONE ELSE WILL PUT UP WITH HER and Zerbrowski only does because he just stares at her ass the whole time. Maybe he imagines it's the one doing all the talking and cracks himself up with just how accurate that is and when she asks him what's the matter he just says something about how her booty is not white girl booty and thus jarring to see on such a petite little slim-waisted frame or whatever and she's satisfied/completely buys that's what's on his mind since how could 'Anita is hot' not be on ANY man's mind 24/7? Anyway, she tells us how "We knew each other" uh yes, I presume so, seeing as how you work together? And how she's been invited to his house for dinners with his wife and kids and how she brought "my two wereleopard live-in sweeties" to the last cookout (yeah, remember THAT novelette?) and how "two men who were "monsters" and I was living in sin with both of them" NO ONE THESE DAYS EVER LIVES WITH A SIGNIFICANT OTHER THEY'RE NOT MARRIED TO, HOW EDGY AND DARING AND UBER-MODERN "and he let me bring them to his house with his family and a bunch of other cops and their families" Who I'm sure were then comically jealous strawman haters to you over it, right?
...weren't we at the vampire lair? Kidnapped girl? Cops on radio silence? About to go in? Should be a tense scene getting you amped and building anticipation for what might be inside?
"Zerbrowski and I were friends. We might never confide our deepest darkest secrets in each other" because he's a cop and your secrets include rape and murder "but we were cop-friends. It's like work friends, but you get each other's blood on you, and keep each other alive." LIKE WORK FRIENDS BUT BETTER AND MORE EDGY! "But when I went out with RPIT they did try to pair me with normals." You'd probably go nuts trying to compete with and undermine anyone else who did have supernatural talent, so that's understandable "Zerbrowski had gut instinct, but not enough to score on the test." Which just makes start wondering where the line is drawn, what kind of tests those are, etc. It sounds interesting.
"We checked the two cars, found them empty" like you saw on the last page? "and I just said it" because of course the OTHER COPS are too SQUEAMISH to, right? "We have to assume that the officers are hurt, so I'm invoking." And then she explains to us how 'invoking' means that she's invoking the Preternatural Endangerment Act that is "the loophole in the new, more vampire-friendly laws that allowed Marshals of the Preternatural Branch to use lethal force if they thought human lives were endangered" Aren't human cops already allowed to do that against criminals to begin with? Human criminals included? "If we wanted anyone left alive, we needed to be able to shoot the vampires." This based on empty cars. It's not that I disagree that bad things are afoot, it's just Anita is soooo eager to start killing people and jumps on the most immediate justification she can for it as fast as she can. It's disturbing. She really, really should not be a cop. Not that this is the only reason, just one of many, the one that happens to be rearing its head and showing its ass right now.
I guess Clive Perry thinks so too, because he says that you're not supposed to invoke that till they know for sure someone is hurt or there's a hostage situation...sounds like how real cops do things, to my limited knowledge. "He was all about the rules, our Clive." Yeah, boo rules! Wait, Anita is a law officers...the rules are law...um, yay rules when they say she can shoot people, boo when they say she can't? Zerbrowski defends Anita's decision, saying that "we have to believe the officers are hurt or worse" and then seems to quote, word for word, what that law probably says on paper exactly, which sounds really unnatural, awkward, and lengthy. Anita then smirks to herself about how "Zerbrowski was the highest-raking officer on site, and he was backing me" and so Clive has to bow that because "Clive did what the rule-lovers did, he followed the rules." IS SHE LIKE EIGHT YEARS OLD? JUST CALL HIM A 'TEACHER'S PET' WHY DON'T YOU! "Later he could tell himself he'd tried to prevent the bloodshed." That sounds more like what YOU'LL do, Anita.
Clive nods and tells Zerbrowski that he's in charge. I like to think that's his way of saying that whatever happens is on him now that he's letting Anita off the leash. Zerbrowski says "Sic 'em, Anita" and Anita thinks he's joking but honestly, maybe he's just treating her like the rabid bloodthirsty brute she is. She says to give her a minute and says if they were trying to sneak up on the vamps she couldn't use her necromancy because they might sense the power but they're obviously not cuz they came in marked police cars so she can. She tells us it was an accident when she used it in the interrogation room (LOL NO IT WAS NOT WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE'S FOOLING IT WAS LAST CHAPTER AND SHE *TOLD* US IT WAS ON PURPOSE) but that it's not accidental now. She then brags about how most animators "have to do ritual to raise the dead. They need a circle of power, ointment, ritual tools, a blood sacrifice, and even then, they're lucky to raise one zombie a night" and how she uses a circle too (didn't she used to have the ointment and sacrifices too?) to "keep wandering bad powers out of my zombies" Oh man, remember when that happened in Flirt? It was soooo cool...so of course nothing came of it and they just looked/felt creepy before going back to their graves like Anita told them too. And then she says she only does the blood sacrifices so she can raise even more and better zombies and if she had used as much stuff as those lame other weak animators she could raise a whole damn cemetery but she doesn't tell anyone that because "no one, absolutely no one, should be able to do that--not even me." Oh wow, the "not even me" bit was the cherry on the smug sundae!
And then, finally, after that entire dump on how she's so much better than other animators, which took over a page, she turns on the necromancy, and she does describe it in some good, effective ways that I enjoyed: She says she doesn't so much conjure it as release it, that's it's always there "like a fist in my diaphragm, a fist that I kept clenched tight" so it doesn't get out and now she's unfolding the fingers of that fist and "letting go of the tension that was always there just under my ribs." My only complaint is I wish we heard more of this tension at the times when she's NOT using her necromancy, since she says it's always there and it's clearly not something she can just forget about. "Maybe for some it was magic and that was why they needed all the tools and ointments, but for me it was a psychic ability, and all I had to do was release it." Maybe? Maybe? Shouldn't that be something she knows for sure? I mean, she gets a magazine specifically for animators, wouldn't there be articles on that, debates on which is more effective, etc.?
Then she says it coming out is like a cool breeze but not, you know, a literal breeze. God, LKH will ever-fail at comparing things. And then comparing herself to a pebble being tossed in water except for this and this and this so...yeah. And she can sense stuff better in front of her than behind her, which is interesting. Smith shivers, Perry takes a step back, she tells us how Perry doesn't actually feel anything like Smith does "but I'd learned that his grandmother, like mine, had practiced as a Vaudun priestess, except his had been a bad person and mine hadn't been." Yes, because her faith must SURELY have been tied to how she was a bad person, since, as we have been shown in the past, it is a corrupting black magic and not, you know, a religion like any other. LKH totally does research, you guys! "It had made him skittish around me, but not have a problem with Smith." Because a psychic necromancy ability and the Vaudun religion have WHAT to do with each other, exactly? Oh, right, because Vaudun/Vodun/Voodoo/etc. is just ALL ABOUT ZOMBIES right? Research!
"I searched for the undead." Weren't you doing that before this little anti-Vaudun tangent? And she spends a big fat paragraph about how her power doesn't detect regular dead bodies, just undead, vampires or ghouls or zombies or a place where vampires had been recently and finally she gets a lead and says this way and "once my power found the vampires it was a race" to get to them before the vampires flee or come find them instead. They get their guns out and run, and Anita is still in those stupid stilettos. Maybe she didn't have time to go home and change, sure, but if she had any sense she'd keep better shoes in her locker at the station...but hey, she doesn't have any sense, so there ya go. She blames it on Nathaniel and how "I was going to have to stop let my stripper boyfriend dress me for work." Dress her for work. Does she get a kink out of this, maybe? Does LKH have a fetish for the idea of hot subservient men dressing her for every day, preferably in sexy clothes so she can wear said sexy clothes and have it not be her fault/choice? HOW ELSE CAN THIS LEVEL OF INFANTILISM BE EXPLAINED? Also, I like how she notes he's a stripper. I guess it's supposed to be a sort of "well, of course he put me in sexy shit, he's a STRIPPER you guys, they're all about sex 24/7 no matter what!"
Speaking of those stilettos, she realizes one still has Barney's blood on it and the vampires might smell it."I wondered if they'd think I killed him; I wondered if I cared." You should, stupid, that might cause them to attack you...oh wait, no, you want that, because then you get to kill them, right? There's a scream, and they run faster, and "somehow I knew the "feel" of vampires would be in the same direction as the scream." WOW, REALLY?
"I HATE IT when the bad guys are in the upper stories" She...she really has that in all caps, omfg, hahaha, wtf? So they go up the "narrow, dark, and dank" stairs and there's another scream and she kicks off her stilettos and slips on the steps because of her hose. Again, I like that she's making mistakes clearly meant to be mistakes, but it FAILS because these are NOT mistakes that she SHOULD be making, for reasons I've already explained. So she takes off her hose while Zerbrowski guards her and the other two go past her. If Anita were supposed to be an inept rookie with no clue how to do things and who had not expected to come to work while wearing this, I'd be okay with this. But she's not. She's constantly sold to us as beyond experienced and competent, and she *chose* to come be a cop while dressed like that, regardless of whether Nathaniel picked the outfit or not. She could have just said no and put on something sensible because BEING A COP MEANS NEVER KNOWING WHEN YOU MIGHT GET CALLED INTO THE FIELD AND SHE SURE AS HELL MUST KNOW THAT BY NOW. This goes beyond the character being stupid, it walks right into the writer being stupid for not considering all this about their own damn main character.
She and Zerbrowski go up the stairs. Anita can smell blood, and so she grabs his arm and gets right beside him so the narrow walls almost press them together. I guess she's trying to prompt him into making some pervy remarks to stroke her ego about how hot she is, since he hasn't made any thus far because he's actually a goddamn professional I guess. She indicates to him that she smells something and so he lets her go in front of him "as if I were the big bruiser of a guy, the meat shield." Or maybe he just hopes he'll get lucky and whatever is up there will eat you first. "I was small, but I had become fucking tough thanks to the vampire marks." Yes, you rhapsodized on both these things quite enough in the previous chapter, Anita. On the stairs there is a policeman lying in a pool of blood. "I was glad I didn't know him, and instantly felt bad about thinking it." This is a shockingly human reaction! I'm impressed. I'm not impressed by "His throat was savaged on one side so there was no way to check for a pulse; it was gone, torn out." Um, if the throat is torn out, it's true there's no way to check for a pulse, but that's a non-issue because you OBVIOUSLY DON'T NEED TO AT THAT POINT.
There's no way to get around the blood puddle. Perry and Smith have already left shoe prints in it. Anita has to walk through it in bare feet. I appreciate this disgusting health hazard of a consequence for her failure to come to the job in proper footwear. It doesn't make me forgive said failure, but I do like that she has to pay for it, so thank you LKH, you did that part right. She figures there's at least one more officer in here somewhere, maybe two. She bases this on the cars, but shouldn't they have a record of who went where and been able to tell her the exact number of missing cops before she left? She hears a girl scream and beg "Don't hurt them! Don't hurt anyone else!" and starts running up the stairs. Her low center of gravity, due to being so short, is mentioned. "I climbed up the steps like you'd go up a stone hill" and then "spilled out" into the room at the top. A gunshot goes over her head. She returns fire, hitting the shooter in the chest. Said shooter has a hold on the arm of a girl as she struggles to get away from him. Shooter falls, takes girl with him. Another man launches himself at Anita. There's the sound of another gun and said jumping man falls beside her, a hole in his chest. He's still alive though, and reaches for Anita, who puts a bullet in his head. She can now see Zerbrowski, who shot the vamp in the chest, in the doorway.
"Smith was kneeling behind a huge industrial-sized metal cog that was to one side of the door" with his gun drawn and Perry lying beside him. Zerbrowski ducks back into the doorway when another shot is fired by the bad guys, and Anita turns to see it came from a boy with a gun in his hand "standing there, so straight, so tall, so arrogant" Her phrasing is so weird. He aims at Anita, she shoots him in the chest and he "crumpled around the wound and then fell to the floor." That makes me think he turned into paper and folded up at the wound sight or something. Another teenager runs forward to grab the gun that the first one has dropped, and Anita shoots him too as Smith yells at her that they're just kids. Anita yells to the baddies that if they touch a gun or hurt anyone, they'll die. They respond with "sullen murmurs of yes, yeah, and one fucking murderer." Yeah, Anita definitely has a rep as just that with vampires, because she does routinely illegally murder them. Oh, sure, we're meant to think he's just saying that because she just killed his buddy, but I think there's no way the vamp community is ignorant of her activities. I doubt JC lets them be, he probably waves it in their face as a threat. All he has to do if they get out of line is feed her some bogus reason on why they 'deserve' to die!
They put their hands up. Anita tells them to put said hands on heads. They are confused by this. Zerbwoski tells them "Hands on your heads, just like you see on TV" because I guess LKH thinks people don't understand a basic instruction like this unless they're reminded they've seen it on TV. Anita keeps her gun aimed at them. The first vampire she shot still has a grip on the girl, who is whimpering and trying to get loose "but either his hands had seized up in death or he wasn't quite dead." Meanwhile, the other vamps obey Zerbrowski, Smith comes out, and Perry is moving so he's alive and he must not be badly wounded since Smith isn't attending to him. Anita goes towards the girl, who continues to try to get the vampire's grip off her. "His hand stayed closed. Vampires died weirder than humans, sometimes they seized up, but..." You know, as long as she does go off on info-dumping tangents anyway, I wish she'd done one here, I'd really like to know more about how vampires die and what way it's weird. Anita goes to check to be sure, being very quiet though "he was a vampire; he'd hear my heartbeat." And I guess he did, because he sits up, draws his gun again, and Anita shoots him in the head. The girl screams but can now get away and runs into Anita's arms "trying to get comfort, but I needed to make sure he was well and truly dead, and unarmed, so I pushed her away" If this were someone else, this wouldn't even register to me, but since it's Anita I can't help wondering if her real concern isn't just girl cooties and she'd totally have given some comfort if it'd been a hot dude. Bonus points for "I pushed her too hard, and she fell" which was totally not needed, thanks, LKH.
"I crept up on him" you just shot him, I think he knows you're there, if he's even still alive. She kicks the gun from his hand, he does not react, she shoots him in he head again and in the chest just to be sure. Smith yells at her that she's shot kids. Anita just grabs the dead vamp by his jacket and drags him toward "the other dead bad guys" and her use of 'bad guys' is always annoying, but the childishness of the term juxtaposed with what she just did is particularly chilling here. "Smith followed me, still trying to pick a fight, or something" while she drops the vamp with the other two and "Now I could keep an eye on all of them. If they moved I'd shoot them some more." Since they'd obviously be such a danger, what with being grievously injured and all, especially with bullets you specified earlier were silver and thus have made wounds that they wouldn't be healing from even if they did live. Smith then pushes her shoulder and repeats that she shot kids. Anita glares at him, then gets down and pushes up the lips on one of the boys to show him the fangs. Smith realizes "You knew they were vampires."
...she's a necromancer. And since Smith can sense when people are using psychic abilities, he should have sensed Anita doing that scan using said necromancy. Heck, Zerbrowski specifically commanded her to do just that with his "Sic 'em" comment. So they all know SHE CAN SENSE VAMPIRES so why is it a goddamn shock to Smith that she knew the vampires were vampires? And why is he surprised that they are vampires WHEN IT TOOK MULTIPLE SHOTS TO THE HEAD AND HEART TO KILL THEM?! Smith then chills out, and tells her that "They jumped us at the door. They threw Perry into the wall." And throwing a grown man through the air didn't tip you off that they were supernatural either? Smith, you may have tested positive for psychic ability, but you're clearly lacking when it comes to IQ points, aren't you? It's okay, that happens to all cops around Anita, not your fault. Anita asks how hurt Perry is, Smith says his shoulder/arm might be broken, Anita says "Go see to your partner, Smith." Last I checked she was not his goddamn commanding officer and is in no position to talk to him like she is. But he obeys because she's Anita.
Zerbrowski then whispers to Anita that she once told him that "when your necromancy is on full power you can't always tell vampires from human servant" and Anita is like yeah and he concludes that she didn't actually know they were vampires when she shot them, she's like nope, he asks if she was checking for herself when she showed Smith the fangs, and then Anita is like oh no wait actually I did know they were vampires, he asks how, she says to look at the wounds, he doesn't get it, she says the blood is "too thick. Human blood is a little more watery than that, even heart blood." and Zerbrowski says it's "just fucking creepy that you know that." No, it makes utter sense for her to know that, considering she's got a degree in Preternatural Biology, remember? No, what's bothering me is firstly that she wouldn't have had a chance to look at the blood of the men she shot with how fast this was happening, and secondly she couldn't judge the blood until AFTER she'd shot them, and all her shots were kill shots.
Anita asks Zerbrowski if he had gotten there first, would he have hesitated because he thought they were human teens, he says maybe, she says it's a good thing she was in front then. Anita steps away from him because she wants the conversation to stop, and then says (I think?) that she actually did think they were human teens (even though she referred to them as vampires when she was shooting them) and how she doesn't regret the choice but wonders how she can be all right with that, how it bothers her that it didn't bother her, but she would do it again if the vampires tried to attack. "I was an equal-opportunity executioner; I killed everybody. I let them see that in my face, in my eyes, and watched the fear leak through the toughness on their faces." Them being the vampire prisoners with their hands on their heads. One of the female vampires starts to cry, perhaps expecting to assaulted and raped like Anita did to the weretigers at JC's last little shindig in Bullet. Anita talks about how even the monsters are afraid of her and she's sorry for that (lol you are not, Anita) but if they attacked she'll kill them so "They should have been afraid--of me."
ugh.
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Date: 2013-12-07 07:39 pm (UTC)