KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER THREE

[a_sporking_rat]

KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER THREE

Perry is taken away by an ambulance, and as for the other officer that went missing, they found him dead with a bunch of vamp bites on him. "They'd take bite impressions of the surviving vampires, and if their bite marks matched the wounds it was an automatic death sentence" which will be done at the morgue with the vampires 'dead' for the day and chained down. Anita "wondered if they understood that they were good as dead; I doubted it, or they wouldn't have given up. They'd have fought, right? I mean, if you're dying anyway, wouldn't you go out fighting?" Some people wouldn't. It really depends on the person. Normally I'd make fun of Anita not being able to see things from the perspective of others or imagine how they could do anything she wouldn't, but for some reason this 'works' for her, in my opinion, and isn't to an irritating/unrealistic degree. Either way though, she's wrong on one big thing: They're not as good as dead. She said they'd be killed *if* their bite marks matched those on the bodies. That might not be the case. Maybe the ones who bit up the dead officer are the ones Anita already killed.

Once more police get there, Anita goes to a spare room and...changes into her vampire hunting gear. Even though the vampires are already caught and imprisoned. Uhhh...? She then gives us a very long, very convoluted explanation as to why she is doing this, and honestly it's really hard for me to decipher, but this is what I got...she has to change in order to keep the Preternatural Endangerment Act in effect. Even though I don't see why it needs to be in effect still because they've been caught and apprehended and no one is in danger? Anyway, the reason for this is because another preternatural branch marshal was put on trial for murder because he invoked the act but then didn't put on his full gear when he had the chance, and the lawyers argued that this proved he didn't really believe that the situation had merited a warrant of execution. This takes her around two pages to tell us because she spends a lot of time derailing about how the people who make laws are poopheads that don't know anything about the real world and their stupid laws that are supposed to help people just get them killed instead.

Okay, but...anyone who was with you could point out that you didn't change when you invoked the PEA, you're only changed now that the action is all over and the vampires are behind bars, so that same argument could still be used against you? I give up on this making sense. Oh, and speaking of how she didn't change...she now tells us that because of this "I always had a change of clothes with me--pants, T-shirt, jogging shoes, underwear, and bra" plus coveralls. SO HOW COME YOU DIDN'T GET INTO THOSE BEFORE YOU LEFT?! And no, I do not buy the "no time" argument, it would take less than five minutes to shimmy out of her original outfit and into the change, and five fucking minutes is well worth avoiding all the things that could go wrong due to being a in a miniskirt and stiletto heels. Not to mention, as she points out, getting put on trial! She also puts on a protective vest and spends more than half a page listing and describing all the various weapons she's strapping on to herself too....now that, may I remind you, THE VAMPIRES ARE CAPTURED. She even "warned our prisoners that I was going to change into my full vampire hunting gear" Oh my god, I cannot even imagine the wtf expressions the vampires must have exchanged in their prison cell when she said this to them. She then complains about stupid laws and the stupid people who make them a little more.

She tells us about the reinforced transport van used to transport preternatural criminals that was used to bring them here, but how they (there are fifteen) are still in regular cuffs and shackles like the ones Barney busted through easily. She mentions that taking the heads and hearts of the vampires she killed while the others watch is probably a bad idea and might make them decide to freak out and fight "so I was waiting." Brilliant observation, Anita, very sensitive and sensible of you. I can see why you're employed on a job like this. Most people would never consider that doing such a thing with an audience might be a faux pas in any way! And then we are introduced to a Lieutenant Billings who is taller than me but "so was everyone else in the room, except for some of the vampires" and by the way she is now in combat/hiking boots that she all along "with my vampire kit in the car." After mentioning her shoes, she gets back to Billings who "seemed to think his being six feet and built like a hard, muscular square would impress me, because he was looming over me, snarling in my face" about how he wants her to do her job. She points at the dead bodies and says she did do her job. He says she only did part of it.

Anita then goes into a long paragraph that takes up more than half the page about how he's looming and how most people would be intimated but she isn't because she's cool and tough and used to therians and vamps snarling at her and humans aren't ever as scary and "there was a part of me that was attracted to the anger" OH SHIT "the way a wine enthusiast could be attracted to a fine bottle of wine. I could taste his rage on the roof of my mouth" Oh, she means attracted like that. Whew. Then again since sex is always food with her, we could still be in a danger zone. She then tells us about how she feed on anger and how "it was a type of energy vampirism, but the laws hadn't caught up to it yet, so it wouldn't have been illegal to drink down all that rage, but if any of the supernormal cops in the room had sensed what I was doing, it might have raised questions." Yeah, and remember that's how Domino became your bonded slave? You ate his anger? Remember? Of course, Billings doesn't seem to be a hot supernatural, so he'd probably be safe even if you did. So "I behaved myself, but my own fascination with his anger helped me keep my own temper, and not mind his so much." This makes me imagine her staring at him in a very very creepy way, like a cat at a mouse or me at a pastry.

Anita speaks back to Billings...well, first she says she talks back to him, but before she tells us what it is she says, she talks for AN ENTIRE PAGE about how her tone is calm because she doesn't want to feed his rage or be tempted to feed on it, how both the officers that were dead had been his men, how he's raving at her to push back the grief, how people will do stuff like that keep grief at bay because once you really feel it it won't leave until it's run its course, that grief has five stages and the first is denial (WOW, NEVER HEARD THAT BEFORE!), grief sucks, Billings needs to yell at someone and it's nothing personal so she won't take it personal and how she's had so many people scream at her unjustly over the loss of their loved ones and how people want revenge and sometimes that helps and sometimes it doesn't AND THEN FUCKING FINALLY SHE TELLS US JUST WHAT IT WAS SHE SAID SO CALMLY: "I'll finish the job, Billings, but we need to clear out the prisoners first." Billings said he'd heard she gone soft and it must be true. Anita raises an eyebrow at him.

Zerbrowski steps in then, because I think he knows that Anita can yammer internally all she wants about how mature and understanding she is, she's going to get into a pissing match the second anyone questions her hard manly badass killer-ness. Zerbrowski says Anita killed all three of the vampires that were shot. Billings repeats he wants Anita to do her job. Zerbrowski says she will as soon as they clear out the crowd. Billings points at the chained vampires and says that he *wants* them to stay and see what happens to the others so they know what's going to happen to them because "no goddammned bloodsuckers can kill cops in St.Louis and not die for it!" and that he wants Anita to "show these motherfuckers what they have to look forward to!" and is yelling so much he gets spit on Zerbrowski's face.

Zerbrowski tells Billings to go for a walk with him. Billings instead goes towards the vampires. The vampires "reacted like humans, recoiling, showing fear. God, they were all so recently dead that it was like watching human faces." Okay, this jogs my memory...in the early books, like really early, I do recall Anita saying vampire faces and stuff were different from humans. I don't remember specifically how, like maybe they were stiffer and less expressive and Uncanny Valley or something like that? But honestly, pretty much ever since Anita got involved with Jean-Claude, we haven't seen that mentioned, nor have vampire reactions to things been markedly un-human in most ways. Anyway, one of the guards steps in front of him, but Billings pushes him out of the way and grabs one of the vampires, a teen boy, Anita and Zerbrowski yell at him, he's about to hit the kid, Anita grabs his arm and stops him and ends up holding on to his arm and dangling off it "the way small children swing on their father's arms" because she's so itty bitty.

Billings grabs her hair and she starts to eat his anger "through the bulk of his body, so big and solid beside my so much smaller one." I don't know if this is suggestive or just more I'M-SO-TINY crap. "I drank down his anger as he breathed heavy and loud...and as I swallowed the thick, red fire of his rage, I smelled his skin so close" Yeeeeah, this is definitely suggestive. Also she can taste fear under the rage as being the root of the anger. This was the case with Reba the weretiger too, I'm starting to think it's meant to show that the person is bad or weak or in the wrong. And then we get this beauty: "Billings was like a piece of cupcake with dark bittersweet chocolate icing that could be licked away, to the warm moist cake, and the hot, liquid center where the sweetest, thickest chocolate lay waiting like some hidden treasure that would make the anger even tastier. All I had to do was bite through that sweet, slightly salty skin of his wrist that was just above my mouth." Anita, I guarantee you will not get chocolate if you bite him.

Billings lets go of her hair, lowers her to the ground, sets her gently on the floor, his eyes wide and his face confused. He asks here where they are. Anita is "still holding his arm, though now it was more like holding hands" oh really now. Anita tells him they're at the old brewery, and she wonders what else he's forgotten and why, saying this has never happened before to anyone whose anger she ate. "He wrapped his big hand around one of my small ones" and asks why the people nearby are shackled. Anita realizes he doesn't even remember they're vampires, and asks what the last thing he remembers is. His facial expressions show he is having a very hard time with this. Zerbrowski tells him again it's time to go for a walk. Billings nods but doesn't get up. Zerbrowski pulls on his arm, and "Billings moved, but he also kept my hand in his" and asks if Anita can go with them. OH SHIT SHE'S BRAIN-ENSLAVED ANOTHER ONE! I hope she loses her badge and gets tossed in jail for this, I really do. Zerbrowski gives her a look that asks what she did, Anita shrugs and knows that he knows from this that she doesn't know. Billings doesn't want to let go of her hand, but Zerbrowski pulls him away and leads him out of the room, mouthing to Anita that they'll talk later. Good, gooood.

The vampire Billings was about to punch thanks Anita. Anita tells us what he looks like: Blue-grey-leaning-to-grey eyes, short blond hair that's a little shaggy in an odd cut (which she implies is UNUSUAL for teens, lol!) and said shagginess makes Anita think he's trying to make it longer, jean jacket, rock band T-shirt, jeans, jogging shoes, has a hungry-looking thin face because he hasn't fed tonight, skin hasn't lost the human tan he died with. So, the whiteness of AB vampires doesn't come from pallor mortis, then, tans and such actually fade...? She concludes from this he didn't bite the cop (uh, vamps can bite a person without feeding on them?) Anita can feel hunger from the other vampires too, and sees that they are also all recently-dead ones. She then tells us that "Fresh-risen vampires could look like everything from corpse-like to nearly human. The more powerful the vampire that brought you over, the more human you could look, depending on the bloodline your master descended from. Whoever had brought these guys over was powerful, very powerful." I don't know if this countradicts previous canon or not.

She blames their hunger as being why she fed on Billings, that she'd picked up on it without realizing it. Pff, sure, Anita. She also claims this couldn't happen "unless someone connected to Jean-Claude had made them. Was their master being of Jean-Claude's bloodline enough, or had one of our people fully blood-oathed to us done this horrible thing?" And she says it is indeed horrible because six of the vampires are teens or tweens, not even done with puberty, and "the grown-ups weren't much better." Weren't much better? How so? "Some of the women looked like they should be baking cookies for scout meetings and packing for family vacations" and "some of the people were a little out of shape or overweight." So...basically what she's saying is they look like normal people, not conventionally-attractive super-fit supermodels in their 20s-30s. Wow, how horrific. Truly, an atrocity has been committed in bringing such unsightly creatures over! Also, I know that we've only ever seen strikingly attractive vampires (besides Willie and Dead Dave) onscreen, but it's just hilarious to me that she's actually admitting they are the norm to the point where normal-looking vampires are a SHOCK to her. I know that it's the norm for beautiful people to be chosen for Belle Morte's line (even though they're the line who needs good looks least, since they have lust powers anyway) but did the vampires turned by other lines for presumably-functional reasons all just happen to be hotties-by-21st-century standards by coincidence?

Anita then tells us there is a myth that becoming a vampire makes you thin. Yes, I agree, of course this would be a myth, vampire bodies can't ch---"Some low-level vampires stayed the same size they were at death, frozen in whatever shape they'd been forever" Some? Low-level? Do you mean..."Some lines of vampires could change their body after death." Okay, uh...biological manipulation I guess I could see from rotting lines, but I bet this is a Belle Morte power, which would at least explain what I said about them being hotties by modern-day standards despite being turned for their beauty centuries ago. "I'd seen them put on more muscle at the gym." Okay, now it's just dumb. Dumb dumb dumb. And I am pretty sure she made this up just to justify Byron. For those who don't know, Byron is a vampire she banged in a previous book. He was turned at fifteen, but managed to bulk up enough after death to look eighteen. Funny, how they can gain muscle, but she doesn't mention that they might gain, say, fat from drinking blood with too much cholesterol in it.

Now,I don't mind the idea of changing the 'rules' for vampires in your series so long as there's a good purpose to it. After all, vampires have been being changed from story to story, author to author, ever since the first vampire novel and probably since before. I am okay with almost any change as long as you can justify it. There are some changes I like more than others, but there are very few I see as innately 'wrong' and something that vampires 'don't' do or are or say. Take, say, sparkling. I could be okay with the Twilight sparkling, even if it's not a choice I'd make for my own vamps, if it had a purpose. For instance, maybe it's an exoskeleton they evolved to protect themselves from the sun, or it's a side-effect from a glamor they use to lure humans in/hypnotize them/etc. But as far as I know (I have not read the Twilight series) it's just...there. It serves no purpose. It just makes Edward pretty. From what I hear, Meyer had a dream that inspired the series, the vampire in the dream was sparkling, and she decided therefore the vampire in her books must sparkle and no in-universe explanation was needed. Nope, in-universe explanations are always needed for things like that, regardless why you personally want it in there. If it gets explained later that vampires can pump up their muscles because that's what's most conducive to their survival, that it's not just aesthetic but actually lets them be physically stronger even than other vampires and thus give them an edge in fights, something like that, then I can accept it, but if it's just "oh, yeah, vampires can get muscular cuz it's hot and/or can make it seem less creepy when my Mary Sue bangs perma-teens" then this is fucking stupid and sucks.

Anita wonders if these people were turned forcibly, and decides that if they were forced then it is a horrible crime and "I'd cheerfully kill the vampire that made them." The idea that their turnings were not by choice seems to have only entered her mind because none of them are hotties. Because why would anyone want to live forever if they weren't attractive, right? After deciding this "my metaphysics got out of the way of my cop brain and I realized I was being stupid, distracted by the metaphysics" Wait, what? What metaphysics are involved in thinking 'ew, fatties, why would they want to live forever being ugly fatty old people?' I guess she means sensing their hunger? Anita hollers to the other cops that the vampires haven't fed tonight. One cop gives her a cynical look and so Anita immediately notes to us that he's about forty pounds overweight. He says they have to have fed, given what they did to Mulligan, the dead chewed-up cop. Smith says that if Anita says they haven't fed, then she's right. Anita tells Urlrich, our meanie fat cop for this book, that if these ones didn't feed on Mulligan, then the ones who did are still out there. Firstly, may I say again that she's again forgetting they could have just bitten him without feeding. Secondly, any discussion on it is gonna be pointless anyway because those bite impressions are being checked, remember?

A younger cop (she calls him a uniform, just as she did Urlrich, this is getting really annoying) says he doesn't understand. She tells us he has short brown hair, brown eyes, and a "slim, runner's build" from which she concludes he is "the brawn for the brains of his partner" How does she even know Urlrich is his partner? How does slim equal brawny? Admittedly I guess he must not have much brains not to understand what she just said, but that's not his fault, all cops around Anita instantly become blithering morons. Urlrich, however, understands according to Anita, undoes the snap on his gun and puts his hand on it, and asks "The body was still warm; are they still here, Ms. Vampire Expert?" and Anita says she doesn't know because "with this many vampires, my spider-sense is on overload" LOOK AT MAH NERD-CRED GUYS "and they have to have a vampire master powerful enough to possibly hide them" and then thinks to herself said Master is "powerful enough to hide this much activity from Jean-Claude, the Master of St. Louis" and it amuses me that even in her thoughts she calls him by his full title. Also it's almost cute how she thinks just because she didn't know about this means that JC didn't, hahaha.

Anita then tells us that "you gained a lot of power over a piece of real estate as master, and over the vampires into, so at this point the rogue would have to be either fucking powerful, or so good at hiding in plain sight that it was a type of power." Anita, just because YOU can't go anywhere without getting all the attention ever focused on you doesn't mean it's a super-power to be able to avoid it. Also, at this point in any other novel I might think 'oh, it's gonna end up that they were never hiding at all, JC is in on this, it's kinda obvious' but since this is an AB novel that's not gonna be the case...not because LKH would find it obvious but because she's not clever enough to even think of that anymore for her once-Machiavellian asshole of a Master vampire, or any kind of twist at all. Smith then asks if it's a trap, Anita say she doesn't know but that these vamps were left behind to take the blame for the crime and Master vamps "don't waste this much manpower without a good reason." Well, these are all, as Anita pointed out, recent converts, so they're all doubtlessly weaklings and thus a lot more expendable than they'd be otherwise. I'd like to know WHY they were willing to kill cops over that girl still, by the way.

Smith says "maybe they thought we'd believe it and they'd be in the clear" and Anita says that'd only work if they'd killed all the vamps on sight, Urlrich says Anita has a reputation for that, and Anita wonders if that was indeed the plan and if so "my reputation was even worst than I thought. I wasn't sure whether I was sad or happy about it. You're only as tough as your threat is good; apparently my threat totally rocked." If you're using terms like 'totally rocked' I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you're happy. Zerbrowski returns and says they need to talk about Billings, Anita says later. NO, THAT SHOULD NOT WAIT. Someone (it's not clear who) asks if this is "like the serial killer who left his wee little vamps to take the blame for his kills, a few years ago?" I expect this refers to Vittorio. Let me remind you how Anita shot one of these wee little vamps in the face, despite her pleas she was mind-controlled by Vittorio. When Anita later encountered his Therian Servant, who killed cops she had sworn to take vengeance for, and found that he had also been mind-controlled, she let him go after sex with him. When she encountered Vittorio himself, whom she had stated repeatedly was dangerous and a killer and needed to be destroyed, she felt bad for him since he was impotent and "wanted to hold him and make it better" and rubbed her naked tits on him until he came with absolutely no plans to defeat him (which happened by a tigris ex machina). No, I will NEVER let go of this.

Anita says "Maybe, but the laws were different back then; SWAT and I had the green light and had no legal option but to use it. We have options now." Urlrich says to tell that to Mulligan's wife. I would like to add to tell that to the aforementioned vampire she shot in the face even though she, in addition to being mind-controlled by Vittorio, also was hinted to not even be his lackey, just the condo-owner where the people she-posessed-by-Vittorio killed lived. Anita says if they did kill the officers, she'll "happily" kill them, but she'd like to be sure first. The "happily" part is really fucked up. A state-sanctioned executioner is not a person who you want to take happiness in their job. Not feeling bad about it is one thing, taking joy in it is another. She uses the phrase "bullet between the eyes" and Urlrich's young skinny partner says you don't shoot them between the eyes, and Anita tells him "yeah, you do, and one in the heart and then you take the heart and decapitate them." The young cop, Stevens, is shocked by this because IT'S NOT COMMON KNOWLEDGE HOW TO KILL VAMPS EVEN THOUGH YOU FACE THEM IN THE FIELD LIKE TODAY, APPARENTLY, AND HUMANITY HASN'T BEEN COMBATTING THEM THROUGHOUT ALL OF HISTORY AND THEREFORE HAD AMPLE TIME TO LEARN THEIR WEAKNESSES AND THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAYS TO KILL THEM. God, the worldbuilding fail never stops hurting.

Oh, and Anita can't leave it at that. She has to be sure he knows how dark and edgy her job is, because she asks him how he'd like to shoot them in the head "while they were looking at you" and he has a "soft, growing horror in his eyes" as he says that "they look like my grandparents, and kids" and Anita says he's right, that "everyone looked like either a kid, or a grandparent, or a soccer mom." NOOO NOT SOCCER MOMS! She says she's never seen vampires that looked so ordinary, and that "even in the Church of Eternal Life" oh, those plebes who accept even non-hotties, ick "you didn't have this many older people and children." yeah, because turning kids is illegal, but what's wrong with a 40+ person? "No one wanted to be trapped forever in a child's body, or an elderly one." You know, some people are afraid enough of death that I think they'd take being old geezers forever if it meant escaping it. Heck, I think "rich sickly old guy on quest for immortality" has been a plot point in a fair few horror movies and books I've seen/read. And considering that becoming a vampire makes you super-strong, super-fast, super-healing, grants immunity to disease, etc., then potentially you might end up only 'old' on the outside and would otherwise be a spring chicken again save for your appearance. So, yeah, sounds like a sweet deal. Of course, leave it to Anita/LKH not to be able to get past the "but you wouldn't be sexy!" bit. Not to mention she seems to count "elderly" as just not being in your thirties anymore. My dad is in his fifties and fit as hell.

Anita whispers to Zerbrowski what she just told us: She's never seen this many elderly and/or kid vamps in one place ever. He asks what that indicates, she says she doesn't know, Urlrich says that "For a vampire expert, you don't know a hell of a lot" LOLOLOL!

Comments

[subtle-shades.livejournal.com]

1.) I loved that theory!

2.) Which is weird since he was always pretty okay to them in general. I think the meanest thing that he ever did to a vamp prior to now was call JC "Count Chocula" or something to that effect.

4.) Poor Larry.

7.) I could totally see that happening!