KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 47
Apr. 14th, 2014 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratSam just started chewing on a banana so I peeled it open for her but she flopped the peel back in place and resumed chewing on that instead Sam why are you so weird
Also her tumor on her right side is starting to seriously resemble a pair of testicles and I probably shouldn't find this amusing as I do. By the way, she's still behaving normally, eating, seems happy and active, etc. She just *looks* like a mess. Dad and I are real proud of her for what a trooper she's being!
KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 47
“I sat on the shallow curb in the weak spring sunlight in my vest and weapons, and had all the SWAT guys, plus Marshal Arlen Brice, Zerbrowski and Dolph, and a lot more of RPIT than I gave a damn, plus my bodyguards, huddling around me to keep everyone else back while I did the psychic dream of every hostage negotiator.” Okay, we already knew who all was there from last chapter, LKH didn’t need to repeat it, she could have just said that her bodyguards huddled around her to keep everyone else back. Speaking of that, while I think she means just the bodyguards were huddled around her, it reads at first as though all of these people are. Nor did she need to mention her vest and weapons, since we can pretty easily assume she would have them in this situation. And finally, the bit about this being the dream of every hostage negotiator just comes off less as witty and more as Anita gloating, but that might be just because I expect that from Anita. Also, why do the bodyguards even need to huddle around her? I think everyone would have the sense to give her space? And why did this require a new chapter?
“I sat on the curb” you just said that at the start of the previous paragraph “and I was small enough that it was like sitting at the bottom of a well of very tall people, but that was okay. I was used to being the smallest kid in school.” SHE REALLY HAS TO MENTION THIS HERE. SHE REALLY HAS TO. DOES LKH GET OFF SEXUALLY TO TALKING ABOUT HOW SHORT ANITA IS BECAUSE THAT IS THE ONLY EXPLANATION I CAN THINK OF FOR WHY HER OBSESSION WITH IT COMES UP EVEN HERE OF ALL SITUATIONS. She “opened the blocks” with Dev first, as suggested by Pride because Dev “was trained as a warrior, a spy, a guard, and an assassin, though he didn’t say all that out loud to the police; he said guard, just guard.” Okay, this doesn’t make sense. The golden tigers were kept by the Harlequin as something that they guarded and kept safe, they would not have used them as warriors, spies, or assassins because that would put them at risk. We know that they were trained in combat to please Dragon-line vampires (and probably also in the event they needed to use self-defense) but that’s not the same as all those other things at all. Since Pride himself did not say any of that and Anita just thinks that’s what he means when he says “guard” (which, I may note, he only became after joining Anita & Co., the Harlequin never trained him as that, because GUARDS ARE AT RISK so it's not something a people being protected would be made to be by the ones protecting them!) I’m going to assume this is all just Anita being stupid enough to assume that “being raised by the Harlequin = doing everything they do!”
"I lowered my shields for Mephistopheles, my Devil." GOD I AM GETTING SO TIRED OF THAT NICKNAME BECAUSE IT RELATES TO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT HIM YOU CANNOT TAKE A WORD LIKE THAT AND JUST TACK IT ON TO SOMEBODY WITH NO MORE SIGNIFICANCE THAN 'HE'S NAMED FOR THE DEVIL IN THE PLAY' SRSLY. Also, she already said she was opening her mind-link to him anyway, that's two repetitions on one page! And she talks about how by the time he'd come into her life (she always uses that phrase with her harem, "come into my life", and I realize it's a really passive phrasing that completely disguises the fact she actively enslaved them all, they didn't just come up to her willingly) she'd gotten good at keeping her other metaphysical linked dudes out psychically, so he'd never been let in "as far as Nathaniel could get, or Micah, or Jean-Claude, or..." Ugh, I really hate the trailing off, I do, it just reminds me all the more of how ridiculous this all has gotten. "Now I tore down all that careful work and reached out to him. I thought about making love to him. The feel of his body in mine, his skin under my hands, his...And just like that, I was in." I guess they don't really have anything between them *but* sex so that's the only way she could envision her connection to him. Makes sense.
She says that most of the time doing this is "like floating above the people I was talking to" but that she can get "closer, much closer" and she does now so that she can see out of Dev's eyes, which is so "disconcerting" that "I drew back." Not gonna make fun of her for that because I'm sure that is a way weird experience, especially if you've never done it before. And I guess she must be just floating above him as a psychic projection again because Dev looks up "where he could "see" me above him" and "gave his version of blank cop face" Along with "uniforms" LKH seems to have learned the term "cop face" and, as with "uniforms", this is a word she is just abusing the hell out of, as she has "apeshit" in previous books and "heteroflexible" in a few (especially this one) as well. Anita thinks "What do you see?" at him and "just like that, I could see what Dev was looking at" which is Sin, Nicky, Nathaniel, and an unfamiliar man who is obviously the bomber. Sin is a little farther toward the stage than everyone else, Nicky is closest to the door and on the other side of Dev, and the unfamiliar man is against the wall on the far side of the stage away from the doors with an arm around Nathaniel's neck. Insert jokes here about Nathaniel probably enjoying it. Dev mentally tells Anita that the bomb is armed but won't let go until the guy takes his hand off the button he's pressing, that pressing down arms it and letting go blows it. I guess that's what a dead man's switch is? Because I actually had no idea what that meant.
"I moved my perception to Sin. He did startle." Awkward phrasing, and sounds a bit judgey of Sin for something that Anita herself did when she accessed Dev's vision. The bomber asks what's wrong and where Anita Blake is, Sin tells him to "Let my brother go." The bomber yells "He's not your brother" and Sin says yes he is. I am pretty sure this is meant to be sweet and touching and all but it just comes off as creepy to me, especially since I have no doubt she's had sex with them together. There's nothing wrong with sibling roleplay sexually, but if Sin really truly sees Nathaniel as his brother for real then that's...yeah. But even if that all isn't the case, since I'm only assuming it and it's never been stated, it still seems creepy because it's an incredibly strong attachment that, for the reader, comes out of nowhere. Anita has mentioned earlier in the book that it happened offscreen, but this is the first time we see it, and it's at it's absolute peak--Sin proclaiming him his sibling to an armed and dangerous zealot, and even ARGUING with him about it despite the situation. It's so extreme that without all the necessary onscreen build-up it just hits a 'wrong' button for the reader, or at least for me.
The bomber demands that Nicky phone Anita again, and Anita can feel Sin's "depth of his stubborness, and knew he wouldn't leave. It wasn't a death wish, it was just a decision. He wouldn't leave Nathaniel. He just wouldn't." Okay, given what Sin just said about Nathaniel being his brother, I'd think any reader would assume that it was a decision not to leave Nathaniel, and the thought it might be a death wish instead would never cross their mind. The fact that LKH brings it up suggests to me that it did cross her mind, though, and that's...interesting. I can't say I'd disagree with Cynric in wanting to just end it all, though. Especially if it came in the form of an attack on Anita. Anita then psychically enters Nathaniel and can feel the man's arm across Nathaniel's shoulders as if they're her shoulders, and is looking at Sin through his eyes "scared, but not leaving" and "I had a moment where I could taste three pulses in my body, and none of them were mine." You cannot taste a pulse. You feel a pulse. If this is meant to be a metaphor, I don't understand why she's using it. Metaphors are meant to serve a purpose. Saying you taste a pulse when you are feeling it serves no purpose. This segues into her talking about how "One of the reasons I had learned to shield like a son of a bitch was that I didn't want to ed up like Weiskopf and his master, just one mind in two bodies, or three, or four, or..." Actually, she kind of is that. It's just that unlike Weiskopf, whom she thinks is possessed by his Master's mind, she's the Master and they're all possessed to some degree or another by her mind, with Nicky being the most extreme case. That's been stated in canon. Speaking of Nicky, she states how she then feels with all of them there EXCEPT Nicky the same way that she had felt JC and Richard when it'd just been the three of them and they'd had "moments of being almost a group mind floating between three bodies." and calls it "having someone elses' heart beating in your head" the meaning of which I really don't understand.
She can feel their emotions and catch bits of thought, and "Dev seemed better at complete sentence, and just thinking about it let me know that the same people who had trained him to fight had trained him psychically" which makes her recount to us how "The gold tigers had been raised to be the perfect instrument of whatever master finally claimed them. That mast had been me, though technically according to vampire law, Jean-Claude." Because she's his Human Servant, so what's hers is his. Add 'the background of the golden clan' to the list of things I really wish would get the focus and depth and exploration they need and deserve. Nicky moves closer to Dev and Anita knows he can feel her energy. Nicky tells the bomber he'll call her, the bomber yells at him to do it, Anita "pulled back, but it was like folding clothes in a suitcase. You never quite got them all put back as neatly and completely the second time. I could feel bits of the connection to all the men in the club." I have a feeling that suitcase thing is something LKH thinks is universal because it's the case for her. Her phone rings and Pride helps her get it out from her pocket because "I was having trouble telling my hands from much bigger ones in that other room." She has to, of course, mention her men have much bigger hands than her. She thinks that she has to do "better than this" and then realizes she doesn't want to shut the guys out completely because if she does lose them (er, "lost Nathaniel, lost them all" because only the important ones ever get named, notice that?) then this will be the last time she touches them. Dev sends her the mental message to "Cut ties, Anita, we can't function like this."
Anita does so "but it was Nathaniel I left last, drawing away like I was caressing him from the inside out." Aw yeah, lemme feel up those pretty kidneys, oh yes. Anita answers her phone, Nicky tells her the bomber wants her inside. At this "a spurt of fear from Nathaniel broke though the newly raised shields. He was afraid" no shit, you feel a spurt of fear from him psychically and he's afraid? He's also thinking that "he would set it off before I got there, because he thought the bomber meant to blow him, me, and Dev up; two animals to call and me at the same time upped the chances of my really dying." Again, note that she is saying that EVEN HER BEING BLOWN UP BY A BOMB is not alone in itself enough to kill her, it has to take a couple of her Therian Servants too, and even then it just "ups the chances" rather than guaranteeing it. How exactly am I supposed to ever feel Anita is actually in peril if this is what it takes to make her dying even a possibility? Anita relays this to Nicky via phone, he says Nathaniel is probably right about what the bomber is planning, and Anita thinks to Nathaniel "Don't you dare!" and then the bomber screams at Nathaniel "What is that? If you shift, you die!" and someone (Nicky, I guess?) says that "The energy in here just spiked. We're all nervous enough that our human friend here felt it." and Anita realizes "the bomber was more sensitive than I'd hoped."
Nicky asks where she is, she says just down the road, he asks if traffic sucks, she says he doesn't want her to come inside, he's like nope, she asks if he thinks the bomber will blow it as soon as she comes in, and he does. She swears, he agrees, she says to tell him she'll be there ASAP, he doesn't think that's a good idea, then the bomber starts screaming "Tell her she has ten minutes and that's it, that's it!" and Nicky asks if heard that. Anita says to tell him thirty, Nicky says he'll try and hangs up. Hill asks what's happening, "I told him where everyone was, and that the bomber's nerve seemed to be failing him." Hill says that this would be good if he didn't have a dead man's switch, Zerbrowski asks how quick Nathaniel's reaction time is, Anita says he's fast, "Faster than you were in the warehouse when you stopped Billings from hitting the kid vampire?" and Anita says they're all faster than she is, which contradicts Bullet where she was notably shown and pointed out to have faster reactions than Dev. Claudia adds that Anita is fast but not as fast as a therian, and Pride adds that she's still human. Again, this contradicts implications of Anita's speed in both Skin Trade and Bullet, though admittedly Anita was only stated to be faster than Dev, not all therians.
Anita asks Zerbrowski what he's thinking, he says that he thinks Nathaniel and Nicky are right about the bomber planning to blow her up with the rest the second she's close enough. Anita tells him that's not helpful...personally, I don't see why it's not helpful? It's kind of a big factor in deciding what to do. And by 'kind of' I mean 'really honking huge'. Zerbrowski asks her to "hear me out" and recounts a story to her of a similar situation in Israel where the would-be bombing victims jumped on the bomber and held his hand pressed on the button until the police arrived and shot the bomber. I think Dolph takes the wrong idea from this, because presumably the idea is "everyone should use their superhuman speed to jump on him and do that" rather than arguing for the bomber to be shot like the end of the story, because Dolph immediately says that "He's human, you can't just kill him." But...don't police take out dangerous suspects like that when they have to, to prevent them from harming other people? I assumed the only reason the police hadn't sniped this guy already is because then his hand would come off the switch. Does LKH think that the law being really serious on vampires means suddenly it also won't kill humans ever? He even says it would be "in cold blood" to do so, and is only argued down when Anita asks if he'd say that if it was his wife there instead of Nathaniel, leading me to suspect this is only in there so Anita can have a chance to prove to someone that VIOLENCE IS THE ANSWER OKAY STUPID as has seemed to be the general message in this book whenever anything is actually happening. Not that I'm arguing about killing this guy in this situation, that's A-Okay by me, just that it's been what she jumps to in all prior situations to when it was far less necessary.
Hill asks if Zerbowski is saying that "we let Anita go in there, and hope that all of them figure out that they're supposed to jump the bastard and hold him" and Zerbrowski says yes. Claudia says Nathaniel isn't trained in hand-to-hand combat, Pride says that "Dev and Nicky are, and Sin isn't bad for a beginning, and he's wicked fast." Nathaniel has super-fucking-natural strength, he could probably do it just by himself since the dude already is holding him to him. Anita says she could telepathically tell three of them what the plan is and "I used air quotes for the tell part". Claudia says that Nicky is good enough to move when they do, Anita corrects her "You mean when I do". Pride says that the guy is "Human with a couple of vampire bites on him. He won't be stronger than Nathaniel, Sin, Dev, and Nicky." What do the bites have to do with it? Vampire bites only increase the strength of a human if they're made in the process of making them a human servant, and that's way different than just regular bites as this guy was implied to have. What Anita asks instead is "You're saying I won't get a piece of him?" because I guess that's more important than saving her sweeties, and Pride says she won't need to grab him, she doesn't understand, Bram tells her that Pride means "you get to blow his brains out so that he can't set off the bomb." Well gee whiz, ain't she a lucky gal! Dolph says he isn't sure this is legal and I don't even see how it wouldn't be? Zerbrowski assures him that the warrants of execution make it okay for Anita to kill anyone involved in the crime the warrant pertains to when she's on an active hunt without even having a trial. I'm not even gonna argue about that, I'm just gonna say that I am pretty sure it is 100% legal for anyone, including a civilian, to take out a dude with a bomb. Her being on an active hunt or the connections the guy has to vampires shouldn't even matter in 'justifying' it.
Also, the irony that they're all worried about legality NOW after the other shit she and others did in this book does not get by me either. I wish it did, because it is a very, very painful irony.
Hill says he doesn't like the idea of Anita going in there alone, Anita says the bomber never said no police, and so Hill grins and he and a guy named Killian says they've got her back. Um, you know what, just because he didn't say 'no police' doesn't really mean you should tempt fate. So Anita relays the plan to "Nathaniel and the others" (again, note who gets named and who doesn't) and trusts that Nicky will just go with it when it happens and thinks about how "it all depending on Nathaniel using that same hand-eye coordination and speed that him so amazing on the dance floor, in the gym, at the shooting range" NATHANIEL IS EVEN 'AMAZING' AT THE SHOOTING RANGE PFFF. And she pretty much sums up the entire plan to us, as if we didn't just read it all, and in the most lengthy, repetitive way possible. At the end she does some more obnoxious faux-camraderie stuff with how "Hill, Killian, and the rest were willing to walk in with me. They were willing to trust that if I believed the loves of my life" I THOUGHT YOU DIDN'T LOVE DEV AND SIN AND NICKY HMMM? "could do this, then they could. I trusted the men in my life, and Hill, Killian, Derry, and the rest, trusted me. Fuck, fuck, fuck."
...of all her cluster f-bombs (and there have been a LOT in this book) this is weirdest-placed one.
Also her tumor on her right side is starting to seriously resemble a pair of testicles and I probably shouldn't find this amusing as I do. By the way, she's still behaving normally, eating, seems happy and active, etc. She just *looks* like a mess. Dad and I are real proud of her for what a trooper she's being!
KISS THE DEAD, CHAPTER 47
“I sat on the shallow curb in the weak spring sunlight in my vest and weapons, and had all the SWAT guys, plus Marshal Arlen Brice, Zerbrowski and Dolph, and a lot more of RPIT than I gave a damn, plus my bodyguards, huddling around me to keep everyone else back while I did the psychic dream of every hostage negotiator.” Okay, we already knew who all was there from last chapter, LKH didn’t need to repeat it, she could have just said that her bodyguards huddled around her to keep everyone else back. Speaking of that, while I think she means just the bodyguards were huddled around her, it reads at first as though all of these people are. Nor did she need to mention her vest and weapons, since we can pretty easily assume she would have them in this situation. And finally, the bit about this being the dream of every hostage negotiator just comes off less as witty and more as Anita gloating, but that might be just because I expect that from Anita. Also, why do the bodyguards even need to huddle around her? I think everyone would have the sense to give her space? And why did this require a new chapter?
“I sat on the curb” you just said that at the start of the previous paragraph “and I was small enough that it was like sitting at the bottom of a well of very tall people, but that was okay. I was used to being the smallest kid in school.” SHE REALLY HAS TO MENTION THIS HERE. SHE REALLY HAS TO. DOES LKH GET OFF SEXUALLY TO TALKING ABOUT HOW SHORT ANITA IS BECAUSE THAT IS THE ONLY EXPLANATION I CAN THINK OF FOR WHY HER OBSESSION WITH IT COMES UP EVEN HERE OF ALL SITUATIONS. She “opened the blocks” with Dev first, as suggested by Pride because Dev “was trained as a warrior, a spy, a guard, and an assassin, though he didn’t say all that out loud to the police; he said guard, just guard.” Okay, this doesn’t make sense. The golden tigers were kept by the Harlequin as something that they guarded and kept safe, they would not have used them as warriors, spies, or assassins because that would put them at risk. We know that they were trained in combat to please Dragon-line vampires (and probably also in the event they needed to use self-defense) but that’s not the same as all those other things at all. Since Pride himself did not say any of that and Anita just thinks that’s what he means when he says “guard” (which, I may note, he only became after joining Anita & Co., the Harlequin never trained him as that, because GUARDS ARE AT RISK so it's not something a people being protected would be made to be by the ones protecting them!) I’m going to assume this is all just Anita being stupid enough to assume that “being raised by the Harlequin = doing everything they do!”
"I lowered my shields for Mephistopheles, my Devil." GOD I AM GETTING SO TIRED OF THAT NICKNAME BECAUSE IT RELATES TO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT HIM YOU CANNOT TAKE A WORD LIKE THAT AND JUST TACK IT ON TO SOMEBODY WITH NO MORE SIGNIFICANCE THAN 'HE'S NAMED FOR THE DEVIL IN THE PLAY' SRSLY. Also, she already said she was opening her mind-link to him anyway, that's two repetitions on one page! And she talks about how by the time he'd come into her life (she always uses that phrase with her harem, "come into my life", and I realize it's a really passive phrasing that completely disguises the fact she actively enslaved them all, they didn't just come up to her willingly) she'd gotten good at keeping her other metaphysical linked dudes out psychically, so he'd never been let in "as far as Nathaniel could get, or Micah, or Jean-Claude, or..." Ugh, I really hate the trailing off, I do, it just reminds me all the more of how ridiculous this all has gotten. "Now I tore down all that careful work and reached out to him. I thought about making love to him. The feel of his body in mine, his skin under my hands, his...And just like that, I was in." I guess they don't really have anything between them *but* sex so that's the only way she could envision her connection to him. Makes sense.
She says that most of the time doing this is "like floating above the people I was talking to" but that she can get "closer, much closer" and she does now so that she can see out of Dev's eyes, which is so "disconcerting" that "I drew back." Not gonna make fun of her for that because I'm sure that is a way weird experience, especially if you've never done it before. And I guess she must be just floating above him as a psychic projection again because Dev looks up "where he could "see" me above him" and "gave his version of blank cop face" Along with "uniforms" LKH seems to have learned the term "cop face" and, as with "uniforms", this is a word she is just abusing the hell out of, as she has "apeshit" in previous books and "heteroflexible" in a few (especially this one) as well. Anita thinks "What do you see?" at him and "just like that, I could see what Dev was looking at" which is Sin, Nicky, Nathaniel, and an unfamiliar man who is obviously the bomber. Sin is a little farther toward the stage than everyone else, Nicky is closest to the door and on the other side of Dev, and the unfamiliar man is against the wall on the far side of the stage away from the doors with an arm around Nathaniel's neck. Insert jokes here about Nathaniel probably enjoying it. Dev mentally tells Anita that the bomb is armed but won't let go until the guy takes his hand off the button he's pressing, that pressing down arms it and letting go blows it. I guess that's what a dead man's switch is? Because I actually had no idea what that meant.
"I moved my perception to Sin. He did startle." Awkward phrasing, and sounds a bit judgey of Sin for something that Anita herself did when she accessed Dev's vision. The bomber asks what's wrong and where Anita Blake is, Sin tells him to "Let my brother go." The bomber yells "He's not your brother" and Sin says yes he is. I am pretty sure this is meant to be sweet and touching and all but it just comes off as creepy to me, especially since I have no doubt she's had sex with them together. There's nothing wrong with sibling roleplay sexually, but if Sin really truly sees Nathaniel as his brother for real then that's...yeah. But even if that all isn't the case, since I'm only assuming it and it's never been stated, it still seems creepy because it's an incredibly strong attachment that, for the reader, comes out of nowhere. Anita has mentioned earlier in the book that it happened offscreen, but this is the first time we see it, and it's at it's absolute peak--Sin proclaiming him his sibling to an armed and dangerous zealot, and even ARGUING with him about it despite the situation. It's so extreme that without all the necessary onscreen build-up it just hits a 'wrong' button for the reader, or at least for me.
The bomber demands that Nicky phone Anita again, and Anita can feel Sin's "depth of his stubborness, and knew he wouldn't leave. It wasn't a death wish, it was just a decision. He wouldn't leave Nathaniel. He just wouldn't." Okay, given what Sin just said about Nathaniel being his brother, I'd think any reader would assume that it was a decision not to leave Nathaniel, and the thought it might be a death wish instead would never cross their mind. The fact that LKH brings it up suggests to me that it did cross her mind, though, and that's...interesting. I can't say I'd disagree with Cynric in wanting to just end it all, though. Especially if it came in the form of an attack on Anita. Anita then psychically enters Nathaniel and can feel the man's arm across Nathaniel's shoulders as if they're her shoulders, and is looking at Sin through his eyes "scared, but not leaving" and "I had a moment where I could taste three pulses in my body, and none of them were mine." You cannot taste a pulse. You feel a pulse. If this is meant to be a metaphor, I don't understand why she's using it. Metaphors are meant to serve a purpose. Saying you taste a pulse when you are feeling it serves no purpose. This segues into her talking about how "One of the reasons I had learned to shield like a son of a bitch was that I didn't want to ed up like Weiskopf and his master, just one mind in two bodies, or three, or four, or..." Actually, she kind of is that. It's just that unlike Weiskopf, whom she thinks is possessed by his Master's mind, she's the Master and they're all possessed to some degree or another by her mind, with Nicky being the most extreme case. That's been stated in canon. Speaking of Nicky, she states how she then feels with all of them there EXCEPT Nicky the same way that she had felt JC and Richard when it'd just been the three of them and they'd had "moments of being almost a group mind floating between three bodies." and calls it "having someone elses' heart beating in your head" the meaning of which I really don't understand.
She can feel their emotions and catch bits of thought, and "Dev seemed better at complete sentence, and just thinking about it let me know that the same people who had trained him to fight had trained him psychically" which makes her recount to us how "The gold tigers had been raised to be the perfect instrument of whatever master finally claimed them. That mast had been me, though technically according to vampire law, Jean-Claude." Because she's his Human Servant, so what's hers is his. Add 'the background of the golden clan' to the list of things I really wish would get the focus and depth and exploration they need and deserve. Nicky moves closer to Dev and Anita knows he can feel her energy. Nicky tells the bomber he'll call her, the bomber yells at him to do it, Anita "pulled back, but it was like folding clothes in a suitcase. You never quite got them all put back as neatly and completely the second time. I could feel bits of the connection to all the men in the club." I have a feeling that suitcase thing is something LKH thinks is universal because it's the case for her. Her phone rings and Pride helps her get it out from her pocket because "I was having trouble telling my hands from much bigger ones in that other room." She has to, of course, mention her men have much bigger hands than her. She thinks that she has to do "better than this" and then realizes she doesn't want to shut the guys out completely because if she does lose them (er, "lost Nathaniel, lost them all" because only the important ones ever get named, notice that?) then this will be the last time she touches them. Dev sends her the mental message to "Cut ties, Anita, we can't function like this."
Anita does so "but it was Nathaniel I left last, drawing away like I was caressing him from the inside out." Aw yeah, lemme feel up those pretty kidneys, oh yes. Anita answers her phone, Nicky tells her the bomber wants her inside. At this "a spurt of fear from Nathaniel broke though the newly raised shields. He was afraid" no shit, you feel a spurt of fear from him psychically and he's afraid? He's also thinking that "he would set it off before I got there, because he thought the bomber meant to blow him, me, and Dev up; two animals to call and me at the same time upped the chances of my really dying." Again, note that she is saying that EVEN HER BEING BLOWN UP BY A BOMB is not alone in itself enough to kill her, it has to take a couple of her Therian Servants too, and even then it just "ups the chances" rather than guaranteeing it. How exactly am I supposed to ever feel Anita is actually in peril if this is what it takes to make her dying even a possibility? Anita relays this to Nicky via phone, he says Nathaniel is probably right about what the bomber is planning, and Anita thinks to Nathaniel "Don't you dare!" and then the bomber screams at Nathaniel "What is that? If you shift, you die!" and someone (Nicky, I guess?) says that "The energy in here just spiked. We're all nervous enough that our human friend here felt it." and Anita realizes "the bomber was more sensitive than I'd hoped."
Nicky asks where she is, she says just down the road, he asks if traffic sucks, she says he doesn't want her to come inside, he's like nope, she asks if he thinks the bomber will blow it as soon as she comes in, and he does. She swears, he agrees, she says to tell him she'll be there ASAP, he doesn't think that's a good idea, then the bomber starts screaming "Tell her she has ten minutes and that's it, that's it!" and Nicky asks if heard that. Anita says to tell him thirty, Nicky says he'll try and hangs up. Hill asks what's happening, "I told him where everyone was, and that the bomber's nerve seemed to be failing him." Hill says that this would be good if he didn't have a dead man's switch, Zerbrowski asks how quick Nathaniel's reaction time is, Anita says he's fast, "Faster than you were in the warehouse when you stopped Billings from hitting the kid vampire?" and Anita says they're all faster than she is, which contradicts Bullet where she was notably shown and pointed out to have faster reactions than Dev. Claudia adds that Anita is fast but not as fast as a therian, and Pride adds that she's still human. Again, this contradicts implications of Anita's speed in both Skin Trade and Bullet, though admittedly Anita was only stated to be faster than Dev, not all therians.
Anita asks Zerbrowski what he's thinking, he says that he thinks Nathaniel and Nicky are right about the bomber planning to blow her up with the rest the second she's close enough. Anita tells him that's not helpful...personally, I don't see why it's not helpful? It's kind of a big factor in deciding what to do. And by 'kind of' I mean 'really honking huge'. Zerbrowski asks her to "hear me out" and recounts a story to her of a similar situation in Israel where the would-be bombing victims jumped on the bomber and held his hand pressed on the button until the police arrived and shot the bomber. I think Dolph takes the wrong idea from this, because presumably the idea is "everyone should use their superhuman speed to jump on him and do that" rather than arguing for the bomber to be shot like the end of the story, because Dolph immediately says that "He's human, you can't just kill him." But...don't police take out dangerous suspects like that when they have to, to prevent them from harming other people? I assumed the only reason the police hadn't sniped this guy already is because then his hand would come off the switch. Does LKH think that the law being really serious on vampires means suddenly it also won't kill humans ever? He even says it would be "in cold blood" to do so, and is only argued down when Anita asks if he'd say that if it was his wife there instead of Nathaniel, leading me to suspect this is only in there so Anita can have a chance to prove to someone that VIOLENCE IS THE ANSWER OKAY STUPID as has seemed to be the general message in this book whenever anything is actually happening. Not that I'm arguing about killing this guy in this situation, that's A-Okay by me, just that it's been what she jumps to in all prior situations to when it was far less necessary.
Hill asks if Zerbowski is saying that "we let Anita go in there, and hope that all of them figure out that they're supposed to jump the bastard and hold him" and Zerbrowski says yes. Claudia says Nathaniel isn't trained in hand-to-hand combat, Pride says that "Dev and Nicky are, and Sin isn't bad for a beginning, and he's wicked fast." Nathaniel has super-fucking-natural strength, he could probably do it just by himself since the dude already is holding him to him. Anita says she could telepathically tell three of them what the plan is and "I used air quotes for the tell part". Claudia says that Nicky is good enough to move when they do, Anita corrects her "You mean when I do". Pride says that the guy is "Human with a couple of vampire bites on him. He won't be stronger than Nathaniel, Sin, Dev, and Nicky." What do the bites have to do with it? Vampire bites only increase the strength of a human if they're made in the process of making them a human servant, and that's way different than just regular bites as this guy was implied to have. What Anita asks instead is "You're saying I won't get a piece of him?" because I guess that's more important than saving her sweeties, and Pride says she won't need to grab him, she doesn't understand, Bram tells her that Pride means "you get to blow his brains out so that he can't set off the bomb." Well gee whiz, ain't she a lucky gal! Dolph says he isn't sure this is legal and I don't even see how it wouldn't be? Zerbrowski assures him that the warrants of execution make it okay for Anita to kill anyone involved in the crime the warrant pertains to when she's on an active hunt without even having a trial. I'm not even gonna argue about that, I'm just gonna say that I am pretty sure it is 100% legal for anyone, including a civilian, to take out a dude with a bomb. Her being on an active hunt or the connections the guy has to vampires shouldn't even matter in 'justifying' it.
Also, the irony that they're all worried about legality NOW after the other shit she and others did in this book does not get by me either. I wish it did, because it is a very, very painful irony.
Hill says he doesn't like the idea of Anita going in there alone, Anita says the bomber never said no police, and so Hill grins and he and a guy named Killian says they've got her back. Um, you know what, just because he didn't say 'no police' doesn't really mean you should tempt fate. So Anita relays the plan to "Nathaniel and the others" (again, note who gets named and who doesn't) and trusts that Nicky will just go with it when it happens and thinks about how "it all depending on Nathaniel using that same hand-eye coordination and speed that him so amazing on the dance floor, in the gym, at the shooting range" NATHANIEL IS EVEN 'AMAZING' AT THE SHOOTING RANGE PFFF. And she pretty much sums up the entire plan to us, as if we didn't just read it all, and in the most lengthy, repetitive way possible. At the end she does some more obnoxious faux-camraderie stuff with how "Hill, Killian, and the rest were willing to walk in with me. They were willing to trust that if I believed the loves of my life" I THOUGHT YOU DIDN'T LOVE DEV AND SIN AND NICKY HMMM? "could do this, then they could. I trusted the men in my life, and Hill, Killian, Derry, and the rest, trusted me. Fuck, fuck, fuck."
...of all her cluster f-bombs (and there have been a LOT in this book) this is weirdest-placed one.
