hand and he never reacted. His eyes stared wide and sightless like the officer on the stairs. The vampire might actually be dead, but... I put a second bullet beside the hole in his head, and another one just a little lower than the other hole in his chest. I could have shot holes through both head and heart with the handgun, but it was messy, and it might eventually go through the body and into the floor beyond. Smith or Zerbrowski would have called for backup by now. It would be bad to accidentally shoot cops on the other floors. Bullets weren't always a respecter of floors and walls. I needed my vampire kit from the car.
Smith was yelling at me, "You shot kids!"
I didn't want to walk away with the vampire's head and chest still intact, so I reached down, grabbed the dead vampire by the back of his jean jacket, and started dragging him over toward the other dead bad guys. Smith followed me, still trying to pick a fight, or something. I let the man drop beside the two teenagers' bodies. Now I could keep an eye on all of them. If they moved I'd shoot them some more.
Smith actually pushed my shoulder, moving me back a little. "You fucking shot them! You shot kids!"
I glared at him, but knelt down by the teenagers and pulled the lips back on the first boy, exposing the fangs. I showed Smith fangs on the second teenager.
"You knew they were vampires," Smith said.
"Yeah."
All the anger just leaked away, and he looked confused. "They jumped us at the door. They threw Perry into the wall."
"How hurt is he?" I asked, standing up from the pile of dead.
"Shoulder and arm may be broken."
"Go see to your partner, Smith," I said.
He nodded and walked away to do that. Zerbrowski joined me, his gun still on the kneeling teenagers. There wasn't an adult face in the kneeling group. Zerbrowski leaned in and whispered, "You told me once that when your necromancy is on full power you can't always tell vampire from human servant in a room."
"Yeah," I said.
"You didn't know they were vampires when you shot them," he said quietly.
"No," I said.
"Were you checking for fangs when you showed Smith?"
"No, I knew they were vampires."
"How?" he asked.
"Look at the wounds," I said.
He did, and said, "What?"
"The blood's wrong," I said.
"It looks the same to me," he said.
"It's too thick. Human blood is a little more watery than that, even heart blood."
His eyes flicked to me, then back to watching our prisoners. "You know, Anita, it's just fucking creepy that you know that."
I shrugged. "If you'd been in front, would you have hesitated because you thought they were human teenagers?" I asked.
"Maybe; they're not much older than my oldest," he said.
"Good that I was in front, then," I said.
He glanced down at the dead kids. "Yeah," he said, but not like he was sure.
I walked away to get closer to our prisoners, one, to help watch them better, but two, to stop the talk with Zerbrowski about my decision to shoot the vampires when I thought they were flesh-and-blood teenagers. I didn't regret my choice in that split second of life and death, but a small part of me wondered how I could be all right with the choice. It bothered me that it hadn't bothered me to gun down two kids neither of whom could have been more than fifteen. It didn't bother me as I looked at the kneeling figures, and I knew without doubt that if any more of the vampires tried to attack us I'd kill them, too, regardless of apparent age, race, sex, or religious affiliations. I was an equal-opportunity executioner; I killed everybody. I let them see that in my face, in my eyes, and watched fear leak through the toughness on their faces. One of the women started to cry softly. What does it mean when the monsters are so afraid of you that you make them cry? That maybe monster depends on which end of the gun you're on, or that I was just that good at my job. Looking at the twenty or so frightened faces staring at me, I felt bad that they were afraid of me, but I knew that if they attacked us, I'd kill them. They should have been afraid - of me.
Chapter Three
THE AMBULANCE TOOK Perry away with his arm as immobilized as they could get it. We'd found the