government ordered, but I actually agreed with it; again, cleaning blood out of your eyelashes loses its charm after a while. The face shield sent my breath back to me, so that I could feel how warm it was. I had a moment to be claustrophobic, but fought it off. If I did it right, I didn't really need it, but every once in a while the undead bodies acted weird, and they'd squirt at you when you weren't expecting it. I really didn't want this guy's blood on my face.
I got out the thin gloves, and then put the longer rubber gloves over that. They went up past my elbows, which I'd need because of the way I took the heart out of the body. A lot of executioners just destroyed the heart with a stake, a knife, or a gun, but left the remnants of it in place. If I could see daylight through the chest, so that I knew the heart was utterly destroyed, I'd do that, but when I couldn't see into the chest cavity, I didn't trust the heart to be destroyed enough. New vampires like this one, the gunshot wounds I'd put in his chest were probably enough to ensure he wouldn't heal and rise unexpectedly, but I'd never gotten in trouble being overly cautious when it came to making certain a vampire was really, truly, completely, dead.
Of course, it was a little hard to see the extent of the gunshots through the clothes, which was why I had the paramedic's scissors. They'd cut through anything but metal, and even cheap metal would yield to them, but harder things like handcuffs were proof against them - but clothes, no sweat.
I knelt beside the body, tucking the scissors in between the buttons just above the waist of the jeans, cutting to one side so I could parallel the fastened buttons.
"Just unbutton it," she said.
"This is faster," I said, keeping my gaze and my attention on what I was doing.
"But the buttons are right there," she said. It's funny what will bother someone most; you never know what it will be. Things that you would never dream would frighten someone, or creep them out, scare the hell out of them or make their skin crawl. For whatever reason, it seemed to really bother her that I was cutting beside the line of neatly fastened buttons, but not using the buttons.
I usually cut a quick, clean line through a shirt, but now I slowed down, took my time, let her watch, let her think, let whatever it was about it have time to bother her more.
"Just do it," she said, her voice holding an edge of franticness. "Just cut through it, if you're going to, or unbutton it. Why do it like that? Why cut it off like you're enjoying it?"
Ah, I thought, she thought what I was doing looked sensual, like I was enjoying it. I wasn't; it didn't move me one way or the other. The days when it would have creeped me out to cut through the clothes were long past. Cutting clothes off a willing lover who enjoyed that sort of thing was fun, exciting, sexy. Cutting clothes off a corpse wasn't any of those things. It was just cutting the cloth away so I could see the chest and judge how much damage the bullets had done to the heart, so I'd know if I needed to take out the heart, or if the bullets had done the job for me. Baring the pale, cool skin was more like unwrapping a piece of butchered meat, inert, not alive, nothing but meat that you might have to cut up. That was the only way to think of it; the only way to do it, and stay sane.
"Just finish cutting it!" She half-yelled it.
The door opened behind me; I caught the movement out of my peripheral vision, so I was able to see Zerbrowski come smiling through the door without actually turning away from the body in front of me.
"What's all the fuss?" he said cheerfully.
The vampire tried to get up off her knees, where the uniforms had put her. The rattle of the chains made me look at her and see one of the officers put a hand on her thin shoulder, automatically pushing her back to her knees.
"Make her stop," the vampire said.
"Marshal Blake isn't under my command. She doesn't answer to me."
The vampire gave me wide frightened eyes. I looked into