Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,99

trying to fuck with us,’ I said, my voice still breathless. Stupid altitude.

There were flashlights swinging through the trees. Some of the police were running toward the dying glow of the cross and the sound of gunfire. I like that about cops; they run toward the problem, not away from it.

‘One more vampire trick and I’m telling him to shoot you,’ I said.

‘Shoot to kill, or shoot to wound?’ Nicky asked.

I’d rather he not have asked it out loud, but I guess it was an important difference and a misunderstanding would be bad. ‘Wound. We can always kill her later, but once you kill someone, wounding seems a little pointless.’

‘True,’ he said. He kept his AR snugged against his shoulder, his face settled against the stock. He looked very natural, as if he could aim at her all night.

The police were up to us in a whirl of flashlights and noise. Some of them joined Nicky in aiming at the vampire. Others came to check on me.

Bush asked, ‘You hurt, Marshal?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Then why are you sitting on the ground?’ It was Becker.

‘Too much running like hell in this altitude,’ I said.

‘You have altitude sickness?’ she asked.

‘Yeah.’

She gave a small laugh. ‘Too funny, that the big, bad Anita Blake has altitude sickness.’

My vision had finally cleared. Yay for that. I got slowly to my feet, still feeling a little shaky. Bush started to reach out to steady my elbow, but then dropped his hand back. He was treating me like he’d treat any of his fellow officers, and I took that as the compliment it was.

I walked over to join everyone gathered around the vampire. They hadn’t moved in and tried to cuff her. I realized that they were waiting for me to tell them it was safe. Then I realized that most of the officers in the night-dark woods had been part of the group that I had dragged out from under the killer zombies, or who had joined us when they fought free themselves, and saw that we seemed to have a plan. I had helped them, and now they were willing to chase vampires in the dark with me. Cool.

I stopped at Nathaniel’s leopard and Ares’ hyena so that I was framed between the two big animals. I trusted Nicky to keep his gun on the vampire. I let the AR hang free on its tactical strap and started to pet Nathaniel’s dark fur and laid a hand on the hyena’s back. He was taller than the leopard, big enough that I could have leaned my elbow on him like a light pole; he was a big damn beast.

The vampire looked at the two beasts with wide eyes. Someone had put a flashlight on her face like a spotlight so that we could see that one of her eyes was clear and brown and very alive, but the other had that white film that happens after death. Nathaniel’s claws had sliced open her face from the edge of the dead eye to the jawline. The wound wasn’t bleeding much, as if the flesh had really been dead so long there was no blood to find, but the wounds on her chest had bled a lot. Blood had soaked into the pink A-line dress so she looked like a macabre Valentine. One shoulder had rotted so you could see tendons and bone, but the other one was smooth and perfect. Why hadn’t she used her vampire powers to make all of her body whole? Rotting vampires had two forms, human and rotting. Most of them spent the lion’s share of their time looking as human and perfect as they could, though most seemed to enjoy the effect their other form had on their victims. This vampire wasn’t enjoying it.

‘Please, don’t hurt me, again,’ she said.

‘You hurt Henry senior,’ I said.

‘Who?’ she asked.

‘The other man that you left up in the aspen grove.’

She looked away from me. ‘I didn’t want to hurt him. I’d finally gotten strong enough to cloud their minds and make them see me as beautiful. I wasn’t done with the first man, but he made us hurt him. He made us hurt him in front of the other man.’

‘You killed the father and made the son watch,’ I said.

She looked back at me and the fear was naked in her face. ‘I didn’t want to.’

‘No one held a gun to your head,’ Becker said.

‘Worse,’ she whispered, ‘so much worse.’

I could feel the other vampire. It