Read Online Kiss the Dead by Laurell K. Hamilton - Free Book Online

first dead by accident when I was a teenager, saw my first ghost at ten; the dead had always liked me. I wasn’t like most of the Marshals; they were humans who just happened to be good at killing monsters. I was one of the monsters.
    A girl stumbled in her shackles. I grabbed her arm to steady her, and she mumbled, “Thank you,” then turned and saw who was touching her. She let out a little shriek and began to struggle. I held on just a moment, caught off guard by the fear that just radiated through her, from her, down my hand, across my tongue. I could taste her fear the way I could taste it on a shapeshifter or a human. Anything that’s afraid of you is food. I let her go, and she fell, unable to catch herself. The other vampires tried to help her up, but they were struggling, too. Zerbrowski finally helped her to her feet.
    The vampires watched me and even behind the sullenness, the anger, there was fear. What do the monsters fear? Other monsters, of course.
    I caught Blondie watching me, but it was Grandma who spat the word at me. “Monster!”
    I said the only thing I could think of. “That’s Marshal Monster to you, Grandma.”
    Zerbrowski said, “Why don’t I have any nifty nicknames?”
    “No one’s afraid of you, Zerbrowski,” I said, and smiled at him for trying to make a joke out of it.
    “You’re just so bad-ass, I can’t compete.”
    “That’s what your wife says.”
    “Oooh,” Smith said, “that was low.”
    Zerbrowski grinned at me. “I don’t have a problem with you being the better man, Anita; I never have.”
    If I hadn’t been armed to the teeth, surrounded by murderous vampires, in view of way too many other cops, I’d have hugged Zerbrowski. “Thanks, Zerbrowski.” But I tried to show him in my eyes how much it had meant to me, that guy moment where you can’t actually say how many emotions you’ve got running through your brain.
    He smiled, not his cocky teasing grin, but that gentle one that let his eyes look tired and sort of tender. He gave a small nod, and I smiled back, and that was it. He understood that I’d understood that he’d understood. It took us one sentence, two looks, and a nod—with another woman it would have been at least five minutes of out-loud talking. Lucky for me I spoke fluent guy.

5
    Z ERBROWSKI HAD TO take a call from Dolph, so it was Stevens, Urlrich, and Smith who helped me move another seven vampires to the big freight elevator. I decided to keep Blondie near me, because if he was screwing with me this badly, I didn’t trust how bad he’d fuck with the others. Besides, to move him away meant to admit he was fucking with me, and that I didn’t know what to do about it. The only way I knew how to face anything was head on, so Blondie stayed by me. He wasn’t half as disturbing as the elevator. It was a bare, metal cage, one that actually needed someone to pull a lever and drive the thing. It was open to the cool, dark shaft with wooden slats as a door on one side, and then metal mesh as a second door, but the rest of the elevator was truly a cage, open to the shaft. It was a killing box if someone could get above us.
    I put Smith on the lever to drive the elevator. He’d driven it last time and hadn’t crashed us. I tucked my AR to my shoulder, then snugged my cheek to it and let out a breath, so that I was still as I pointed the barrel upward through the metalwork.
    “Why are you pointing up?” Stevens asked.
    I kept my attention on the top of the shaft as I answered him, “Some vampires can fly.”
    “I thought that was just movie shit,” he said.
    “Not just movie shit,” I said. I let my eyes relax, searching the darkness above us for movement, just movement, because there shouldn’t have been any.
    “Moving,” Smith said.
    I flexed my knees a little, steadied myself, and kept watching the darkness above us. “Go,” I said.
    The elevator shuddered to life. It was like trying to get your sea legs, and then it smoothed out,