Free Kiss the Dead by Laurell K. Hamilton Page A

dead,” he said.
    I nodded. “You’re right. Bright side.”
    A uniform ran up to us. “There’s a news crew out here.”
    “Shit,” Smith said, “how the hell did they get in?”
    I looked down at the dead vampire, and thought of all the vampires that looked like grandparents, children, soccer moms, all slaughtered by police on camera. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity, fuck! I fought the urge to kick the vampire’s body. Had they planned it this way? Had they alerted the media, and been willing to die for this? Had they made martyrs of themselves? God, I hoped not, because where there’s one martyr, there’ll be more.
    The elevator clanged to life behind us, and we all turned, guns coming up. I snugged the AR to my shoulder and cheek until I saw Zerbrowski lift the wooden door. He had his gun out; so did they all. He glanced at the dead vampire. “I miss all the fun?”
    “Missed the firefight, yes. Media shitstorm, no,” I said.
    “I can go back upstairs,” he said.
    “You may be ranking officer on site; I think you get to talk to them.”
    “Shit,” he said.
    That about summed it up.

6
    I WALKED OUT into the courtyard into chaos. People were yelling, there were lights everywhere, including a chopper overhead, with a spotlight. One uniformed officer was kneeling over a child vampire, holding his hands over her stomach wound, trying to stop the bleeding, trying to save her. A gunshot sounded loud, close, and I turned, gun in hand, pointed and ready. Another uniformed officer was shooting into a vampire on the ground, finishing him off. Another cop with a blond ponytail was yelling at him, “Stand down! Stand down!”
    Smith asked, “Do we save them, or kill them?”
    That was an excellent question. Legally we could kill all of them. I’d invoked the act, which meant it was a paperless warrant of execution. We could legally do a coup de grace and put a bullet in everyone’s head and heart. Some officers were trying to stanch the wounds with their hands or jackets. Some had guns out, pointed at the fallen. If I gave the word, we’d just make sure they were dead. Legally I could do it; a few years back I would have, and been absolutely sure I was right. Now… I wasn’t sure. What legal options did I have here? What did the law say I could do? When you have a badge, sometimes that’s all that’s left; youhave to follow the law. Problem is that sometimes the law is gray, and not clear, and other times, it’s too clear—clear, but not just, not right. Once I’d believed that the law was about justice, but I’d carried a badge and a gun too long not to understand that the law was about the law. It was about how it was written by people who would never have to stand here in the night with bodies bleeding, and men asking them,
What do we do?
Fuck.
    Zerbrowski had his phone and came to me, speaking quietly, “Everyone upstairs is getting antsy. Do they shoot the rest, or try to bring them downstairs? And we’ve got two ambulances outside the kill zone. Do I have them come ahead and try to save the ones they can, or are we going to finish the job?”
    “You know the legal options as well as I do,” I said. I didn’t want to make this call. Why couldn’t someone else make it?
    “You want us to just shoot the ones upstairs, and send the ambulances away?” he asked, and he was studying my face, as if he didn’t know me, or was waiting to figure out who the fuck I was; maybe we both were.
    I shook my head. “No, fuck it, but no, I guess not.”
    “Guess?” he asked.
    I shook my head again, and started moving. “Let the ambulances through. Tell the cops upstairs to reassure the vampires that we will get them to safety, but things are too volatile down here to guarantee their safety. Tell them to sit tight; everyone will get out alive, if everyone cooperates.”
    He did what I said, and I went to help the wounded, and show, by example, what we were going to do tonight. How we were going to handle this