Free Kiss the Dead by Laurell K. Hamilton Page B

would all depend on the next few minutes.
    How do you help wounded undead? Smith was kneeling beside a teenage girl vampire. “Is she supposed to have a heartbeat?” he asked.
    “Not necessarily,” I said, and went to kneel by him because it was as good a place to start as any.
    “Then how do we tell if they’re dead, or… saveable?”
    “Good question,” I said.
    He spoke low. “You got a good answer?”
    I smiled, but he didn’t smile back. I sighed and dropped some of my psychic shields. I was a necromancer, the first real one allowed to live and mature into their power in over a thousand years. The vampires had killed people like me for centuries, because legend said truly powerful necromancers controlled all the undead, not just zombies. I couldn’t control vampires the way I could a zombie I’d raised, but I had power over them… sometimes. I looked down at the “girl” with her short black hair and pale, pale skin. She was the most Goth, or emo, of the vampires. The hair so wasn’t her natural color. She looked about fourteen, maybe younger, the age when a lot of us rebel. I tried to “see” more than just the physical packaging. I’d been able to feel their hunger earlier; maybe I could do more? I’d saved a vampire or two in my time. There… a spark, like a cold flame flickering in the center of her body, about where the sternum and stomach met. The energy that I saw wavered like a candle flame moving in the wind, guttering down to die. I “looked” at the other bodies, concentrating, trying to see. Some of them were cold, no hint of energy. They were gone, truly dead, but three others had flames burning above them, in them.
    The ambulances were here, the emergency medical technicians coming with wheeled stretchers. I saw them hesitate, wondering where to start. I called out, “Start with the woman at the edge of the group, near you, she’s closest to dying.”
    They exchanged glances, sort of shrugged, and started hooking the vampire up to plasma. They’d found that plasma, or a rush of blood transfusion, could “save” a vampire and give them a chance to heal on their own. It was about all they’d found to do for vampires in an emergency. I directed the second group of EMTs to the next vampire whose flame was wavering; that left us with two that were still alive, but hurt, but you can hook IVs up only so fast.
    I touched the girl’s cold skin. Vampires that haven’t fed and are less than a hundred years are cold without our blood to make them live. I willed that flickering flame to burn steadier, brighter. It flared enough that I pulled back, as if it were real fire.
    “You okay?” Smith asked.
    “Yeah, just bring the other live one over here, so I can touch him, too.”
    “You’ll explain why later,” he said.
    “Yeah.”
    Smith took me at my word and just went to help carry the vampire to me. I heard a gasp, and a stifled scream from someone. I looked over, and the fire wavered with my concentration. Shit. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
    “He’s awake,” Smith said. “It startled someone.” He gave one of the uniforms with him a look, but they carried the man’s body over to me in a cradle of their arms. They laid him down on the other side of me so I’d have a hand for each vampire.
    The man blinked large dark eyes at me, his face grimacing in pain. His short hair was naturally black, to match the slight uptilt of his eyes. I wasn’t a good judge of Asian ethnicity. If I’d had to guess, I’d have said Japanese or Chinese, but he could have been Korean. I guess it didn’t matter. He was slender, and about my size, so he looked delicate for a man. Like everyone in this group he looked like a victim, or at least not dangerous. The bullet hole in his upper chest added to the whole not-dangerous thing. I reached out to touch his hand. He flinched and did his best to move it away from me.
    “Let me help you,” I said. I lost concentration on the girl’s spark as I