Free Anita Blake 20bis - Beauty: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Outtake by Laurell K. Hamilton

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    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
     
    BEAUTY

    A Berkley Book, published by arrangement with the author
    PUBLISHING HISTORY
    Berkley eSpecial edition / May 2012
     
    Copyright © 2012 by Laurell K. Hamilton.
    Excerpt from
Kiss the Dead
copyright © 2012 by Laurell K. Hamilton. Cover design by Judith Lagerman. Cover image of woman © Dazo / Masterfile; metal plate © R-studio / Shutterstock.
     
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    ISBN: 978-1-101-57930-5

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1
    Once upon a time I’d had no one to go home to after a crime scene, but that was back in the day when I’d done nothing but hunt bad guys and raise zombies. I’d been more a consultant for the police than an actual cop. I had been grandfathered into the U.S. Marshals service along with most of the legal vampire executioners in the country who could pass the weapons test. I had a real badge now, and was doing more time as a cop than as my original day job of raising the dead. It paid better than the police work, but people didn’t usually die if I missed an appointment to raise a zombie for a historical society so they could question it on the accuracy of some battle information. People could die if I missed this job, but there were nights when I just needed to come home and wrap myself in my boyfriends’ arms and forget about the blood and death I’d just seen. This was one of those nights, and according to the schedule, I was coming home to Jean-Claude, the master vampire of St. Louis, and one of my main squeezes. We’d been dating for seven years, sometimes on-again, off-again, but for the last few years it had been very on.
    Yeah, I did see the irony that I wanted to forget about the death I’d just seen on the job by getting up close and personal with a vampire, but trust me when I say vampires aren’t dead. They are
undead
, and that is way more lively than a lot of human men I’ve known.