Free The Hollows by Kim Harrison Page A

who feed on them will become careless and accidentally kill them, conveniently forgetting to finish the job and bring them back as an undead. And whereas a high-blood vampire is born with status that he or she carries into vampiric death, low-blood vampires must fight for theirs. They can be very dangerous if they start to overcompensate, becoming ruthless to measure up to their sire’s expectations. Just punch them in the gut, and they’ll fall like any other human.
     
    The other extreme of the vampiric existence are the true undead. These are the soulless, alluring vampires who exist only to satisfy their carnal urges, and it’s their incredible strength coupled with their utter disregard for life that makes them such a threat. They experience no compassion or empathy, yet retain all their memories; they remember ties of love, but they don’t remember why they love. It’s a dead emotion, and in my limited experience, it brings untold grief to the living they interact with and once cared for.
     
    The liabilities of the undead are few, and while they have lost their souls, many don’t consider that a drawback but a blessing. If sanctified, crosses can inflict real damage on undead tissue, but it’s a charm that causes the hurt, not a religious belief. Bringing out a cross will most likely only irritate a vampire, not get him or her to back down, so have something more potent to follow it up with.
     
    In theory, the charm to burn undead flesh can be put into any bit of redwood or silver, but the magic is older than agriculture, and those that craft the spell—be they human or witch—insist the charm won’t stick to anything but a cross. Personally, I wouldn’t trust anything but a sanctified cross to distract a vampire in a tight situation.
     
    I’ve found that unblessed artifacts of any religion are little more than a bother, ticking off the undead with the reminder that because their soul has already moved on, there will be nothing to carry their awareness to a higher plane when their body fails again. Undead vampires are intimately aware that if their body dies, not only will their spark of life cease, but that it will be as if it had never existed, a thought intolerable to the immortality-seeking vampires.
     
    It’s with the undead that light becomes a liability. The virus that allows vampires to continue his or her existence after the loss of their soul is rendered inactive by light, and they will undergo a sadly un-dramatic death. However, if the big-bad-ugly falls to the ground in anything less than full sunlight, shoot ‘em before you go see if he or she is really down. They’ll move if they’re still conscious. Trust me on this—damn the paperwork, and just shoot them. Twice.
     
    Only the undead are capable of bespelling an unwilling person, luring them into a state of bliss by way of sophisticated pheromones. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the undead and should be treated with the utmost caution. Don’t bother averting your eyes; it won’t help and only pushes a hungry vampire’s buttons. Fear is a blood aphrodisiac; try not to make things worse.
     
    Fortunately, unless you have pissed the undead off or are quivering in terror, they will likely ignore you as a source of blood. The undead are fastidious in choosing their blood partners and will generally target living vampires to avoid legal battles with humans. A word of caution: luring and betraying humans to their ruin with false promises gives the undead a feeling of lustful domination that stirs them almost as much as the blood. Try not to get involved.
     
    The newly undead can be very cruel to those they don’t fear or once loved, but with time they regain a veneer of morality, most attaining elegant social skills to beguile and charm. It’s all the better to eat you with, my dear, so be careful. A good rule of thumb is the nicer a vampire is, the more depraved he or she can be.
     
    As their sophistication grows, an