Free [Anita Blake 17] - Skin Trade by Laurell K. Hamilton Page B

elbows. Even knowing that, even having Melbourne motionless on the floor in front of her, still Mendez didn’t shoot her. Jung was leaning against the wall, like he’d fall down if he didn’t concentrate. His neck was torn up, but the blood wasn’t gushing out. She’d missed the jugular. Let’s hear it for inexperience.
    I said, “Shoot her.”
    The vampire made mewling sounds, like a frightened child. Her voice came high and piteous, “Please, please, don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me. He made me. He made me.”
    â€œShoot her, Mendez,” I said into the mic.
    â€œShe’s begging for her life,” he said, and his voice didn’t sound good.
    I peeled shotgun shells out of the stock holder and fed them into the gun as I walked toward Mendez and the vampire. She was still crying, still begging, “They made us do it, they made us do it.”
    Jung was trying to hold pressure on his own neck wound. Melbourne’s body lay on its side, one hand outstretched toward the cringing vampire. Melbourne wasn’t moving, but the vampire still was. That seemed wrong to me. But I knew just how to fix it.
    I had the shotgun reloaded, but I let it swing down at my side. At this range the sawed-off was quicker; no wasted ammo.
    Mendez had glanced away from the vamp to me, then farther back to his sergeant. “I can’t shoot someone who’s begging for her life.”
    â€œIt’s okay, Mendez, I can.”
    â€œNo,” he said, and looked at me; his eyes showed too much white. “No.”
    â€œStep back, Mendez,” Hudson said.
    â€œSir . . .”
    â€œStep back and let Marshal Blake do her job.”
    â€œSir . . . it’s not right.”
    â€œAre you refusing a direct order, Mendez?”
    â€œNo, sir, but—”
    â€œThen step back and let the marshal do her job.”
    Mendez still hesitated.
    â€œNow, Mendez!”
    He moved back, but I didn’t trust him at my back. He wasn’t bespelled; she hadn’t tricked him with her eyes. It was much simpler than that. Police are trained to save lives, not take them. If she’d attacked him, Mendez would have fired. If she’d attacked someone else, he’d have fired. If she’d looked like a raving monster, he’d have fired. But she didn’t look like a monster as she cringed in the corner, hands as small as my own held up, trying to stop what was coming. Her body pressed into the corner, like a child’s last refuge before the beating begins, when you run out of places to hide and you are literally cornered, and there’s nothing you can do. No word, no action, no thing that will stop it.
    â€œGo stand by your sergeant,” I said.
    He stared at me, and his breathing was way too fast.
    â€œMendez,” Hudson said, “I want you here.”
    Mendez obeyed that voice, as he’d been trained to, but he kept glancing back at me and the vampire in the corner.
    She glanced past her arm, and because I didn’t have a holy item in sight, she was able to give me her eyes. They were pale in the uncertain light, pale and frightened. “Please,” she said, “please don’t hurt me. He made us do such terrible things. I didn’t want to, but the blood, I had to have it.” She raised her delicate oval face to me. “I had to have it.” The lower half of her face was a crimson mask.
    I nodded and braced the shotgun in my arms, using my hip and my arm instead of my shoulder for the brace point. “I know,” I said.
    â€œDon’t,” she said, and held out her hands.
    I fired into her face from less than two feet away. Her face vanished in a spray of blood and thicker things. Her body sat up very straight for long enough that I pulled the trigger into the middle of her chest. She was tiny, not much meat on her; I got daylight with just one shot.
    â€œHow could you look her in the eyes and do