Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Colletion_ Books 11-15 - Laurell K. Hamilton [530]
There was a fight at the end of the hallway. Our civies, one dark and one blond, had caught up with the bad guy. They seemed to be winning. They had him on the ground, though the dark-haired civie was on the ground, too. I cleared the door, gun in a two-handed grip, with Zerbrowski right behind me. He yelled, “Police, everybody freeze!”
The civilians hesitated in the fight, because they were upstanding citizens. Upstanding citizens tend to listen to the cops. It wasn’t much of a hesitation, they just stopped fighting as hard, and they glanced at us. That was it, then they turned right back to the bad guy, but he was a bad guy, and he hadn’t looked at us, or hesitated in the fight. After all, he had nothing to lose. I already had a warrant that let us kill his ass.
The two vampires had him down, but when they hesitated, one of them must have loosened their grip, just a fraction. I saw something silver glint in the bad guy’s hand. I yelled, “Knife!” but it was too late. The blade hit the dark one in the chest. Something about that blow seemed to stagger the blond, because he went to his knees beside his friend. Maybe he thought we had the bad guy covered. He knelt and reached for his fallen friend, and if the bad guy had done the usual and stood up and run through the door, we’d have had clean shots at him. But he didn’t, he pushed the door wide with his hand, and half-crawled, half-rolled through the door. The two civilians were blocking our shots completely.
I yelled, “Fuck!” and started to run.
67
WE CLEARED THE far door, me going low, Zerbrowski high. Marconi and Smith a weight at our backs waiting for a clear angle. We were in the parish hall, and in the middle of all those long tables was the vampire. He was using his leather jacket to shield his face from the white-hot glow of the two uniforms’ crosses. They had their guns in one hand, and the crosses in the other, almost like you’d hold flashlights, so that they were able to maintain a two-handed grip and still show the crosses. Training will tell.
I yelled, “He’s got a knife!”
I saw one of the men’s eyes flick to me, but only for a second. “We’ll cover him, you pat him down.”
“Don’t be a wussy, Roarke,” Smith said, from behind me.
“Call me a wussy when you’re standing this close to him.”
I kept my gun on the vampire and walked slowly toward him. I talked while I moved, “Slowly, drop the knife.”
The vampire didn’t move, except to cower behind his jacket.
I stopped moving and looked down the barrel of my gun at him. I felt myself going quiet inside, slipping away inside my head to that distant strangely peaceful place I went when I killed, and had time to rev up for it. “I’ll ask one more time, Jonah. Drop the knife, or I put a bullet in you. I won’t . . . ask . . . again.” All the air slid out of me, and my body went as still and peaceful as my head. I didn’t hear that white noise tonight, that static, it was just quiet. The world had narrowed down to the crouching figure and nothing else. I wasn’t really aware of the police, Zerbrowski behind me, even the glow of the crosses had pulled back, so that my vision was sharpened down to the man I was about to shoot.
Something dropped from that dark figure, something silver that glinted in the white glow, but it didn’t really register. I didn’t think knife. I had passed the point of no return. I was committed.
Zerbrowski’s voice brought me back. “Knife, Anita, he dropped the knife.” His voice was gentle, as if he understood that I was on the edge. The edge where a sharp voice might have pressed that trigger for me.
My breath came back in a sharp hiss of air. I pointed the gun at the ceiling, because I had to stop pointing it at the man. I had to point it elsewhere, or I was going to shoot him. Legally, I could have done it, but we needed him to talk to us. The dead, the true dead, aren’t a chatty bunch.