Kiss the Dead by Laurell K. Hamilton

teens, or younger, tweens. They were all children, all too young for that secondary growth spurt. They’d all been brought over before they finished puberty. It was forbidden to bring children over, and their faces staring up at me were all borderline, and all recently dead. Fuck, and double fuck.
    I looked beyond the kids in front and found that the grown-ups weren’t much better. Some of the women looked like they should be baking cookies for scout meetings and packing for family vacations, not kneeling here in cuffs with fangs. Some of the people were a little out of shape or overweight. It was a myth that being a vampire made youthin. Some low-level vampires stayed the same size they were at death, frozen in whatever shape they’d been forever, so if you were going to become a vampire you should drop that extra few pounds first. Some lines of vampires could change their body after death. I’d seen them put on more muscle in the gym, but I wasn’t sure how much they could change after they were dead. Had these people chosen to be vampires, or had they been forced? If forced, then it was a truly horrible crime. I’d cheerfully kill the vampire that made them.
    Then my metaphysics got out of the way of my cop brain, and I realized I was being stupid, distracted by the metaphysics—which was why the cops had started partnering one normal with a supernormal, so you had a mundane double check. Fuck!
    I turned from the vampires and hurried to the knot of uniforms with Smith. “The vampires are all hungry! They haven’t fed tonight.”
    One uniform looked at me, with all the cynicism you gain in police work. He was about forty pounds too heavy around the middle, but his eyes held the years of experience that can make up for speed and athleticism if you paired him with a rookie who could run. “They have to have fed. You saw what they did to Mulligan.”
    Smith said, “If Anita says they haven’t fed, she’ll be right. She knows the undead.”
    I checked the nameplate and said, “Exactly, Urlrich; if these guys didn’t feed, then we’re missing the ones who did.”
    “I don’t understand,” the younger uniform said, and shook his head. He had short brown hair, matching eyes, and a slim, runner’s build. The brawn for the brains of his partner.
    Urlrich understood. He undid the snap on his gun and rested his hand on the grip. “The body was warm; are they still here, Ms. Vampire Expert?”
    “I don’t know. With this many vampires, my spider-sense is on overload, and they have to have a vampire master with them powerful enough to possibly hide them.” In my head I added,
Powerful enough to hide this much activity from Jean-Claude, the Master of St. Louis
. You gained a lot of power over a piece of real estate as master, and over thevampires in it, so at this point the rogue would have to be either fucking powerful, or so good at hiding in plain sight that it was a type of power.
    “Is it a trap?” Smith asked.
    “I don’t know, but they left these vampires here to take the blame for the crimes. Master vamps don’t waste this much manpower without a good reason.”
    “Maybe they thought we’d believe it,” Smith said, “and they’d be in the clear.”
    “Only if we killed them all on sight,” I said.
    Urlrich said, “You do have a reputation for shooting first, Marshal Blake.”
    I couldn’t argue with that. Was that what the vampires had counted on, that I’d just kill everyone in the building? If that was the plan, then my reputation was even worse than I thought. I wasn’t sure whether I was sad or happy about that. You’re only as tough as your threat is good; apparently my threat totally rocked.
    Zerbrowski came back up as we were talking. “We need to talk about Billings, Anita.” He looked very serious.
    I nodded. “Agreed, but later.” I told him that the vampires hadn’t fed.
    “Is it like the serial killer who left his wee little vamps to take the blame for his kills, a few