Anita Blake 20bis - Beauty: An Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Outtake Read Online Free PDF

firmly up on his face and held a piece of paper out to me. The paper looked very official. I reached for it, and the vampire yelled, “I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you everything, please, please don’t kill me!”
    Zerbrowski drew his hand back. “Is he cooperating, Marshal Blake?” There was the slightest of twinkles in Zerbrowski’s brown eyes. If he grinned at me, I’d kick him in the shins. He stayed serious; there was a missing girl.
    I turned back to Barney. “Cooperate, Barney, because once I touch that piece of paper I am out of legal options that don’t include lethal force.”
    Barney told us where the secret lair was, and Zerbrowski got up and went for the door. “I’ll start the ball,” he said.
    Barney stood up and tried to move toward Zerbrowski, but the leg shackles wouldn’t let him get far. It was standard operating procedure to chain vampires. I’d removed the cuffs to try to gain his trust, and because I didn’t see him as a danger. “Where’s he going?”
    “To give the location to the other police, and you better pray that we get there before she’s been turned.”
    Barney turned that pink-stained face to me, looking puzzled. “You aren’t going?”
    “We’re forty-five minutes away from the location, Barney; a lot of bad things can happen in that amount of time. There’ll be other cops closer.”
    “But you’re supposed to go. In the movies it’d be you.”
    “Yeah, well, this isn’t the movies, and I’m not the only Marshal in the city.”
    “It’s supposed to be you.” He almost whispered it. He was staring into space, as if he couldn’t think clearly, or like he was listening to some voice I couldn’t hear.
    “Oh, shit,” I said. I was around the table before I had time to really think what I’d do when I got there. I grabbed a handful of Barney’s black T-shirt and put our faces inches apart. “Is this a trap, Barney? Is this a trap for me?”
    His eyes were wide, showing too much white. He blinked way too fast; the unblinking vampire stare took decades to perfect, and he hadn’t had that much time. The pale watery blue bled over his entire eye, so it was like looking at water with sun shining through it—his eyes with vampire power in them. He hissed in my face, snapping fangs at me. I should have backed off, but I didn’t. I was so used to dealing with vampires who wouldn’t hurt me that I forgot what it meant that he was a vampire, and I wasn’t.
    He moved, too fast for me to blink, his arms around my waist, lifting me off my feet. I was fast enough to have time to do one thing before he slammed me down on the table. Once I would have pulled out my cross, but it was in the locker with my gun, because a new law had declared it unfair intimidation against preternatural suspects. I had a split second to choose between my only two options: Do I slap my hand on the table to take some of the impact, or put my arm against his throat to keep his fangs away from mine? I chose my arm in his throat, and I was down. The table shuddered with the force of the blow, but his arm was between my back and the table and it took some of the impact. I wasn’t stunned, good.
    The vampire snarled in my face, fangs snapping; only my forearm shoved against his throat kept him from tearing mine out. I was more than human-strong, but I was a small woman, and even super-strong, I wasn’t as strong as the man pinning me to the table. He grabbed my wrist where it pushed against his throat and tried to pull it out of the way. I didn’t fight him for it; the best he was going to do was turn more of my arm into his throat. He didn’t know how to fight, didn’t understand leverage, he’d never grappled for his life—I had.
    I heard the door slam open but didn’t glance at it. I had to stare into those burning blue eyes, those fangs; I couldn’t afford to look away, even for a second, but I knew the door meant help was in the room. Arms grabbed him from behind, and he snarled,