Page 34 of Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 29)

I thought about it before answering. “Jean-Claude doesn’t tease me with his powers like he did just now. We’re getting married, he doesn’t have to use his vampire wiles anymore, so I think the charm used the connection between us to strip us both of some of our control.”

“We were told that it would protect us from a vampire’s secondary powers,” McKinnon said.

“As far as I can tell, all it does is guarantee the vampire will be even more uncontrolled; maybe if it’s less than a master vampire it will do what the makers of the charm advertised, but if the vampire is a master I think it will actually make them more dangerous. Hell, if you take away the gaze, that still leaves them with super strength and speed.”

“No, that’s the gaze, it makes people think they’re faster and stronger.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Shapeshifters are faster and stronger, but vampires have to cheat by using their secondary abilities.”

I looked at Dolph and made a little go-ahead gesture.

“You’re the vampire expert,” Dolph said.

“He’s your friend.”

“I thought we were at least work friends,” McKinnon said.

“How would you feel if I forced you and your wife to harm each other, as an experiment just to see what would happen? Would we still be friends after that?”

Expressions chased across his face like clouds on a windy day ashe tried to process, or maybe he was just buying time to frame an answer that would make him the good guy here. That’s what most people do, they reframe things so that they are the hero and not the villain. I hoped McKinnon was better than that.

“If you did it without understanding that it would hurt us, I’d hope I’d listen to you explain and accept a heartfelt apology.”

“I don’t trust you as much as I did before, but skip it, let’s get back to the fact that you are part of a government think tank committee and you all think that vampires are not faster and stronger than human normal. How the hell did the experts on your panel decide that bit of misinformation?”

“I’m not at liberty to share the names of our experts.”

“If it was Gerald Mallory, he hasn’t done anything but morgue stakings in decades. Maybe he doesn’t remember the truth, but if you take this charm into the field and come up against someone who’s not chained down with holy items for a morgue staking, you could strip the vampire’s control away. This magic could turn them back into a killing machine that just slaughters everyone it sees, because you’ve taken their ability to control their hunger for blood away from them. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I’m not sure I’m following you.”

“She means that even if the vampire wasn’t planning to hurt anyone, the charm could force them to attack.”

“We were told the charm just strips away the human mask and reveals the true monster inside.”

“Whoever told you that knew exactly what the charm would do.”

“You can’t know that it wasn’t just an honest mistake, Blake.”

“I bet you a hundred bucks that they knew, and that they believe that the only good vampire is a dead vampire.”

“We would never take advice from someone who thought that,” McKinnon said.

“And they know that, so they’ll keep the worst of their prejudice to themselves, so they can further their agenda.”

“I don’t believe that the people who made this charm understood what it would do.”

“Most witches don’t know that much about vampires, not really; their magic is all about life, so they had to turn to a vampire expert on what went into the charm, right?”

He looked away then, so we wouldn’t see his eyes. I think he was out of steely cop gaze that would hide what he was thinking. That meant I’d made him doubt one or more of the experts on his oversight committee. Good.

“If it’s Gerald Mallory, then he’d do anything to change the laws back to the bad old days when vampires could be killed on sight. He hates them with the kind of hate you see in hardcore white supremacists, or men who despise women at the same time that they’re obsessed with them. It’s that kind of obsessive hatred that I saw in Mallory the last time I worked with him.”

“I’m not admitting that Gerald has ever spoken with our committee, but he’s not very flattering about you either.”

“He’s told me to my face what he thinks of me.”

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