Incubus Dreams--chapter 79

Yeah, just one chapter tonight. Why?

I got sick at work and passed out in front of my boss. That is how fucking hot it is in Texas right now.

I am tired, and I am really tired of listening to Anita.

So after ALL THAT SHIT last time, Anita decides that these were not the vampires they were looking for. Under normal circumstances the cops would be matching teeth to bite wounds to make sure of this, but in the Anitaverse the cops are all "the number's mostly right, and we lost guys, so we're done now."

Remind me again how respectful LKH is of the cops? Seriously, you LOST GUYS on this, and you're not going to make sure you got all the bad guys? YOU HAVE TOOTH IMPRESSIONS FOR FUCK'S SAKE. That's how they got Ted Bundy put away.

Hey, let's have some sexism!

“Go home, Blake, go home to your husband, or boyfriend, or fucking dog, but go home. Your job is done here. Do you understand that?”

Anita continues to argue because she, and ONLY she, knows they didn't get all the bad guys.

The cop recommends that Anita drop the criminal consultant part of her job for a little while, she's probably burnt out. They don't make real cops stick with it more than five years, according to this text, so Anita is past her sell-by date.

Response?

“My abilities with the dead are genetic, it’s like a psychic gift. No amount of training or practice will teach you how to see the invisible. There are less than twenty people in the entire country that have abilities even close to mine.”

You know, "I see things you can't" has been the running theme for this book. There was the "explaining color blue" sequence with Arnet, and then there was the pissing contest with the cop a little earlier. Now we have this. ANITA IS SPESHUL, boys and girls. She sees things. 

 It's the cop's turn to give her a speech:

“Look, Blake, take some advice from someone who’s been doing this longer than you have. You’re not God, you can’t save everybody, and the police work in this town has been running just fine without you to baby-sit. You aren’t the only cop in this city, and you aren’t the only one who can do this job. 

 YES. FINALLY SOMEBODY CALLS ANITA ON HER--

You’ve got to let go of that idea, or you’ll go crazy. You’ll start blaming yourself for not being there twenty-four-seven. You’ll start thinking, if only I’d been there, this bad thing, or that bad thing, wouldn’t have happened. It’s a lie. You’re just a person, with some good abilities, and good judgment, but don’t try and carry the weight of the whole fucking world. It’ll crush you.”

Anita has good judgement.

ANITA BLAKE has good judgement.

ANITA. The woman who basically had sex on top of Wicked and Truth back at the church. Who picked a cat fight with Jessica Arnet rather than coming out and stating up front that she and Nate were dating. Who went to a crime scene in a muddy pit in a miniskirt, thong and stiletto heels because proving you so-called liberation is more important than proving who killed who in court.

Who withheld critical evidence in a serial murder investigation so that she could get to lead an insertion team into an apartment, and managed to fuck that up by the numbers.

Stop kissing your main character's ass, Laurel. It only makes her fuck-ups that much more obvious.

Anita then figures that his advice is hard won--well, I'd say no shit, but it's so fucking obvious a rookie could have pulled it out of their ass on the first day--and decides...you know what? Fuck it. Read it yourself.

If I’d been a girl-girl, I’d have said something like, you sound like you’re talking from experience, but I’d hung around with the boys’ club too long not to know my manners. Hudson was opening up, and he didn’t have to, he was trying to help me; asking him personal shit would have made me an ungrateful wretch.

Bonding moments only happen between girls.

He tells her to go let her family know she's not dead. She tells him that the DNA from the bites won't match the vamps upstairs. Given that this. will take. for. fucking. ever. to process I'd go out on a limb and say that they'll be looking at bite impressions LONG before they get to DNA. Oh, they'll start processing it right now, but they'll get the results back in a couple of months.

The chapter ends.

I am going to bed now.