13 Bullets

13 Bullets by David Wellington combines the hard-bitten detective teaching his lovely and naïve protégé with a little bit of the supernatural and creates a predictable yet fascinating story. It did one of my favorite things in vampire fiction - it maintained the vampire as monster, pure monster - and still managed to keep a little bit of the sexy. 13 Bullets was fun, violent, and fast paced; all around surprisingly enjoyable.

The two characters whom the story revolves around are Special Deputy Arkeley and State Trooper Laura Caxton. Arkeley is a crusty old police veteran and the only living human to have come into contact with vampires - the only human with experience killing vampires. While Caxton is this lovely yet insecure new Trooper who just happened to stumble across the latest vampire uprising. Arkeley swoops Caxton up and drags her along in his hunt of the vampire brood, all the while keeping her guessing as to whether she is bait, newest protégé, or just convenient eye-witness. There’s not much to be said for their relationship; Laura has daddy issues and insecurity while Arkeley is able to show a human side despite his gruff exterior. The dynamics between the two weren’t that interesting - having seen or read this kind of story countless times Wellington didn’t have anything significant to add. It is to be hoped that the relationship between these two manages to be more interesting, as they feature in at least three more books.

The vampires were wonderful superhuman monsters, blood-thirsty and viscous, physically differing from humans in many respects, one of them being ridiculous strength. The opening chapter - the report filed by Arkeley recounting his first encounter - provides a vivid scene and an introduction of the vampire’s brutality and inhuman-ness.

“Lares spun around on his side without any warning at all, far faster than a human being could move. He got one knee under him and grabbed at the SWAT’s arm to pull himself up. He had no trouble whatsoever getting a grip on all those crosses. The SWAT started to react, bringing his MP5 up, ducking down in a firing crouch. Lares grabbed his helmet in two hands and twisted it right off. The policeman’s head came with it.

For a second the decapitated SWAT stood there in a perfect firing crouch. Blood arced up from his gaping neck like a water fountain. Lares leaned forward and lapped at it, getting blood all over his face and chest. He was mocking us. He was goddamned making fun of us.”

The entire novel is full of these violent and bloody scenes rich in gore and spectacle. In addition to the vampires there are also creatures called half-deads, the gruesome remains of the vampire’s victims reanimated to serve the vampire.

Wellington’s vampires (and half-deads) have their own strengths and weaknesses, and a good deal of the fun is in learning what the rules are. For example vampires can grow old but that has it’s own attendant problems.

“The woman in the wheelchair…was little more than bones wrapped in translucent white skin as thin as tissue paper. There was no hair on her head except for a few spindly eyelashes. The skin had broken and parted from the bones of her skull, in places having worn away altogether, leaving visible shiny patches of bone. She had one plump eyeball, the iris colorless in the blue light. Her ears were long, sharply triangular, and riddled with sores. Her mouth looked broken, somehow, or at least wrong. It was full of shards, translucent jagged bits of bone. Caxton slowly made out that these were teeth. The woman had hundreds of them, and they weren’t broken. They were just sharp. This was what she had read about in Arkeley’s report…a vampire, an old, blood-starved vampire. She’d never seen anything more horrible…”

As bizarrely pathetic and morbid as this creature is, she turns out to be a formidable and ruthless opponent. And in a lot of ways it was this unexpected evil that made the story most interesting. If that pathetic creature could be such a menace what else was in store for the vampire hunters?

All the sexy in the story came from the character of Caxton, she was an insecure lesbian in a man’s world trying to keep herself private. When I first discovered that she was lesbian I was bracing myself for scenes of male fantasy hot lesbian sex - which would have really come across as grotesque or barely justified. Much to my delighted surprise - and I’m sure many other readers dissapointment - there were no fantasy lesbian scenes, just two women who loved each other. I was however annoyed at the psychology behind some of it, but only mildly annoyed and it didn’t come into play until nearly the end so my reading experience wasn’t ruined. I just think that people of all sexual orientations are capable of mourning a loss in their relationship - if you lose your loved one in anyway you should be sad not jumping on the next hot thing that comes your way. But enough said on that.

Overall I enjoyed 13 bullets immensely. This book exceeded many of my expectations. It was violent and gory, intense and in some ways thought provoking. After a few days though my excitement has waned and while my estimation of this story has not changed I find that the characters and story weren’t enough to inspire me to read any other of the four novels in this series.