Stake
Page 29
She grinned. ‘Hugo Zelm will pay for it. He already sent me a message.’ She mused, feeling wistful. ‘Maybe I’ll keep it as a souvenir. I’ll be salvaging a lot of things, but at least I’m alive and Blair is alive.’ She drew a breath. ‘And Simon Helsing isn’t.’
Carrow came the rest of the way into the room and sniffed the huge bouquet of roses. He swung the door mostly shut for privacy. ‘There’s one more curious thing I wanted to talk about. When we were pursuing Helsing through the forest, we found where he had holed up, a small cave with some stashed supplies, first-aid items.’ He skewered Lexi with an intense gaze. ‘And another body. A large man, dark hair, beard. He’d been stabbed through the throat. Any idea who he might be?’
She felt a cold knot of dismay. ‘Unfortunately, I think I do.’ She hung her head, saw that Blair was also staring at her with intense curiosity. She had a lot to tell them both. ‘His name was Lucius.’
It was long past time for secrets and assumptions. She explained in full detail about the Bastion community, the camp, how she had been lured out there with a promise of evidence, and drugged … all of it.
After hearing the tale, Carrow shook his head. ‘That’s a crazy story, Miss Tarada, but I’ll surprise you – for once, I believe everything you just told me.’
His phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket, turning away to answer the call. His expression grew disturbed as he listened, then spoke. ‘No, nothing more, sir. We’ve wrapped up the case, withdrawn the plainclothes protection. Mr Lugash has nothing else to fear. We haven’t had any contact with him in several days.’ He listened again, then scratched his other cheek. ‘All right, I’ll have a look. But it has nothing further to do with the case.’
He ended the call and gave Lexi a questioning look. ‘That was the manager of Checkers Pizza. Frederik Lugash hasn’t shown up for work for the past two days, and his boss thought we had taken him into protective custody.’ He paced the floor of the hospital room. ‘I’ll do a welfare check at his house, just to make sure. Too much of a coincidence.’ He pulled open the door again to leave. ‘Thank you both. I’ll call if I need anything else.’ He glanced at Blair in the bed, as if suddenly remembering he was there. ‘Oh, and get well soon.’
‘I’m going with you.’ Lexi squeezed Blair’s arm and set off after the detective.
Carrow frowned. ‘No you’re not.’
‘Throw me a bone, Detective. I’m more a part of this case than anyone else. Besides, you must have more questions and paperwork for me. We can do it on the way.’
He sighed. ‘Come on, then.’
They drove out of downtown and headed south, winding their way into the sad old residential area where Lugash lived. Lexi didn’t tell Carrow that she had already snooped at his house. She followed the detective up the driveway. The Volkswagen with its Checkers Pizza sign was gone.
‘Seems like nobody’s home,’ she said.
He pounded on the door. ‘We know he’s not at work.’ He kept knocking, but received no answer.
‘That’s a good enough reason for concern, considering the circumstances,’ Lexi said. ‘Could Helsing have gotten him before he came after me? Is the door unlocked?’
‘Why would he leave the door unlocked?’ Carrow asked, turning the knob.
It opened.
Inside, the house was quiet and empty. ‘Hello? CSPD. This is Detective Carrow. Mr Lugash, are you here?’
No answer.
Lexi followed him into the front hall, adding her own voice. ‘Anybody home?’ She felt the emptiness, knew in her heart that they would find no one inside – no one alive at least.
The house was in disarray. Some of the drawers remained half-open; papers were scattered on the counter, as if hurriedly searched then left behind. She briefly thought the house might have been robbed, but this felt different. ‘Somebody left here in a hurry.’
Carrow’s brow furrowed as he walked deeper into the house, still calling out. Alert, Lexi moved cautiously. She didn’t smell any blood, but that didn’t mean the pizza delivery man hadn’t been murdered. All the drapes were drawn, as she had expected. She looked around the front room, the bare walls above the sofa, poked her head into the small powder room and was surprised to see that the mirror above the sink had been removed.
‘He must have been doing some remodeling,’ she said aloud. Then a chill went down her back. She took another quick scan and realized that there were no mirrors in the house at all.
The bedroom closet was open, dresser drawers askew. A few clothes were scattered around, but most were gone. ‘He grabbed what he could, packed up, and left,’ Carrow said. ‘Lugash is out of here. We’re not going to find him.’
‘Running from creditors maybe?’ She knew it was a foolish suggestion.
‘Why would he just take off? What was he afraid of? The vampire killer’s gone.’
‘He was afraid of something,’ Lexi said. ‘Maybe afraid that he’d be found out.’ She felt gooseflesh on her arms. ‘The bed hasn’t been slept in.’
Following her instincts, she went to the mattress, pressed down on the bedspread, plucked at the corner. Her heart sank, knowing what she would find.
Lexi pulled back the sheets on the bed and found no mattress there.
Just soft dirt.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have lived near Colorado Springs for more than twenty years. It is a beautiful place to live, surrounded by incredible mountain scenery and wild national forests that could hold many secrets. I have done a lot of exploring, but I still haven’t found any vampires, though. I wrote much of the novel here, but the last chapters were written (by serendipitous coincidence) in Eastern Europe, in Prague and elsewhere in the Czech Republic, a place extremely appropriate for vampires.
This novel is even more special to me because just as I was starting to write it, a dear friend suffered a terrible personal loss, the death of her husband, and was struggling to pay funeral and everyday expenses. I rallied friends and fans and offered to name characters in Stake after anyone who made a donation to help her – side characters or victims – and the real name of the serial killer reserved for the person who donated the most. We raised over $5000 to help, and many of my friends and supporters are in this novel. Many of them, alas, meet terrible ends …
Special thanks to Steve Feldberg at Audible.com for giving the opportunity to write this novel. I’ve had it on my back burner for almost two decades, but timing was never right. Also thanks to Carl Smith at Severn House, my agent John Silbersack at the Bent Agency, Eric Williams at Zero Gravity Management, Brendan Higgins, and Diane Jones.