“Why would you think that?” Orin asks. “You never mentioned anything like that before.”
“I know but… I had a dream and in it, she was really anxious. And then I was remembering how she was going to take me to get ice cream before really adamantly wanting me to make sure you were home when she changed her mind. I think she was taking me somewhere other than the ice cream place and then thought better of it. So she kept speeding and was clutching hard onto the steering wheel like something bad was happening. I think she knew. I think she was going to take me to him and then maybe she felt guilty or some shit… which is kind of hard to believe. But… do you know if my mom was close to any vampires?”
Orin sighs as he sits down on his bed. “Sadly, I feel like this’ll be another dead end. Your mother worked at a club that, behind the scenes, allowed vampires to feed off the humans. Brooks had been looking into the place as a detective and had asked me to go with him. That’s where I met your mother. So that means she worked with a lot of vampires. She was kind to me, and we hit it off, so I started visiting her. I realized later that she was just using me for the money, and I cut it off. She was conniving and was always out to make herself end up on top while not caring who or what she destroyed to get there. I could easily see her selling you out to someone to keep herself safe or for some money. Honestly, I’m surprised she kept Aria from me for so long, but maybe it was to spite me or maybe there was another reason that she took to her grave. It wasn’t until I was already aware of Aria’s existence that she told me she’d sell her to me. That she’d go along with passing her over for enough money. Too bad for her, I won in court without giving her a dime. But I think that’s what pissed her off enough to fight to keep you. I should have just paid for Aria, but because I didn’t, when I tried paying for you, she was nowhere to be found. It was a fucking mess. But yes, she was involved with many vampires.”
Finn seems to deflate. “Dammit. I thought I finally had something.”
“I wouldn’t give it up yet. It means she had to have been in contact with them. How about tomorrow we can dig up some of her old shit and see if we can find anything?”
“Too bad we’re basically poking into a thirteen-year-old case. Shit’s going to be ice cold, but I sure hope we can find something,” I say.
“Me too,” Orin says. “Now, next time, knock before you burst in.”
“Trust me, I will,” Finn says as he grabs my wrist and tugs me after him. “Come, Marcus. I need to wash my eyes.”
Chapter Sixteen
FINN
“Oh, fucking hell, who let this thing in here?” Karsyn growls as he walks into the conference room where Marcus and I are sitting across from Claude.
Claude looks around, trying to figure out what “this thing” is referring to before smiling like he’s got it. “It’s okay, I’ll protect you.” He definitely doesn’t get it.
“He’s talking about you,” Marcus says as Karsyn makes a beeline to me and sits down beside me.
Claude isn’t deterred as he leans forward and gives Karsyn the biggest smile. I have to hand it to the man, he’s attractive, but my god, he’s not going to get Karsyn this way. I’d be surprised if Karsyn doesn’t kill him by the end of it.
Karsyn pretends the man is nonexistent by pulling out some papers and reaching for the stapler.
“Has anyone ever told you how sexy your accent is?” Claude asks.
“Were these all of the papers?” Karsyn asks, trying his hardest to drop his accent. He sounds a bit like a Southern hillbilly, and I have to try my absolute hardest not to laugh. Who puts that much emphasis on the E in “were”?
“Aw, Karsyn, where’d you go over the weekend? You lost your accent!” Briar teases as she walks in.
Claude reaches out and sets a hand on top of Karsyn’s. “I was just telling him how sexy it is. I can only imagine the way you’d whisper dirty words to me.”
“Get your hand off me,” Karsyn growls, accent surging back in full force.
Claude doesn’t listen and just like that, Karsyn flips open the stapler and slams it down on Claude’s hand, leaving a staple behind.
Marcus lets out this strange little noise of delight that makes me stare at him in wonder.
Claude, on the other hand, looks extremely confused as he pulls his hand back, plucks the staple out and flicks it toward the trash can. “Does everyone around here hate compliments?”
“I don’t,” Briar says.
Claude glances at her. “Ew.”
“Oh my god. Who is this man?” Briar asks, now also disgusted by him.
“It’s not you, it’s just your body,” Claude says, as if that makes it better.
I’m assuming he means her lack of male parts, but I’m convinced he could have come up with a different and much better way to say it.
Claude turns to Marcus. “Brother—”
“Brother?” Karsyn growls and another staple goes flying as he clutches onto the stapler. “This is your brother, Marcus?”
Marcus’s entire body stiffens as he sits in silence for at least a minute. He’s either hoping everyone forgets the question or maybe trying to come up with a lie. “Karsyn, there’s no choice in the matter. He might have information to help us, so we must suffer,” Marcus explains. “But once he’s done, we could off him if you want. Tell him you’d like to see him naked and have him meet us in a secluded spot—”
Claude clears his throat. “It would be greatly appreciated if you all stopped fantasizing about my death. I gave up an extremely busy schedule to be here.”
“Thank you for coming, Claude,” I say, since it’s clear no one else will say anything nice to him.
He snickers and I realize that I thanked him… for coming and like a twelve-year-old, he thinks it’s funny. It’s only funny if it was my joke. “You’re welcome, cutie pie.”
Brooks walks in with Orin and DeGray, who all take a seat. When DeGray slides in next to Briar instead of Karsyn, Karsyn stares at him, but returns to stapling his papers since Claude’s hand is not within stapling distance.
“Okay, Claude, you said you had something?” I ask.
“I do!” He pulls out a freaking binder packed full of papers. “I’ve always been curious about the origin of true vampires. We know that true vampires are unlike regular vampires in multiple ways, but most notably, they can have offspring. While extremely rare, it happens on occasion. But what I was most curious about is when true vampires came into existence. While records are few and far between, we see a pattern when we start to question when they came around. Marcus and I were born in the year 1709. Seemingly to the same mother, which was quite questionable for many years. No other vampires report having siblings, but for twin children to be born to the same human mother and both to be ‘monsters’ is unheard of. True vampires all were born around twenty years of each other starting as early as 1690 and as late as 1712. Were they born vampire, were they turned into vampires after birth? None of us really know. We were merely infants, but we aged and grew and while we could eat human food, we were weak without blood. Many died before they realized that what they truly needed was the blood of a human. But what really began to interest me was that during my research there were reports of another vampire-like being around 1678, over ten years before the first true vampire was supposedly ‘born.’”
Interestingly, when Claude is talking about history, he’s not as annoying as every other moment of his life. I thought asking him to help us was a joke, but maybe Marcus is right that he could be of some assistance.
He pulls out a piece of paper. “Here’s a letter from a sheep farmer from 1680 that I’ve translated. ‘Dear brother, at first it was the sheep. I tell others that they are left bloodless. The bodies are left to rot but with no blood spilled and yet no one believes me. They claim an animal dragged it off after its death. But they’re wrong. There is a monster haunting my fields, so I was forced to draw them into the safety of the barn where no animal could reach them. I closed the
doors up and left them in the safety of the straw. When I woke the next morning, the sheep nearly crushed me trying to flee the barn. I have never seen such terror! And when the living were out to pasture, I found more were dead. Most of the deaths were young ones that’d been trampled from fear. The ram, the mean one who attacks everything, was lying in the mow, neck broken, blood gone from it. This creature dragged an adult ram straight up into the mow and drained its blood but spilled not a drop.
“‘But when I finished examining the body, what I realized is that there’d been no forced entry into the barn. I searched the windows, the floor, but there’s no way the creature burrowed its way inside, telling me that it never came inside. It was already inside my barn when I locked the sheep up. Brother, I’m asking you to help me hunt down this monster that harasses my livelihood. For I fear I can’t kill it alone and everyone thinks I’m crazy.’ And then this is the next letter, ‘Brother, I knew I had to do something. Ten more sheep have died since the last letter. My herd is spooked and are fleeing. I spend hours finding them only to see they have deserted their young and have wounds caused from panicking. So I took my best dogs and in the night, I walked out to the barn and threw the door open, prepared to kill the animal myself. When I lifted my lantern, I saw its eyes glowing in the dark. I knew it would kill me if I didn’t run. Brother, I fear I’m next.’”
“W-Why were its eyes glowing?” I ask.
“Probably reflecting off the light of the lantern,” DeGray says.
Claude shakes his head. “No, there are multiple instances where they state that the creature’s eyes glow. That they see the eyes glowing in the dark, even if there’s no light for them to reflect.”
Suddenly, I see those eyes before me. Even in the dark room he’d kept me in, I knew he was there by the way his eyes held on to me.
“Is it too much?” Marcus asks me.
I quickly look over at him and shake my head. “No, no, I’m fine. I promise. But yes… his… his eyes seemed to be glowing.”
“There are more instances. This definitely isn’t the only person who was recorded talking about this blood-feasting creature. It sounds like the vampire started on animals before changing to feeding on people with no remorse,” Claude says.
“The issue with information from that long ago is they weren’t knowledgeable on things, so everything would become exaggerated,” Marcus says. “Do you know how many times I’ve been told I’m shorter than the stories spread about me? I mean, I’m not a short man, but clearly, they thought I was a giant. But we now know there was at least one vampire or even more before the first true vampires were reported. Are there any other descriptions of him?”
Claude shrugs. “A few, but they vary so much. Some said he was inhumanly handsome with a charming smile and soft, gentle features that pulled in young women and men. Others said he looked like a monster, face grotesque and distorted. Some claimed he was as pale as a ghost and others that he was as dark as the night. What I’ve been trying to do is pull out repetitions. We have more than one case of glowing eyes and Finn can confirm that one himself. Most have that he’s taller, but taller back then could have been five foot ten.”
I think about it and try to push past the glowing eyes to something concrete about him. “I think he’s close to six feet.”
“Finn, what if I compile a list of descriptions of him and you go through and look at them and see if anything jogs a memory or something about him that we might have missed?” Claude asks.
“Sure, I’ll look over them.”
Marcus pushes all his papers into a pile. “While you guys do that, I’m going to head to the prison and question Adler. I want to see why he confessed to killing Tonya Everest when it’s clear now he was just a pawn. While we do know he was likely the one who killed Perez, I don’t think he killed the girl.”
“I’ll go with you if Hayes is staying here,” DeGray says.
“I’ll run through these documents with Finn,” Karsyn says. “I’ll cross-analyze them with current data I have.”
Once everyone parts ways, I send a text to Marcus.
Me: I want to go on a date or something tonight. Something to distract me.
Marcus: Of course. Where do you want to go? And don’t say roller skating because that will never happen again.
I grin at the thought of Marcus flailing around. How many nights have I used that memory to put him back in his place?
Me: How about you pick then?
Marcus: Perfect. I’ll pick something you’ve never done so I can look manly and you can flounder around.
Me: Sounds lovely. I can’t wait.
Marcus: Me too. Be prepared to be embarrassed.
I can’t fathom why he wouldn’t want to go roller skating again when we had so much fun last time.
“Don’t look at me,” Karsyn growls.
Now that I’m alone with Claude and Karsyn, the two seem to be back at it. But this time, all Claude did was smile and Karsyn’s ready to eat him.
“Children, settle down,” I say.
“He looked at me,” Karsyn says, as though that’s a good excuse.
“You’re like the sun, I can’t look away,” Claude says which is the stupidest pickup line I’ve ever heard.
“Can I tear his eyes out?” Karsyn asks me like I’m suddenly in control here. He’s at least a century older than me and he’s wanting my permission?
I pat his shoulder. “Not yet. Remember how you wanted to eat me? Maybe you’ll even grow to like Claude,” I say as we both look at Claude who is beaming at us. “Never mind. Let’s get back to work.”
Claude nods and starts pushing papers in front of us. Clearly, when he’s working, he’s less obnoxious. He’s actually intelligent when he uses his brain for something other than flirting.
“Karsyn, can I see what you have while Finnigan works on that?” he asks.
So as I read through the transcribed notes, Karsyn runs through the data with Claude.
“The victims so far resemble Finnigan, do they not?” Claude asks.
“Brown hair and blue eyes aren’t a lot to go on, but yes, they have similarities,” Karsyn says.
I glance up as I watch Claude lean in. “No, no, look at the shapes and structures of their features. The man has an eye,” Claude says as he reaches across the table and runs a finger over my cheek. “Look at the way Finnigan’s cheeks run down to his chin and compare it to the women. He has a type.”
“Let me run these features through the database and see if I can find any other murders that match,” Karsyn says. “Hayes, can you get me pictures of yourself when you were sixteen?”
“Yeah… probably.”
“According to the police report, your leg was pinned in the car, right?” Karsyn asks.
“Yeah, the car accident broke it.”
“Why would he put Finn in danger?” Claude asks.
“I don’t… I don’t think he did,” I say as I think back on the dream. “I think I made a mistake. I thought something pushed us into the railing, but I think my mom jerked the wheel because she saw him. I don’t know. It’s hard for me to remember everything clearly. So much happened during those days.”
“It’s not uncommon to forget things surrounding a trauma,” Karsyn says. “Why was the vampire attack not in your files?”
“Orin pulled a lot of strings and had it removed because, unknown to me, my mother had put in a claim that I was in unnecessary danger being raised by a vampire. This could have been the information needed to push them into finding me a new home. Making it seem that I was instead wounded from a car accident by the human mother who was trying to drag me back helped keep Orin as my father. You have to realize that even though it was only eighteen or so years ago that he adopted me, it was nearly unheard of for a vampire to be allowed to adopt a human. We had to protect that as best as we could.”
“So Orin pulled some strings?” Karsyn asks in surprise.
“Orin had the money and Brooks had the mea
ns,” I say. It was something I wasn’t supposed to talk about, but at this point, I don’t think either of them is going to run off and get Brooks or Orin in trouble over it.
Karsyn takes a deep breath. “Alright, let’s hope something important wasn’t erased because of it.”
I’ve been through the data time and time again. I can’t imagine there’s anything in there that hasn’t already been gone over multiple times, but I’m hoping there’s something I missed or something my team can help me figure out.
Still, we spend hours going through it, and when Marcus returns from questioning
Adler, he has nothing more than when he went in. He said he’s refusing to even talk to Marcus anymore after claiming he has no idea what he’s talking about.
Chapter Seventeen
MARCUS
“A… horse farm?” Finn asks in surprise.
Finally, my opportunity to show him that I’m amazing at something that he doesn’t know how to do. This will once and for all be what I need to make him forget about making fun of my lack of roller skating expertise. “Why, yes. You haven’t ridden a horse before, right?”
“No, I haven’t! I get to ride one?” he asks, looking excited. Having been with Finn as long as I have, I’m aware he loves any and all animals he comes across. So not only is this a perfect opportunity to prove to him that I am better at things that matter, but he also gets to moon over some more animals.
“Yes, you can ride one. Occasionally, I miss the old days when I could ride just about anywhere, so I come here,” I explain.
“I didn’t know that! Sometimes I forget that you are so old there was nothing but sticks and fire around when you were born,” he says.
I glare at him. “There was more than sticks and fire.”
“Did you have to lasso your horses and bring them in from the wild?” he teases.
“No, I bought them or stole them,” I say, since he clearly has some Old West idea going on in his head.
How to Elude a Vampire (VRC: Vampire Related Crimes Book 2) Page 16