How to Elude a Vampire (VRC: Vampire Related Crimes Book 2)

by Alice Winters

  I sigh. “So… after everything that happened to me, I wanted to be in martial arts. Orin said he’d allow it as long as I promised to also go see a counselor. I wasn’t very good at the whole therapy thing but the lady knew I liked martial arts, so she came here with me one day. She told me that every time I landed a hit, I was to pretend I was hitting one thing that upset me, I hated, or was bothering me. Got it?”

  “Okay…”

  I pick up a strike shield which is a small rectangular mat that one person holds and the other strikes. Then I grab one for myself. “I’m going to punch you first. Ready?”

  “Yeah.”

  I punch the shield he’s holding onto tightly. “I hate how weak this asshole makes me feel. Your turn.” I lift my shield and brace my feet.

  He looks perplexed like he thought I was just going to spill everything while he looked sexy. “I’m fine, I don’t… vampires don’t chat about feelings. We just like brood and look cool.”

  I stare at him. “Marcus.”

  “Fine,” he says as he throws the lightest punch ever at me. It doesn’t even push the shield into me. “I hate that he’s done this to you.”

  I switch and punch him as hard as I can. “I hate that he hides behind his tricks.”

  Marcus punches the shield a little harder this time. “I hate that I can’t keep the one person I love more than anything safe. It’s my job to keep you safe.”

  I punch his shield again. “I hate that I’m putting the people I love in danger.”

  “I hate that he makes me feel inferior. I’ve never been faced with something I can’t fucking destroy.”

  “I hate that people are dying just so he can prove a fucking point.”

  “I hate that you have to live this way.”

  I kick the shield as he braces for it. “I hate that I can’t do the job I want. That I can’t do what I enjoy and what I’m good at.”

  We go back and forth telling each other things that piss us off, things that make us angry, until I’m breathing hard.

  “Then she said to not end it like that. That even though you let the negativity out, you now have to look for the positive things. For every block, you say something good in your life.”

  I throw a punch and he hesitates. “Okay… meeting you. I feel like for the first time in hundreds of years I’ve found someone who isn’t my brother that understands me.” He strikes my shield.

  “For me, it’s also meeting you. You weren’t exactly a bundle of joy and were a bit evil, but I knew under all of that evil exterior was a nice person.”

  “I’m not sure why. You were just more determined than anything,” he says as he lowers his shield.

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m glad you were,” he says as I set my shield down.

  “Me too.” I step into him and lean against him as I wrap my arms around him.

  “Do you want to tell me what woke you up?”

  “I had another stupid dream.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  I hesitate, wanting to smack that wall back up into place but knowing that I shouldn’t. “Not really, but I will. In the dream, I woke up in the room and I was alone. I was confused and in pain. At first, I was trying to wrap my mind around it and I just felt like I should be in the hospital, but clearly, I wasn’t. And that’s when he came in.”

  “What’d he do?” Marcus asks.

  “He… he told me that my mother ruined me. That he’d fix me. He liked to tell me how I was his. How I was only his doll, and I would always be his. He said that the moment he saw me, he knew that I belonged to him.”

  “Did he allude to how long he’d been watching you?” Marcus asks.

  “I don’t know… he’d say things about watching me grow up, but I was a teen. I’d been growing up quite a bit.”

  “I’m just trying to figure out if he knew you before you were with Orin or after. We know he knew your mother, but how well or how long?”

  “But like Orin said, she worked at a vampire establishment. She could have known him for years or just met him.”

  “Did she bring people home?”

  “Sometimes. There was a time or two we went to her workplace with her because we didn’t have a place to go for the night. It was a pretty shitty setup, honestly. There’s no telling how many vampires she came in contact with while working there.”

  “There were never any who paid particular notice to you? Special attention?”

  I shrug. “Her boss was nice, but he was a little guy, this man isn’t. I don’t know.”

  He gives me another squeeze. “Alright. We’ll keep thinking and working and see what we figure out. Let’s go to bed for now. Are you tired?”

  “I am.”

  He pulls me in with one arm and kisses my forehead. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  FINN

  Marcus had some paperwork to give the others and I wanted to talk to Brooks, so we risked driving to the department. I can’t imagine it would upset him if I came in just to drop something off and was around for five minutes.

  I walk into Brooks’s office as Marcus goes to do whatever he wants. “Hey, do you have anything for me to work on while at home?” I ask.

  “I thought you were taking a little time off?” Brooks says.

  “Yes, and now I’m bored of my time off. If you don’t give me something to do, I’m going to… go find something to do, and I’m positive it’ll have something to do with someone with pointy teeth,” I say.

  He leans back in his chair. “Finnigan Hayes… are you blackmailing or threatening me?”

  “Is it working?”

  “No.”

  “Dammit. Come on, Brooks. Please? Pretty please? Please, please?”

  “Fine, I’ll email you some stuff but you’re only working on it at home, and you will not leave that house, you hear me?”

  “Thank you!” I shout and yank open the door before he can change his mind. I slam into Miller, who must have been planning on knocking on the door. “Oh! I’m sorry!”

  “It’s okay,” he says as I slip past him and rush over to where Marcus is sitting at his desk.

  Marcus does a light head flick and I wonder if I’ve been caught. I hadn’t exactly told him I was going to beg Brooks for work. Instead, he pushes me into my chair before pulling me over to his computer.

  “Were you here when we found out that Perez’s body cam had been on but destroyed?” Marcus asks.

  “No… I must have missed that. Why didn’t I hear about that?”

  “I think you were at the doctor or something. It showed nothing and gave us no information, so we didn’t look into it further. It really showed us nothing, at least we thought, but come here.” He pops earbuds into my ears and parks me in front of his computer before hitting play. I can hear the sound of crunching leaves as Perez walks through the woods. Then I hear a step behind him before the body cam goes dead.

  “Did you hear it?” Marcus asks.

  “Someone stepping behind him?” I ask.

  “No, no, no. Listen closer. There’s another set of footsteps that we didn’t notice before. I hear it.”

  He plays it again and I hear nothing more than I’d heard the first time.

  “Marcus, you know your bat senses pick up more than mine.”

  “Close your eyes.”

  I close them and then abruptly open them as he blasts the noise into my ears. “Oh my god. Deafening me won’t help. I trust you!” I say as I look at him.

  He scrutinizes me. “Hmmm… such weak and feeble ears.”

  “I’m going to show you what weak and feeble is,” I say as I jab him in the side with my finger. Huge mistake because it feels like I broke it. “Why are you so fucking solid?”

  “Why are you so squishy? It’s like humans just want to be weak and get eaten!”

  I grab him in a headlock and pull him down. “I will eat you,” I growl. “It’ll just take a lot longer.”

  He snort
s and that’s when my eyes lock on to Miller who is leaving Brooks’s office, and what Marcus was saying about hearing two sets of footsteps sinks in.

  “The monster knows what I’m doing and where I’m at. But how? Is he following me around or does he have other vampires working with him, like the man who killed Perez?”

  “If we’re going with this theory, we have the people who attacked you on the bus as well.”

  “I have a thought. Stay here,” I say as I pull my phone out and toss it on Marcus’s lap then trail after Miller. I wait until he heads down the hallway, out of sight of the others. Once he’s on the second floor ready to talk to someone, I step up to him.

  “Shit,” I say.

  He turns and looks at me. “What’s wrong?”

  “I forgot my phone and don’t want to run all the way back in there. Can I borrow your phone so I can send a text to my dad? He’s been on my ass since this happened. Won’t let me go anywhere and I kind of forgot to let him know.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he says as he hands it over just as the woman he was waiting on turns to him. I pull up a text to Orin and type out that I’m going to send him a fake text and to reply to it like he would a real one and then I delete it before sending him a text about how I forgot my phone. He responds by telling me that I shouldn’t go anywhere without my phone and I should get back home.

  While he’s busy doing that, I go to Miller’s call log and scroll all the way back to the day that Perez was killed. I take a screenshot of his call log and send it to Marcus before deleting the picture and the text to Marcus and replying to Orin.

  “Thanks,” I tell Miller before heading over to chat with Foster. I don’t actually have anything to say to her, but I didn’t want it to look like I came up here just to stalk Miller. After a few minutes, I head back downstairs to find Marcus poring over a notepad.

  “This is from Miller’s phone?” he whispers.

  I nod. “I didn’t get a chance to look at it. I didn’t want him suspicious. Anything off?”

  “So, the call from Perez’s phone to Miller’s phone that Miller claims ended abruptly was at nine fifty-two and is marked as a missed call. According to this log, Miller never accepted any call from Perez. At nine fifty-three, Perez’s body cam shows the attack, which correlates well with the time that Miller claims to have lost the call from Perez’s phone and then called him back. But Miller was clearly lying about picking up the call.”

  “Say he asked to borrow Perez’s phone before the attack and he used it to call himself, he couldn’t answer the phone because Perez was with him,” I say.

  “You think he had Perez’s phone and called himself?” Marcus asks.

  “Maybe. It’d explain how he was able to make the calls back and forth without answering any of them if he was involved.”

  He nods. “It would make sense. How else does this elder vampire know everything about you? While Miller’s never worked with us before, he’s been adamant about being on this case.”

  “He’s not… he’s tall enough to be him. His body type is different.”

  Marcus shakes his head. “No. But he’s probably working with him.”

  “We need to find proof,” I say.

  “We need to take this to Brooks and get permission for an arrest.”

  “No,” I say as I grab his wrist before he can get up.

  Marcus looks over at me like I’m crazy. “No? Oh… do you want me to murder Miller or torture him? I can do that as well. I’m extremely good at torture.”

  “No, as in, I don’t want Miller to know we’re on to him. He could lead us to him. Or we could get information out of Miller!”

  “You want to follow him?” Marcus asks quietly. The issue with working with vampires is they can hear everything, so we have to be extremely careful.

  “Yes. Do you think that man is Miller’s maker? Do you think that’s why he’s listening to him?”

  “We don’t know yet that he is working for him. That’s all speculation at this point, so let’s not jump into anything.”

  I stare at him because I’m prepared to jump into anything at this point to have a lead. I’m done with being terrified of this man haunting me. I have to stop him from consuming my entire life.

  “What are you guys whispering about?” Karsyn asks as he wheels over to us.

  “Karsyn, come here,” I whisper.

  Marcus looks up and I notice Miller is coming, so we need a different tactic.

  “Come, come,” I say as I grab Karsyn’s hand and Marcus’s hand and take off.

  “Wow, we don’t look suspicious,” Marcus says as I lead them off toward the bathroom.

  “The thing is we now look so suspicious it’s clear we’re not trying to be inconspicuous,” I explain. Just as we’re about to pass Brooks’s office, Brooks opens the door and looks out at us.

  “Do I even want to ask?”

  “God, I don’t have enough hands. Marcus, grab Brooks’s hand.”

  “Why can’t we just walk? Why do we have to hold hands?” Marcus asks.

  “Brooks, meet us in the bathroom upstairs in two minutes. The tiny one that looks like a closet,” I say and hurry off.

  “Can you let go of my hand?” Karsyn asks.

  “Shhh… human touch will not harm you or make you ill. It’s a proven fact,” I assure him.

  “Yeah, well, it’s making me want to vomit and vampires don’t even vomit, so please, end this torture,” Karsyn says as he tries to pull away, but it’s my fake hand so I know he won’t and just like that, I have them both headed up the stairs with me.

  “Does it hurt you this much to have physical affection? Is this why you don’t have a boyfriend?” I ask Karsyn who thinks I am anything but funny.

  He slams to a stop so fast that I’m pulled to a stop, so I look at him. “Who the fuck told Claude I’d go on a date with him if he watched Finn? Like how does that even relate to me? I was going to bitch sooner but I wanted you guys in person so I could see your faces as I punched the one who agreed to this.”

  “You’d punch me?” I ask while making sure I look wounded that he’d suggest it.

  He bites his lip. “Maybe. Did you do it?”

  “I did,” Marcus says as he pulls his hand free from me so he can cross his arms over his chest and just stare down into Karsyn’s eyes. “Now tell me, Karsyn, what would you like to do to me?”

  Karsyn stares at him for a long moment. “Why’d you do it?”

  “Because he wouldn’t listen to anything else and I thought this was best. It’s just a date.”

  “He did nearly die because of me,” I add as I peek around Marcus’s menacing body.

  Karsyn’s eyes get huge. “You too?”

  Marcus waves him off. “I didn’t say a date, I agreed that he would treat you to a drink at Rouge.”

  Karsyn hesitates. “Rouge? Isn’t that the place where the glasses are like a hundred dollars?”

  Marcus grins at him. “It is. Make sure you get extras to take home.”

  “Finn, you should be on my side for this,” Karsyn snaps.

  “I would be, but Claude saved me and my sister, so now I owe him anything he wants. If he wants to force you on a date, then there’s really nothing I can do about it besides let him. You guys will be so cute together.”

  Karsyn looks to be about one word from his bursting point. “Yes, zanuda, I will look very cute covered in his blood after he says some disgusting bullshit to me about my face or my accent.”

  “Adorable,” I say.

  Marcus just laughs because Marcus only finds things funny when it pertains to blood, gore, or torture. Why’s he still so handsome? “Is this how you plan on taking Finn from me?”

  “I don’t want Finn!” Karsyn says, then quickly hurries off, making me cock my head before glancing at Marcus.

  “I think he wants you,” Marcus says.

  “I don’t want him! Let’s get this over with!” Karsyn snaps.

  “I’m so flattered,�
� I say as I grab my chest.

  “Don’t be,” Karsyn calls back to us.

  We head into the bathroom, but the only issue is the bathroom back here, while secluded and farthest away from the rest, is fairly small since it’s only a one-person bathroom.

  “Why do we have to talk in a closet?” Karsyn asks. Maybe it’s because our bodies are pressed together.

  “We have to be quiet,” I say as the door swings inward, smashing into Marcus.

  “What the hell are you three doing?” Brooks asks, looking at us like we’re crazy.

  “Fondling each other. Come inside,” I say as I try pulling him in.

  Brooks doesn’t seem convinced or interested. “I don’t want to be fondled.”

  “Come into my hole, Brooks. Come,” I say as I drag him into the room and lock the door. “Marcus, activate your bat perception and tell me if we’re being listened in on.”

  “Brooks, can you fire me?” Karsyn asks. “I didn’t agree to any of this.”

  “Shush, Marcus is using his bat beacon,” I say.

  Marcus lets out a noise that’s either his bat senses turning on or his brain shutting down. I’m not quite sure which. “I don’t hear anything besides your loud breathing.”

  Brooks glances between us. “What’s this about? You’re all uncomfortably close.”

  “I think Miller is working for the elder vampire,” I say.

  Marcus pulls out the paper he’d jotted his notes on. “We could be wrong, but the call log actually points to some inconsistencies in his report.”

  “Miller?” Brooks asks. “The guy whose partner was killed?”

  We explain everything to them as they listen closely.

  “Interesting, can you send me that?” Karsyn asks.

  “We need to confront him—”

  I stop Brooks. “I want to watch him instead. He might be meeting with the elder vampire. There’s a possibility he could lead us to him.”

  “So if we go with the mindset that Miller is working with him, we can start to assume that the elder vampire changed him, right?” Karsyn asks. “He probably also changed the guy who killed Perez. Adler, right?”

  “What about the vampires who attacked Finn on the bus?” Brooks asks. “These three groups all have one thing in common: Finn.”