Relentless (Vampire Awakenings Book 11)

by Brenda K. Davies

  However, the lemon aroma was faint as the stronger scents of pancakes, coffee, and bacon filled the air. The familiar smells brought a smile to his face; he missed bacon. The freshly painted dove gray walls shone under the glow of the recessed lighting, and the blue, industrial carpet looked new.

  Dante walked to the end of the hall and the apartment at the end. Lifting his hand, he knocked loudly and waited for a response; there was none.

  Leaning closer to the door, he strained to hear any noise coming from inside as he knocked again and waited. The door across the hall opened, and a middle-aged woman with a toddler in her arms leaned out.

  “Are you looking for Arnold?” she asked.

  “Is he the superintendent?” Dante inquired.

  “Yeah.”

  “Then yes, I’m looking for Arnold.”

  “I haven’t seen him in a couple of days.”

  Dante kept his surprise over this revelation hidden. Everything he’d seen about this building and the property indicated it was well maintained by someone who put in a lot of time here. “Do you often go days at a time without seeing him?”

  The woman shifted the toddler on her hip as uneasiness filled her face. “No. I’ve lived here for five years, and I’ve talked to him every day. He must have had a family emergency or something.”

  “Would he have left without telling anyone?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so; it’s never happened before. Maybe he didn’t have the time to let anyone know he had to leave for a bit. I hope everything’s okay and he’ll be home soon.”

  “I’m sure everything’s fine,” he assured her. When she remained standing in the doorway, Dante smiled at her. “Thank you.”

  “Oh… ah… yeah,” she muttered.

  She ducked back into her apartment and closed the door. He took no offense when the locks clicked into place. Dante turned his attention back to the superintendent’s doorway, but he didn’t bother to knock again.

  Maybe Arnold did have a family emergency, but Dante wasn’t buying that. It was a little strange that Jasmine and Arnold would vanish from the same building. But why would Arnold go missing weeks after Jasmine disappeared from Preston’s life? Had Jasmine only recently abandoned her apartment?

  One thing was for sure, he wasn’t going to discover any answers standing in this hallway. Grasping the door handle, Dante looked up and down the hall before turning the knob. He expected to have to put his shoulder against the door to break through the locks, but the knob turned easily, and the door swung open.

  Standing in the doorway, Dante craned his head to see inside. The door was open, but he still couldn’t walk in there unless invited. Lifting his hand, he pushed it toward the apartment; when it traveled past the doorway, an uneasy feeling twisted in his stomach.

  Unless Arnold had moved out or was dead, Dante shouldn’t be able to enter the apartment, but he stepped inside. He closed the door behind him and studied the apartment. Judging by the family photos on the wall, the books sitting on the couch’s end table, and the plants hanging from the windows, Arnold hadn’t moved out.

  Dante discovered that all Arnold’s clothes and toiletries remained behind. He even found a few hundred dollars tucked into the sock drawer. No, Arnold hadn’t moved out, but he wasn’t alive either. However, he hadn’t died here as there was no sign of a struggle or a body.

  Before leaving the apartment, Dante found a rag and wiped his fingerprints off everything he’d touched. His prints were still on file with the police department, and the last thing he needed was the Boston PD looking for him.

  He left the apartment and stood in the hall as he tried to figure out his next move. Who had killed Arnold, and where was the man’s body? Those questions might have nothing to do with Julie; the man might be dead in the park and his body hadn’t been discovered yet.

  However, he didn’t think that was the case. There was something strange going on here, and he couldn’t rid himself of the certainty that solving this mystery would help him find Julie. Jasmine’s apartment was on the second floor, and he decided to take another look at it. There might be something he missed.

  When he stepped off the stairs and into the hallway of the second floor, he detected an aroma that hadn’t been there last night. Sniffing the air, he caught a faint whiff of something rotten, but it wasn’t coming from this floor.

  Dante hated to do it, but he shut down the connection linking him to Cassidy. It would upset her when she discovered it, but if what he suspected lay above did, then he preferred to tell her about it in person. He was determined to keep her out of this as much as possible.

  He took the stairs to the third floor and then followed the aroma to the fourth. That was where the faint, sickly sweet smell of rotting meat was a little more potent, and so was the scent of lemons.

  An uneasy feeling churned in his gut as he followed the aromas to an apartment. He’d been an officer for enough years to know that rotten smell. It might be hours, if not days before a human nose detected it, but his heightened vampire senses picked up the stench of a rotting body.

  Was this where Arnold died? Had he fallen off a ladder and broken his neck while painting a bathroom or changing a lightbulb? But why hadn’t whoever resided here reported the accident?

  With little hope of finding life on the other side of the door, he still lifted his hand and knocked on it. No one responded. Unlike Arnold’s apartment, when he grasped this knob and turned it, it didn’t move. Resting his shoulder against the door, he pushed his weight into it until the wood splintered, and the frame gave way.

  He winced at the sound of fracturing wood, but none of the neighbors came to their doors. Judging by the mostly empty parking lot, he suspected most of them were at work, but if someone heard the noise and called the police, he had about ten minutes before they arrived. He shouldn’t require that much time.

  The sickly sweet, rancid scent of a decaying body and lemons caused his nose to wrinkle. He’d been around more than a few dead bodies during his time on the force, but at least he’d had something to put under his nose to help block the scent. Now, he had nothing to protect him and the nose of a bloodhound.

  Using the rag he’d taken from Arnold’s apartment, he wiped off anywhere he’d touched on the door before stepping inside. When he crossed the threshold without any resistance, he realized it wasn’t Arnold’s body he was smelling, but the person who used to live here.

  This building was like an old episode of the Twilight Zone. People and creatures moved in, but they never came out again.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Dante closed the door the best he could, wiped it off, and was careful not to touch anything else as he followed his nose down a hallway and to a cracked open door. With the toe of his boot, he nudged the door open.

  He swallowed the bile that rushed into his throat when he saw what lay within. A woman, with her wrists and ankles tied to the four bedposts, was laid out on the bed. Blood from her torn-out throat soaked her clothes and the mattress. On the floor next to the bed was the splayed body of a man he assumed was Arnold.

  A toolbox lay next to Arnold’s outstretched right hand, and his throat was torn out, but there was less blood. Dante assumed this was because the vampire who killed them was hungry when they feasted on Arnold, but they were looking for the thrill of the kill when they attacked the woman.

  Four of those aroma things were in the room. Two of them had turned off, but the other two were still spewing intermittent blasts of lemon mist into the air. A dozen lemon car fresheners also surrounded the bodies.

  He recalled passing a carwash on the way here. Whoever did this probably went to the carwash and bought as many air fresheners as possible. He didn’t know why they decided on lemon and didn’t care.

  For the rest of his life, whenever he smelled lemons, his stomach would turn.

  Whatever happened here, happened recently. Otherwise, the stench would be so much worse. When he knelt beside Arnold to exami
ne his wound more closely, he didn’t see any evidence of a vampire, but a vampire did this.

  And since only one vampire lived in this building, he could imagine who it was. But what did this woman have to do with anything? And how did Arnold get involved?

  He left the room and walked to the end of the hall. Wrapping the rag around his hand, Dante used it to open the door before reaching inside to find the light switch. When light flooded the room, he barely kept his jaw from dropping at the spectacle that greeted him.

  Thick, gray padding covered the walls, floor, and ceiling. When he stepped inside, he discovered more padding on the back of the door, effectively soundproofing the room. A single bucket sat in the corner. He didn’t have to approach it to know it contained waste; he could smell it from here.

  “What the fuck?” he muttered.

  And then the hair on his nape rose as it dawned on him; this was where Jasmine kept Julie. Just how crazy was Jasmine if she did something like this?

  He stepped out of the room and looked down the hall to the room housing the bodies. His brain spun as he tried to figure out what happened here.

  He returned to the murder scene to study it again. The more he did so, the more he believed Arnold stumbled upon whatever was happening here by accident. Dante checked his watch; if someone called the police, he should still have a couple of minutes before they arrived, but he had to get out of here soon.

  Cautiously, he approached Arnold’s prone figure. Years of training screamed at him not to disturb the scene, but, with the rag, Dante grasped the back of Arnold’s shirt and lifted him. The body was stiff, but already coming out of rigor mortis.

  Nothing lay beneath the man, not even a puddle of blood; he gently set the body down.

  Next, he used the rag to flip open the lock on the toolbox. Carefully, he lifted the lid and revealed all the tools within. Some electrical tape and a set of wires were also inside the box. He closed the lid and turned on the flashlight on his phone, shining it under the bed. There, in the shadows, was a light switch and screwdriver.

  Sitting back on his heels, he studied the two bodies before rising. Knowing the light in the bedroom worked, he walked over to the switch beside the closet and flicked it up; nothing happened.

  Studying the scene, and the bodies, he started putting together the pieces of what happened. Arnold was called here to fix the closet light but didn’t have the necessary parts for it. Instead, he ordered them or went to buy them. When he got them, he returned to the apartment to fix it. Having his own set of keys, he let himself in and stumbled across this horror.

  But who was the woman? And if Julie was here for two weeks, why hadn’t this woman been reported missing? Her home would have been the first stop the police made.

  Dante left the room and strode through the living room. The furniture in this place was almost identical to what was in Jasmine’s apartment. He stopped beside the thick, wood kitchen table tucked beneath the window. A stack of mail sat on it.

  The envelope on top had a name on it—Margie Dalton. Unwilling to take the time to write it down, Dante memorized the name as he flipped through the top envelopes. It was mostly bills, but at the bottom was a checklist for a cruise.

  The fourteen-day cruise boarded in Spain and disembarked in Italy. Margie must have been going on the cruise alone or, if not alone, the person she was traveling with hadn’t expected her to go. Otherwise, she would have been reported missing.

  It also explained why Arnold felt comfortable entering this woman’s apartment. He’d expected her to be away. Had Margie been tied to the bed for two weeks?

  Dante tried not to imagine the woman’s terror, but if she’d remained out of the soundproofed room, then Jasmine probably kept control of her mind. Hopefully, Margie didn’t know what was happening to her. If Jasmine kept Julie in that room, she wanted the girl terrified.

  This whole thing was getting weirder, and somehow Julie was caught in the middle of it. Was she still alive? If Jasmine took her out of here alive, she would have taken control of Julie’s mind to ensure her cooperation, or had she slaughtered Julie to keep her quiet? But then why would she risk taking Julie’s body with her?

  Whatever she was doing, he had no doubt her motivation was to get back at Preston for breaking up with her. If she’d kept Julie alive this long, then she probably had something bigger than this disaster planned. He had to find her before then.

  Striding away from the table, he returned to the ruined front door. He edged it aside before poking his head into the hall to make sure no one was around. He left the apartment and swiftly descended to the first floor.

  Jogging down the hall, he checked his watch before knocking on the door of the woman with the toddler. He was cutting it close, but he had to talk to her before leaving here.

  Locks turned on the other side, and the door cracked open. The safety chain remained in place as she peeked out at him.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Do you know Margie Dalton?”

  “No.”

  “She has an apartment on the third floor.”

  “I’m sorry, but the name doesn’t sound familiar. I don’t know many of the people who live here.”

  “Does Arnold ever let himself into people’s apartments without their permission?”

  “Of course not! Arnold’s a great guy. He wouldn’t do that unless it was an emergency.”

  As Dante suspected, Arnold assumed Margie was on her cruise when he got the parts for the light. He probably believed it would be nice for her to return to a fixed switch. Instead, he stumbled across poor Margie, who was most likely Jasmine’s food source.

  Dante didn’t know Jasmine, but when he found her, he would kill her.

  “Is something wrong? Is Arnold okay?” the woman asked nervously.

  Dante stepped closer to the door. “Everything’s fine,” he said in a soothing tone as he took control of her mind. “I was never here; you never saw me. Do you understand?”

  The woman’s eyes glazed over. As much as he disliked using this power on others, he couldn’t deny it came in handy.

  “I understand,” the woman said.

  “Go back inside and lock the door.”

  The woman closed the door, and the locks turned as he left out the back exit.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Dante tucked the rag into his pocket as he stepped onto the small roadway running along the back of the building. The narrow lane was more of a service road and, thankfully, was empty. As he walked, he pulled out his phone and pulled up Preston’s name. He hit the button and waited for Preston to answer his call while he maintained a casual pace that wouldn’t draw anyone’s attention.

  He kept his head down and his face averted from any possible cameras. He couldn’t take the chance of someone seeing and identifying him later. Or worse, security cameras catching him.

  “Hello,” Preston greeted after the third ring.

  His drowsy voice alerted Dante that he’d been sleeping.

  “Do you know a Margie Dalton?”

  There was a pause as blankets rustled across the line and a click sounded. “Dan?”

  “Yes. Do you know a Margie Dalton?”

  “Yeah, Margie’s a good friend of Jasmine’s. Why?”

  Bile churned in his stomach. If Jasmine could do that to her friend, what would she do to someone she considered an enemy? “How good of a friend?”

  “They were best friends. Margie used to go out to dinner and play cards with us, and they always went shopping together. She’s human, and she doesn’t know what Jasmine is, but they’re extremely close.”

  A couple of the puzzle pieces fell into place. “Are they close enough to go on a cruise together?”

  “Oh, yeah. They used to talk about going on one all the time, but they never got around to it.”

  So, there was no one to report Margie missing because they all thought she was on a cruise with her best friend. Her work and friends wouldn’t start to worry ab
out her until her vacation ended.

  “Why are you asking about Margie?” Preston inquired.

  Choosing to ignore Preston’s question, he asked another one of his own. “How long have they been friends?”

  “Jasmine told me she’d lived in the building for a few years. They bumped into each other when Jasmine was carrying in boxes, and Margie helped her. They’ve been friends ever since. Is Margie okay?”

  Dante had no idea what caused Jasmine to snap like this. It couldn’t be the fact Preston dumped her if she started acting crazy while they were still together.

  “Dan, is Margie okay?”

  Dante didn’t know how to break it to him easy, so he ripped the Band-Aid off. “She’s dead.”

  Preston sucked in a breath. “What happened?”

  “Jasmine killed her.”

  “No!” Preston blurted. “She wouldn’t do that! She loved Margie. They were like sisters, except they never fought. Margie was a good person; she was sweet and kind and… how do you know it was Jasmine?”

  Dante glanced around to make sure he was still alone before filling Preston in on what he discovered in Margie’s apartment and what he believed happened. When he finished, stunned silence followed his words.

  “What happened to her?” Preston finally whispered. “Jasmine wasn’t like this.”

  “She is now, and she still has Julie. I’m pretty sure Julie’s still alive, or I would have found her body in the apartment. Can you think of anywhere she would go?”

  “No.”

  “This is to get back at you for whatever reason she’s concocted in her twisted brain. Is there anywhere the two of you went that you would consider a special place?”

  “We went to the Cape a couple of times, to New Hampshire, Foxwoods, the Jersey shore—”

  “It would have to be somewhere close. Even if she is controlling Julie’s mind, she wouldn’t be able to take her far. Where did you meet?”

  “At one of Opal’s parties. It was in an old warehouse down by the waterfront.”

  “Did it have the same kind of soundproofing as the party last night?”