by Judith Post
“Right.” Danny let it drop. He didn't think Enoch killed Liza or these two men, but something wasn't right with his friend's story, and he intended to find out what it was. It could wait, though. He had enough on his plate for now. “They must have tagged the wrong vic after they passed on you. Or vics.” He stared at their twisted torsos. “One person couldn’t do this much damage.”
Enoch's expression told him that he might be wrong, but he let that pass too. Instead, he motioned to a gun lying in the weeds. “You’d think they’d at least have gotten off a shot.” Danny raised an eyebrow and motioned one of the cops over. "Derek, Enoch. Enoch, my sometimes partner. What you got, kid?"
Derek consulted his notes. “Three bullets are missing.”
"Three?" How could the men miss if they got off three shots?
Enoch rubbed his forehead absently, but didn't comment.
“You gotta see this.” Derek turned the man who wore a cap onto his back, revealing his neck. His throat was ripped to shreds. He shone his flashlight on the second man. Stooping to look, Danny could see that his neck was no better.
“Looks like a dog went for their throats,” Danny said. "Some of the local dealers use pit bulls for protection, but that doesn’t make sense. Who'd attack someone with a pit by his side?”
Enoch glanced up and down the street. He peered into shadows. Was he worried the killer was still somewhere close? No, Danny had never seen Enoch scared, even when he stopped the guy packing a gun. He wasn't frightened. Nervous maybe. Of what?
Danny shook his head. “This night can’t get any better. Think I’ll drop you off at your place and then come back.” He glanced at his watch. “After five. No sleep for me.”
“You’ve got plenty to do. I can walk.”
"Are you nuts? In this wind? All the way to your place? It'll only take me a few minutes. Come on." Once in the car, Danny gave him a long, hard look. “You said these guys passed you, right?”
Enoch's expression was impossible to read. “They were heading to the Laundromat. I’d guess they were looking for easy money.”
“Neither of them have wallets. Do you think our robbers got robbed?”
Enoch frowned, considering the idea. “No, I’d bet they jumped the wrong person.”
That was good for as far as it went. Danny decided it would work for now. He parked in front of Enoch's apartment building and watched him stalk into the lobby. His friend knew more than he was telling. He had his secrets. Was he undercover of some kind? Some agency that Danny didn't know about? Maybe someday soon, Enoch would open up. Danny couldn’t wait to hear his whole story.
Chapter 3
Enoch took the elevator to his penthouse apartment and stood staring out the balcony windows, watching traffic zoom by on Lafayette. Street lights bounced in the wind, and wires undulated like snakes. Crappy weather for a crappy night. The two men who’d tried to rob him didn’t concern him. They were a normal part of the fringes of society. But the girl he’d passed did. He had a strong hunch that she wasn’t a natural part of anything.
He'd have sworn she wasn't hunting. He got the impression that she was doing her best to stay in the shadows, like he was, that she didn't want to draw attention to herself. But if the men were stupid enough to attack her, then God help them. She'd toss them around like rag dolls and then drain them. Unless….
Why hadn't he thought of it before? What if the vamp he'd tracked here had gotten hungry? According to Caleb's rules—he winced at the thought of his one time friend—vampires could only feed on humans who preyed on other humans. Alessandro didn't qualify, but these guys would be prime candidates. It was an unfriendly clean-up service that supplied vamps with food and rid the world of its least desirable mortals—a compromise Enoch had agreed on so that he and Caleb could reach an uneasy truce. If vamp girl had sucked those men dry, she was allowed to. She was hungry and desperate. Hopefully, so was the rogue.
Enoch fought the disappointment he felt whenever he thought of Caleb. How could his fellow angel go so wrong? But what was done was done. Ancient history. Enoch took a deep breath. His mind was too cluttered. He sank to the floor, Indian fashion, and cleared his thoughts. Time to meditate, to find balance.
Danny called and broke his concentration in the early afternoon. When Enoch picked up, Danny said, “No nap after last night? Don’t you ever sleep?”
“No.” It was the truth, but no one believed him, one of the downsides of the Fall—complete awareness twenty-fours a day, seven days a week, century after century. “Do you want to try your trick on the new guys in the morgue?” Danny asked, pulling him back to the task at hand.
“Is that supposed to tempt me?”
“Aren’t you a little curious what happened to them? If it’s going to happen to anyone else?”
The last did worry him. How hungry was vamp girl? He should say no, but would she strike again? “Are you coming to pick me up?”
“I’m already in your lobby.”
Just like Danny. “I’ll be down in five minutes.”
Enoch had been in morgues before, but the processing of corpses always sobered him. These men, at least, would have dignified burials. Not like the bodies Enoch had found strewn across village squares, rotting in the sun, pecked at by birds and chewed on by animals. Vampires didn't hunger for human flesh, only their blood. And before the truce with Caleb, vampires rampaged at will.
The medical examiner nodded at the bodies on the metal tables. “An odd case,” he said.
"Doc, this is the guy I was telling you about, the one with the special trick." Danny nodded from Enoch to the M.E. "Enoch, this is Doc. We've worked together a long time. You don't have to worry about him. He's seen it all, and he doesn't flake out about psychics."
Enoch gave Doc a level stare. He'd be seeing a lot more than psychic tricks if Enoch couldn't find the rogue, and he wondered how Doc would handle it. Even though the M.E.'s hair had turned snow white, he was tall and athletic. He radiated vitality and health. Enoch guessed him to be in his early forties. He didn't strike Enoch as the type who panicked easily.
“These men suffered physical abuse twice in one night." Doc turned down a sheet. "They have serious bruises and swelling from one attack that are almost obliterated by the damage from their second encounter.”
Danny raised an eyebrow at Enoch. Enoch did his best to look clueless, but how far had forensics come? Of course, at the time, he hadn't expected the two men to end up on metal tables.
“A bad night for burglars,” Enoch said.
"Yeah, right. Are the wounds similar?” Danny asked Doc.
“Except for the necks and the intensity of the attacks."
“Do you think they’d be stupid enough to pick a fight with someone, lose, and then try again later?” Danny threw the question out in general, but Enoch answered it. “They didn’t strike me as too brilliant.”
“What about the necks?” Danny asked.
“Ripped apart by fangs.” The examiner hesitated, trying to word his next statement properly. “And their bodies were drained of every drop of blood.”
Damn the vamp girl. Why did she have to suck the men dry? Why not just sip a little from each of them?
“Drained?” Danny stared. “All of it?”
“There are two puncture holes in each of their necks. Looks like the killer savaged them to try to hide them.”
Danny shivered. “You’re making me think of the old vampire movies I watched as a kid.”
“The thought crossed my mind.”
“What are you telling me? That we have a new group of criminals who think they’re vampires instead of just going Goth?”
“No idea,” Doc said. “I’m only telling you about the bodies’ traumas.”
Danny looked at Enoch. “Okay, give your thing a try. Maybe you’ll see something that helps.”
Enoch shouldn't. It was one more step, but he laid a hand on Mr. Cap’s shoulder. The cap was gone, but the chin stubble remained. He closed hi
s eyes and waited. After a long period, he saw a man attacking an older woman. The woman was struggling, but would die soon, when someone picked the man up from behind and threw him across the room. The pale, silver-haired vampire sprang after him. She bared her fangs and was lowering her head to his neck when she stopped suddenly, turned, and looked directly at Enoch. She stared at him across time and distance. They stood, locked in each other's vision, until Danny rushed toward them. Then she whirled away.
A small gasp escaped Enoch’s lips and he blinked back to the present.
“That didn’t sound good,” Danny said.
Enoch frowned. “This has never happened to me before. I saw these men's killer attack her next victim, but she attacked him because he was trying to kill someone else."
"She?" Doc asked. "A woman did this?"
"Yes."
"And did she kill the next guy too?"
"No, she looked up and saw me and ran away."
“She saw you?” Danny asked.
“Yes.”
“At a crime that hasn’t happened yet?”
“Yes.” Enoch couldn't explain it. How had it happened? How had she seen him?
“This whole mess just keeps getting creepier and creepier.” Danny motioned for Doc to pull the sheet back over Mr. Cap.
“She was defending someone. The guy was attacking an older lady, and she rescued her.”
“Do you think that’s why she…." Danny was at a loss for words. What could he say? Broke these guys to bits? Drained them dry?
Enoch shrugged. “I don’t know. It could be. They might have jumped someone, and she saved them.” Or they might have jumped her, and she destroyed them, then drank all their blood.
Danny nodded toward the second body. "No use showing us him. We'll see the same thing, won't we?"
"Yes." Doc looked from Danny to Enoch and back again. "Any more questions? You can ask me, but I don't have any answers."
"No, that's it. Thanks, Doc."
They didn't talk as they left the building. Danny waited until they were in his car before he asked Enoch the big question, the one Enoch knew he was dying to ask. “And how was our mystery woman going to kill the guy she attacked?”
Enoch didn’t hesitate. It was time to level with Danny, to let him know what he was up against. “By biting him in his neck with two long fangs.”
"Yeah, right, get real. Quit jerking my chain. This is serious."
"I know."
Danny blended into traffic and headed back toward town. “Okay, you've had your little joke. So what's the deal? How did she kill the two guys and how did they get drained?”
“She looked real in my vision—strong enough to lift the man off the ground, and she knew I was there. No one’s ever done that before.”
"So you're telling me she's a vampire, and you really believe that?"
"Figure it out for yourself. You were in the vision too. She saw you."
"Me?" The light turned red and Danny almost ran into the car ahead of him. "Shit!" He had to swerve onto the curb to keep from hitting him. "Holy hell!"
"You're going to meet her. Might as well know what she is." Enoch's mind raged with thoughts and worries. This time, he wasn't going to straddle two worlds—mortals and vampires. It looked as though they were going to collide. And that could be bad. He had to be there for Danny when it happened. “I haven’t had lunch. The Gas House is on the corner. How about stopping there for something to eat?”
The light turned green and Danny blended back into his lane. He looked pale, uncomfortable. "Are you going to tell me horror stories over fish and chips?"
“I might. I could use a beer.”
"I could use a pitcher." Danny drove the rest of the way in silence. He was trying to sort things through, Enoch could tell. "Look, man, I respect your gift and all. And I appreciate your help on this case, but there's no such thing as vampires. You've lived in a lot of small, weird ass countries, and Lord knows what superstitions they have. Then there's your talent. Believe me when I tell you, no one else would want it. That probably screws with you too. Maybe seeing the dead guys messed with you. Maybe we should give ourselves some time to chill out."
Danny was trying to make excuses for him. That endeared him to Enoch even more. But Danny was going to run head on into vampire girl. He needed to be a little prepared. "I saw what I saw."
Danny parked by the restaurant's side door, and Enoch led the way inside. Since his apartment was just across the street, he frequented this spot more than other haunts. The waiter waved to him when he walked in. “Your usual?”
Enoch nodded. “And my friend here wants a beer and the fish and chips.”
They sat in the bar at a small table in the corner, where they could talk in private. Once their drinks came, Danny took a quick swallow. “I’ve been thinking. Let's forget the vampire thing for a minute. Let's just focus on your visions. Did you put yourself in danger if the girl saw you? What if she comes for you now?”
Just like Danny to ignore the vamp thing and go straight into cop mode. “I saw her on the street last night,” Enoch said. “She saw me too. If she wanted to attack, she’d have done it then.”
Danny stared at him. "Attack you? A woman?"
"There are female vampires too." Of course, she was weak and pale when they met. Now, gorged with blood, she'd be strong and fit for anything.
Danny ignored the vampire reference. “You didn’t mention a woman on the street.”
“I didn’t think she was anyone to worry about.”
"Should I worry?"
"Not yet."
Danny sighed. “Is there anything else you didn't happen to mention about the murders?”
Enoch could think of a few. “I tell you whatever's pertinent and important.”
"Pertinent and important? What is this? The secret service, and I’m on a need to know basis?”
“Have you confessed all your sins to me? Or is the background check you ran on me your only one?”
Danny grimaced. “Okay, we’ll leave it at that.”
Danny's tone said that he'd like to spend the next hour grilling him. Too bad. It wouldn't do him any good. Danny knew it, too, and gave in ungracefully. They made strained, small talk while they finished their meals, then Enoch paid and left his usual twenty dollar tip.
"What the hell? Haven't you heard of twenty percent?" Danny demanded.
Enoch waved him off. "It makes me happy."
"Well isn't that wonderful?"
"Screw you."
Danny took a deep breath. "It's stinky weather. Want me to drive you across the street? No need to walk home."
"Nah, the fresh air's good for me." And Danny's company wasn't all that great at the moment. Enoch walked him to his car, waved him off, then started for his apartment building. Once he was home and settled, he struggled to push the vampire girl out of his mind. She’d be burrowed some place dark now, resting. There’d be no way to find her. To distract himself, he sat in front of his computer and read the world news in several languages. Wars. Oppression. Would mankind ever change? Inspiration for a new article. He began to type.
Writing was the thing he’d found he could do century after century, changing his name for each lifetime he passed through. Occasionally, his writing became famous and made a contribution or a difference. Some of his works proved timeless, still sitting on library shelves. But sometimes, as in this life, it was merely an outlet and a voice of the times—a weekly newspaper column. It helped to ground him, so he kept at it.
As usual, when he was working, time passed quickly, so when he looked up and saw that it was getting dark, it surprised him. He went to the French doors that led to his balcony and opened them wide—an invitation to come in if vamp girl stopped for a visit. Then he put her out of his mind and returned to his writing.
Chapter 4
Voronika woke, feeling healthy and sated. She made her way out of the coal bin into the basement. She'd tried to warn those two fools, but they wo
uldn't listen. She shouldn't have drained them. Not a smart move. But she'd been so hungry, so weak.
Insects and vermin scrambled out of sight as she crossed the cement floor to look out a small, high window. Dead, wilted grass greeted her. The fence that circled the yard dipped and sagged. She tiptoed up the stairs to the main floor of the house. Empty rooms. Neglect. Pine floor boards were coated with dust. Cobwebs hung in corners.
Voronika didn't go any further than the basement door. She didn't want to leave footprints that someone might see. Not that anyone came here, but better safe than sorry.
She glanced out the door's glass window at the condos in the distance. Miss Nice Girl was dead. She'd seen the squad cars, the cops, and the yellow tape. She'd heard what she wasn't supposed to. Strangled. Dressed as a clown. The bastard.
She swallowed down the lump that formed in her throat. The girl was mortal. They came and went. But this one had been nice. She blinked her eyes. She was past tears. What good did they do? They fell and evaporated. So what?
But she didn't want to walk past the condos tonight. Maybe not for a while. She didn't want to think about the girl and her smiles, her kindness. Kindness got you killed.
She pulled on her jacket, ready to go outside. She needed fresh air, space, when she felt the probing. It was him. He was looking for her. He'd invaded her sleep, and now he was calling her to him. She remembered the dream—the stranger who attacked Marie, the man rushing in to save her, and then his friend, the cop. How had he done that? Was it real? Or was it just an illusion? If anyone hurt Marie….
She slid out the door into the cold. No wind tonight. There was no use hiding. Whoever he was, he had some kind of talent, a gift she thought only vampires shared. Telepathy was common between them. But this man wasn't a vampire. He didn't smell right. His scent wasn't human either. So what was he? Only one way to find out…
Chapter 5
It was after midnight when he heard a swoosh and a thud when she landed on his balcony. She hesitated at the open doors.