InsistentHunger

by Lyn Gala

  “I know, Alex. Trust me, I do know that I’m a little off balance.”

  “A little?” Alex reached out slowly and almost tentatively put a hand on her arm. “Silver, you’re the biggest badass in a station full of badasses, but you’re coming apart at the seams. Go home before the captain sees you and puts you on leave.”

  Paige nodded. She did need to get out of here fast. “I just have to ask someone one question.”

  “I hope you’re asking for the name of a good therapist,” Alex muttered, but he shifted back so she could go past him into the station.

  “Hell, I have a half-dozen of those already,” Paige pointed out as she hurried inside. Maybe she looked worse than she thought, because two of the officers up front came to a full stop and considered her with worried frowns.

  Alex came in behind her, a gust of cool morning air catching a couple of papers someone had set on the front desk. He moved behind her, his hand brushing against her shoulder. “Just hurry up. The captain is going to give you a one-way ride over to County General for a full physical if he sees you,” he whispered in her ear. Paige nodded and scanned the room.

  The profiler was standing over by the map of the town he’d been using to hand out assignments. Sure enough, the colors had all changed and new target areas were highlighted. If they used Monagas’ MO for a new search, they’d find his lairs. The profiler looked as tired as Paige felt. His graying hair stuck up on one side, so she guessed he’d fallen asleep on a desk at some point and no one had been kind enough to suggest he find a mirror.

  Paige threaded her way through the desk and unfamiliar detectives borrowed from nearby towns. “Can I talk to you a second?” she asked the profiler. He was bent over a desk with Adams—one of their own detectives.

  “Now?” His eyes were so bloodshot that for a second Paige had an irrational urge to ask him if he was a vampire. She didn’t.

  “Yeah, now,” Paige said. Without waiting for his answer, she turned and walked over to the quietest corner of the room. The short hall led back to the interrogation room, but their normal suspects, the drunks and wife-beaters and shoplifting kids, had all gotten very quiet in the last couple of weeks. Until they caught Monagas, Paige suspected the rooms wouldn’t get much use.

  The profiler came over with an expression that would have frightened a lesser woman into backing off. However, after the shitty week she was having, Paige almost wanted a fight. He’d just started to open his mouth, probably to tell her off for interrupting him, when she dropped her bomb.

  “Where’s Hunter?” she demanded.

  He blinked fast, his face turning a subtle shade of white, and his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. Paige knew that she’d guessed right. She also guessed this guy was a shitty poker player. “Excuse me?” he finally managed to get out. His voice was even, but he’d already lost this round.

  Crossing her arms, she glared up at him. “Jim Hunter. Balding guy, forties, fond of his weapons and his stupid fingerless gloves.” She raised her hands and wiggled her fingers in the profiler’s face and he reared back. “Jim. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “No,” she cut him off. “Do not give me that line because I’ve had a shitty week and I’m really getting ready to vent my anger on someone. If you want to paint a target on yourself, just keep on lying. If you want to avoid me making the world’s biggest scene, you’ll tell me where Jim is.” She poked her finger into the center of his chest, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see the entire squad room stilling.

  This jackass was going to try to bluff though. He put on a plastic smile and angled his body so that he blocked the others’ view of their little conversation. “Which is hard for me to do if I don’t know who Jim is.”

  “You actually make that sound so logical.”

  “It’s not hard to make logic sound logical.”

  Paige nodded for a second. This schmuck was really pissing her off. Either that or her last nerve had finally given way and she simply wanted to go off on someone. Either was possible.

  “Well, try this logic,” she suggested. “Jim had a friend when he broke into my house one night. From the fact that Jim was willing to show his face, he trusted that he could talk me out of shooting or arresting him; however, his partner fled into the night. His partner risked getting shot by an overly tired and stressed cop when he could have just waited until Jim cleared things up.”

  “Sounds like a stupid partner.” The profiler had buried all his emotions under a mask now, but it was too little, too late.

  “You’d think,” Paige said in an overly friendly tone, “but then I’m not sure Jim would put up with stupid. So why would the partner run? I figure the partner had to run or I’d recognize him.”

  “Or her.”

  “No, it was a him. I got enough of an impression to say ‘him’. So we have a male that I would recognize on sight, but Jim’s partner isn’t a local. If this particular problem Jim is chasing were local, I would have heard hints. People gossip. So I figure Jim is from out of town and so is his partner.” Paige laid out her evidence as neatly as if she was writing a report for the captain.

  “You have some unfounded supposition in there, but as a theory, it might work.” The profiler was all business now. With a little warning, he could control his face admirably, but Paige wasn’t walking out of here without a lead. No fucking way.

  “Yes, it might. Now when I first met Jim, he knew who I was and he knew that I’d lost my partner.” Paige crossed her arms and glared at the man.

  “Common knowledge.”

  “The department hadn’t released the name of the victim or the victim’s partner yet.”

  That gave him pause. “Like you said, people gossip.”

  Paige leaned closer. “Not to out-of-towners, they don’t. That means that Jim’s partner is connected to the police department. Now there are a lot of you strangers wandering around with the big rape case, but I have to ask myself which of these strangers consistently puts himself near me? Who offers me a ride, shows a willingness to listen? Eavesdrops? Put all that together and I do believe I’m safe in concluding that you’re Jim’s partner.”

  Paige gave the man a feral smile that dared him to contradict her. “So, where is he?”

  “Officer Silver, while I admire your tenacity, I think you’re overly tired and clearly—”

  “I’m not going to ask again,” Paige cut him off. “The next thing I’m going to do is to start loudly accusing you and this random Jim guy of breaking into my house, screaming crazy shit about how Brady is a vampire.” Paige’s smile grew when the profiler’s face turned bright red. That hit his buttons. “I’ll tell everyone how you two were trying to convince me he’s still walking around.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he said, but he didn’t sound so sure and he was back to swallowing nervously.

  “With the shitty week I’ve had? Please. I’m not that mentally well-balanced right now. Sure, some of these fine people will think I’ve slipped a gear. However, everyone is going to be watching you. Everyone will be looking for Jim, and I suspect that there are people out there who listen closely to anything that involves crazy ramblings about vampires. Am I right? Because I’m willing to test that theory. Push me and you’re going to see just how willing I am to test that theory.”

  Paige looked around the room at all the men and women who were surreptitiously watching them.

  The profiler glanced over his shoulder. Then he looked at her for a long time, his lips thinning into a straight line. That gesture told Paige that she’d won the round and she just had to wait for Mr. Profiler-guy to give up the intel.

  Sure enough, his whole body seemed to sag. “Have you ever considered going into profiling?”

  “Nope. Don’t make me ask again—I won’t.”

  He moved back until he could sit on the edge of a desk. “Jim is chasing down a theory about where these new guys went after their last little adventure.”


  “Adventure.” Paige snorted. That’s not what she’d call it. In fact, when she caught up with him, she figured she was about as likely to kill Jim Hunter as Brady was. “And he would be chasing this theory where?”

  “This really isn’t safe, you know.” He studied Paige, his worried expression reminding her of her first and third therapists. Maybe her first and fourth. Two through six sometimes merged into one big faceless gnome.

  “Nothing is safe. Falling in love isn’t safe. Having someone offer to teach you an attack strategy isn’t safe. Sometimes walking out to your mailbox with your daughter’s hand in yours isn’t safe because some idiot thinks that a half a case of beer isn’t too much to drink before driving.” Paige made a face.

  “I know a lot about not-safe. I can’t say I really care. So either cough up an address or I’m going to find a whole new way to be not-safe and I will drag your sorry ass along with me for the ride.”

  “You’re a hard one.”

  “Oh you have no idea,” Paige warned him.

  He held up his hands as if in surrender. “Fine. One of the big plantations up on Deadline Road.”

  Paige frowned. “The Carter place or the old Bausell plantation?”

  He shrugged. “Jim said it was near the water, that vamps were using the water to avoid the roads and the locals.”

  “The Carter place,” Paige said, her mind already spinning with ideas about how to approach the property.

  “He also said someone big was in town, someone too big to take on directly. He’s worried,” the profiler warned.

  Paige focused on him for a second. “I’ll be careful, and thank you.”

  He shook his head, his expression full of disgust, and Paige could guess he was disgusted with himself for folding so fast. “Yeah, thank me after you get back without getting yourself killed.”

  “There’s a vote of confidence for you,” she said with more than a little sarcasm. Too many men had made the mistake of underestimating her and they’d all been wrong. “Trust me, I’m not that easy to kill.”

  He leaned closer and his voice dropped to a whisper. “I imagine you aren’t. But these guys are rather skilled at it.”

  “We’ll see,” Paige said with a smile before she turned her back on the guy and started heading for the door.

  “Silver,” he called out.

  She turned and looked at him.

  “I meant what I said. If you ever want to go into profiling, you call me. I’ll get you into the program,” he offered.

  Paige frowned. “I don’t even know your name,” she pointed out.

  The profiler seemed startled at that, but then he hadn’t really been on her radar until she’d put all the pieces together. “Kent. Kent McAllen,” he offered.

  “Well, Kent McAllen, hell will freeze over first,” Paige said with a smile. Paige turned her back on a room full of cops staring at her in shock and headed for the door. She had an idiot partner to catch up with…possibly to kill, but she hadn’t totally made up her mind on that one yet. She’d catch up to Brady first, and then decide if he was too stupid to keep on living. Unliving. Whatever.

  To get to Deadline Road, Paige had to drive by Brady’s old place. The street looked so normal without the sea of police outside, but as she drove past, she remembered a face watching her that morning after she’d reported the mess in Brady’s apartment.

  A woman in a business suit had watched from the carport, her face devoid of any expression. She’d had the same striking hourglass figure, the same tilt of her head as the vampire from that house Hunter attacked. And she’d been at Brady’s apartment. Well shit. Paige figured she had more to worry about than a vampire rapist. Unless she missed her guess, Brady had himself a stalker.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sixteen hours later, she crouched at the edge of the old Carter place. Brady’s car hadn’t moved since she’d checked it in the early hours of the morning, and now that night had fallen, she couldn’t escape the feeling that she had to do something. She’d found the vamp lair and she just had to do something.

  Paige understood why the vamps had chosen this house. This part of the county used to be part of a network of old plantation houses, but some local frog had gotten the roads closed as part of the Endangered Species Act.

  Now the Carter place and the old Bausell plantation were at the end of a two-mile stretch of road dedicated to the frogs. It made for a lot of privacy. Hunter’s blue sedan was parked under a chinquapin oak tree halfway between the house and the turn-off from Old Kentucky Road. The lack of blood or a dead body suggested that either Hunter had lost Brady along the way or the two of them had decided to team up against the lair. Both seemed unlikely.

  Like the last lair she’d found, Paige could see those same low-level vamps wandering around. Those were the ones the website had called vrykolakas or jiangshi. Their touch would drain her life and somehow it felt really unfair because supposedly vampires had to bite.

  It was a lot easier to avoid a bite than a simple touch. Then again, Hunter had been touched and bitten and he was still up and running. She’d gotten the feeling that those had been from a type of smarter vamp, like the one she’d seen at the house where she met Hunter, but she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure about a whole lot and it was pissing her off.

  If she got through this alive, she was writing a fucking manual. A nice easy-to-read manual with cross-referenced entries for each type of demon. And then some doctor could shove her in a nut house.

  Paige checked her Glock again and then fingered the various supplies she’d brought. If this didn’t work, she was about to be very dead. For a second, she wondered if a demon would move in if she died this close to a whole bunch of demons. If it did, how much of her personality would the demon keep?

  As much as Paige didn’t want to think about these things, her thoughts kept circling right back to the same places. Like she kept obsessing over the fact that Brady had gone missing for a whole day and she couldn’t even file a missing person’s report. She couldn’t even call a friend to ask them to lie and tell her it would be okay.

  “Get a grip,” she muttered to herself as she checked her work and then moved as silently as she could through the woods.

  Since she couldn’t risk a frontal attack, she would have to trick the nice little demons and one idiot demon hunter into coming out of hiding. Thank God for discount stores, even if the lack of supplies in Oxbow had forced her to drive to the city to get everything she wanted.

  Paige checked her watch and moved a little faster. She could hear the vamps shuffling through the tall, dry grass. Through the trunks of the trees and swaying branches, she could catch glimpses of them mindlessly staring at nothing. A branch cracked under Paige’s foot and she froze. Her mouth went dry. However, when she looked toward the house, none of the vamps had even twitched. Thank God for stupid demons.

  Everything was taking longer than it should. Page could feel a cold desperation rising in her chest as she hurried to the next spot where the trees thinned. Pulling out long colorful streamers, she attached them to the branches. Yellow and pink and neon green strips of fabric swayed in the mild breeze. Paige used plastic zip ties to secure them and then set up the platform, clicking the fireworks into place.

  If this worked, whoever was in that house was going to come out and whoever was in the woods would show himself. Hopefully she could figure out step two in her plan just as soon as she saw who ran in which direction. And if either Hunter or Brady had been idiotic enough to get captured, hopefully she could make a big enough distraction to give them a chance to free themselves. It was a bad plan, but it was the only plan she had.

  A loud popping noise on the far side of the house suggested that her first trap had gone off. A long streak of orange raced into the air, leaving behind a wobbling trail of gray smoke against the black sky.

  Paige ducked through the trees, racing for the hill she had scouted earlier. It gave her the best view of both traps. Once she reached it
and threw herself down in the middle of a patch of alligator weeds, she could see vamps starting to move toward the fireworks.

  Sparklers went off, their white flickers flaring brilliantly and then fading to nothing. A whistling bomb soared twenty feet into the air, exploded and then showered color down onto the scene. Vamps started running, and with each step their movements grew more fluid, more sure. Their stumbling aimless wander turned into a purposeful pursuit.

  Last time she’d been at a lair, she’d been the bait. She’d never gotten to see the point at which the mindless vamps had turned into hunting predators. It was terrifying. However, those predators reached her trap and they became almost childlike. Hands reached up to stroke and pull at streamers she had tied to the branches. One of the fireworks hit the side of a vamp’s body and sparks flew everywhere. The vamp cried out wordlessly and his companions ignored him completely as he fell to the ground.

  The door to the Carter house came open and a new vamp appeared. This one didn’t chase after Paige’s trap. He stared out into the dark, intentionally turning his back to the fireworks in order to study the trees.

  Paige sank down into the weeds and leaf litter and held her breath. Her heart beat rabbit fast, which was fair considering she was the prey in this little scenario. She was the prey, and if they caught her, she had very little doubt about how she’d end up. However, this prey had teeth. And if they had done something to Brady, she was going to burn their lair to the ground.

  A new vampire appeared at the door with the first and the two talked. Hands gestured and then vamps number one and two stepped out into the yard and walked in opposite directions. They never even glanced toward the mob of mindless demons with their colorful toys. Vamps had ripped the streamers from the trees and were wandering again, their fingers working at the fabric of their newly gained possessions. Vamps who hadn’t managed to claim a prize remained near the fireworks platform and stared into space.

  The two higher-level vamps were circling the house now. The only place they weren’t looking was the spot where the fireworks had gone off. Too late, it occurred to Paige that she shouldn’t have set the second trap. These guys knew she was not hiding near her traps, and her second trap was going to narrow the search even more. Obviously not all vamps were dumb. She pulled her Glock out of its holster and waited.