The detective shook his head. “Not until I’m sure I’m not conjuring connections where there are none.”
Holding his gaze for a long moment, I tried to analyze the pros and cons, but in the end, I did something unusual for me, and instead went with my gut. “We can work together. But you don’t have to wait for me. I have no idea how long this might take. We will talk again soon, though—maybe when your FBI agent arrives?”
I pushed away from the wall, too, leaving the policeman to watch me as I left, and glancing into Felicity’s room when I moved past it. Will spoke to her, keeping her attention on him until I was gone.
Maybe some extra time would help me figure out what the hell had just happened.
Then again, maybe not.
Chapter 2
Scott
“You think it’s vampires again?” I rubbed my hand across my eyes to clear the sandy feel of sleep deprivation. I took another swig of coffee as I waited for my brain to catch up with Detective Henry Iverson’s words.
“The case I’m down here for? Yes. The sick kids? No. Not directly, anyway. Not their style.” Even through the phone, I could hear the anxiety underscoring his tone. “But there’s something connecting them. I’m sure of it.”
“Damn.” I blew out a breath. “Vampires alone would be easier. I’ve almost got a handle on how they work.”
Almost.
“This is taking kids. My sister’s kid. But it’s got…I don’t know. The same feel to it, somehow. If I’m right, this is something new.” Iverson’s voice was more tentative than I was used to hearing it—usually, the big, gruff, blond Dallas police detective barked orders, certain that they would be carried out immediately.
“Listen, man. I’m not saying you’re wrong. But could this be what it looks like? Some virus or something? Something we could leave to the doctors?” I could hope, right?
“No.” Now Iverson sounded certain. “Whatever this thing is, it isn’t natural.”
“You have any evidence at all?”
“Nothing substantial. But there’s a doctor here, and Felicity’s pretty sure she dreamed about the doctor attacking her last night.”
I shook my head. “Not that weird, right? I mean, if she’s your niece’s doctor, she’d be on her mind.”
“Felicity had the dream before she met the doctor.”
Iverson was right—as evidence went, it was thin. But we had investigated leads on less in the last few weeks.
“Okay. I’ll hit the road in an hour, be there this afternoon.” I owed it to Iverson to help him out, no matter what. He and his team had saved me from being part of some weird-ass vampire ritual sacrifice less than two months earlier, after I stumbled into the middle of their operation as part of another investigation.
When Iverson’s undercover agent had gone missing, we hadn’t been able to find her, even after I pulled in every marker I had with the FBI vampire squad.
It was like she had disappeared off the face of the earth.
If Iverson was right, and the sudden illness that had hit his niece had a supernatural origin, the least I could do would be help him figure it out.
I pulled out the bag I kept packed for overnight cases, dropped it on the bed, and headed to the shower.
# # #
“I was right,” Iverson said. “And it’s worse than I thought.” The detective had met me at my hotel—he hadn’t even waited for me to check in, but met me in the lobby, and we shook hands in a quick greeting. I’d excused myself to drop my bags in my room, and now we were headed to his car.
My stomach dropped, but I kept my cop face on. “Right about the case being like Dallas? Or about the sick kids being connected?” I paused, considering the worst alternative. “Or both?”
Iverson wore his cop face as well, so I knew it was bad. “About this case being vamp-related, at least. Houston PD picked up their second carving murder while you were on the way down. That’s two in less than a week.”
“Same MO as Dallas in the fall?”
Lips pressed tight, Iverson nodded. “The lead on the case sent printed pics from the first scene, and just emailed to say he’ll get the second set to me when they’re ready.”
I fell into step beside him. “You been to the second scene?”
“No invite, and I didn’t ask. You want to?”
Hell, no. “Maybe.” I glanced at my watch. “I should probably check out the initial scene pictures first. How long have they been processing at number two?”
“We’ve got time to go over the first set of pictures. You had lunch?” When I shook my head, the detective continued. “Let’s grab something, then.” Anyone else might have found Iverson’s question inappropriate, or at least insensitive, but we were professionals. Crime scene photos weren’t supposed to put us off our feed.
That’s how we ended up at a nearby Mexican food joint, eating cheese enchiladas in red sauce and staring at photos from a murder scene with a similar color scheme: the body of a young woman, dumped in a back alley, strange symbols carved into her flesh and highlighted in blood.
“Any significance to the body placement?” I asked, forking a bite of the food into my mouth.
Iverson shook his head. “If it’s really like Dallas, then the murder site is what matters. That’s the focus of the blood magic.”
“Do we know where the kill site is?”
“Not yet.”
“And your niece’s illness? How does it fit in?”
“No idea.” Iverson ran his hand across his eyes. “I’m not even sure it does. But every instinct I have is screaming at me that it’s connected.”
“Okay. We’ll start from the premise that they’re connected. Work it backward for a connection.” Iverson tried to mask it, but I caught the flash of relief across his face at my words. If this was an instinct, it was one tugging at him so hard that he was on the verge of panic, though his self-control was strong enough that not many would realize it.
I stared at the photos in front of me, absently shoveling in the rest of my meal. “These symbols—” I fanned out the stack of photos with my free hand until I saw the one I wanted and fished it out to place it on top. Peering at it closely, I traced the figures the killer had etched into the horrific canvas of her skin. “Are they the same as the ones in Dallas?”
“A few of them.” Iverson reached across the table to gather the photos and flip through them until he found another close-up. “This one, and this one.” His blunt finger tapped first one sigil then another. “The rest are new.”
The genial, dark-haired waitress stepped up to the table, her smile faltering as she glanced down at the pictures in front of us. “Oh,” she said, distressed.
Without any conscious thought, I dropped my napkin on the pile. “I think we’re ready for our check,” Iverson said smoothly.
She blinked and scurried away, and I pulled the napkin off the stack of photos again. “In Dallas, the symbols were meant to call up some sort of magic spell, right?”
Iverson shrugged. “Cami Davis thought they were meant to help the vamps do some sort of blood magic. Taking them out at the Adolphus was supposed to stop that.” We both paused, considering Davis’s disappearance, and our shared conviction that she had ended up on the wrong end of some of that blood magic.
I shook off the depressing reminder of our failure to determine what had really happened to her. “But if these aren’t the same symbols, maybe they’ve got a different purpose?”
“For all I know, Davis was entirely wrong, and those murders had nothing to do with vampires. Hell, maybe the Dallas perp moved on to Houston. Or we have a copycat killer.” Iverson’s tone shifted to something angry. “For all I know, Davis is lying dead somewhere, all carved up, and some other cop is looking at pictures of her body in some restaurant.” He shoved at the pile, scattering the pictures across the table.
“You told me she’d been turned,” I said quietly.
“Yeah.” A muscle jumped in Iverson’s jaw as h
e clenched his teeth.
“Then she’s probably still alive. Undead. Whatever. Anyway, she’s still around somewhere. And we haven’t stopped looking yet. This is connected somehow. We don’t have the big picture yet. But we will. We’ll get there.”
Iverson stared out the window for a long time before he finally nodded. Glancing at his watch, he said, “They’ll be processing the scene for hours yet. Let’s hit the hospital before we go over there.”
# # #
Hospitals always make my skin crawl—they are too clean, too antiseptic. But underneath all the chemical cleanliness floats the pervasive smell of death—human illness, rot, decay, overlaid with the scent of hand sanitizer.
It coated the back of my throat and hung there. Not even the horrendous coffee I had picked up in a small waiting room could wash away the taste.
I had spent the almost four-hour drive from Dallas to Houston mentally reviewing everything I knew about the supernatural—which was surprisingly little, for having been the Dallas FBI office’s front man in the anti-vamp unit. And then I’d spent the ride over to the hospital from lunch reviewing it all again.
Of course, it hadn’t been all that long since I’d had to reconsider everything I thought I knew about vampires, since the Dallas Sanguinary—the vampires’ secret governmental body—had been all but wiped out in a single raid spearheaded by the missing Dallas detective, Cami Davis.
I had liked Cami Davis, against all odds. She had taken one look at my official FBI badge, complete with my full name, Stanley Scott Chandler, and called me “Agent Stan Chandler.” I hadn’t bothered to correct her, certain at the time that she didn’t need to know my preferred name—and equally certain that if she ended up needing to know it, I would have the chance to tell her.
I had been wrong about that last part.
I still had nightmares about the night she disappeared, the night that following a lead on a potential vamp feeding ground had gotten me captured and almost served up to the bloodthirsty monsters. But Davis had managed to step in and save me.
And then Davis had disappeared, along with her vampire contact, Reese Fulton.
No one in the Dallas PD would give me more than the official story: Cami Davis was taking some much-needed vacation time. Yes, they would pass on his messages when she returned. No, they did not yet know when that might be.
Then Iverson, the lieutenant detective who had been the official lead the night of the raid, contacted me privately. His department was calling off the search for Davis—not officially closing the case, because there had never been a case file opened, but quietly shelving the unofficial investigation. Their official stance would be that she was on extended, unpaid leave. Their unofficial stance was that the vampires had turned her, changed her into one of their own.
Unofficially, the orders regarding Cami Davis were stake on sight.
Although he hadn’t included it in his official reports, Iverson had told me more than once that he knew for sure that Cami had been turned—but for some reason, he remained convinced that she was on the side of the humans.
I owed Davis and Iverson both more than I could ever repay, so when Iverson asked me to help him quietly follow up on leads, I agreed.
That was when I found out precisely how much support the Dallas FBI front man had from Washington: virtually none.
When I ignored orders to quit investigating what might remain of the Dallas Sanguinary, I was temporarily suspended, and my quick promotion to the Dallas office suddenly made a lot of sense. The FBI Anti-Vampire Task Force didn’t want someone seasoned in that position. They wanted someone they could control.
I was still trying to decide what to do about that when I got Iverson’s call to come to Houston and the answer came clear.
Apparently, part of what I was going to do was ignore my own orders to suspend all investigations into the supernatural.
# # #
The corridor leading out to the waiting room for the contact isolation ward stood empty, our echoing footsteps bouncing off the walls unsettlingly.
I glanced over at Iverson. The lieutenant looked more strung out than he ought to, as if he had been pacing the hospital halls for days rather than moments. “Thanks for coming,” he said as we moved toward the waiting area outside the scrub-in room. “I know it’s an intuition. The docs aren’t saying much, either. That one lady doc from the CDC goes all shifty-eyed when I try to talk to her about it now, though she was willing enough to listen to me tell her about Felicity’s creepy dreams earlier.”
Leave it to Iverson to call someone a “lady doc.” He probably got away with it, too.
I made a noncommittal noise. “Mm. I’d trust your intuition over a lot of other cops’ facts any day. It’s why I’m here.” I glanced around the room. “Think the CDC doctor would be willing to talk to me?”
Iverson lifted one hand in a shrug. “Let’s find out.” He led me to a desk with an old-fashioned black telephone on it, and picked up the receiver to dial a single number. He asked whoever answered to let a Dr. Banta know that an FBI agent was here to speak to her. I narrowed my eyes at that—Iverson knew perfectly well that I had been suspended.
I let it go. He might play the bumbling, redneck, good ol’ boy cop, but everything Iverson did was carefully calculated. As long as I didn’t claim to be officially speaking for the FBI, we should be fine.
It didn’t take Dr. Banta long to respond. The door to the scrub-in room opened after only a few moments. The woman walking down the short hall toward me was arrestingly beautiful. She was small, not much over five feet tall—almost a full foot shorter than me—but determination and power practically radiated from her. I saw her stop and speak quietly to a nurse, who nodded and moved off purposely—the interaction suggested that the nurse obeyed Dr. Banta out of respect, not simply because doctors ranked higher in the hospital hierarchy.
She wore her dark hair pulled back in a low ponytail that curled halfway down her back. The look she gave me from her wide-set, dark brown eyes suggested that she was perfectly aware that I was imagining letting that hair down and running my hands through it. Unfortunately, the tight set of her otherwise generous lips suggested that she didn’t approve of the fantasy.
Then again, maybe her eyes and lips weren’t saying anything about me at all. Maybe she was a doctor dealing with a potentially supernatural disease targeting children. That would be enough to make anyone look disapproving.
Time to rein in that imagination, Chandler.
“You must be the FBI agent,” she said, holding out a slim hand for me to shake. “I’m Dr. Lili Banta.” Her palm was dry and cool, and her grip stronger than I expected from such a tiny woman.
I nodded, hoping my professional mask hadn’t slipped. “Scott Chandler. Nice to meet you, Dr. Banta.”
If she noticed that I didn’t exactly claim the role of agent, she didn’t give any indication.
She also didn’t give any indication that she had noticed my response to her.
Good. Maybe I could keep my game face on around her.
Chapter 3
Lili
I glanced back at the FBI agent as I led him down the hall to a private consultation room, where we could talk. He didn’t look anything like I had expected. When Iverson mentioned calling a colleague, I had expected someone much older, and much more forbidding. Someone who frowned a lot and said things like, “Just the facts, ma’am.”
This guy certainly wasn’t smiling, but smile lines lightly creased his face—lines that made him look even younger, somehow, rather than older.
And he wasn’t at all forbidding, despite being almost a foot taller than I was. His short, FBI-regulation haircut did make him seem like the sort to say “ma’am,” but he looked more Boy Scout than Cigarette Man. His eyes matched his hair—such a dark brown that they seemed almost black, and his skin was dark, too. Mediterranean heritage, I guessed, browned even further by the Texas sun.
But most of all, he was beautiful.
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Not attractive, not even handsome, though those two things were definitely in the mix. He was the kind of beautiful that probably made women stop on the street and stare.
All these thoughts had flashed through my mind as I walked toward him, and I had frowned as I tried to push it all back down.
Now that we were sitting across from one another in the consultation room and I was staring directly at him, I found that I had to keep shoving those thoughts out of the way. It would be far too easy to be distracted by his good looks, and part of me knew that would be a terrible idea.
I didn’t examine too closely which part of me believed that.
Leaning back against the scratchy orange cushion of the chair, I propped my elbows on the wooden armrests and tented my fingers in front of me. “How can I help you, Agent Chandler?”
“Please, call me Scott.” His body language was perfect for the situation, I noted analytically—his elbows resting on his widespread knees so that his upper body bent toward me, hands loose and open, the whole pose inviting confidences. Secrets.
Add that to his good looks, and I would have bet that he was an amazing interrogator. People probably fell all over themselves to tell him their secrets. Women, anyway.
Secrets.
I wondered if my strange dreams featuring the Dallas detective’s niece counted in that category.
With a start, I realized that the agent had asked a question. Something about the disease we were facing, the prognosis, what the kids might have to deal with. I tried to keep my face calm. “We’re not entirely certain. Although this particular illness has some similarities to an outbreak about twenty years ago, we simply don’t have enough information yet to give any definite answers about how, or even if, the disease might have changed in that time.”
“How is the illness spread, Dr. Banta?” His tone matched his body language: relaxed, calm, inviting. But some instinct told me that he was none of those things. No, the beautiful Agent Chandler was playing a role, every bit as much as I was.
I smiled my best professional smile. “That’s part of what I’m here to discover. Although I will be working with the patients, my primary job here is as an investigator for the CDC. And please, call me Lili.”
Bloodborne (Night Shift Book 2) Page 3