It was my last chance to escape without explaining myself.
Possibly my last chance to save my job. My career. The only thing I had ever wanted out of life.
If I sprinted, I could reach my SUV on the other side of the block before anyone knew what had happened.
I stayed put.
We had been working in secret for too long now. Henry and Lili and I needed backup. I knew what we were dealing with now. I might not have a name for it, but I knew what it looked like.
It was a real, living, breathing monster, not merely some horrific disease.
I knew its shape.
That meant I could hunt it.
# # #
Lili didn’t answer her phone, but Iverson met me at the local police substation, where I sat cuffed to a bench, waiting. The local officers had been polite but firm, insisting that I needed to go with them while they verified my identity. They had also offered a kind of professional courtesy by not openly discounting my claim that I was an off-duty FBI agent.
Technically, it was true. I had been suspended, not fired.
Not yet.
Iverson was calm, and his attitude seemed to rub off on the cops around him; within half an hour of his arrival, we were out of the station, and fifteen minutes after that, I had my vehicle back.
I debriefed the detective over coffee in a nearby all-night diner, telling him everything I had seen. “So I decided to call you in before I got Rodriguez involved in this aspect of the case,” I concluded.
“Good decision.” He drained his cup and motioned to a waiter to bring more. “Still no definite connection to the murders—nothing past a symbol you’ve drawn on a map.”
“You think I’m right, though.”
Iverson’s voice was quiet when he answered. “I’m absolutely certain of it.”
Chapter 13
Lili
The ringing of my cell phone woke me up, but I had the feeling it had been going on for a long time. As I pushed my way up out of sleep, I realized I was hearing the ringtone I had assigned to Detective Iverson and Agent Chandler.
Rolling over, I groped for the phone on my bedside table, even as I shook away the last tattered remnants of a dream—something about flying, and a window, and trees, and a gun.
My voice was blurry with sleep when I finally answered. “Hello?”
“Lili? Finally. Where have you been?” Agent Chandler didn’t wait for me to answer. “I saw it last night.”
“It?” Glancing at the glowing red light of the digital alarm clock Inay, my mother, had insisted on putting in my room, despite my assurances that my phone’s alarm would work as well, I realized that I had been sleeping for at least five hours since the last time I’d glanced at it. By M.D. standards, that was practically a full night’s sleep.
I shouldn’t be this exhausted.
My brain was taking far too long to catch up. Kicking my legs over the side of the bed, I pulled on a robe and headed to the kitchen to make coffee as I listened to Agent Chandler’s garbled description of the monster he had seen that night. I held the empty coffee pot under the running faucet.
“It had wings, like some giant bat. I got a shot off at it, but it flew away.”
At the word “shot,” I froze, struggling to recall those wisps of dream.
Gunshots. Flight.
The water overflowing the pot and running out onto my hand brought me back to myself. Chandler was still talking, and I tuned back into his words.
“I think we should get together as soon as you’re able to meet us and talk this through. I think we can catch this thing.” He sounded more frantic than I had heard him before, as if he were running on pure adrenaline.
“When is the last time you slept, Agent?” I asked, automatically moving around the kitchen to start the coffee.
In the tiny silence that followed, I realized that he had called me by my first name when I answered. I wondered if I should have done the same, or if I should correct myself—but then he began speaking again, and the moment passed.
“Sometime yesterday,” he admitted.
“And do you have any idea where this creature might have gone?” There was barely enough coffee in the bottom of the pot to fill a cup, and I breathed in the steam as I finally took a long drink.
“No,” Chandler—Scott, if we really were going to use first names—admitted.
“Do you know where it will be tonight, too?”
“Possibly.”
I nodded, trusting that the certainty would come through my words. “Then go get some sleep. I’ll do my rounds, check on the children. If you’re right and this creature is our disease vector, then we shouldn’t be getting any new cases today. We can meet this afternoon and make a plan.”
“And if I’m wrong?” I had to strain to hear Scott ask the question.
“Then I’ll be treating new patients today.”
# # #
Scott wasn’t wrong.
At least, he was right enough that I didn’t have any new Yvonne’s patients show up that day.
News crews were still camped outside the hospital’s main doors, but I hoped that if we didn’t get any new patients, interest in this outbreak of Yvonne’s Disease would fade quickly. The 24-hour news cycle didn’t keep things alive all that long.
Maybe the next time we had something newsworthy, it would be a cure.
Or maybe the corpse of the monster that Scott was so certain was spreading Yvonne’s.
Of course, that would lead to a whole different kind of news. As I scrubbed out of the containment unit, I considered what it would mean to the world to discover that vampires weren’t the only monsters among us.
I continued to think about the issue as I ducked around to take back hallways and elevators down to the cafeteria. What would it mean to humans to find out about another nightmare creature come to life?
I had been in med school when the vampires had shown up en masse. No one had believed it.
And when we finally did believe it? There had been riots, mass hysteria—at least for a little while.
Did I really want to be the reason that started up again?
Could I possibly keep something like this secret?
What kind of monster were we talking about, anyway? A disease carrier with bat wings.
And what does it mean that vampires aren’t the only monsters roaming the night?
I half wished I hadn’t told Scott Chandler to get some sleep. I was ready to talk about this new horror.
“Wait up, Lili.” Turning, I watched as Will jogged to catch up with me. “How are you doing?” he asked as he fell into step beside me.
“Confused.”
“I take it you’ve heard from Detective Iverson?” Will’s wrinkled nose suggested he, too, had an idea of what we were dealing with.
“Agent Chandler, actually, but yes, I’ve heard from them.”
Will cut his eyes to the side, as if checking the empty hallway to make sure no one overheard us. “You have any idea what time we’re supposed to meet them?”
“No, but I’m not going anywhere until I’ve eaten something. I refuse to discuss giant bat-men without something in my stomach.” I knew I sounded angrier than I actually felt.
I felt scared.
Terrified, actually.
I didn’t know what we were dealing with or how to stop it from spreading its disease to more children. I didn’t have any answers to give the children, or their parents, or even the CDC.
I hate feeling helpless.
It happens often enough in the medical field. All too often, a disease can’t be cured. An injury can’t be healed. A patient dies.
I hated that part of my job. At least as a CDC investigator, they were rarely my patients. Somehow it was easier to think of them as “disease vectors” or “carriers,” or even, sometimes, “patient zero.”
I rarely had to actually spend time with the patients I diagnosed—only long enough to get a blood sample then head to the lab.
This time, I had spent part of my time conducting patient contact surveys with Agent Chandler.
I didn’t know if that had truly been necessary, or another means of avoiding getting to know patients.
Or maybe simply a way to get closer to Scott Chandler.
I ignored the errant thought, choosing instead to refocus on my conversation with Will. “I’m headed to the cafeteria. Join me?”
“As long as you don’t expect me to eat oatmeal,” he said, rolling his eyes.
Chapter 14
Scott
By the time I finally woke up, it was late afternoon. It was a sleep schedule I should be used to by now, since almost all of my work in the Dallas office of the FBI’s anti-vampire unit had been at night, but I never was able to shake my preference for working mornings over nights.
My mind felt almost as gritty as I pulled open the hotel’s thick, plastic-feeling blackout curtain and stumbled toward the coffee pot—the fuel that powered most investigations—and pulled up my messages on my phone.
A text from Lili noting that no new Yvonne’s patients had been admitted as of early afternoon. A frisson of excitement cut through the waking-up haze.
I knew it. That monster I saw is the source of the contagion.
Consciously, I realized that the lack of new Yvonne’s victims didn’t actually prove my theory, but everything in me told me I was right, that I had tracked down the monster causing the kids to fall ill.
Now I needed to figure out the connection between the sigil I had traced on the map and the creature attacking the kids.
The text I shot back to Lili was short and straightforward: Thought you’d be free of new Yvonne’s kids. Will be working with crime scene photos today, barring new information. Let me know if anything new comes up.
The certainty that something else was at work here niggled at the back of my brain, as if I would see it as soon as I blew away enough cobwebs and dust from whatever part of my subconscious held the information.
Why these two cases? Why vampire murder victims, all of whom were adults, and Yvonne’s Disease victims, all of whom were children?
Infection. There was something about infection…but the thought slipped away before it was even fully formed.
Heaving an enormous sigh, I settled in to study the photos and map again, determined to find something connecting the two different cases besides the victims’ placements in the symbol I had traced onto the map.
Chapter 15
Lili
I didn’t get Scott’s text until I scrubbed out of the isolation unit, several hours after he had sent it. But I knew, as soon as it arrived, that I needed to go to his hotel.
I needed to see those crime scene photos.
We need to.
I ignored the high-pitched echoes in my head, refused to examine this desire too closely. Instead, I used the video call feature on my phone. I wanted to be able to see his reaction to my request, though I couldn’t have articulated exactly why that was suddenly important to me.
“Hey, Scott. About those crime scene photos? Mind if I stop by after my shift and take a look at them?” I tried to keep my tone casual, but didn’t know if I succeeded.
“I could bring the files to the hospital with me tomorrow.” Chandler sounded more cautious than I suspected he usually did.
I took advantage of that slight hesitancy, pausing longer than necessary to stare into his eyes. “I’d rather see them tonight.”
The only thing that gave him away was a slight jump in the muscles of his jaw, a tiny widening of his eyes as his pupils dilated.
I felt my pulse jump in response, a light flush spreading across my chest and body.
Crime scenes or no, I wanted to see Agent Scott Chandler tonight. Preferably in his hotel room.
That wasn’t my usual style. As a general rule, I was too busy to worry about dating, and one-night stands held little appeal. Scott Chandler, though, appealed to me. On almost every level.
Unless I missed my guess completely, Chandler was every bit as interested in me. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed once before giving me his hotel address and room number.
I fought back a smile. “I’ll have some paperwork to fill out before I can leave. I can bring something for dinner, though.”
# # #
Standing inside the doorway, plastic bags of Chinese food in hand, I glanced around Scott Chandler’s hotel room. My own room in my mother’s house was less impersonal, but only barely.
“You have the files here?” I didn’t have to ask, but I needed something to say. Anything would have done, really. Suddenly, I felt much more self-conscious than I had at the hospital earlier. Apparently setting up a date in a man’s hotel room was easier than actually following through with it.
“On the desk—I’ve got some printouts and the computer image files are already open.” Scott gestured with his head as he relieved me of the food bags and began unloading the cartons onto the long, low dresser.
As I moved toward the file folder next to the open laptop, a thought hit me so hard that I nearly stumbled.
I’m going to seduce him tonight.
The realization shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did, given my thoughts about the agent earlier, but the absolute certainty of the idea seemed out of character for me. Strange.
Almost foreign.
Yet I was certain this was my own idea—that the voice in my head telling me that I wanted Scott Chandler in my bed was my own.
This is my own idea.
I want him.
For myself.
No chittering voices contradicted me.
I decided to take that as a good sign that I wasn’t going crazy. I shoved down any lingering doubts. For the first time in a long time, I was attracted to someone, and I was going to act on that attraction.
Starting now.
Chapter 16
Scott
Lili reached out to flip a page over, her motions efficient and sure, like everything about her. The sight of the tendons moving on the back of her slim hand held me captive for a moment as she pointed at various numbers in the chart. There was nothing extraneous about her hands—she kept her nails filed into short, even half-circles, and her skin, darker than my own, looked soft, despite a slight dryness I suspected came from the harsh antibacterial soap the hospital provided.
When the hand I had been staring at didn’t move for several moments, I glanced up to find her staring at me.
“Does that make sense?”
I had no idea what she had been talking about for the last few minutes. “Go over it one more time,” I requested.
Without any sign that she realized why I had been distracted—and without any visible irritation at my inattention—Lili backed up and explained again the problem the medical teams were having identifying the infectious agent they had found in the children.
“All this adds up to having no idea where this thing came from or how it’s spread.”
She chewed at her bottom lip, and I found myself once again staring at her rather than listening to what she said. This time, though, I did manage to catch the gist of her comments as she slumped back into the chair and ended a sentence by saying “…no idea.”
I nodded, tearing my gaze away from her mouth.
This had to be the least sexy conversation I had ever had—sick children, disease vectors, rates of infection—and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about getting Dr. Lili Banta into bed. Couldn’t quit imagining those slim, competent hands deftly sliding across…
Jesus, Chandler. Get a grip.
My mental admonition didn’t do much to rein in my imagination, but I did manage to focus on her words rather than various parts of her body.
“Do we have any indication that this is supernatural?” Even more than ten years after the vampires first showed up, the word felt unnatural in my mouth. FBI agents—even FBI agents on suspension—shouldn’t have to consider supernatural events. It
was like the whole Bureau had gone X-Files.
“Nothing we can pin down,” Lili said on a sigh. “Just a whole lot that doesn’t add up medically. And…” Her voice trailed off.
“Yes? Something else?”
“And a gut feeling that I can’t shake. It’s not scientific. It’s nothing I can even pin down. But I know that this isn’t anything … natural. At least, not natural in the way we think of the term.”
I nodded. Iverson had said much the same thing. Gut feelings. The instincts that we all go on but can’t even name.
Like the one that right now was telling me I needed to grab Lili Banta and hold on tight.
She hadn’t moved her hand after she closed the case file. It rested there lightly, as if it might flutter away any moment, like a bird startled from a branch.
I wanted to touch her. To slide my finger across the raised tendons that radiated from her fingers down to her wrists. To brush back the black fall of silken hair that dropped down over her cheek when she bent to examine the folder.
It was a terrible idea. I knew it. It was unprofessional, at best, and could lead to any number of awkward moments later.
All of these facts were perfectly clear. Everything in my training had taught me to avoid emotional entanglements in a case.
Yet, no matter how much my intellect screamed at me to sit still, to hold back, that gut instinct overrode the internal voice.
I reached out and rested my hand atop hers.
Gently.
Lightly.
As if one wrong move could send her flying from me.
When she turned her deep brown eyes to meet mine, though, I knew she wouldn’t run.
Chapter 17
Lili
I knew this was a terrible idea. When Scott’s hand came down onto mine, I wondered if he might be trying to comfort me—or worse, trying to stem the tide of my increasingly anxious babble covering what we didn’t know about whatever this disease was that was striking down children in such an odd way.
For the barest instant, I was certain he had recognized the chatter for what it was: a desperate attempt to cover my anxiety about sitting on a bed in his hotel room.
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