It wouldn’t do to let her distract me from the cases—no matter how delightfully distracting she might be.
Get your head in the game, Chandler.
Today, though, I was determined to figure out the connections I felt certain we were still missing.
Blood magic.
The words wandered through my brain almost lazily, as if they had been waiting to catch me paying attention to my thoughts rather than my body—to my brain rather than my attraction to Lili Banta.
That idea that had been tugging at my subconscious suddenly burst, full-formed, into my awareness. And it had my complete attention now.
Many of the symbols in the Houston cases were different from the ones in the Dallas case. That suggested that there might be different kinds of blood magic.
My mind raced as I considered all the implications.
In Dallas, the vampires had been using blood magic to open the portals. We had assumed that they were trying to open them to let something through—and we had assumed that meant more vampires.
It had perhaps been enough of a revelation that vampires possibly came from somewhere other than our own human past.
But now I had proof that something else existed—some other kind of monster. Something other than vamps.
Maybe something from the other side of the portal.
Without ever saying so explicitly, Iverson and I had clearly both been working from the assumption that, as in the Dallas case, the killers had been leading up to a large-scale sacrifice that would complete whatever ritual they had planned.
But what if there were no grand finale?
What if each sacrifice were complete in itself? What if that creature I shot at had already come through an open portal?
What if every sacrifice in Houston is dragging some nightmare beast into our world?
Oh, hell.
I needed to call Iverson.
“Calm down, Scott,” the detective said after I had outlined my theory to him. “Yes, that’s one possibility. But it’s not the only one.”
I took a deep breath to follow up, but Iverson’s sure tone cut across me. “We haven’t seen any evidence of portals here. Until we do, this is only a theory, one of several.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “Okay, then. How do we test our several theories?”
“We’re going to hit the local Blood House tonight, see what we can shake loose.”
My stomach curdled at the thought. “You remember what happened the last time I decided to check out a Blood House? I almost ended up as vamp-chow.”
“And then I saved your ass.”
A chuckle underscored Iverson’s point, and I caved. “Fine. I’ll go with you. As long as we check out my idea, too.”
“Always, man. Always.”
This time, Iverson wasn’t laughing.
# # #
I spent the next several hours trying to use the sigil I’d traced on the map to see if I could predict the next murder victim’s site, but since all I had to work with were body-dump sites, the endeavor felt more than a little hopeless.
But I was also beginning to think that in this case, the dump sites were the important elements, rather than the murder sites.
If that was true, then my insights would do nothing to help us find the killers and stop the murders. The killing would happen at random spots. We simply didn’t have the manpower to place observers along all possible points for a body dump, hoping we’d catch the killers with the bodies.
Iverson did, however, get Rodriguez to increase patrols along the lines of the symbol on the map, so maybe my work wasn’t entirely useless.
By dark, I was itching to get out of the hotel for more than merely the lunch I had shared with Iverson, rehashing what we knew of the case.
I was almost looking forward to checking out a Blood House.
The troubled look on Iverson’s face when I met him downstairs suggested he was less excited about our outing than I was. Then again, he had spent all day at the hospital with his family.
“How’s your niece?” I asked as I buckled myself into his car.
“No worse. No better, either.” His expression turned pensive as he turned onto the street. “I’ve been thinking about your theory all day. You got that map with you?”
“I’m taking it everywhere in case I need to mark something new on it.” Reaching into my briefcase on the floor, I pulled out the map.
“Before we head to the Blood House, I want to take a detour to drive the route you’ve traced out on it.”
“No problem. Let’s start at your sister’s house.”
The way Iverson squared his shoulders as he nodded suggested that he might have been trying not to closely consider my theory, at least inasmuch as it pertained to his family.
A quick phone call to Rodriguez cleared our route with his patrols—it wouldn’t do to distract them from watching for real threats—and several of the uniformed officers we saw, both in and out of patrol cars, waved at us as we drove past.
The police presence was heavy.
But they couldn’t blanket the area entirely.
We drove slowly, alternately peering into the darkness and shining flashlights up into the trees, and had almost completed the route when we saw it—the same creature I had shot at before, or one almost exactly like it.
This time, it was halfway through a window when the glare of my flashlight caught it, reflecting off its eyes as it froze.
“Holy shit,” Iverson breathed out beside me, braking to a halt.
I was out of the car before it had completely stopped, running toward the monster and drawing my gun from my shoulder holster all at the same time.
The creature’s legs were already through the window, but the screen wasn’t torn—it was as if the monster had somehow crossed the boundaries without actually damaging them.
Like the portals, maybe?
I had only a few seconds to take in the entire scene before the creature burst into flight.
I didn’t even have time to get a bead on it before it was lost among the leaves of a live oak.
“Stop,” I ordered in my best FBI-issue voice.
A sound like hundreds of tiny voices laughed at me. “No.” Its hissing echoed in the dark as it sped away, its words floating back to me on the night air.
“We do not obey. We are aswang.”
Chapter 21
Lili
We are aswang.
When I woke from the dream sometime after midnight, I was shaking. I had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, watching television.
At some point, I had made my way back to my own bed.
I shoved that thought down hard and pulled clothes out of the closet. Almost without thinking, I made my way to my car and drove to Scott’s hotel, knocking on his door.
Although he was in his shirtsleeves, he hadn’t even taken off his tie yet.
I knew where he had been.
We know.
I couldn’t think about that.
Laughter chittered in the back of my brain.
I didn’t want to think at all.
This time I didn’t wait for Scott to make the first move. As soon as he shut the door behind me, I stood up on my toes and wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling him down to kiss me. Pressing my lips against his, hard, I pushed against him until he bumped into the wall at his back. Then I opened my mouth under his, waiting for him to sweep his tongue across mine. When he did, I sucked at his mouth, enough to increase the pressure between us.
Within moments, I could feel his erection pressing against my stomach, and I twisted, wriggling against him until he groaned deep in his throat. Scott slid his hands down my back, his touch light until he reached the back of my thighs. At that point, he swept me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist.
On some level, I knew I was trying to forget what was going on in my city. In my own body. The irony of choosing another investigator on the case as my release mechanis
m didn’t escape me. Besides, I thought this connection between us, whatever else it might be, could possibly turn into something more.
For right now, though, I wanted the oblivion that physical release could bring me. I knew the science behind desire—all too often, I couldn’t keep from thinking about it even in the middle of sex—but in this moment, the only thing I could consider was the feel of his body against mine, the pressure of his weight over me as he lowered me to the bed.
And for a long, blissful time, I forgot.
Chapter 22
Scott
Although Iverson and I had gone to the local Blood House the night before, the visit hadn't yielded any new information. Lili showing up just as I’d gotten back to my hotel had been a welcome distraction. I didn’t want to admit how disappointed I was to discover she’d left by the time I woke in the morning.
Iverson and I had decided to split up for the day, but I spent it spinning my wheels, retracing our investigation so far and finding nothing new.
Despite my lingering concerns about sleeping with someone connected to a case, I didn’t even try to resist my desire for Lili when she returned early that evening.
Afterward, she blew out a breath. “I vote we try to forget everything about this case for an hour or so.”
Rather than pointing out that I, for one, had managed to spend the last bit of time forgetting almost everything except the feel of her around me, I agreed, and reached for my clothes.
Even in the middle of December, Houston was colder than I had expected, the humidity making it seem even chillier than the temperature might have indicated. I waited for the SUV to warm up while Lili and I discussed where to go to dinner.
We were still debating when my phone rang and my stomach clenched. Iverson.
“We have another one,” he said.
“Shit. Sick or dead?” Lili winced at my words.
“Dead. I’m sending the address. Meet me there.” Iverson clicked off without waiting for a response, and his text came through moments later.
I glanced at Lili, debating whether to take her with me to an active crime scene. She watched me with her dark eyes narrowed, and then spoke. “If it were a sick child, you’d already be headed to the hospital.” Her mouth twisted wryly. “I’m an epidemiologist. I’ve been around dead bodies before.”
Nodding, I pulled up the GPS directions and headed toward the crime scene. “This might be rougher than you’re used to,” I cautioned.
“Rougher than Ebola?” she asked, her tone dry. “I’ve worked with victims of diseases that make murder look like the kinder option.”
I shrugged, conceding the possibility. “You spent much time in a morgue?”
“No. But I did rotations in emergency rooms and surgery. I’ve seen what people can do to one another.”
When I pulled up to the address Iverson had sent, though, it was a hotel—no crime scene in sight. As I picked up my phone to double-check the address, Iverson called.
“You here yet?” he asked.
“I’m at the hotel,” I said. “No cops, though.”
“Good. We’re trying to keep this quiet for a while. Inside the lobby, there’s an escalator that leads down here. Rodriguez has a uniform stationed at the bottom. She’ll be watching for you.”
“Down where?” But Iverson had already hung up.
We left the SUV in the hotel self-park and made our way inside the lobby. “This is weird,” Lili said, glancing around at the apparently normal activity at the front desk.
I murmured in agreement, but didn’t say anything more as I led the way to the escalator I had spotted.
The moving stairs had been shut off. At the bottom, the uniformed officer eyed Lili behind me. “Detective Iverson told me to expect an FBI agent.”
I nodded. “That’s me. This is Dr. Lili Banta. She’s consulting.” Technically true, anyway.
After one last, hard stare, the uniform let us pass, pointing. “About a hundred yards ahead,” she said.
The tunnel curving away in front of us was lined with stores, restaurants, coffee shops. An underground shopping mall. I could hear the murmur of voices echoing through the otherwise empty space.
As I rounded the bend, I stopped in my tracks so quickly that Lili bumped into my back. I put my hand out to steady her, but didn’t take my eyes off the crime scene in front of me.
This one was different from any of the others.
For one thing, it wasn’t a body dump. Whatever had happened had happened here. Blood splashed the glass of a closed coffee shop, the green and white logo streaked with what looked like a bloody handprint.
It was recent, too. The blood hadn’t even had time to coagulate fully, pools of it spreading out from the body still liquid in the center.
I couldn’t help but wonder if this kill had called the creature we saw earlier.
Yellow crime-scene tape blocked the entire hallway, but Iverson spotted us from his position crouching near a forensic photographer, and moved to let us in. Rodriguez stood on the far side of the scene, taking notes as he talked to a trembling janitor, presumably the guy who had stumbled into his worst nightmare of a scene.
“Scott. Dr. Banta,” Iverson said in greeting, but he shot a quizzical glance in my direction.
I shrugged. “She’s consulting.”
Lili took it all in stride, her thoughtful gaze absorbing the details, perhaps cataloging them according to some medical categories I didn’t know.
The body itself was, like the one at the aquarium and several from the Dallas case, naked. The photographer’s camera flashed as other technicians marked potential evidence.
I couldn’t tell from this distance if the dead woman at the center of all this activity had been carved with the same symbols as the others, but I didn’t think Iverson would have called me for anything less.
“Follow me,” the detective said, leading us around the edge of the scene, presumably via a path that had already been cleared.
Closer up, the body’s torso looked mangled, almost mauled, as if it had been ravaged by wild animals. But some sort of sigil had been sliced into at least one of her thighs, and it looked similar to the other ones from the earlier cases.
“This doesn’t sound like what you’ve described before,” Lili said quietly. Still, her voice echoed in the underground space. “This woman was alive when she was cut.”
“Some of the others were, too,” Iverson said. “But they were cleaned up before the bodies were dumped. This is the first time we’ve found the killing spot.”
“Before it was burned down, anyway,” I muttered. Iverson shrugged, and I spoke up more clearly for Lili’s benefit. “There was one survivor in Dallas, and she was held for days as one of the Sanguinary vampires cut her up in an attempt to complete some sort of blood magic.”
She shook her head. “This looks…rushed.” She pointed at some of the slash marks on the woman’s stomach. “That was made with a sharp instrument, like a scalpel, but it was hurried. See how it gets ragged at the end of that cut? It’s like whoever did it cut too deep and the instrument slipped as he pulled it out.”
“Or she.” The same crime-scene tech who had led me into the aquarium scene stepped up behind us.
“Hm. Yeah. Or she.” Lili’s voice was abstracted as she leaned in closer to the body. “These are weird wounds, some precise and careful, others…” Her voice trailed off. She and the tech leaned closer to one another, murmuring and pointing to various features of the dead body in front of them.
Iverson and I exchanged a glance and stepped a short distance away.
“Is the time of death here before or after we saw that thing?” I asked.
Turning up a palm in a one-handed shrug, Iverson shook his head. “No official TOD. This mall closed down before then, so it could be either one.”
“If I’m right, and these killings are meant to call that thing, then this…” I looked at the scene of carnage. “This overkill could be because the perp is
frustrated that it’s not always working.”
“Because we keep interrupting?” Iverson’s gaze followed mine. “Definitely could be.”
“Hey, guys? Could you come back over here?” Lili didn’t even look up at us as she continued to peer at the body. “Look at this.” She pointed with a pencil the tech handed her. “This part right here. I’m almost certain it’s a bite mark.”
The tech jumped in to help, pulling a pair of sterile tweezers from her kit and gently moving a flap of skin back into its original, unbitten position. “But look at this.”
“It looks like the bite might have been made to obliterate another symbol.” Lili glanced up at me triumphantly. “The same one you’ve been using on your map.”
“Sure you don’t want to be a crime-scene investigator?” Iverson asked.
“Or a medical examiner?” I added.
Leaning back on her heels, Lili glanced up at us and then stood. “No. Not enough of a chance to make a difference.” She stared around again at the blood covering the scene. “At least in this case, though, I might be able to help stop these sickos.”
“You notice anything else, Agent?” Iverson asked me.
“She tried to escape at some point after he cut her.” I nodded toward the bloody handprint on the window logo. “Suggests he didn’t put some vamp whammy on her.”
“Vamp whammy?” Lili repeated.
“Mind control,” Iverson said.
“They can do that?” Horror threaded through Lili’s question, matching the feeling that hit me in the gut every time I thought about it.
“They can.” I knew my response was curt, but I couldn’t seem to help it.
Detective Rodriguez made his way toward us, tracing a wide circuit around the edge of the scene to get to our side of the hallway. Iverson introduced Lili as a consultant, and Rodriguez nodded coolly. “Any new insights?” he asked.
Iverson repeated our observations for the Houston detective, who took in the information without any change of expression, watching as his team gathered evidence and took photographs. Iverson didn’t mention my own theory.
I didn’t blame him.
Bloodborne (Night Shift Book 2) Page 9