After a long silence, Rodriguez said quietly, “We need to catch this fucker before he kills again, Henry. You absolutely certain he’s connected to the vampires?”
“We had one survivor in Dallas. She says the vamps had her.”
“There’s no sign of any bite marks on this vic.” Frustration permeated every line of Rodriguez’s body.
“Not yet,” Lili interjected. “But I think you might find feeding marks on her abdomen.”
Rodriguez glanced at her sharply. “Why?”
“I think there’s a chance some of that ripping was done with fangs. The cuts are straight and clean. But there’s some shredding, too, and it doesn’t look like it was done with a blade.”
We all stood silent for a moment after that. Then the tech who had spoken up a few moments before stepped in closer to the body. “I’ll get shots of that now, and get some at the morgue, too, after the body’s cleaned up,” she said.
“Thanks, Tiffany.” Rodriguez heaved a sigh as he turned to face Iverson squarely, holding the other detective’s gaze with his own. “Do whatever it takes to stop this, Henry.”
“I will.” The exchange held more weight than the words themselves would indicate, as if the two men had a history.
Maybe someday I would ask.
But not now.
Chapter 23
Lili
“I’m not hungry anymore. Can we go back to your hotel?” At least, I was no longer hungry for food. I wanted comfort. Again.
Stay.
I pushed the words down as deeply as I could, but they drifted up anyway, like air hissing out of a leaky tire.
Blood.
Ours.
The voices pushed at me, showing me images of the mangled body, but particularly of the partially obliterated sigil.
That symbol called to me.
To us.
I had known it was there, could see it outlined in shining blue, even through the tearing and teeth marks that had tried to destroy it.
The more I thought about it, the louder the voices got.
It wants us.
Open the doors.
Bring them to us.
This time, I worked to replace the thoughts with images from even earlier—the planes of Scott’s hard, bare chest under my hands, the sound of his sharply indrawn breath as I flicked my tongue along the line of his collarbone.
“Of course. But I need to stop by an office supply store.” Scott’s words interrupted my reminiscing.
Despite the horrors surrounding us, I had to smile. Clearly our thoughts had taken slightly different directions—unless Scott had some use for office supplies that had never occurred to me before.
I suggested a nearby chain store, then waited in the car when he went inside. When he returned with a flat paper bag, I took it from his hands and glanced inside. “Tracing paper?”
“I want to be able to overlay the different symbols on the map, see if I’m missing anything.”
So much for my erotic fantasies for the evening.
At least we could do something productive.
Or Scott could, anyway. Nothing in my skill set would be particularly useful in this.
That’s what I assumed, anyway. As it turned out, the same steady hands that made me good in the lab also helped when tracing images of bloody sigils onto paper. Ultimately, we found two symbols that could correspond with the points on the map that showed victims—both the original one Scott had used to track the creature originally, and another that better fit with the latest victim in the underground mall.
The hotel’s business center was empty when we took in a thumb drive with the images we needed to scan and print.
“Isn’t there a computer program that could do this?” I asked.
Scott’s pause lasted longer than simple consideration might warrant. “Yes,” he finally said. “But I don’t want to leave any record of this online, either with the agency or out on the web.”
“Does the FBI not know what you’ve found down here?”
“Not exactly.”
His response surprised me. Was his Boy Scout demeanor a shield?
Of course it was. I already knew that he wasn’t nearly as innocent as his looks suggested. But what a man was like in bed didn’t necessarily correspond with how he behaved at work.
In any case, some part of me was glad he wasn’t reporting all of his findings back to his bosses.
I only hoped it wasn’t the part of me that hissed inside my head.
As usual, I pushed the thought away.
Then, when we were done printing, I took Scott’s hand and led him back to his room, where I let him distract me even more.
# # #
It had been days since I had dreamed the monster dreams. Days since I had seen a child being attacked.
I had almost begun to think that the dreams were a fluke, some weird psychic thing—or, even more likely, that I hadn’t dreamed of those specific children at all, that my mind had superimposed their faces on my dream images only after the children were admitted to Houston General.
I had almost stopped being afraid to go to sleep, even when I was alone.
And here with Scott, I wasn’t afraid at all. I drifted off into slumber easily, confident in the FBI agent’s strong arms around me, certain that nothing could shake his hold on me.
But that night, when I found myself in a residential neighborhood, I wasn’t surprised. I simply scanned the houses around me, looking for the telltale blue glow that would show me where to go to get what I needed. I drifted along without thought for a few moments, allowing the scents of the night to flow through me.
The cool, sharp air pressed against me, a hint of the power I needed threading through it. I drifted up into the air and homed in on that touch of power until I could tell what direction it came from.
With enough care and attention, I could trace it back to its origin.
But the man with the gun worried me.
FBI agent, a voice in the back of my mind reminded me. Scott.
Worries us, a chorus of other voices responded.
I needed to hurry.
Yes. Quickly. We need to finish.
The trace of power grew stronger the farther I followed it. This time I stayed in the shadows, away from any lights, any way that someone with a gun might see me, my wings almost silent in the night.
There. A blue light from a window.
Yessss.
Like before, I found myself inside the room with barely a thought, though this time that other voice in my mind—the lone voice that I almost recognized—whispered, how?
The glow from the boy in the bed quickly drowned out the question, and I approached him eagerly.
Not much longer. I knew it as I looked at the sleeping child.
Soon our work here will be done. We will be free.
We will be ourselves.
I flicked my long tongue out, its sharp end easily piercing the boy’s exposed skin inside the elbow crease on his arm, splayed out in sleep. He whimpered, but I threaded my way quickly into his vein. The tik-tik-tik noise of the narcotic pumping into his system quickly became the only noise in the otherwise silent room.
As the power spooled out of him and into me, my mind drifted to examining the child.
Remember, the lone voice inside me insisted.
This boy was dark-haired with light skin, barely old enough to be out of a crib. Even in the relative darkness, his long eyelashes threw spiky shadows across his round cheeks.
Remember.
As the final drops of the shining blue power slid into me, I shivered, the insistence in that word echoing through me as I pumped the last of my venom into the child and withdrew my tongue.
My departure from the room was as smooth as my entrance had been.
See. Remember.
Glancing down as I swept up into the trees outside the house, I saw something sketched on the windowsill of the room, a symbol that I almost recognized.
A
sigil.
In blood.
And I knew that it had called to me, had shown me where to go, helped me enter and exit.
Blood magic.
Remember.
Chapter 24
Scott
I knew when I woke that she was gone, though I still reached across the bed to check her side. It was cold, as if she had been gone a long time—longer than it might take to go to the bathroom.
Forcing my eyes open, I struggled to sit up and turn on a light. I glanced at the clock. Not quite 5:00. Had she gone home? “Lili?”
When she didn’t answer, I got up to check the bathroom, and when she wasn’t there, I pulled on a pair of pants. That’s when I realized that she had left her clothes strewn across the floor, where they had landed when we had ripped them off the night before.
Where would she possibly go without clothes?
Suddenly, I was completely awake, fear lancing through my chest as I realized that I couldn’t come up with a single explanation for Lili’s absence.
I pulled on a t-shirt and shoved my sockless feet into a pair of running shoes, then grabbed my keys and wallet from the dresser.
When I yanked the door open, Lili stood outside it wearing green scrubs, one hand raised to knock, the other holding a diet soda. She jumped backward as I reached out to pull her inside the room, hugging her to me tightly.
“Where have you been?” I spoke into her hair, and then held her away from me, searching her eyes.
She blinked several times, her words coming out slowly. “I was thirsty.” She held up the drink between us, examining it as if in confusion.
“Where did you get the clothes?” I worked to make my tone gentler.
“From my bag, I guess.” She didn’t sound certain as she glanced around the room until she saw the shoulder bag she carried as a purse. She blinked again, and whispered, as if to herself, “Remember.”
“Remember what?” I tilted her chin up to look me in the eyes again.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head.
“Were you sleepwalking, Lili?”
“Maybe? I don’t know.” She yawned, and for the first time since I had opened the door, she focused fully on me. “But I’m definitely sleepy now.” Glancing down at the soda still in her hand, she frowned. “I don’t even like this stuff.” She set it on the dresser and took me by the hand, drawing me back toward the bed. “Come on. Let’s get some sleep. I want to try to get to the hospital early tomorrow.”
I glanced at the clock. “Today, now.”
“Yeah. Today.” She yawned again, and crawled under the covers, snuggling down.
She was asleep within moments.
I, on the other hand, couldn’t go back to sleep for a long time. I kept wondering what, exactly, Lili had wanted to remember.
And more importantly, what it was that she had forgotten.
Chapter 25
Lili
When I woke up later that morning, I could almost remember what it was that I was supposed to tell Scott. Something distant, barely out of reach. I could almost touch it, whatever it was.
Something tinged in a blue light.
Something terrifying.
I didn’t remember the details, but I knew what I needed to say.
“I need to tell you something.” No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep my voice from shaking.
Scott frowned, making me want to smooth away the lines that formed between his eyebrows. “What is it?”
I could hardly force the words out. “I think I might be…” My voice trailed off, and I took a deep breath, determined to say it aloud for the first time ever. “I think I might be involved in this somehow.”
The confusion on his face didn’t clear. “Of course you’re involved. You’re here. We’re working the case together. You’re the kids’ doctor. You and Manning, anyway.”
“No.” The word was barely a whisper. “I mean I think I might be to blame.”
I half expected Scott to recoil from me. Instead, the circle of his arms tightened around me. “You don’t have to feel responsible for this, Lili. We will find out what’s going on.”
God. He didn’t understand. For all that he could read my body’s every desire during sex, could touch me in ways that made me come apart in his arms, he truly didn’t understand what I was trying to say.
Unless he was misunderstanding me on purpose.
Or because he couldn’t bear the thought that all of this might be my fault—that I might be the one hurting children, or killing people and carving strange symbols into them.
I shook my head.
No. That second part—that wasn’t me. I wasn’t dreaming about the dead women. Only the children appeared in my dreams.
Yet I knew that the dead women were somehow connected to whatever was happening here.
As was I.
My trembling intensified.
Scott had continued speaking as I had considered all the ways I might be to blame for these horrors. “It’s not an unusual reaction, Lili. You know that. It’s not your fault that the children aren’t improving. Just like it’s not my fault that the killer struck again. We will catch a break, find out how the cases are connected, and then everything will come clear.”
I nodded.
What else could I do?
Even as I knew, without a doubt, that he was wrong, I also knew that nothing I could say would change his mind.
He didn’t want to understand that I was to blame. And for as long as he resisted that knowledge, he would ignore anything I said.
Good, the voices inside me whispered.
I was going to have to figure out my role in this waking nightmare all by myself.
Turning in his arms, I lifted my face for a kiss. He obliged, perfectly aware of what I meant by every tiny action.
I wanted that connection to last. I wanted to be able to give myself over to it entirely. I wanted to plan a future with this kind, generous, loving man.
I couldn’t do that, though.
Something inside me was growing, keeping me from opening up to him entirely.
I didn’t think I would be able to bring up my fears again. Whatever it was that had worked its way inside me was determined to keep me quiet.
Maybe I can write it down.
I glanced around the room, hoping to spy a pen and paper.
There, by the phone. A notepad and pen.
But the force that held me silent also kept me from moving to pick up the writing implements. Even as I opened my mouth to try speaking aloud one last time, something clogged my throat, stopping my voice until I drooped, finally defeated.
Once again, I shoved down everything I knew—even if I wasn’t sure how I knew, or why I was so certain.
“I need to get to the isolation ward. I’m going to go take a shower,” I said. Scott’s glance at my disheveled clothing made me smile. “I always keep a change of clothes in my bag. I never know how long I might end up at the hospital.”
Glancing in the mirror, I realized that my eyes were red-rimmed, and I rummaged in my shoulder bag for the eye drops I had begun carrying with me lately.
That was new, too, and something about it tugged at the corner of my mind.
As I moved toward the bathroom, my stomach twisted, at odds with the smile on my face, pasted there for Scott’s benefit.
I didn’t know how I was ever going to reconcile all the parts of myself—especially those parts that I knew didn’t really belong.
Chapter 26
Scott
The sound of the shower running made me consider joining Lili in the bathroom, but I knew if I did, it would simply turn into another marathon sex session, and we both needed to go to work.
Not that my body agreed with my mind on that score. My cock strained, determined to convince me that another hour or two wouldn’t make a difference. I ignored it, deciding instead to take another look at the images I had pulled from the online map. I hadn’t gotten photos of the enti
re routes traced by the symbols, but I had found several.
I was going to have to examine it in person.
After we met Iverson and Manning at the hospital.
Once Lili was out of the shower.
To hell with it.
Grabbing a condom from the bedside table, I opened the bathroom door and entered the steamy room. “You have room for one more in there?”
Her low, breathy laugh sent a shiver down my back. “Absolutely.”
I stepped in to find her back to me, her long, dark hair straightened by the spray, sending rivulets of water streaming down to the dimple above her ass. Corded muscles running down either side of her spine reflected the stress we were all under, the deeper we got into this case.
I dropped the wrapped condom onto one of the small shelves on the wall. Reaching around, I took the tiny hotel soap bar out of her hand and rubbed it between my palms to create a lather. With both hands, I swept the suds down her back then up again, this time using my thumbs to create pressure along those sore muscles. Lili moaned a little, and leaned forward to brace herself against the wall. I increased the pressure of my hands, the small noises she made telling me where to rub more, or longer.
After a few moments, she straightened and stepped back to lean against me, her head resting against my chest. My soapy hands slipped down to her hips, then swept back up to rest right under her breasts, fingers splayed to catch their weight for a moment before I turned my palms up to cup them. Her nipples hardened as I flicked my thumbs across them, and I marveled at how amazingly responsive she was to my touch.
Then she turned in my arms and pulled me down for a kiss. I had only a moment to realize that although our height difference hadn’t made a difference before, it might be a problem now, when she stepped lightly up on the edge of the tub, balancing with her hands on my shoulders.
With one hand, I snagged the condom from the shelf then braced myself against the shower wall and slid the other under her ass to help hold her up as she wrapped her arms around my neck and one leg around my waist.
“Please, now,” she whispered, her breath ragged against my ear.
“Hang on tight.” Unwrapping the condom, I slid it on.
I lifted her up higher, positioning myself at her hot, slick entrance. She let go long enough to slide one hand between us. Wrapping her fingers around my cock, she wriggled atop me until I was in place. Then she sank down onto me with a breathy sigh, the tight heat of her sliding down my cock until she had taken all of me inside of her, her weight pushing me so deep that for a moment, I thought I might explode.
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