Blood Vice

by Angela Roquet

  I didn’t respond. It felt like a vice had been placed around my throat. My voice would spill out feebly, trembling and vulnerable. And he didn’t deserve the satisfaction.

  “If I’d let you kill her, you would have been arrested and sentenced to death.” The admission softened me, but only by a fraction. There was still so much I didn’t know, and he’d been so stingy. If I kept my mouth shut, I wondered how much he’d let slip before we made it back to my house.

  He looked at me again and sighed. “I’ll return your things from evidence to your captain by Friday. The Scarlett Inn has been disassembled, so we can close the case now.”

  I almost broke this time and thanked him. It would be nice to have my badge back, not to mention my service pistol and a cell phone from this decade. But I bit my tongue, holding out for more. Roman seemed to catch on and turned the table.

  “Your sister might be able to get you cleared for duty, but you’re going to have a hard time picking up where you left off at your job. What are you going to do?”

  I hated to admit it, but I wasn’t really sure. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I’d been content just to survive each night that had passed since waking up in the morgue.

  “I’ll figure it out,” I said, not turning to look at Roman. “I always do.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Mandy sat at the breakfast bar, her ankles crossed and swinging back and forth under the barstool. She shoveled a heaping spoonful of Lucky Charms into her mouth and snorted at the K9 manual in her opposite hand. The cover was folded behind the book, and a few dozen dog-eared pages fattened the top corner.

  “That’s not happening,” Mandy mumbled to herself, spraying milk on the corner of a page. I didn’t really think any of it was happening, but she’d surprised me plenty already.

  If she could pass the practice test, I’d agreed to apply for the K9 unit. They worked mostly nights, and it would allow Mandy to have a job without compromising her human identity. Her picture could still be found online and in various public places, labeling her as a missing person. There were too many questions she’d have to answer for the police—not that House Lilith would let her make it that far.

  Laura wasn’t too tickled about our line of work, but it did mean that she’d have to cover for me less. She wasn’t obligated to by any means—which she made perfectly clear every chance she got. In fact, I was pretty sure she’d only continued the ruse for this long because she was hot for my general physician. She enjoyed the therapy sessions with Dr. Townsend, too. What actress didn’t love the sound of her own voice?

  I’d eased up on her once Will’s funeral had passed, after making her tell me every last detail, right down to the stitching on Will’s suit and the number of roses on his casket. I’d wanted to be there so badly. Eventually, I’d find the nerve to face Alicia and Serena myself. Maybe I’d have them over for dinner when fall crept in and I could rise earlier in the evening. That would require some careful choreography with Laura, considering I wouldn’t be able to eat anything.

  Roman had returned my things as promised, including my Browning and Mandy’s vest with the money inside. The items were found in the farmhouse, near Mustache’s dead body. At least someone had gotten what was coming to them that night.

  I hadn’t heard any more from Roman, and I was hoping I didn’t. Ever since drinking his blood, I felt all off about him. We clearly didn’t like each other. I despised him for letting Scarlett get away—and for his theory that House Lilith would kill me dead if they knew who my sire was. It made it impossible for me to reach out for support from my new kin. I’d had to make some hard compromises to find out the things I needed to know.

  I plugged my cell phone into the new outlet in the kitchen, right under where the drywall had been patched. It needed to be painted, but Laura and I hadn’t decided on a color. It was clearly time to update the space. I’d opted not to replace the cordless phone. We still had the one in the living room though. Mandy liked to use it to check in on the girls in rehab.

  “Where are my cork-heeled sandals?” I asked, putting a hand on my hip and turning to watch Mandy stuff more cereal into her mouth. She gave me a bored look and shrugged.

  “I have a date,” I groaned. “Come on. Why is it so hard to put things back where they go?”

  Duncan yapped at my feet, and I looked down to find the strap of one heel between his teeth.

  “Laura!”

  “What?” She stood in the threshold of the kitchen, my other heel in her hand. “I had an appointment with Dr. Foxy today.”

  “For what?” I took the shoe from her and propped my free hand on the counter for balance as I slipped it on. Then I snagged the other one from Duncan. “I thought I passed the physical already.”

  Laura placed the back of one hand across her forehead. “I was feeling lightheaded.” She sighed. “I thought maybe he should check me out again.”

  I rolled my eyes. “He’d better not find anything wrong with you that could keep the department from clearing me next week.”

  “Oh, relax.” Laura circled the counter and pulled a bowl down from a cabinet before joining Mandy at the breakfast bar. “I just wanted another excuse to tell him about your hot, actress sister who is recently single,” she said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  The doorbell rang, and I left Mandy and Laura to go answer it.

  Through the peephole, it looked like Vin had brought me another bouquet of flowers. When I opened the door and got a closer look, I realized they were empty blood bags. He’d twisted them up to resemble roses, tying rubber bands at their bases to make the stems. The sticky residue left in the bags gave them their dark red hue. It was really pretty creative…and sweet…and creepy.

  “Tell me there’s a full one in there somewhere,” I said as I invited him inside. Vin handed me a plastic lunchbox with a grin. I greedily popped it open before remembering my manners. He was waiting for me with his cheek turned out. I planted a wet one on him before snatching up one of the blood bags and biting down on the stopper to puncture a hole wide enough to drink through.

  Vin was safe. He didn’t know anything about the dark and secretive world of vampires, and I actually really liked that about him. It made him more objective, and also kept him from freaking out about everything. Roman was too cool and tough to actually freak out, but his anxious brooding was close enough to drive me crazy.

  Vin didn’t know that I was an unsanctioned scion of exiled royalty. He didn’t know that my sire was dead. And he didn’t know that I saw red on occasion. I did feel a little weird about the science experiments he’d bribed me into conducting with him in exchange for blood bags—which he obtained legally now. Sort of.

  The university he’d gotten his doctorate from requested that he give a few lectures every semester, and he’d paid a handful of the students to donate blood for some top-secret research he was doing. Which was oddly enough true.

  I’d already discovered, through his helpful little experiments, that I wasn’t allergic to holy water or garlic. And I could totally go into any house I wanted to, no formal invitation necessary. Which was good to know, in the event that Mandy and I didn’t make the cut for the K9 unit. We could always become cat burglars.

  As I finished off my blood bag, and Vin and I headed out the door, the landline rang. It surprised me since I’d had my cell back for a couple of weeks now. I almost let it go, but then I changed my mind and stepped back into the house. I waved Vin on and told him to give me a minute.

  Laura came out of the kitchen and met me halfway.

  “Freeze! You’ve reached the Skye residence,” Mom’s voice called from the machine.

  “I meant to change that,” I said, reaching for the phone. Laura grabbed my hand.

  “You’ve made enough changes lately,” she said, her mouth curling up on one side in a forgiving smile. “Let’s not get carried away.”

  I grinned as Mom finished her spiel, and then my lips sagged as Roman’s voice ec
hoed through the speaker.

  “It looks like I’ll be staying in St. Louis longer than I expected,” he said, sounding every bit as dismayed about it as I felt. “And I might need your help.”

  Laura gave me a troubled frown as I pushed the delete button on the machine. “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  I sighed and headed for the front door. I was going to go on my damn date. “I’ll figure it out,” I called over my shoulder. “I always do.”

  Read on for a sneak peek of…

  BLOOD AND THUNDER

  BLOOD VICE BOOK TWO

  Coming August 22, 2017 – Available for pre-order HERE!

  Sometimes, when working a particularly shitty shift, I fantasized about what my life might have been like if I’d been a vampire a few hundred years ago. If my sire hadn’t been a total asshole—or dead. I imagined him showing me a good time, somewhere like London. He’d be independently wealthy, and by some other means than running a brothel. I’d wear a ruffled dress and he a fancy suit with long coattails and a top hat. We’d go dancing, and then relieve a local doctor of his bloodletting collection. The night would conclude with us settling down in a gothic crypt, where he’d gladly answer my every obscure question.

  But, unfortunately, I died in the twenty-first century.

  There were no ruffled dresses or coattails here. No fancy crypts. My sire was a prick, and now he was dead dead. And I had no one to answer the million questions ping-ponging around inside my head along with all these distracting fantasies. Oh. And now that I was one of the undead, I always got the shit shifts. Tonight was no different.

  I hated running DUI checkpoints. Traffic was backed up down Olive Boulevard, more funneling in off of the 141 ramps. The heat of idling engines paired with the sweltering August air was wreaking havoc on my hair and skin. The pits of my uniform were damp, and my legs itched under thick brown pants. At least it was dark. Of course, now that I slept like the dead while the sun was up, it was always dark.

  The night had yielded a handful of sloppy drunks and one unfortunate bachelorette party that had tried to win over the only gay officer on the force by flashing him. Now that I worked with the K9 unit, I was, thankfully, no longer subjected to the worst of the catcalling and bribery tactics. I simply had to walk Mandy, my werewolf partner moonlighting as a police dog, around any vehicle pulled in for additional questioning.

  It was an easy gig, but also unbearably mind-numbing. Like most of the rookie tasks we were assigned. Mandy constantly nagged me to push Langford, the new captain I was under, for meatier jobs. She wanted something she could sink her teeth into. Literally. I couldn’t afford to tell her how badly I wanted that, too. And I didn’t have the heart to tell her that day would never come.

  We had to be careful if we wanted to make this last. The circus act we were pulling off was unheard of. Vampires and werewolves living on the fringes of the supernatural society weren’t supposed to draw attention. The more eyes, the more risk of exposure. And House Lilith didn’t do warnings. Assassinations and executions were more their style—at least, that’s what I’d heard from my very limited sources. It made my occupation difficult to manage on so many levels.

  If Mandy and I ever did anything worthy of praise, anything that might make the local newspapers or television stations take interest in us, it could also draw the wrong kind of attention from House Lilith. If Mandy ever bit someone, there was the risk that it could be deemed unnecessary roughness. There was the risk the suspect could convince a jury they were innocent and demand that Mandy be put down. And heaven forbid she get injured on the job.

  If a vet sedated her, she’d shift back to her human form. Even if they let her remain conscious for an exam, any half-baked vet would figure out soon enough that she wasn’t some rare dog breed. Right now, we were fudging her papers with the help of a doctor Mandy knew in Spero Heights, some backwoods town in the Ozarks teeming with all sorts of strange things I didn’t even want to know existed.

  “Earth to Skye. Come in, Officer Skye.” The walkie-talkie clipped onto my uniform crackled as Collins’ melodious voice sang through it, and I was ripped out of my 19th century London daydream.

  I stopped and gave Mandy’s leash a gentle pull—the lightest tug imaginable. Still, she growled under her breath and turned her black, wolfy face up to glare at me. We were still working out her job expectation issues with the K9 unit. At least she didn’t show her ass too much around the other officers.

  I huffed out an annoyed sigh before tossing my blond ponytail over my shoulder and pressing a button on my walkie. “I’m here, Collins. What do you need?”

  “We’re pulling one in, but Ricker and Yogi are still working over the last car. Wanna bring Star down to do a quick trunk sniff?” he asked.

  “We’ll be right there.” I lifted an eyebrow at Mandy. “Lead the way, Princess Pea.”

  Mandy groaned and grumbled as we turned around and headed back up Olive Boulevard. The white letters spelling out POLICE on her ballistic vest glowed in the dark. I knew she hated wearing it in this heat, but it helped disguise the fact that she was no German Shepherd. It also made me feel a tiny bit better about dragging a teenager into my dangerous line of work. Mandy was barely eighteen. We’d celebrated her birthday just the month before, with fireworks and a backyard barbeque, and the small handful of people who knew our darkest secrets.

  As we slipped between a pair of cars being flagged through the barricades cutting across Olive, disgruntled drivers shouted through open windows. Someone wanted to know how much longer this was going to take. Someone tried to argue how unconstitutional checkpoints were. Someone called me a bitch. I ignored them all.

  The cherries on top of Collins’ cruiser flickered over the road, marking the entrance to the lane blocked off for the lucky few chosen for further inspection. Four officers manned the flow of traffic, while Collins and his partner Ramirez questioned the drawing winners, occasionally calling in Ricker and Yogi or me and Star, Mandy’s on-duty name, to be extra thorough.

  As Mandy and I approached the second car in line—a yellow station wagon with Kansas plates—the driver’s side door opened. A lanky man with dirty blond, shoulder-length hair stepped out of the car. He wore a flannel shirt and ragged jeans. Our eyes met briefly, and then his attention was pulled away as the beam of a flashlight flickered across his face.

  Officer Max Collins was every warm-blooded, hetero woman’s idea of perfection. His chiseled chest filled out the shirt of his uniform as if it had been made just for him—or to be torn off on a stage adorned with poles and piles of cash—and his bright green eyes managed to maintain an air of sensitivity even when they smoldered.

  “Hey!” Collins shouted at the flannelled man as he circled the car. “Sir, I didn’t tell you to get out of the vehicle.”

  A low growl stirred from Mandy, and before the man could say anything, his attention snapped down to my partner. His pupils swelled as he took in Mandy, and then he was off. He tore past the barricades and stumbled over the median and into oncoming traffic. A horn blared, and he threw up his hands over his face without stopping, until he dropped off into the ditch on the other side of the road. Collins was hot on his trail, the beam of his flashlight bobbing against the nest of trees not far off—where the Kurt Cobain doppelganger appeared to be heading.

  Mandy barked, snapping me out of my shocked trance. And then we gave chase, too—albeit, more methodically and without blindly rushing into traffic. As we caught up with Collins, I felt a stab of panic in my gut.

  What had made this man so terrified of Mandy? Did he know what she was? Or would he have reacted this way to any large dog? What would he do once we took him down? What would Mandy do?

  My heart throbbed in my chest, dreading the long list of overwhelming possibilities, and my vision was suddenly painted in shades of red. All except for the man we were chasing.

  Vampire. He was a fucking vampire. And Mandy knew it. I could tell in the way she was dragging me
ahead of Collins. We had to reach this guy first, and we needed to do it without human intervention. But what we would do when we caught up to him was the real problem.

  The man darted past the halo of a street light and under a buzzing row of power lines. Then he disappeared beyond the trees. I squinted ahead, using the Eye of Blood to suss out the path of least resistance through the woods. Creve Coeur Creek dipped under Olive Boulevard and ran alongside a small clearing before coiling back toward us and succumbing to the trees and brush.

  My guess was that our suspect would try to cut through the woods long enough to lose us and then cross the clearing and the creek. Collins seemed to agree. He pointed toward the clearing with his flashlight and spared me a quick glance.

  “Chase him back this way. I’ll cut him off when he comes out the other side.” He rubbed his free hand over his forehead and sprinted away from me before I could reply.

  I pressed my lips together and ushered Mandy through the brush and bramble outlining the trees. Then I bent down and reached for the leash hook on her collar. I pulled her face in toward mine, directing her eyes away from her quarry, and gave her a sharp look.

  “We have to make sure he escapes,” I said under my breath. “Do you understand?”

  Mandy yipped and tugged away from me, but I held firm to her collar.

  “This is important,” I said through clenched teeth. “If he’s caught and held by the human police, House Lilith will hold us responsible.”

  Mandy grumbled, but she nodded in understanding. Satisfied, I unhooked her leash. She sniffed the ground as I gazed through the trees, assessing the best way to cut off the vampire before he reached the clearing where Collins would be waiting.

  I projected my concentration ahead, weaving it through the thick summer foliage. Leaves rustled and twigs snapped, and the vampire’s breath hitched as he stumbled over a fallen tree trunk.