by Karen Chance
The body was lying in a disgusting room in a motel Marlowe could only assume was named Didn't Want to Sleep in My Car, although he couldn't be sure. He who usually noticed everything couldn't recall the name or what the outside had looked like or who had been behind the front desk or if there'd even been a front desk. He'd torn through the place too fast to notice anything, and now he was just kneeling there, on a dingy stretch of tile, wanting to rip someone's head off.
But there was no one there.
"Find him," he said hoarsely, his Child's blood seeping through his fingers.
"Sir --" someone said, before someone else wisely shut him up through a process Marlowe didn't see, because he couldn't see anything.
Except the slack features resting on the arm of his coat, and the slit in the throat deep enough to have drenched his trouser leg, because Allen had bled out before he got here.
He had thought he might be in time. It would have drained him badly to save one so close to death, but he could afford that now. And why could he afford it? Why could he leave himself vulnerable when he never did?
Because half the senate was here with him. And some of his best men. Yet Allen lay here, dead in his arms. The boy he'd found screaming over the smoking corpses of his parents in the Great Fire, the boy he'd raised as his own son, the boy who as a young man had chosen this life, willingly, happily, just wanting to serve. And he had, admirably, for the last four hundred years.
Until today.
Kit surveyed the room expressionless. For once, he didn't have to work at it. He could feel it, the gaping hole in his Child's chest where the stake had stolen him away. It felt like it had been thrust into his own: the pain, the loss, the endless, aching void --
Someone would bleed for this.
Someone would die for this.
And said someone would scream a long time before the end.
"Master?" Kit turned to see Heinrich, the ragged cow boy he'd picked up in Germany long before there was a Germany, who was now a second level master with a nose a bloodhound would envy. He'd been - literally -- sniffing around for clues, and it looked like he'd just found one.
"Did you find him?" Kit rasped.
"Her, my lord. We're after a woman." Heinrich held up what appeared to be a single dark hair.
"You're sure?" Kit glanced around. "This place looks like it rents by the hour. There could have been dozens of people here in the last week --"
"No," Heinrich's eyes went dreamy, the way they did whenever his nose was in charge. It was as if it pulled brain power from all his other senses, and maybe it did. Kit didn't know how Hounds did their work, and right then, he didn't care. He just wanted the result.
"Well?" he prompted, after a minute. Because Heinrich could go on scent journeys that lasted hours as he traced the story of a room back days or even weeks. He could recreate whole scenes-who had been there, what they'd been doing, where they'd been before they came-a hazy movie playing in his mind formed from scent instead of sight, but almost as good.
Almost.
Because he had a worrying frown on his forehead that Kit didn't like.
"Young, yet old . . . human, yet not . . . adrenaline yet . . . no fear," Heinrich murmured. "She expected to take him, if it came to that . . . she expected to win . . . ."
"She did win," Kit said harshly, keeping a lid clamped tight on his temper. He couldn't afford to lose it now. Not until he had her. "What do you mean, human but not?"
Heinrich moved his head slightly, a lock of blond hair falling into his eyes. Which he didn't bother to push aside, since he didn't need them, anyway. "Not sure. Sweat is human, but . . . ."
"No human did this."
"No. There's something else, so subtle, I can't get a read on it. Something dark . . . something shadowy . . . something . . . odd."
"Odd?"
"Oddly familiar . . . ." He scented the tiny remnant again, which was unprecedented. Heinrich never needed to do that twice. His forehead wrinkled some more, trapping blond strands in the creases. "I know this, I know this, but I can't . . . quite . . . ."
"Familiar? Then you've scented her before?" Kit asked sharply. Because that would mean she was in their files, which would make this considerably more --
"No," Heinrich said, squashing the hope before Kit could finish the thought. "Not her. But someone . . . ."
"Someone with her? There were two?" That would make more sense. Allen had been one of his best men. He wouldn't have gone down easily.
"No. No others. Except for --"
"Sir?" A new voice from the doorway caused Kit to look up. It was Liam, his second, his afro impeccable in spite of the heat, his smartly fitted gray suit as dapper as if he hadn't just sprinted across a sweltering city in record time. Unlike the sweating bag of lard he had by the arm, in a stained wife beater and sagging jeans. "Front desk clerk," Liam said, as the man stared at the bloody mess on the floor. "We found him on his way back in."
"Back in from where?" Kit asked. "Where has he been?"
"L-l-liquor store," the man said, still staring. "I-I-I-"
"You-you-you what?" Kit jerked the man, who had been slowly sinking to his knees, the rest of the way down. "Where have you been?"
"I-I-I just went out for a minute. To get some better rum --"
His pudgy hand was wrapped around a paper bag covered bottle, which he was about to drop. Kit relieved him of it -- rein it in, rein it in, rein it in and get some answers -- and the man just blinked at him. Kit would have thought he was under a suggestion, but he was too stupid to need one.
"He said he was trying to impress the girl he let in here earlier," Liam said. "Petite, young -- maybe early twenties -- unusually strong. Said she hefted a bag weighing almost as much as he does with no discernable difficulty."
"She was hot, though," the clerk said, tearing his eyes away from the body. And glancing around like he expected to still find her here, keeping company with a corpse. "And she liked rum . . . ." His eyes focused on Kit's. "Are you guys the cops? Is she in trouble?"
"More than you can possibly imagine," Kit breathed, as another report, this one a communication from his office in Las Vegas, came echoing through his mind.
"My lord, we just found Allen's last report, filed last night."
"And?"
"He said he might have a line on that senator you had him checking out, something big."
"Did he say what?"
"No. But he did say he had picked up a complication. Someone was tailing him, someone good, and he had to waste time shaking her. He said he wouldn't have bothered to mention it, but the last time, he got a good look at her."
"And?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but he said she was . . . rather, that he thought she might be --"
"What, damn it! He thought she might be what?"
"Dhampir."
Chapter Three