by J. K. Beck
“Yeah, take your best shot,” his lieutenant said. “Shit, Garvey. You’re out of here in six months. Can’t you just try not to ruffle any feathers until then?”
Oh, hell, he wished he could just sit back, especially now that the truth was squeezing the air out of his lungs. Gilli had always believed that they’d worked their way into the government. The dark things. The evil ones. That they’d climbed all the way up to the White House. That they were well positioned for a coup. Edgar hadn’t gone that far. It was too hard to believe. Too terrifying.
But he believed it now, even though he hoped to hell he was mistaken.
He didn’t think he was, though. And he feared that his beautiful, supposedly eccentric bride had been right on the money.
Vampires existed. They’d eased their way into the human world. They were poised for an attack.
And if what Sanders said was true, they were neck-deep in Homeland Security.
Edgar slid the car to a stop, shifted to park, and kept his hands tight on the steering wheel.
“Say it if you have to,” Alexis said. She knew what he was going to say. That she shouldn’t have come. Hell, if she was in his position, she’d probably say the same thing.
“You shouldn’t have come. What? Why are you smiling?”
“No reason.” She grabbed the handle and pushed open her door. “Come on. Near the duck pond, right?”
He gave a miserable nod, then cut the engine, killing the headlights. After a moment he got out of the car and met her by the hood, his footsteps making a squelching sound as he moved over the soaked grass.
“There,” she said, pointing to an area about five hundred yards away that glowed with eerie illumination. “Homeland’s forensics team must’ve set up lights.”
“You should let me handle this on my own.”
“Not a chance,” she said. “You said the time of first assault was estimated to be sometime early this morning, right? Well, that would have been not long after that vamp I wounded got away. And you know as well as I do that he was looking for a meal. I’m thinking he found one in Penny Martinez.” She kept her voice detached and professional, but inside she was twisted in knots. “And if what you heard from the responding officer is true, he found her, fed off her, and kept her alive for hours. Time of death was just a few hours ago, just around nightfall, right?” She shuddered. The vamp must’ve had a tarp or something to keep him out of the sun during the long hours of torture. Somehow the fact that he tormented the poor girl in broad daylight made the heinous act even more vile.
“He might not be the killer. And even if he is, it’s not your fault.”
Like hell. She shrugged off his words. “My fault or not, I’m working the scene.” She picked up her pace.
He was breathing hard when he caught up to her. “What if someone at the scene knows you?”
“I was FBI, not Homeland. And you said yourself it’s not a task force matter. Who would I know?”
He didn’t answer, but he looked so unhappy that she stopped walking.
“Come on, Edgar, no one will know who I am.” He made a snorting noise. “Fine. If someone figures it out, then we’ll say that you didn’t know the truth, either. As far as you know, I’m FBI all the way, and I’ve just pulled a huge scam on you.”
“Sometimes I wish that was true. I’m just not sure I’m—”
“What?”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the whole thing. You pretending to be something you’re not.”
She let his words slide off her. She’d made peace with her decision to leave the FBI. She had a mission, after all, and pretending to believe that a cult was bleeding victims dry wasn’t helping that purpose. It was a waste of time, and she didn’t miss it. The only downside was the fact that an FBI badge did open certain doors. But the interesting thing was that you really only needed the badge and the attitude. She already had the ’tude. And fortunately, she’d had plenty of money to acquire a new badge once her official one had been turned over to headquarters.
“Are you ‘comfortable’ with what’s going on, then?” she asked. “With what killed Penny Martinez? People are dying, Edgar, and there aren’t enough of us fighting. We need whatever advantage we can snag. This isn’t a random crime we’re talking about. It’s evil. Pure and simple.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you’re scared,” she said.
“Damn right I am.” He hunched his shoulders and trudged on. She followed, silent. What could she say to that?
After a moment, he slowed his pace, then waited for her to step in beside him. “So. Did you kill him?”
Alexis recognized the words as a peace offering. He was asking her if Leena had gotten her mojo on again and looked at her magical mystery map. The one that could pinpoint Tori’s killer.
“She tried. Spent the whole day sleeping then came over with all her stuff right before you called me. But she was too spent. She couldn’t see a thing.” Alexis tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice, but it was hard. She’d found satisfaction in hunting vampires, whether they had anything to do with Tori or not. They were vile, destructive, murderous creatures, and the more she could take out the better. But that didn’t change her soul-deep obsession with finding her sister’s killer. She wanted him dead. And then she wanted to dance in his dust and spit on his memory.
“It’s still amazing,” Edgar said, gently touching her sleeve. “She actually managed to come up with a spell that lets you see if the son-of-a-bitch is still kicking.”
“I know,” Alexis agreed. “Believe me, I don’t mean to sound disappointed or ungrateful. I just wish—”
“That she could control it at will? That kind of stuff’s gotta be exhausting. It’s amazing to me that she can do it at all.”
“Definitely mind-blowing.”
“And even if she’d been all primed and energized, there was no guarantee that she’d see the spark, right? Doesn’t it only fire up if Tori’s killer is actually on the hunt?”
Alexis nodded. “Ironic, huh? I can see that he’s out there, but unless I manage to move fast, he’ll kill some other victim before I can avenge Tori.”
It had taken Leena months to figure out how to create the map, and even now it wasn’t perfect. As Edgar had said, it only displayed the killer’s location when he was actually on the hunt. To Alexis’s mind, that was a major downside, as evidenced by what happened last night. Two vampires, and no idea which one was her bad guy. Not that she was complaining—she was patient as hell. More than that, she was willing to do whatever was necessary to find Tori’s killer. She’d proven that much when Leena had told her she’d need her help to make the map functional.
“My help?” Alexis had asked. “You mean you need my blood again?”
“I need more than that. I need a promise.”
“A promise?”
“All magic has a price, especially magic that’s tied to vengeance. You want to find a killer, so the price is death.”
Alexis’s heart had skipped a beat. “I don’t understand.”
“You have to promise to kill the vampire if you find him.”
“Well, yeah. That’s the point.”
“And if you don’t, then you have to promise to die in his place.”
“Like suicide?”
“You make a blood promise,” Leena had explained. “You break the promise, the magic takes your life. Are you willing to do that?”
“I already told you.” She hadn’t hesitated, even for a second. “I find him, and that vampire is dust.” She held out her arm. “Do whatever you need.”
Leena had taken the blood she’d needed from Alexis’s wrist, and now she absently rubbed the small, diamond-shaped scar.
“You will catch him,” Edgar said. He didn’t know how the map worked, or what Alexis had done to fuel it. “What you’re doing—devoting your life to hunting these things—it’s amazing. And it’s not like you’re going to be openly
rewarded. No one’s going to throw you a parade. You’ll be lucky if they don’t call you crazy. Trust me, I know about the crazy part. But I also know that you’re fighting the good fight.”
“Thanks.” She shot him a smile. “Knowing you’re here to hold my hand through the rough spots made the move a lot easier.”
“I got your back, kid.”
“I know,” she said, and she meant it. Leena was her friend, her adviser, her most valuable resource. But Edgar had become her rock.
“Thin crowd,” Edgar said as they crested a small hill.
Alexis frowned; Edgar was right. Usually murder scenes drew the lookey-loos. “The bad weather, maybe. And we’re a bit off the beaten path.” Still, with police band radios being all the rage, the remote location of a crime usually didn’t keep the crowds away.
She easily made her way to the yellow tape with Edgar at her side. Once there, she focused on the drama playing out in front of her. It was a murder mystery, and right away she could identify the key players, although she had to admit that they were playing their roles in an unfamiliar way.
The man she thought was the medical examiner, for example, did nothing other than press his hand to the victim’s forehead. No inspection of the body. No thermometer to detect the core temperature. Just that single touch.
It was weird.
She eased left, following the tape until her line of sight shifted and she got a view of the vic. Penny Martinez. Female, twenty-eight years old, just like she’d heard. And right there in plain sight, Alexis could see the vicious neck wound.
“Like hell this case doesn’t fit the task force parameters,” Edgar said.
“Damn sure fits ours,” Alexis agreed. She took hold of the crime scene tape, lifted it, and slid under, ignoring Edgar’s muttered curse as he followed. As she’d expected, one of the uniformed officers scurried over to them. She flashed her counterfeit badge, forestalling his prattle. “FBI. This crime scene is part of an ongoing investigation.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but—”
“It’s okay, Officer.” Another man approached, Hollywood-handsome in a suit that was only slightly rumpled. He extended his hand; when she ignored it, he offered it to Edgar. “Severin Tucker,” he said. “Homeland Security.”
“Detective Edgar Garvey, and I think we’ve got a little problem here. This case is part of a joint task force between the FBI and local law enforcement.”
“This case is outside the FBI’s jurisdiction.”
“I’m afraid that we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that,” Alexis said. She marched past him toward the body. “You want to tell your man there to get his hands off my vic. You people never heard of preserving the scene?”
Tucker didn’t say anything. She saw him glance at another man—this one taller, with broad shoulders and dark hair and a scar marring his right cheek. The man nodded, and Tucker seemed to relax. “He’s one of our forensics experts,” he said, nodding at the man fondling the body. “I assure you, we’re doing everything possible for the victim.”
Like hell, she thought, though she didn’t say it. She just frowned and kept on walking, certain that any second someone was going to take her by the elbow and lead her forcibly away.
Fortunately, there wasn’t any trouble. She reached the body, glanced down, and got a closer look at the violent puncture on the female’s neck. The supposed forensics expert was still crouched over the body, his hands on the victim, and despite the fact that Alexis was both curious about what he was doing and irritated that he was manhandling a victim’s body, right then she had her own problems.
She glanced around, checking to see how much attention they were paying to her. But Edgar—bless him—had Tucker wrapped up in deep conversation, and the rest of the officers were giving her a wide berth. With luck, she’d have a few minutes to maneuver.
Slowly, easily, she dropped into a squat, hoping she presented the appearance of a woman who wanted a closer look at the body. She pressed a hand to the ground as if balancing herself. What she was really doing was digging her fingers into the ground to collect the dirt she needed for Leena.
The witch’s first project when they’d arrived in Los Angeles was to find vampires for Alexis to hunt. “Can’t you just look into a crystal ball and find them?” Alexis had asked. “Then we’ll go to the cemetery or the spooky mansion and dust them during the daylight?”
Leena had responded with a massive eye roll. “First, we has to be you.” She tapped her leg and shrugged. “I wish I could be in the field, but I’d be dead within a minute. Second, vampires aren’t equipped with OnStar. I can’t just flip a switch and have their locations show up on Google Earth. It’s more complicated than that.”
So while Alexis had focused on training and getting into the best shape of her life, Leena had hooked up with some of her sources in the psychic-witch-new-age fringe. It had taken a few weeks, but eventually Leena had found a way. “Everything has an aura, right?”
Alexis shrugged. Until recently, something so very woo-woo would have prompted her to roll her eyes. Now she was willing to believe.
“So all we need to do is track the vamp’s aura.”
“How?”
“By accessing some of the vamp’s energy.”
“Again I ask: How?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Leena said. “It’s not the perfect solution, but the simple fact is that a vamp is going to leave aural residue on and around his victim.”
Alexis’s stomach twisted. “So you’re saying I can hunt them after the fact.”
“Like I said, not the perfect solution.”
“No, it’s not.” She drew a deep breath. “But it’s better than nothing. At least I can start by going after the vamps we know have murdered humans. Hunt them, kill them, take them out of the equation.”
The dirt held that auric residue, and once Alexis had a handful, she stood up and casually dropped it into her pocket.
Time to get out of here.
She turned to find Edgar and realized he wasn’t where she’d anticipated. Frowning, she glanced over the scene, but stopped when she saw a man in the distance. He was standing by himself in a copse of trees, well past the crime scene. His face was half in the shadows cast by the bright lights that Homeland had set up. It was an attractive face, with classic lines highlighted by a hint of stubble, as if he couldn’t be bothered to shave. But it wasn’t his looks that caught her attention—it was his eyes. She couldn’t make out the color, not from such a distance, but she had the impression that when she saw them up close she’d learn that they were slate gray, as hard and unyielding as a rock.
She stared—and realized that she’d stopped breathing because seeing him was like looking in a mirror. Her own emotions reflected right back at her. Frustration. Hate. Regret.
And a burning need to get revenge against the worthless subhuman who’d done this to an innocent girl.
Her.
Serge looked across the field into the eyes of the woman from the alley, and everything he was feeling—rage, hunger, regret—was reflected right back at him. She’d come for the same reason that he had—because a rogue vampire had escaped, wounded and hungry and looking to feed.
She blamed herself just as Serge did, and the anger and frustration clung to her body like perfume. He breathed it in, welcoming its power and taking selfish comfort in the feeling that, for this singular moment in time, he wasn’t alone. Because right then they both sought the same thing: Mitre’s head on a goddamn platter.
And it was Mitre who’d snuffed the life from poor Penny Martinez. Serge had caught the scent the moment he’d arrived. Slightly putrid with an undercurrent of copper, like blood left to rot in a drain. It twisted on the wind, kicked up by the shoes of the PEC agents who were stomping all over the scene. Faint because of the rain, not even strong enough for a vampire to catch. But Serge was more than that now. His senses were keener. His body more finely tuned.
The woman had
wounded Mitre, and he’d raced away searching for food. And because Serge had been too damn slow, a girl now lay unseeing on the cold, hard ground, surrounded by agents of the PEC, all trying to find a clue to her killer.
Damn it, damn it, god-fucking-dammit.
A slow, dangerous anger bubbled up inside him, and he clenched his fists, his nails cutting so hard into his own palms he drew blood. He needed to leave—to track Mitre’s scent before he decided to attack another human. But once again the woman had stalled his departure, and though she had turned her attention to the body, Serge couldn’t rip his away from her.
He stepped back into the shadows cast by the copse of trees and watched as she knelt by PEC agent Ryan Doyle. Only a few humans knew of the PEC’s existence, and in the United States, it was neatly hidden within Homeland Security.
Serge knew that Doyle hadn’t been randomly assigned to the case; he’d been called in because of his unique skills as a percipient daemon. As Serge watched from a distance, the agent pressed his hands to the girl’s forehead, trying to pull out the last images she’d seen before dying. The last bursts of emotion.
Trying to see her killer.
The body was cold, though, and Serge wondered if Doyle would find anything. Time was the strongest enemy. It taunted everything it touched. Even the immortals, who should be able to wield time like a weapon, staggered beneath the weight of eternity.
Serge scowled, irritated by his self-pitying thoughts. If time was punishing him, it was only because he deserved it.
Behind Doyle, Luke paced. Lucius Dragos, the newly appointed vampiric liaison to the Alliance. The new governor of the Los Angeles territory. A man who had reluctantly assumed the mantle of power. A man who had once been Sergius’s closest friend. Now, as far as Serge knew, Luke believed him to be dead. It was better that way. Though Luke’s daemon lived close to the surface, he had finally learned control, unlike Serge who repeatedly succumbed. Now he had the beast to contend with, too. Luke hardly needed that weight added to the incredible burden of responsibility recently heaped upon him. No, Serge walked a new path, and he had to walk it alone.