by Nova Archer
“As do I,” he said. “But at least it’s a starting point. Other facts we found should help to narrow that down a bit.”
“Like what?” Lyra asked.
“The fact the victim worked at the Club.”
Lyra nearly dropped the pen she had been fiddling with. “You’re joking right?”
Caine shook his head. “I think you know me better than that.”
“You know what that means,” she said.
“We can’t jump to conclusions,” Caine said, but she could tell by the tightening of his jaw and the firming of his lips he’d considered the possibility.
Lyra didn’t like the implications of this at all. A lot of influential people frequented the club, including the mistress of the city, and their own baron, Laal. At one time, Caine had been a regular there—before he’d learned to control his vampiric urges and became comfortable with them.
“Are we heading over there to question the staff?”
Caine looked at his watch. “Yes, if we go now we can still catch the manager.”
“I have heard of this club,” Theron stated. “I would very much like to see it for myself.”
“This isn’t a tourist stop,” Lyra said as she stood.
“I’ll stay out of the way, but I’m going to the club either with you or without you. I do not have to answer to you, ma chere.”
Caine’s lip curled. He was thoroughly enjoying their banter. “Okay. Let’s go then.”
Lyra glared at Theron’s back as they all exited the analysis room and walked down the hall to the parking garage.
Destiny.
“Destiny my ass,” Lyra growled.
Theron glanced over his shoulder at her. “What about my ass?” He smiled.
Ignoring his question, she put her head down and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. Because now that he said it, she couldn’t help but stare at his butt as he walked.
CHAPTER NINE
Lyra had been to the “club” once before. The one experience had been enough for a lifetime.
The club didn’t technically have a name. There wasn’t one plastered atop the elegantly carved double oak doors, or anywhere on their cream-colored linen stationary or business cards. It didn’t need a name. It was enough to simply say the club. Everyone in Necropolis knew of its existence. It was part of what gave the undead city its unique identity.
The club was like any other high class establishment where the wealthy could engage in a rigorous game of squash, or set out for eighteen holes of golf on the world-class greens. It had a few tennis courts—indoor and outdoor-swimming and diving pools, jogging track, gym, and luxury spa. But for the most part, it was a place for vampires to satisfy their blood lust in a safe and monitored environment. Other lusts were also being satisfied, but no one would come right out and admit it.
Lyra knew Caine had frequented the club for years. She had asked him once why he still didn’t go and he had said because he didn’t need it anymore. She supposed it had been some type of therapy for the chief. Vampires came in two groups—those who accepted their need for blood and sex as a part of their natural physiology and those who reveled in it. Caine was the former.
The club was definitely for the revelers.
When they—Lyra, Caine, Mahina and Theron—walked through the heavy oak doors, they were greeted by a beautiful vampire in a floor-length gown of red silk and jewels.
Smiling, she approached them, fangs peeking out between her lush red lips. The woman must’ve just eaten if her fangs were so distended. “Welcome to the club. My name is Sofia. How can I be of service to you?’
Lyra sensed a charge in the air. The talisman at her throat began to hum and vibrate on her skin. The vampiress was putting on the power. By the way Theron seemed to be enraptured by the newcomer, his tongue virtually hanging out of his mouth, Lyra could easily guess what her power was—seduction. Even Lyra could feel the beginnings of attraction in her body. Obviously Sofia had no qualms what gender she seduced.
Mahina flashed her badge. “Can you tone it down a bit, Sofia? We’re here to see the manager not get the deluxe special.”
The vampiress bristled a bit at Mahina’s gruff manner, but she did dampen down her power. Enough that Lyra’s amulet quieted. And she did it all without losing her smile.
“I will get Mr. Hamilton for you. Would you like anything while you wait?”
“We’ll be fine, thank you, Sofia.” Caine inclined his head. It was a sign of respect. Vampires were intolerably polite to each other, especially in public.
Lyra would never understand vampire politics. She knew the rules certainly, but she tried to avoid having to engage in them whenever possible. Thankfully, she had few vampires in her life who she’d call friends who weren’t stuffy and controlled around her.
Glancing at Theron, she wondered not for the first time, what he’d be like without the ingrained vampire politics at play. A few times she’d seen him with his guard down and had liked it. More than what was probably wise.
Mahina came back from wandering the lobby and smirked at Caine. “I can’t believe you used to come here.”
“It has its purposes,” he replied. “Would you rather vampires indulged in their more decadent activities out on the streets?”
“Hell, no. I’d be way too busy cleaning up the damn mess,” Mahina commented just as Sofia returned with a gaunt-looking man in a gray three piece suit.
He offered his hand to Caine first being he was a vampire and the rest of us weren’t. Well, Theron was half, but Lyra doubted that counted here.
“Mr. Valorian, it’s a pleasure to see you again.”
Caine took the man’s hand, giving it a firm but quick shake. “Thank you, Bernard.” He gestured to Mahina. “This is Captain Garner of the NPD, my associate Lyra Magice, and Theron LeNoir, our consultant.”
Bernard glanced fleetingly at Mahina and Lyra, then his gaze settled on Theron. Smiling, he offered his hand to him. “Welcome, Mr. LeNoir. Your name is very well known to us here at the club.”
Lyra frowned at Theron. “It is?”
Theron extracted his hand from Bernard’s, nodding politely, and pointedly ignoring Lyra’s question. “Thank you. My father speaks highly of your establishment.”
Caine stepped forward in a subtle sign of authority, but it effectively blocked Theron from Bernard. “We need to speak with you about one of your employees, Lori James.”
Still smiling, Bernard’s gaze swept over Lyra then back to Caine. It was brief, but Lyra felt every nanosecond of it. There were nerves there. Lyra didn’t have extrasensory power but she didn’t need to. She was a keen observer of behavior and Bernard’s was screaming anxiety. Maybe she reminded him way too much of his former employee.
“Is there a problem? Has she done something wrong?”
“Yeah, she died,” Mahina huffed.
He stared at the captain for a moment as if weighing her words for hidden meaning, or wondering why the lycan was speaking to him, then nodded. “Of course.” He swept his arm behind him. “If you’ll come this way to my office.”
Lyra followed behind Mahina and Caine. Theron trailed along beside her. As they walked, she watched Theron. He kept his eyes trained forward. Not a normal behavior for someone who’d never been to a particular establishment. Usually, a person would look around, especially in a huge lavishly decorated place like the club. The multitude of exquisite paintings on the walls alone forced a patron to stare, if not for the beauty of them then for the pure thought they must be worth over a million dollars—each.
Although his house back in Nouveau-Monde was as lavishly decorated, she sensed he was hiding something.
“I thought you’d never been here before.”
He glanced down at her, with one brow cocked, much as Caine did. “I haven’t.”
“Then why does that guy know you?”
“He doesn’t know me, Lyra. He knows my last name. My father is a powerful and influential man. His name carries a lot
of weight in the vampire world.”
“Oh.” She still thought he was hiding something.
“It bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“What?”
“My vampiric roots.”
Lyra scuffed her shoe on the immaculate tiled floor and nearly tripped. Theron grabbed her arm in time to stop her from landing on her face. Embarrassed she cleared her throat.
“Why would it bother me? You’re a consultant on a case, a guy who’s helping me with some book translation. We’re not, you know, involved or anything.”
When he stopped moving, she realized she had too because his hand was still on her arm. Only now was she conscious of the heat of his touch.
“Aren’t we?” His thumb stroked the exposed skin on her arm. “You dream about me.”
She shrugged off his touch. “No, I don’t.”
“You do. I know because I was there, and I saw you, too.”
Lyra stared at him. She couldn’t take her eyes from his face. She saw the truth there, darkening his eyes. No wonder he had acted so strange earlier when he had asked about her dreams. She had sensed something pass between them, a flash of knowledge, a flare of power. It was something that had only happened with one other person in her life, her maternal grandmother, Eleanore. It tied them eternally.
Did she want such a bond with this man?
“Excuse me.”
Startled, Lyra swiveled around to see Caine regarding them from the doorway of an office.
“Are you joining us?”
Hands shaking, Lyra nodded and took a step back from Theron. “Yeah, I’m coming. We were just—,”
“Comparing spells.” Theron finished for her.
Without a backward glance, Lyra walked into the big office and slid into a vacant chair beside Caine. Theron sat down next to her.
Bernard was at the filing cabinet, pulling Lori’s file, Lyra assumed. Manila folder in hand, he sat down behind the desk and opened it. “Lori’s been working for us for about a year now.”
Mahina flipped open her notebook. “In what capacity?”
“She worked in the spa.”
“Doing what?” Mahina asked.
“Massage therapy, Reiki treatments, and aura healings. Things like that.”
He was holding something back. Lyra could tell by the way his gaze shifted back and forth, from Caine to Mahina to the file lying in front of him.
“Did she ever engage in the other activities that happen around here?”
Bernard leaned back in his chair. “What are you insinuating, Captain?”
“Oh, c’mon Bernard, everyone knows what goes on here. You’re running a glorified sex—,”
Caine put his hand on Mahina’s arm cutting off her next words. “What Captain Garner is asking, Bernard is if Ms. James was anyone’s blood donor.”
The manager glanced down at his file and flipped through the pages. “There’s no one listed.” He shut the folder and glared at Mahina. “If she was donating to someone outside the club, that would’ve been her business not mine. But as it was, she worked in the spa and that’s it.”
“We’ll need her client list and the schedule of the last day she worked.” Caine interjected before Mahina could open her mouth, and possibly stick her foot in it.
This was another reason why Lyra hated vampolitics so much. Sometimes it stopped them from doing their jobs quickly and efficiently. A person, especially a non-vampire, had to constantly follow protocol and ask permission for this and that. It was exhaustive just thinking about it.
Bernard slid the file across the desk to Caine. “Is there anything else you need?”
“Yes. We’d like a tour of the spa, admittance to Lori’s locker, and access to the employees who worked with her.”
Bernard bristled. “Can’t that wait? It is Saturday our busiest day, and we have a few very influential clients here today. I don’t want to disturb them.”
Caine grabbed the file, slid it under his arm and stood. “No, it can’t wait, Bernard. Not unless you want Captain Garner to get angry and start a scene.”
Mahina stood and Lyra had to stifle a laugh when she saw the lycan’s grinning face. If there was one thing the police captain loved it was confrontation, especially with a vampire. She disliked most of them. Caine was probably the only exception to her rule.
After a few tense moments, Bernard stood and walked to the door. “Right this way.”
Lyra had the task of going through the victim’s locker while Caine, Mahina and Theron got to tour the facilities and meet the other employees.
She didn’t find much of anything in the small metal locker but Lori’s spa uniform, which consisted of a naughty nurse type thing, shoes, and various toiletries like shampoo and deodorant. After bagging and labeling everything but the uniform, she set about going through the small pockets. There was residual magic left on the fabric. Lyra could see it as a faint red stain along the seams of the pocket.
Digging into the left slit in the jacket and then into the right, she came away with a small folded piece of paper. She set the evidence on the top of the nearest counter, and took several pictures. With tweezers she carefully unfolded it, smoothing it flat on the surface of the table. On it was initials and a time—ND 7:30 pm—written in red pen. After snapping off a couple of pictures, she slid the unfolded paper into a plastic baggy, sealed and labeled it, setting it inside her evidence kit with everything else.
It still wasn’t much to go on, but sometimes the littlest things could make or break a case. Caine had taught Lyra that among a multitude of other things when she first started with the OCU. He’d been her mentor.
Packing up her kit, she stripped off her gloves and walked out of the staff room to find the others. The hallway was devoid of any activity as she made her way to the main spa facilities. There were several closed doors along the right side. She wondered what was going on behind those doors. Perhaps the things Mahina had alluded to earlier.
Like everyone else in Necropolis, Lyra had heard the stories about what really went on at the club. Bloodletting sexual orgies. Because vampires had an oversized libido due to their blood lust, Lyra could picture scenes like that. Wild, writhing, uncontrollable feeding frenzies.
As she thought of it, her mind conjured up an image of Theron in the midst of it. Shirt undone, fangs distended, he had a look of a man lost to his desire. A shiver ran down her spine as she tried to blink back the image. She didn’t want to imagine Theron like that. She didn’t want to imagine him at all, but there he was cemented in her mind, causing the first flutters of desire to build in her belly.
Angry she couldn’t stop thinking about Theron, Lyra almost missed the open doorway on her right. Stopping midstride, she glanced both ways down the hall to make sure no one was watching her. She made her way over to the gaping entrance. Rabid curiosity forced her to peek into the room.
What she saw within had her lose her breath.
A woman in a gauzy gold dress was lounging on a sofa while three men in various forms of undress serviced her. One man was on the floor at her bare feet, caressing and massaging her. Another beside her on the sofa busied himself at her breasts, licking and suckling her exposed flesh. And still another sat on her other side, his wrist to her mouth. Blood cascaded in rivulets down his arm to dribble on the sofa as she greedily drank.
Her heart pounded like a hammer as Lyra watched enraptured by the scene before her. She’d seen vampires drink before but nothing like this. This was wild and passionate. Untamed. Purely sexual in nature. The look on the donor’s face was one of utter abandon. He was lost to her completely. Lyra could see it all over him, and especially in the strain at his crotch.
She felt like a voyeur watching them, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away. Transfixed, she stared as sweat trickled down her chest and back. The heat surrounding her and building inside was unbearable. While she watched, an image of Theron entered her mind again.
In her scene, he was the one on the sofa and s
he the one enraptured while he feasted on her blood.
Too enthralled with her carnal thoughts, she didn’t feel the body pressing up against her back until it was too late.
“What are you doing?” Theron’s voice whispered against her ear.
Yelping, Lyra pulled back and collided with him. Instinctively he wrapped his arms around her as she pushed him backward into the wall.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t,” she panted, very aware of his heated presence around her, but curiously she was in no hurry to move out of it. His nearness resonated a warmth and security around her. Something she hadn’t felt with another living person.
She was very aware of his elevated heart rate at her back as well as the hardness of his body next to hers. And if she wasn’t mistaken, even more of him grew harder.
“Lyra, are you all right?”
Caine’s voice jolted her from her reverie and catapulted her from Theron’s embrace. Smoothing out her shirt and pants, she tried to hide the pink stain in her cheeks. She hated wearing her embarrassment so prominently on her face.
“I’m fine.”
“What is going on here?” Bernard asked, his voice tinged with irritation.
The doorway filled with another form—one wearing a long golden dress and a not-so-friendly look on her perfect pale face. Her long red hair cascaded around her like angry flames. “I’d like to know the same thing.”
Lyra wanted to dig a hole and climb in. There was no escaping this one. She had definitely spied on the wrong vampire.
Bernard brushed past Lyra and grabbed the woman’s hand in his and patted it nervously. “Ms. Devanshi, I apologize for the disturbance.”
She pulled from the manager’s touch and ignoring Lyra completely, trained a sparkling green eye on the chief. “Caine, how lovely to see you again.” She offered her elegant hand.
Caine took it and brought it to his lips to press a quick kiss. “It is always a pleasure, Nadja.”
“I take it you are here on business.”
“Yes.”
“Am I under some investigation?”
Lyra wanted to bleed into the wall behind her. Anything to disappear from the impending disaster that was about to occur.