Hunting the Dark

by Karen Mahoney

  Shaking my head to clear the primitive need buzzing in my head like a swarm of bees, I pocketed my phone and forced myself to kneel beside Quinn’s lifeless remains. His crutches were discarded close by and one of them was broken clean in half. There was a shotgun lying just centimeters from his hand – the kind you’d expect to see on a different kind of hunter – and a bloodstained dagger a little further away. Clearly, there had been a fight, but I needed to do better than that.

  I tried to figure out what had happened. How he’d died such a violent death.

  And, far more importantly, who had killed him. Probably the blood on that knife was a more than excellent clue, but it wasn’t like I could go all CSI and have it analyzed.

  I had no idea how much time I’d have before someone discovered the body. Would it be Jace who found his father’s old friend? Did Quinn have family, other friends who might pay him a visit when they didn’t hear from him? More hunters?

  Here was yet another person that Jace had lost. I couldn’t help thinking that, even as I fought for control over my baser instincts.

  I needed to get out of here, breathe the night air and separate myself from the blood, but maybe if I stayed I would find something useful. Something that might help Theo – and Jace. Some kind of clue. If nothing else, there might be a piece of evidence that linked Quinn to Nicole’s death – or a trail pointing toward someone else. Perhaps another hunter ‘colleague’. Could I metaphorically throw Quinn under the bus and frame him? He was dead now, anyway, so what did it really matter? Let his death have some meaning, right? I might even be able to plant some evidence that I could then take to Theo in order to get Jace off the hook, and I couldn’t pass up that chance – no matter how slim.

  I know, I know . . . I’m an idiot. I can’t help it. But I knew Jace wasn’t responsible for any of this mess. I believed him – and not just because I liked him, but because I truly didn’t think he was capable of ending Nicole. He certainly didn’t have a motive.

  Then again, the whole thing had happened so quickly. The sneakiest of sneak attacks. It’s not like anybody had to actually fight, which gave me a horrible sense of how vulnerable even the most powerful of us could be. Perhaps Theo was right; the older vamps really had gotten complacent.

  Forcing myself not to inhale the lingering smell of death, I began searching the house. Swiftly cooling blood had seeped into my jeans, but I resolutely turned my attention away from that and tried to keep busy, methodically going from room to room, looking for something that might help me to make sense of this. Quinn had kept records, becoming an intel expert since his forced retirement from physical hunts. There had to be a lead of some kind, and if there was I would find it.

  I am the vampire Veronica Mars, right?

  The house seemed depressingly stripped down, showing all the signs of someone who lived a simple life. The life of a military man, with only the very barest of essentials. Nothing flashy. Nothing to tell me anything real about who Quinn had been.

  Except . . . for the fancy computer in the office I’d seen earlier. Now that must have cost a few dollars. Seemed like a strange thing for such a minimalist sort of guy to own. If it had been a laptop I could have just taken it with me, but I didn’t want to carry the tower outside and risk damaging it in some way. Also, the screensaver had still been active, meaning that Quinn could have been using it recently. No harm in taking a quick peek.

  I’m good with computers – it’s a neat skill to have when Theo wants me to falsify birth and death information for members of the Boston Family. That kind of deception becomes necessary when you live for a long time. A very long time. I realize that it’s not ethical, but you could argue that the very existence of vampires isn’t exactly ethical. We survive on human blood. That’s sort of a problem. When you get right down to it, a few hacked genealogy databases isn’t really the end of the world.

  I headed back to the office and seated myself in front of the shiny terminal. I felt so much better – way more in control. I cracked my knuckles. Humming to myself, I jiggled the mouse and got to work on Quinn’s files.

  Mostly there was just regular stuff like house-related documents, bills, bank records, and other mind-numbingly boring information. But outside of the personal folders, there were one or two other items of interest.

  First up, a folder titled simply – and worryingly – Targets. All the hair on the back of my neck prickled. I was pretty sure that Quinn wasn’t talking financial targets, and clicking on the icon proved me right. It was kind of like opening Pandora’s box.

  I swallowed as I scrolled through dozens of individually named files. It would take a while to go through the contents properly, but I scanned the list for anything that might somehow link to Nicole. Could it really be that easy? Was this some kind of kill list?

  Of course not. There was no obvious sign of her, but everything was filed by surname and I didn’t know her full details or any of her aliases. I figured that she was Italian, but she hadn’t lived in Italy for a long, long time. I had no idea what her birth name was, anyway. She was super-old, I knew that, but even Holly didn’t know how old. That could mean she’d owned too many names to count.

  I glanced down at the next letter in the alphabetical sequence of files. I should really just copy the data and run, but that’s when I saw something that made my eyes grow so wide I could actually see their silver glow reflected in the computer screen:

  O’Neal, Marie Katherine

  Holy. Shit.

  I stared at the file name, feeling sick all over again. This was a mistake, right? I was under a lot of stress. I’d misread it.

  Right?

  I looked again, but there it was in black and white. My real name. In an experienced vampire hunter’s virtual file cabinet. I was only Made a little over a year ago, meaning that Quinn had definitely still been gathering information on vampires long after he’d lost his leg. The ‘records’ that Jace had mentioned were even more up to date than I could have imagined.

  Swallowing, I opened the file. My file. My hand shook on the mouse and I bit my lip as I hastily glanced over the pages. Thankfully there wasn’t much to it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t freaking the hell out. I mean, he had a copy of my high school graduation diploma – along with the last photograph that had been taken of me before I was Made. I gazed at the girl in the picture, trying to find myself in that smiling face.

  This was worse than bad.

  Clicking away from that particular horror show, I looked at some of the other folders. One was titled in ALL-CAPS which, once again, made my Moth-sense sit up and take notice. Also, it didn’t seem to fit in with the other folders – there was no context for something called: PROJECT NEMESIS.

  Project Nemesis? That sounded ominous.

  The folder needed a password. Of course it did. I gnawed at my lip as I tried to find some connections. I could be getting just a little carried away here, but Quinn did seem to have an awful lot of information in his possession for a so-called loner. Maybe he was working for someone else – a wider organization, some kind of Vampbusters central. Quinn could be affiliated with them in some way. Would Jace know the answers to any of my questions? Would he be willing to work with me on this?

  Whatever. I grabbed a sleek flash drive from a small box on the cluttered desk, hoping there would be enough space on it to save as much of this stuff as possible. I had to take it with me – sort through it in my own time, then present my findings to Theo. Maybe I could clear Jace’s name and help my Maker to avenge Nicole’s death even sooner than I’d hoped. I would try to figure out what ‘Nemesis’ was before I went any further with my (extremely) amateur investigation.

  Casually, I slid open the single desk drawer while I waited for hundreds of files to transfer. I honestly wasn’t expecting to find anything inside other than pens or staples or stationery of some description. Maybe a stick of gum if I was super-lucky.

  But I was wrong. I found something else.

  The
first thing I saw was a small handgun and ammo. I turned up my nose in distaste and shoved it toward the very back of the drawer. Beneath that I found a small manila envelope full of photographs, some of which looked pretty old. Interesting. It seemed like a surprisingly low-tech storage solution for someone who owned a top-of-the-line computer system. Once again, my gut told me that Quinn wasn’t working alone – his computer could have been provided as part of some kind of deal with his partners. Or his bosses.

  I moved onto the floor, sitting cross-legged, and began flipping through the pictures. I don’t know what I was hoping to find, but surely there would be something useful. Maybe even incriminating. Aside from that, I have to admit I was also just plain curious. There were photos of Thomas Murdoch as a younger man, his hair still cropped short but lacking the flecks of gray I’d seen last year. Several of them were of Murdoch Senior with Quinn, both of them holding hunting rifles, with Quinn’s foot resting on what looked like the remains of an alligator.

  A freaking alligator?!

  I looked closer. Yep. It was a ’gator all right. Or a crocodile. I never could tell the difference, but whatever it was the two men looked like they were in a swamp. Before I could even begin to speculate on who had taken the picture, I caught sight of the next one.

  Thomas Murdoch, again as a young man, but this time with an attractive brown-haired woman . . . and a blond-haired boy of about ten or eleven.

  Jace . . .

  Only, it wasn’t the young Jason Murdoch who caught my eye. It was the fact that the woman who I could only assume was his mother was heavily pregnant. Eight years ago. Everybody looked happy. I blinked, trying to gather my thoughts. The picture was the antithesis of everything I knew about Thomas Murdoch. I’d rather think of him with his boot on that damn alligator – not as a loving husband and father. It was hard to think of him as anything other than the man who’d threatened to kill me, or who’d violently attacked his own son for hanging out with a monster. But there was no denying the huge smile on his face; the pride positively beaming out of him and encompassing his entire family.

  I laid the photograph on the worn carpet and stared at it, trying to find my Jace in the eyes of the boy that stared out at me.

  I’d fallen into Jace’s mind last year, during an early tussle – into a memory of another time. I was hardly an expert at bending humans to my vampire-y will, and all I’d managed to do was distract him for a few moments during a fight back when we weren’t exactly seeing eye to eye. But those stolen moments were enough for me to slip between the cracks of his psyche and catch an illicit glimpse of his past. Jace, as a boy, standing beside his mother’s bed. I remembered her now, and realized that . . . yes . . . this was definitely the same woman. The woman in the photo. In the vision or memory (or whatever it had been), Jason’s mom had been dying – anybody could have seen that. Thomas Murdoch told his son that it was time to say goodbye.

  She had been pregnant in that image too – in that dream-memory, I mean. How had I forgotten that? It hadn’t really registered at the time, but her belly was very definitely swollen with new life. And she’d looked deeply, fatally sick. Her eyes had been glazed, so that for just a second, in that confused moment, I’d thought maybe they were silver . . . But that couldn’t be true, could it? I must have it wrong. Or maybe the memory that I’d plucked out of Jace’s head simply didn’t provide all the facts. There was no context. He had been young, back then; he probably didn’t have an accurate picture of such a painful and traumatic time in his own recollection.

  Hands trembling, I stuffed the photo back into the envelope and tucked the whole thing inside my jacket. Vampires didn’t leave fingerprints, so I didn’t need to worry about that, but I wanted to take the pictures with me. I felt like I’d violated Jace in some terrible way, but maybe I could find the right time to show him these. Talk to him about his family. Did I have that right?

  What had happened to the baby? To Jace’s little brother or sister? They would have been about eight years old by now, if they had lived. I shivered. But surely the kid must have died, along with Mrs Murdoch. Had Murdoch’s wife been killed by a vampire? Had she—?

  I caught the sound of glass crunching underfoot from somewhere downstairs. The noise would have been impossible for anyone human to discern from here, but that was another ‘benefit’ of being a vampire. I was a regular superhero, wasn’t I? Someone had just entered through the window I’d broken.

  Maybe whoever had killed Quinn was coming back for something – or maybe they were going to move the evidence. Dump his body. Something cheerful like that. Isn’t that what murderers and the Mob do on TV shows? It could even be the same person that had ended Nicole’s existence. That was a stretch, but it was possible.

  I yanked the thumb drive out of the machine, hoping that enough of the data was safely copied. Probably I’d end up with something I couldn’t use, but no point in worrying about it now.

  I hesitated on the landing, listening to the soft pad of footsteps below and wondering whether to cut my losses and make a run for the front door. Was it locked? I hadn’t bothered to check, which was a dumb move now that I thought about it. Or I could just climb out a window from up here. I ran my tongue nervously over my fangs, thinking that I should hide and see who my fellow intruder was.

  The scent of blood momentarily distracted me, and I turned toward the room holding Quinn’s body. I took a step in that direction, and then another. All the while the human part of my brain was screaming at me to stop! get out! But the monster had reared her head once more and she was hungry.

  That hesitation cost me, because the next moment footsteps practically flew up the stairs. I smelled the oily, metallic scent of a firearm. A heavy boot kicked the door open as far as it would go, and a flashlight’s beam jabbed at my over-sensitive eyes.

  I squinted at the familiar figure standing in the doorway pointing a gun at me with a steady aim.

  Click.

  There goes the safety. I pocketed the flash drive, hoping I’d been quick enough to hide it.

  ‘Don’t move,’ Jason Murdoch said. ‘Seriously, keep your hands where I can see them.’

  Which, when you think about it, doesn’t make much sense because . . . really? He was worried I might be holding a weapon? My main weapons were currently fully extended and razor-sharp.

  Time stood still for a moment that stretched . . . and stretched. I willed my fangs to retract, but all I managed to do was make my gums throb even more. I needed to say something – hopefully something that would stop Jace from shooting me – but I couldn’t seem to make my mouth form Actual Words. (Trust me, I realize how rare that is.)

  ‘Jace,’ I finally managed to squeak. ‘It’s me, Moth!’

  His heart was beating so fast and so loudly, it was a wonder we weren’t both deafened by it. My hunger for blood was still too close to the surface, and I was horrified to find myself staring at Jace’s throat.

  ‘I can see it’s you,’ he said. His voice was filled with suspicion. ‘What I want to know is why the hell did you kill Quinn? He wasn’t a bad guy—’

  ‘He was a vampire hunter!’ I snapped. ‘I wouldn’t exactly call him a “good” guy.’

  ‘Depends on whether you’re human or not.’

  I tried to say something cutting in reply, but my throat had tightened and nothing came out. That was a low blow, even for Jace. Also, I couldn’t help noticing that I wasn’t trying to defend myself. I hadn’t even killed Quinn! But I didn’t see why I should have to tell Jace that. Surely we’d gotten past this nonsense by now . . .

  He still held the gun aimed right at me. ‘Did Quinn try to fight you, is that it?’

  I ignored his question and took a step back, raising my hands. ‘What happened to what you said earlier? About Quinn not being home? And how you wouldn’t hurt me? About us trusting each other?’

  ‘I also said that things change.’

  ‘You can’t kill me with a gun,’ I said, trying to sound reas
onable. ‘You know that.’

  His lips twisted into something resembling a smile. ‘Maybe not with an ordinary gun. But I have silver bullets, and even if I just hit you in the foot it’ll hurt like hell.’

  Yes, I thought miserably. And if you hit me directly in the heart I’ll be dead. For real.

  ‘Jace,’ I said, trying again, trying to avoid being shot by any kind of bullets because I really didn’t want that to happen. ‘I thought we were friends now. I didn’t kill him. Why would I do that?’

  ‘That’s what I just asked you,’ he snapped. ‘I’m still waiting for an answer. And for the record, I don’t know whether we are friends, not if you’re going to steal my phone and sneak around behind my back.’

  ‘You know I didn’t do this,’ I said, waving my hand at Quinn’s body. I couldn’t really argue with the whole phone-theft thing, so I chose not to mention that part. ‘You’re just mad because I came out here and left you asleep.’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep, you moron,’ he said, lowering the gun for the first time. ‘I heard you leave and followed you.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  He snorted a laugh. ‘For a vampire, you don’t exactly move like a ninja.’

  If I could actually blush right now, I would have blushed all the way to the tips of my toes. Luckily – or unluckily, perhaps – I really needed to feed. My excess blood supply was all used up just keeping my body ‘alive’ – nothing left over for something as human and unnecessary as blushing.

  Thinking about blood made me even more conscious of the amount of it spattered around the room. Whoever had murdered Quinn had done a thorough job, slicing and dicing him like he was so much meat. I wasn’t thinking too clearly, but from what I could see this seemed almost like a personal attack. There was nothing cool and calculated about it. I could almost feel the cloud of hatred left behind by the killer, although that was more likely just my overactive imagination. And even an idiot like Jace could see that if I had done it, my face and hands would be covered in Quinn’s blood. He’d seemed to have worked it out too now, as he finally lowered the gun. Phew. No silver bullet coming my way tonight then.