Sanguinary (Night Shift Book 1)

by Margo Bond Collins

  “And tonight?” He gestured toward the doorway. “Why the massacre?”

  “To open some kind of door.” Her voice dropped. “They needed more power. Every time, with every one, they’ve needed more power,” she whispered.

  My stomach dropped in sudden dread. “Every one what?” I spoke up for the first time.

  Richards glanced at me. “Every ceremony. Every sacrifice.”

  “You mean the dead women, right?” I took a step toward her, my hands fisting at my sides as I fought the urge to shake the information out of her. “The Sanguinary is sacrificing them?”

  She nodded, eyes wide. “They are planning something really big, and tonight’s the lead-in.”

  Tonight’s butchery was only the lead-in? What the hell was the Sanguinary planning?

  “Where?” Reese demanded, grabbing her upper arm. “Where is tonight’s sacrifice?”

  “I don’t know. I swear, I don’t know.”

  I believed her.

  But that meant that somewhere in the city tonight, a woman was dying—was being tortured to death by vampires—and I probably wouldn’t be able to find her in time to stop it. Helplessness swept over me, leaving me shaking and weak.

  “But we interrupted it, right?” I asked. “They didn’t get the power they needed.”

  Richards watched me, her eyes calculating. “Maybe not. But still more than they’ve had before.”

  “What’s the big plan? What is tonight leading up to?” I stepped up to loom over her threateningly, momentarily forgetting my role as good cop as I edged Reese out of my way.

  She shrank away from me. “All I know is that it’s set for Halloween.”

  A brief, startled noise from Reese suggested that he might know what she meant, but I pushed the clinic director anyway. “And you probably don’t know where that’s happening either, right?”

  The clinic director smirked at me, regaining a bit of her confidence as she flouted her superior knowledge. “Maybe I could find out.”

  “How?” Though he had stepped out of my way, Reese still hadn’t let go of Richards’s arm.

  “I have a phone number.”

  My first instinct was to say, Not a chance in hell. But in the end, that’s what this was: a tiny chance to save one woman from hell.

  And maybe save the entire world.

  I nodded at Reese. He let go of her arm and stepped back.

  But when we brought her a phone—tapped and monitored—and she dialed, no one answered.

  I counted each ring like the tolling of a bell on an old-fashioned clock, counting down the moments until someone else died.

  A death knell.

  Though we didn’t get an answer, the other phone was turned on, so Tech One and Tech Two were able to give us a general area to search—somewhere within a few miles of downtown—but even diverting all available units didn’t give us access to every home, every building, every basement, every attic.

  We had Richards call over and over, for hours on end, until eventually the number began going straight to voicemail, an automated message only.

  I pulled Reese aside after the last failed call. “Richards is a problem. We can keep all the other humans on lockdown and under guard while we sort out which ones knew what they were getting into, and which ones were dupes.”

  “But Richards now knows you’re a cop, and she is also connected to the admin.” He pursed his lips for a brief moment, and then nodded decisively. “I’ll take care of it. I can make sure she doesn’t remember you.”

  I shuddered. The thought of a vampire digging around inside my mind sent chills up and down my back.

  As my vampire partner left to muck up Richards’s memory, I tried to distract myself by helping with the clinic cleanup. It took us all—detectives, SWAT, uniforms, EMTs, and CSU, everyone who wasn’t out crawling the streets looking for the Sanguinary and their horrific sacrifice—the rest of the night to get the clinic cleared out and the patients transferred to real hospitals. I didn’t envy the doctors and morticians that night. Then again, we all had serious work to do.

  Somewhere in the controlled chaos that is an active crime scene, Dr. Leah Richards disappeared.

  I bawled out the uniform watching the room where we had stashed the clinic director, threatening to write him up for his incompetence.

  It wasn’t until later that I realized Reese was gone too, probably in connection with his plan to wipe the doctor’s mind. I didn’t want to be part of that, but I did want to talk to Reese in private about his sudden appearance at Westlake, about the strange connecting tug I’d felt between us—that pull I could still feel, if I concentrated on it. It was a twinge that I knew I could follow. It would tell me where to go to find Reese. When I realized he was no longer at the clinic, I closed my eyes, feeling a magnetic draw, pulling me almost directly south.

  Downtown. Near the phone Richards was calling. Near the sacrifice?

  I considered joining him—but then the call came in.

  Another body.

  The latest sacrifice victim.

  Chapter 14

  This victim’s body was at the Cathedral Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, only a few blocks away from the Winspear Opera House.

  The crime scenes were getting closer to one another.

  This was the first time a body had been found inside a building—the first time we’d found the primary crime scene rather than a body dump. There hadn’t been time for a dump—the killer had been interrupted by the priest coming in to prepare for morning mass and had fled the scene.

  “Think they chose the spot because it’s a church?” Iverson asked as we stepped out of his unmarked car and headed into the cathedral. Jeanie had stayed behind to oversee the wrap-up at the clinic scene.

  Too many vampire crime scenes tonight.

  The redbrick exterior of the cathedral gave way to cool white walls sweeping up into darkness. The reflected glow of streetlamps shone through the rose window above the nave, the light washed away before it reached the floor by the additional lamps the crime-scene techs were shining on the body draped across the altar.

  I paused for a moment to look up the long aisle, flanked by pews. This cathedral had one of the biggest congregations in the country—second only to St. Patrick’s in New York City—and the room was huge.

  Did these murders have a religious significance? Did vampires care about religion at all?

  We knew crosses didn’t work on them. Stakes to the heart, beheading, sunlight. They were otherwise invulnerable.

  Though the lack of any older vamps suggested that they might not actually be immortal.

  I shrugged. “For all we know, they could have been doing all of the sacrifices here.”

  The crime-scene tech—Bradley, the same one who had pulled the scrap of paper from Felicia Monroe’s hair—straightened up from where he had been peering at this dead woman’s out-flung arm.

  “Doubtful,” he said, continuing his perusal of the victim. “If all the kills had happened here, the perp would probably have known the priest’s schedule. And there would probably be more bloodstains on the altar. I can’t say for sure until the labs come back, but I think we’re looking at just one murder in this location.”

  He turned to face us. “But you’ll probably want to see this.” As he moved around to the other side of the altar, he pointed at a wound on the victim’s dangling hand, blocked from our view until we moved up the steps onto the parquet floor.

  A bright blue light flashed from her palm. The tech pointed at it with his pen, careful not to cross the beam or allow it to touch him. Then he traced the beam to its endpoint at the back wall, where instead of creating a small circle, the light seemed to expand until it created an oval about two feet tall and a foot wide.

  “It was bigger when we got here,” the tech said. “And watch this.” He pulled a penny out of his pocket, hefted it in his hand, and then tossed it toward the oval.

  It should have bounced off the wall.

>   Instead, the coin hit the light, where it slowed and seemed to hang for a moment, as if moving through some viscous fluid.

  And then it was gone.

  “What the fuck?” Iverson breathed.

  The tech shrugged. “Hell if I know. But nothing we’ve put through has come back.”

  “Has anyone touched it?” I asked.

  “No. Earlier, I tried to mark the wall—trace a circle around it—and my pen got pulled out of my hand. Once that happened, I didn’t let anyone else close to it.”

  “Does it go both ways?” Iverson asked, peering at as closely as he could without risking touching it.

  Bradley shrugged. “Nothing’s come through yet.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to maintain my composure. “Tell us what else you’ve got.”

  As the tech circled the victim, pointing out the various wounds—the ones I had come to expect, lately, given their repetition across the victims—I considered the possibility that the crackpots were right: Vampires came from somewhere else.

  Maybe from somewhere that could be reached through that blue light, that strange little portal that continued to shrink, even as I watched it out of the corner of my eye.

  So the Sanguinary vamps were using these portals to…what? Bring through more vampires for a war against humans?

  I rubbed a hand across my grainy eyes, working to put it all together.

  Feeding on blood gave vampires a kind of power, one connected to blood magic.

  That blood magic could be strengthened through a massacre like the one at the clinic tonight.

  And that stronger blood magic could be channeled through a sacrifice like the one tonight, opening the door for more vampires? So why the serial sacrifices? What was the end-goal of the Sanguinary?

  “Thirteen’s a powerful number.” Reese’s voice was quiet behind me, and it was all I could do not to jump.

  “What do you mean?” I didn’t even bother to ask what he was doing here—or where he had gone when he left the clinic.

  The tech had moved away to another part of the cathedral, and Iverson had followed him—I had been too caught up in my thoughts to notice—so we were all alone for a moment.

  “This is body number twelve, right? The twelfth sacrifice?”

  “Unless you count the clinic. There were a lot more than twelve bodies there.”

  Reese shook his head. “That wasn’t a sacrifice. These are careful, controlled. That was a massacre.” Reese followed the line of blue light to the spot on the wall, now shrunk to just a few inches across. As he stepped closer, the light pulsed. “You know the history of vampires, right? The public one?” he finally asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “You guys have always been here, but vamps were a minority—until there were enough vampires to survive a potential war, they all stayed in hiding.”

  “I don’t think it’s true,” he said.

  When he didn’t speak for a long moment, I finished the thought for him. “You think the crackpots are right—the ones who tell their stories to the American Enquirer and post their crazy theories on the Internet. Vampires didn’t come from this world.”

  Reese nodded, watching me carefully.

  “So where did they come from?” I tried to keep my voice level.

  Leave it to me to get hooked up with the one vampire who bought in to the craziest bullshit out there.

  Then again, the pulsing blue oval on the wall—a hole in the world leading nowhere—suggested that maybe Reese wasn’t so crazy, after all.

  “I know it sounds insane,” he said. “But fifteen years ago, so did the idea of vampires. I think there have been a few vampires here for a long time. They came from wherever, found a world full of walking, talking meals, and stuck around, turning a few other people here and there. But there weren’t many of them. About eleven years ago, there was a series of ritualistic murders exactly like the ones you’ve been investigating, but in New York City.”

  I shook my head. “No way. It would’ve popped on one of the databases when we entered these in the system.”

  “Hear me out. Not long after, vampires started showing up in huge numbers—first in New York, then in other places all over the world. And in all those places, there were murders like these. Exact same MO.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  He paused for a long moment. “Because I was the lead detective on a case like this one in Denver. And suddenly, all the cases disappeared from the databases. Then the cops who were working on them started disappearing too.”

  “You’re a cop?” My rising voice echoed in the empty sanctuary, and I looked around to see if anyone else had heard, but Iverson and Bradley were just moving out the front entrance.

  He grinned. “Was a cop. Now I’m a vampire.”

  “Okay. Let me get this straight. You were a cop, then a vamp junkie, then a vampire?”

  “Didn’t plan on either of the last two,” he said dryly. “The Denver Sanguinary got me addicted, drove me back home to Texas, checked me into Westlake. I’ve spent the last eight years showing the Dallas Admin that I’ve converted completely.” He paused, then added quietly, “And figuring out what the fuck they’re doing here—and why they need to kill people to do it. I may be dead, but I’m still a cop at heart.”

  “Do you have proof of all this?” I asked.

  “Some. Not as much as I’d like.” He shrugged. “But in the end, it doesn’t matter. If I’m right—and I’m sure I am—then the murders are actually acting as some sort of focus to bring vampires through from wherever they originate. Stopping the murders in one place isn’t enough. We need to find out how to close down their ability to create portals altogether.”

  “How does all of this tie in to the Sanguinary and the blood house?” I asked.

  “The number thirteen has power in this world. The Sanguinary has arranged for thirteen blood sacrifices to create the portals. As far as I can tell, almost all of the vampires in the admin are part of the Sanguinary group. That means that most of the vamps in charge are also involved in opening the portals. I need to get in with them, to get more information.” Reese’s voice sounded determined.

  “How did you even know there are portals?” I glanced at the shrinking blue oval. “Before today.”

  “Hints, whispers. Nothing certain.” He shook his head and his jaw tightened. “But someone in the Sanguinary knows more, and I’m going to find out.”

  “So you think the massacre at the clinic was used to power this sacrifice?”

  Reese nodded. “Richards said this was a lead-in to something bigger. And like I said, there’s power in the number thirteen.” He held his hands out toward the portal, like someone warming them at a fire. “And power in the number in other worlds too, I think. I can feel something strong calling to me.”

  “What will happen with sacrifice thirteen?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, exactly.” He shook his head as if brushing away the pull of the blue light and turned to face me again. “But we can’t let it happen—we can’t let the Sanguinary gain that much power.”

  As he spoke, the portal flared for a moment, the outline of a hand pushing through from the other side. I gasped and pointed as a penny—maybe the same one Bradley had sent through earlier—bounced out and across the floor.

  As if that had used the last of the portal’s energy, the light collapsed with a faint pop, then winked out.

  I stared at the blank spot on the wall for a long moment before I turned to Reese. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I think you’re right.”

  He caught my gaze with his, and his pupils began to swirl with a light that matched the portal’s glow. My chest squeezed, as if my heart were reaching out to his, the energy connecting us drawing us closer and closer to one another. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “And I think I know when they’re going to kill their next victim. I know how we can stop the Sanguinary.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Reese
, Iverson, Captain James, Chief Paige, and I sat around a conference table at the station, the door to the meeting room closed and locked. I had smuggled Reese in through a back entrance, and we had spent the last few minutes outlining our plan.

  “Are you positive?” Chief Wallace Paige asked.

  “As sure as we can be, sir,” Iverson responded.

  “Magic,” Captain James said, shaking his head. He blew out a sigh. “You’re certain the next sacrifice is set for Mendoza’s party?”

  Reese nodded. “It’s the biggest vampire gathering I’ve ever heard of. Every local member of the Sanguinary will be there. We can take them all out and keep them from bringing through whatever is on the other side of that portal.”

  “And taking down the vamps won’t add to this magical power?” Chief Paige was focused, his deep voice rumbling and intent.

  “We can’t know for certain.” Reese opened his palm in a one-handed shrug. “But if vampire deaths opened the portal, I don’t think the Sanguinary would have hesitated to sacrifice their own.”

  “This is why you sent me in, sir,” I said. “To find out what Sanguinary was. Now that we know the connection between the Sanguinary and the killings, we can stop them.”

  Everyone around the table nodded.

  “Very well.” Paige leaned back in his chair, nodding. “You two see if you can get an in to this party without drawing any additional attention. We’ll get ready on our end.”

  Reese smiled, but it was a grim expression. “Halloween night—seems like a perfect time to kill vampires.”

  Chapter 15

  I caught a ride back to my apartment with one of the uniforms.

  I had spent the entire night at horrific crime scenes, and the thought of sleep—of allowing myself the luxury of unconsciousness in a world where women were tied down to altars so their bodies could be sliced into the right shape for vampire magic to flow through them—made me dizzy and sick. So instead, I went for a run. The early morning haze had burned off quickly, and the bright sunlight beat down on my face. Usually I hate the Texas sun, the way it pounds on my head. We native Texans know to stay out of the midday heat.