by Candy Crum
As we stood in the door, I looked down to the floor just in front of the wall to my right. There it was. A massive blood stain. My eyes filled with tears as I stared at it. It was much larger than I expected. Actually, I wasn’t sure what I expected, but that wasn’t it.
“Why am I crying?” I asked, wiping away the tears that had spilled onto my cheeks. “Why is this room and that spot affecting me the way that it is? I feel scared. Abandoned. Anxious.”
“That blood is human,” Cass said, his voice very soft. “Is that yours?”
I nodded.
He followed suit, nodding his head as well. “If I had to guess… I would say your tears are coming from you mourning your human death.”
“What?” I asked.
Cass sighed before he spoke. “This is the very last place that you were human. You can’t even consider the hospital the last place because you were in the process of changing. This is the final resting place of you. You lost your mortal life here. That Mia is dead, and she’s never coming back. That blood stain, right there, is the last shred of your innocence. Now, you are a part of the shadow world. You’ll never again know what it’s like to wake up and go to work, come home, and just live without the knowledge of everything you’ve learned. That is why you cry, sweets. You’re mourning your death.”
His words hit hard. There was no doubt in my mind that he was right. The emotions that I felt were strikingly human. Fear. Anxiety. All things that I felt just before, and also as, I laid there, dying in a puddle of my own blood. I couldn’t believe it. The amount of strength that I’d found within myself over the couple of weeks prior was significantly different than anything I could find before. I’d always considered myself a strong person, but it was nothing compared to the new me. It made me wonder how much more I would change.
“I can’t smell anything else in here,” Cass said. “Just your blood. Uh… Sorry. That was a little insensitive. I’m going to walk around.”
He tried not to look me directly in the face. I knew he had no idea how to handle what I was going through right then. I had no idea how old he really was, but I assumed that he was old enough to have forgotten what it was like to say goodbye to his human life.
“There has to be something,” I said. “I’m betting they hid a bunch of stuff in the walls.”
We each heard the front door open and stepped just outside the office door to find Andrews walking in. He wasn’t even shy about it. It wouldn’t matter having an obvious unmarked police car out front because the police have been in and out. It’s obvious to Jay they haven’t found anything. However, random people breaking in would be suspicious. Drug dealers know how other drug dealers work. They’d be more likely to know what Jay was hiding and where.
If anyone thought that our little trio was part of another drug ring, we could get busted, quickly. Andrews showing up kind of saved us from that. It was obvious that Jay had been very confident that nothing would be found, or they wouldn’t have left it for so long. Someone would have been back by now.
No, they were sitting and waiting for it to all blow over before coming back.
“Find anything, yet?” Andrews asked.
I sighed. “Just a shit ton of my blood in the floor. Other than that, no. We haven’t physically found anything, but Cass can smell bodies and drugs. He wanted to scan everything on this floor before moving on, though.”
“Actually, that’s a good idea,” Andrews said. “Thorough. Don’t be random and move from room to room only to go back again.”
“Found something!” Cass called out. I hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t in the living room.
We went into the office again, and I was careful to ignore my blood spot. We looked over behind the desk, where Cass was standing. He began furiously ripping books off the built-in book shelves. Once it was clean, he began tearing it apart. The boards were nothing against his strength. They snapped into pieces under the force of his hands.
Once he’d cleared the area, he punched through the back and straight into the wall. When his hand emerged, he was holding a plastic-wrapped packaged full of something white. Cocaine.
“The smell of your blood was throwing me off,” Cass said. “I guess there was something on this floor after all.”
“How much more?” Andrews asked.
Cass began tearing the wall apart and found several more.
“I don’t think there is very much hidden in any one place,” Cass said. “At least, if they were smart, they wouldn’t have done that. I’d say this is the majority, if not all of it in here.”
Once Cass and Andrews were convinced the room was clear, we moved further into the house. We cleared the first floor and moved up to the second. The second floor had two rooms that hid drugs within their walls. Still – we found no bodies. I had a feeling those would be the last things that we’d find. With every moment that passed, I became more and more nervous.
“All that’s left is the basement,” Andrews said. “If you smell decayed human bodies, I have a feeling that would be the safest place to keep them. I can’t smell anything. It smells just like it did the last time I was here. You fuckers really need to come out of the closet already. We could use you as detectives.”
“If the immortal queen has her way, that will happen soon enough,” Tristan said.
“That’s no shit,” Cass said.
“You guys keep talking about this war, but haven’t told me shit about it,” I said. “Why do you keep talking about immortals? Aren’t we all immortals?”
While I both wanted and needed to learn all about this crap, I was actually trying to distract myself. I didn’t want to see what was coming.
“We are all immortals,” Tristan said. “Meaning that we are all immortal. The immortals are different. Khia, their queen, is a deceitful, vengeful woman. She was born human, but allowed a demonic-like soul to possess her and give her immortality and power. Each generation from there on was able to inherit her power like she’d had it from the day she was born.”
Cass spoke then. “Khanae, my queen, is hell bent on reclaiming the Egyptian throne that Khia stole from her three millennia ago. She wants to protect the humans. Rumor has it that the girl that’s supposed to bring about the end of the great war has been found and Khanae has her.”
“It sounds like they aren’t too different from us. I’m planning to start a war of my own, but local,” I said as we made our way through the kitchen and to the door that held the stairs to the basement.
I took several deep breaths before Andrews opened the door.
“This war will affect all of us,” Cass said. “At some point, every vampire on earth will be called to join. Khia has many rogues fighting on her side against our queen, Khanae. We will all be called to choose our side and fight.”
“This really affects everyone? It’s not just a squabble among the species?” I asked.
The smell of dead bodies grew stronger and stronger with every step I took descending the stairs. Tristan grabbed hold of my arm and looked down at me in the almost darkness.
“Mia, our immediate concern is finding this Jay and killing him before he finds a way to kill you. You need to learn to control your power. I worry for you more than you think, even in the very short time that I’ve known you. Right now, we must worry about the immediate future. But make no mistake, this war will come, and you will be asked to fight. You can choose to, or you can hide or flee, like I suspect many will do. When that day comes, I want you to be ready.”
The seriousness in his tone and the way that he looked at me made me even more nervous. I didn’t want to run. I never wanted to run again. I wanted to save the city from Jay, and then I wanted to save the world. With Tristan and Cass with me, and even Andrews, there was nothing I couldn’t accomplish.
Well… unless it was walking into a seemingly clean basement that smelled of decayed human flesh, mildew, and dust. That one I wasn’t doing too good with. Cass was already standing in the middle of the room stari
ng down at the concrete floor. He took a deep breath as he looked at all of us, a small bit of the early morning sun peeking through the tiny ground level windows.
As he exhaled, he lifted his fist and punched straight down, neatly painted concrete shattering everywhere. When the dust settled, I saw it… A shiny black trash bag glistening in the sun. It was tightly taped around something oddly shaped resting just under the surface.
Chapter Five
Despite knowing what we’d come down there for, I still took a sharp intake of breath. My entire body locked up. I knew what it was, but that still didn’t stop me from asking, “Is that what I think it is?” all while hoping beyond hope that it wasn’t what I thought it was.
Cass cleared away the large broken pieces of concrete as Andrews watched carefully. Once the concrete was cleared away, even he could smell the scent of human decay with his human nose. That meant that it was even worse for the rest of us.
“I’m afraid it is,” Andrews said after a few moments.
He reached down and tore open the plastic to find a face staring back at him. Andrews jumped back so quickly that one would have thought that he’d been punched. He began hyperventilating and collapsed to the floor. I quickly ran to his side, kneeling beside him and placing a hand on his back.
“Andrews, what’s wrong?” I asked. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
He began shaking his head as his eyes squinted closed. Tears squeezed out of the inside corners and ran down his mocha skin.
“My niece, Michelle, has been missing for about six months,” he said.
As soon as the words left his lips, my heart sank. I looked over to the hole and saw what appeared to be dark skin. The girl in the hole was black. Chills rushed through me. Andrews… Oh, my God.
“She ran away. She had all kinds of drug problems. Her dad ran off, and she went from a 3.9 GPA student to a 2.3. She quit studying, she started smoking pot, then she got into harder stuff. She wanted to be a doctor, and she was well on her way to it. Smart as hell. Her mom and me… We tried to get her better, but she fought us so hard. She was only sixteen. She lives a couple of towns over. I never in a million years would have thought to look here. Jay… They… They must be further out than we thought… Oh God…”
As soon as he stopped talking, he began hyperventilating again. The words he spoke only having served to remind him of the feelings he held for her.
“Tristan,” I said. “Make it stop.”
Tristan made his way over to the two of us kneeling in the floor.
“No!” Andrews said. He spoke between short, shallow breaths. “I… don’t… want… to… forget her.”
Tristan reached out, his hand resting on the back of Andrews’ neck. The contact immediately calmed Andrews. I could feel the small amount of power emanating from Tristan as he pushed his will onto the hysterical man.
“No,” Tristan said, his voice incredibly soft. It was soothing. It had a seductive tone to it, but given what we are, it made sense. “You shouldn’t forget her, but you need to be strong for her. Shh. Give in and let me calm you.”
Andrews stopped shaking, and his breathing began to return to normal. The tears stopped flowing. I was surprised to see that they didn’t return, even when he looked over at his niece’s body buried within the floor. I looked at her and realized that it could just as easily have been me lying there. I could have been right next to her. It was a horrible thought.
“Mia,” Andrews said. “I need you to do me a favor.”
I had a bad feeling about that favor.
“Okay. What is it?” I asked.
“I need you to come here and look at a photo for me.”
Chills ripped their way down my spine. No. Please no. I didn’t want to look. I didn’t want to look and possibly see one of the girls from Jack’s memories. One of them he killed. One of them that he tortured. I vaguely remembered a darker skinned girl. Beautiful with light eyes.
Please, no. Please, no. Pleeeease, no. Don’t be her. Don’t be her. Don’t be her.
I kept repeating those things over and over in my mind, silently praying that the girl wasn’t her. Andrews held his phone out to me, and I nearly threw up. There she was. Beautiful and full of life. I could see such excitement in the smile on her face.
Tears spilled down my cheeks.
Andrews’ brows furrowed, his lips pressing into a thin line. “How bad was it?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I had no idea what to say. I couldn’t imagine breaking his heart like that.
“Mia,” he said. “Please. Was she one that you saw?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
He sighed. I could tell that he wanted to cry, but Tristan’s compulsion held tight. “Was she beaten?”
I paused for a moment before nodding once again.
Andrews waited before asking his final question. I knew what he was going to ask, and I didn’t want to answer.
“Was she… Was she… I can’t say it.” His voice quivered as he spoke. That man was ripping my heart out. I felt terribly for him.
More tears spilled down my cheeks just before I looked down at the floor. “I’m so sorry.” It wasn’t yes or no, but it was all I could manage.
“Please tell me that he suffered,” Andrews said.
I nodded. “I felt her fear. I felt the fear of his victims as I saw the memories of him going after them. When I did, I turned every last bit of it back at him. He saw everything that he’d done to others, including your niece, aimed right at him. He was screaming until the moment he became too weak to scream any longer.”
Andrews nodded. “I suppose that I’ll take comfort in that, though my sister won’t have a clue. I can’t tell her that a succubus killed him slowly. Tortured him the way he deserved. All I can do is tell her that her only daughter was tortured and killed before being buried under a basement floor.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I promise that I will find all of them. They will all pay for what they’ve done. Tell her that.”
“There are others,” Cass said. “I can smell them. She’s not the only one.”
“Go ahead and get out of here,” Andrews said. “I’m going to call this in and have them come in here with another team. This place needs to be torn apart by professionals. I want to make sure to get all the evidence that I can. Not all of Jay’s men can come back in body bags. That’s how the people on TV get caught. We have to do something the right way. Especially with my niece. Now, go. I’ll finish up here.”
We didn’t argue with him. We knew that he needed time and space. My thoughts were pounding in my head, and my heart felt like it could explode with grief for Andrews. Such a beautiful girl. Such a sweet man. All I could do was run the promises that I’d made through my head, once, twice, a thousand times. Repeat them over and over until they weren’t something that I simply had to do…
They were quickly becoming a way of life.
Chapter Six
The field trip to the prison was called off that day, for good reason. Later that day, Andrews texted me and thanked me for helping him get closure. He said that after his niece’s body was exhumed from the basement floor, he couldn’t take any more. He had to leave. They were working on pulling another girl out of the floor, and he saw Michelle, his niece, in that bag all over again, even though she’d been loaded into the back of the coroner’s van.
Three more girls were pulled from the basement and two out of the back yard. Five. Five young women ranging in ages from sixteen to twenty-five. All five had been in Andrews little file. Three of the five had flashed through my head the night I killed Jack. That meant that three of them had at least one of their killers murdered. I just needed to find the rest.
The whole thing put me in a shit-tastic mood. The absolute worst, most craptacular day I’d ever had had never even left me feeling quite so drained – and I’d had a few of them. I told Tristan and Cass that I’d had enough. After that, there was no fight left in me. Ther
e wasn’t a shred of me left that thought I was a monster. I had my humanity. I cared about humans. I wanted to be, as Tristan put it, a warrior for the humans. Why the hell should I be broody and feel bad for what I am when I plan to hurt no one, except the monsters that would do harm to the innocent?
I took twenty-four hours to calm myself before telling Cass and Tristan that I was going out. I planned to do things for myself. Tristan still forced Cass to go, to make sure I didn’t kill anyone. Awkward, but it was fine. While I was very confident in myself, I understood that Tristan wasn’t. I’d never been with a human post-transition, so I could see why he’d be worried. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to have Cass with me, though I stood by the awkward part.
My emotions were all over the place. I could barely hold a single thought as we pulled up to the strip club. The Candy Shop. How appropriate. With everything I’d learned, I knew the only thing that could clear my mind was satisfying my true nature. Cass held my shaking hand as we walked inside, but was quick to part ways from me after crossing the threshold. As I stood there, scanning the floor of the bar for someone that I felt hungry for, I tried to decide what I craved.
With all that had happened, I had a lot of rage. Did I want someone that I could dominate? A woman perhaps? I didn’t really like weaker willed men… Hmm. I needed to learn control. Maybe I should learn total control. Or… did I want to be dominated? Should I learn to be submissive, even when I know I’m stronger? Did I want to relieve stress by relinquishing total control? Oh, it was so hard. There were so many wants. So many desires.
“Hi. I’m Curtis.”
I turned to see a man standing to my left. There was a smile on his lips and no hesitation in his posture. I didn’t respond as I studied him. He was tall, thick in the chest and arms. Dark hair and eyes. He was strong, both physically and in spirit. He was a sexual predator, though that term meant something totally different to me than the average human. This was something dark and delicious, but very harmless.