Blood Lily (Lilith Adams Vampire Series Book 1)

by Jenny Allen

  Lilith’s mind was racing like a hummingbird’s wings. Cohen was far too smart for his own good. Either that or he was making a last ditch effort with the good cop act. She had to either pretend to confide in him with something, or call him on his bluff. She was already taking too much time to think while Cohen was staring right at her. She had to give him something, but what. Nothing that would point to Duncan directly or the family in general. Then it just popped into her head.

  “My father told me that Miriah was following a money trail on a piece of property around here. She and Malachi were working together on it. I don’t know anything specific, only that my father and Spencer were concerned about it.”

  Cohen’s eyebrow arched as she spoke, his face lighting up with the same sort of excitement she had when she found evidence. “Do you know what property?”

  “Some place called Phipps Bend.” Her clueless look wasn’t all acting. She still hadn’t found anything out about the place.

  “The old nuclear reactor site?” His brows knit together in a deep frown. “The county sold it?”

  “Apparently it was some hush deal, but yes. That is the only reason I can think of that anyone might want to hurt Miriah.” Okay, so that was pure acting, but in the light of an actual lead she could have said that fuchsia elephants sang her to sleep every night and he wouldn’t have blinked. This should kill at least two birds with one stone. Phipps Bend didn’t lead to Duncan or the family directly, so it was relatively harmless to give them and put her on the friendly side of the cops. It also gave her help chasing down the specifics about the property, if she played her cards right.

  Detective Cohen pushed away from the table and struggled to pull on a serious face. “I should consult with Detective Whitmore. I’ll be right back.” He rushed out of the room, leaving her alone with her thoughts once again.

  Her mind kept returning to Detective Cohen’s question about Malachi. Why had he just dropped the envelope and left? Was he trying to get to Gregor and been interrupted? If that was the case, how the hell did anyone know he was there? She buried her face in her hands with a huge sigh. There were so many questions that still needed to be answered and still her mind kept silently praying Chance was still okay. He was definitely a distraction and she desperately needed complete focus right now.

  Lilith had no doubt that she was still being recorded. She wanted to make a dozen phone calls but that would look suspicious, so she kept her hands clasped on the table and looked around the room. The walls were a stark white, accentuating the florescent lights and making the whole room blindingly bright. In contrast, the cheap linoleum floor was a dingy grey covered in stains. Most of them were probably coffee stains, but not all of them. It looked like they had enough time to clean the two way mirror though. The monstrosity took almost the entire left side of the room and was meticulously clean. Then there was the drop ceiling with its oddly patterned tiles, some of which were covered in large water stains. Yeah, she was definitely being recorded through that one way mirror, the only clean thing in the room.

  The minutes felt like hours with only the whir of the air conditioning kicking in to break the silence. She kept trying to think over the case, but her mind skittered to a halt either thinking about Miriah’s body or about Chance dying in her nightmare. She was wasting time in this damn place. She should be at the lab, getting answers, not stewing in some interrogation room tap dancing around questions that could put her family in jeopardy. They were in enough danger as it was.

  It slowly occurred to her that perhaps this mystery villain knew Gregor’s plans to reveal them to the public. If their existence was revealed in any connection to a murder this grizzly, they would never recover. They’d be hunted down, tortured, killed by the very people they tried so hard to live in peace with. It wouldn’t just be her family. Every vampire in the world would have to go into hiding, deeper and farther than they already were. It was difficult enough for them now. She closed her eyes and cursed silently. If that was part of this monsters motivation, things were going to get much more complicated. He’d do anything in his power to make things public.

  Malachi’s murder would go through the normal channels in New York. There was no way for Alvarez to avoid that now. Soon enough Cohen and Whitmore would find out about his murder and the similarities and then hell would be unleashed. She doubted that a police force this small would care about the glaring differences in the bodies. New York wouldn’t let her near Malachi’s case to point out those differences. They would just assume it’s the same killer.

  There was no way they could tap dance their way out of this. It was suspicious enough that Miriah was murdered just after they arrived for a visit. Add to that the fact that Malachi was found dead in a similar fashion in their home town hours after they left and there was no way that one or both of them wouldn’t be arrested. It wouldn’t matter that their arrival in Tennessee wouldn’t quite match the timeline. Autopsies can’t pin down a specific time of death. There’s usually at least a two hour window, and that window could make or break them.

  Figuring this whole thing out, even stopping the monster behind this, wouldn’t solve their problems now. She could see it all, but what the hell could she do about it. She certainly couldn’t tell the Detectives the truth. They’d throw her in the closest loony bin. They wouldn’t believe a lie and they definitely wouldn’t believe the truth. She hadn’t even considered the complications when she’d insisted on leaving Miriah there. She’d been distraught and distracted, panicked.

  If they’d just moved the body… She sighed and slumped down into the chair. It wouldn’t have changed anything. All the reasons she’d sited that night were still valid. They couldn’t have cleaned up the scene in time. They most likely would have been spotted and then they’d have forensic evidence in their rental car on top of it. She’d made the right decision. It would have been much worse if their car held any trace evidence of Miriah’s body. Either way, they were screwed.

  An hour or two must have passed while she stewed in her thoughts. She refused to pull her phone out of her pocket to check the time and give them another reason to be suspicious. Finally, the door swung open and Cohen breezed into the room. He had a kind of grace about him that she hadn’t really noticed before. When the cops were confident, it didn’t bode well.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting so long.” He flashed that too bright smile of his and settled into the chair across from her again. “We’d like to verify a few things with your father and this Detective Alvarez. Do you have their information handy?”

  She gave Cohen the first and last names as well as their cell phone numbers without using her phone. They were the only two numbers she actually had memorized.

  When he finished jotting them down, he carefully laid his pencil on top of his notebook, clasped his hands and looked up at her calmly. Yeah that was cop body language for “you’re not going to like this”. “We are going to hold your fiancée until we can confirm things with your father and the Detective.” Her face just fell, tears burning at her eyes. They were going to let her go. If they only knew what that really meant. Alone and unprotected with a killer tormenting her.

  Cohen reached out and patted the back of her hand with genuine concern. “We aren’t charging him, Ms. Adams. I’d just like to hold him until we clear this up. I promise that if these men confirm your story, he will be free to go. You have my word.”

  “He’s not the one you’re looking for. He trains underprivileged kids in a Dojo in New York City. He’s worked security for my father’s company since he was 17. He’s saved my life and my father’s many times over. He is a good man, Detective Cohen.” She gently clasped his hand, her teary eyes staring into his, willing him to understand. “There is a killer out there, a vicious monster that has already killed one member of my family. Chance is all I have here, the only person I have to keep me safe.” The real fear started kicking in, stealing her breath as her eyes welled with tears. “Detective, you can’t hold
him. I need him.” She couldn’t keep it together. The fear, the memory of her nightmare, the thought of how this mystery man had almost killed her once already, it all rattled her right out of her cool, logical composure.

  Cohen just stared at her completely shocked. He blinked a few times as he struggled to think. He wanted to comfort her, tell her it would be all right, she could see that in his face. He didn’t speak though, just sat there trying to figure things out.

  “Detective, please.” She thought quickly, she had to come up with a solution. “We will stay at the apartment. We won’t leave until you can confirm our stories, I promise. You can even post police at the building. Just don’t send me out there alone.”

  Cohen’s brow furrowed in a frown. “Do you know something, Ms. Adams?” It wasn’t his accusatory voice from earlier. It was actual, genuine concern.

  Lilith’s head fell forward and she took in a rattling breath. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” The words were a bare whisper. She was taking a huge gamble saying anything at all but she was banking on Cohen’s sincerity. She didn’t have any other chips to play. She’d tipped her hand, losing it like that, and now she had no choice but to find a solution.

  His face fell into absolute seriousness in the blink of an eye. He pushed out of his chair and marched straight over to the two way mirror. He made a slicing motion across his neck and she watched his head sag down heavily. She had no idea what was going on. She just watched Cohen’s back as he stood there in absolute silence.

  Finally, he turned toward her and leaned down inches from her face. “I need you to come with me.” His voice was a breathy whisper. Her heart started tripping in her chest. What the hell was going on and how much trouble did she just get herself into? Cohen grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the seat with care and walked with definite purpose to the interrogation room door. Lilith struggled to keep up with him in her stupid strappy heels. There was a brief moment where she recalled Chance’s comment on her shoes and it would have made her smile if she hadn’t been terrified at the moment. She felt like she’d just taken a bad situation and made it ten times worse without knowing it.

  They exited the room into the hall and Cohen dragged her into the very next room on the right. It was the observation room behind the two way mirror. There was no one here and the video camera facing the room she’d been in was turned off. Cohen shut the door behind him and glanced out the glass into the second interrogation room. When Lilith followed his gaze, she stepped closer to the glass. Chance was hunched over in his chair, leaning heavily against a metal table identical to the one in her room. He was alone, head hung low, looking completely defeated and it made her heart ache.

  “I wanted you to see that Mr. Deveraux is okay. He hasn’t been thrown in a holding cell or mistreated in anyway.” When Lilith was able to tear her eyes away from Chance, she saw Cohen leaning casually against the door with his hands in his pockets. “I’m not the bad guy, Ms. Adams, and I think you know that. I genuinely believe that you are not responsible for the events and that you are in danger.” His face was complete, open honesty. He really believed her, which seemed miraculous.

  “I want to help you.” He sighed heavily again and leaned his head back against the door. “Hell, if it wasn’t your cousin, I’d be asking for your help right now, processing the scene. You are with the Major Crimes Unit after all. We are not prepared at all for something this severe.” When he lowered his head to look at her, there was a familiar frustration in his eyes. “We deal with country hicks that move into the city and think they’re living in the hood so they should be in a gang.” He rolled his eyes before continuing. “Or it’s religious protesters that go too far at the abortion clinics, or domestic abuse cases that turn deadly. That’s what I work with all the time. This…This is beyond evil.” There was something in his voice, something he wasn’t saying, or something he was exaggerating, but what part, she had no clue. Overall, it didn’t seem malicious though. Maybe he was just covering something personal.

  His voice suddenly sounded haunted and hollow and she knew why. She felt it to. There comes a certain point where a crime is so horrible, so unthinkable that you lose the ability to comprehend that a person did this. You want to think it’s some monster or boogey man, not the guy that stands behind you in line at the grocery store. “It sounds pretty awful.” She didn’t have to act, her voice breaking and the tears stinging her eyes came easily enough just remembering Miriah’s body lying unrecognizable on the desk.

  Cohen stared at her with a soft edge of sympathy. “I’m sorry. What your cousin endured, no one should ever have to go through that.” His brown eyes were warm and caring, filled with such genuine emotion that it was a little surprising. Cops that cared this much usually just get eaten alive. Eventually they see one too many victimized children or mutilated corpses and they just burn out. You can only feel so much before you break. It would be a pity. From what she’d seen, Cohen was a great Detective and those were rare.

  Lilith turned and stared through the mirror to Chance’s interrogation room. She felt better, safer, just being able to see him. How ridiculous was that? He had no clue where she was. He couldn’t come to her rescue, but somehow just knowing he was close was comforting. Maybe it was all the trauma of the past few days with Chance being the one familiar thing she could cling to.

  The shrewd Detective didn’t miss the expression on her face. “He really is what you say, isn’t he?” When she turned to him with a startled look he continued. “He’s no monster. Whitmore really likes him for this, but I think that’s just because Whitmore is a lazy bigot that will jump at the first convenient suspect.” He released a sigh of pure frustration that almost bordered on a growl. Those brown eyes rested on her again and there was a keen sharpness in them. “However, you two are not here to visit family, are you?”

  “Actually, we are here for precisely that.” It wasn’t a lie. If Lilith wanted to visit her Uncle, she’d simply have to find him first. Cohen seemed like a great guy, a trustworthy type, but he was still human. She couldn’t reveal things that would endanger her family and most likely just get the Detective killed.

  “I can be your ally, Ms. Adams. I want to find your cousin’s killer just as much as you do.” Actually, Lilith didn’t really want to find him as much as kill him, but semantics.

  “I believe you, Detective.” She rested against the glass, staring at the door behind Detective Cohen with sightless eyes. The facts of the case kept swirling in her brain and she fought to piece them together.

  “Okay, let’s go at this from a different angle.” She was only half listening, lost in her own thoughts. “How long have you known Duncan’s been missing?” That snapped her head up sharply. How in the hell could he know that? There was no way that Spencer or Miriah would go to the human cops, and besides, Cohen was a Knoxville Detective not a Madisonville Sheriff.

  “How do you know Duncan?” She moved away from the glass, all the calm comfort vanishing with the chill sneaking up her spine.

  Cohen pushed away from the door with an easy grace that seemed completely effortless. “There is a reason I took you away from the cameras. It wasn’t just to show you that your fiancée is safe. There are things that I need to discuss with you that aren’t safe for certain ears.”

  The chill turned ice cold as the little hairs stood on the back of her neck. Without thinking she took a step back and could feel her heart beating a touch faster. “I…I don’t know what you mean.”

  He laughed and it was a rich, earthy sound that rubbed softly against her skin. “I know Duncan, personally, and I know his sorted family history.” There was a weight in his eyes, a significance that jolted her. He merely smiled at her startled face and leaned against the glass near her. “I’ve been helping him on a few things. So if you truly are his niece, which you certainly seem to be, you can tell me the truth.”

  It all seemed too convenient, too bizarre. What were the odds that one of the lead Detecti
ves on Miriah’s murder case was actually in Duncan’s pocket? She remembered Richard Coffee at the lab saying he had a man on the force, but that was in forensics. He definitely hadn’t mentioned a detective. Her heart truly started pounding now. She needed to get out of this room. He could be bluffing, trying to startle a reaction out of her. Well it worked. It wouldn’t take much work to find the name of Miriah’s father, but he knew he was missing. There were only two ways he could possibly know that. Either he truly did know Duncan personally and was telling the truth, or he was responsible in at least assisting their unknown tormentor. All the signs pointed to the first, but she couldn’t risk that.

  The walls seemed to be closing in, choking the breath from her as panic started to sink in. She had to get out of here, out of this room, away from Detective Cohen. He seemed to sense just how agitated she was.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He held out his large hands in a sign of peace. “Take a deep breath before you pass out. Your heart’s racing like a rabbit being chased by a fox.” How the hell could he know that? She had excellent hearing, but unless she was standing inches from a person, even she couldn’t hear that. From all the way across the room, there was no way he could. Still, his face showed every single marker of concern. She should believe him, trust him, but something about that made her gut scream just the opposite. Vampires tended to have some pretty serious trust issues.

  “Are we free to go?” She forced herself to stand up straight, clenching her jaw in determination.

  “You are I suppose.” He looked genuinely confused. Everything about him seemed genuine. It just wasn’t natural, it wasn’t right. She stared at a point on his chest so she could avoid looking at his almost handsome face but still watch his movements. “Like I said before, we are holding Mr. Deveraux until we can confirm your story.”