by Jenny Allen
“He what?” Cohen’s jaw hit the floor. “The bone actually started growing back? Entire missing chunks of skull?”
“He wasn’t exaggerating. Literally half his head was a smear on the floor and suddenly it was growing back while he was multitasking. How it’s even possible for him to slice a fingernail down the guy’s body with half his primary motor cortex missing is beyond me.”
“Whoa.” Cohen put up his hands and sat a little straighter on the desk. “Look, Lilith, we have advantages. Yes we heal faster, even faster than you have been. We move somewhat quicker, we are stronger, but rebuilding bone and brain on that scale, that is beyond even us. That’s impossible.”
“It looked pretty fucking possible from where I was standing, Detective.” Chance leaned forward in his chair, daring Cohen to insinuate they were liars again. Lilith knew that the Detective didn’t mean it that way, but Chance was looking for a good reason to deck him in the face, she wasn’t. Yet.
She glanced over at Chance and then back to Cohen. “What about the actual…feeding?” She didn’t know what else to call it.
“I explained all this earlier. Do we really need to go over this again?”
“I get that your blood is allowing me to ‘feed’ on emotions, but I need a better explanation. What happens to the people you ‘feed’ on?”
“Earlier, when you were distraught and Chance was trying to comfort you, you drew on his strength and it weakened him, made him tired. You seem exceptionally healthy right now and Chance doesn’t look any worse for wear, he certainly isn’t dead, so I’m assuming you’ve discovered a …” He glanced at Chance, as if suddenly remembering that he was there and probably wouldn’t like what he was about to say. “…better way.”
“Actually people have died, right in front of me in fact. It’s not just life or death though. I can feel their emotions tap into them. So how does this work? With the various emotions I mean. They don’t all seem to have the same effect.”
“That is true.” There was a hesitation, but she knew that, secretly, he wanted to tell her everything. “Some emotions we take, like strength from a comforting loved one. However, there are a few things that cause a mutual creation of energy, where there is an equal give and take, an equilibrium. The most successful one is seduction.” Cohen’s eyes glanced nervously to Chance. She couldn’t tell what Cohen was thinking, but she could sure as hell feel Chance bristling beside her. Without a single thought, she tightened her fingers around Chance’s before they curled into a fist. Cohen stared down at their hands and continued. “It’s funny, my kind goes out of there to create situations where they can get what they need without hurting anyone and it’s the very thing that people have used to paint us as monsters from some imaginary hell.”
“Wait…feeding off seduction? Like some kind of succubus?”
“Well for me it would be Incubus, since I have man-bits.” Another nervous glance at Chance and the amused smile disappeared in an instant. “There are actually several different species that feed on energy, not just mine. But incubus, succubus, demon, they are just old terms that overly-religious, sexually repressed fools coined hundreds of years ago. We aren’t spawns of Satan, if such a thing really exists. Back in those times, people loved to blame the objects of their attractions, freeing themselves of any responsibility. An old married man leering over some twenty year old young thing blames her, labeling her as a seducing demon to minimize his own sense of responsibility and guilt over his ‘sin’. I’d like to say the human race has evolved since those days, but… ” Cohen huffed with a disgusted look, obviously an old wound of his.
Lilith leaned forward, trying to make sense of it all. “Okay, back up. Explain about this seduction thing.”
Cohen quirked an eyebrow. “I’m not really good at this. I think your dad should be the one explaining the birds and the bees. Of course I kind of thought you’d already know about that kind of thing.” All of a sudden he seemed to realize that the six foot three bodyguard sitting next to her might not appreciate his humor once again. Cohen swallowed the lump in his throat while Chance’s fingers tightened around hers. She was actually pleasantly surprised that Chance was continuing to sit silently, controlling his temper. Maybe it was their intertwined fingers. For once, maybe she was his anchor to the rational, testosterone-free world.
Of course that didn’t mean that Cohen’s sense of humor didn’t piss her off. Her eyes narrowed to angry, impatient slits. “Cut the crap, Cohen.”
“There’s nothing to explain. Sexual tensions, affection, they build energy between the two people; they give and take in perfect balance. Like I said earlier… magnets attracting each other. We feed and the other person doesn’t suffer any effects, short term or long term.” She felt an immense relief wash over her. So she wouldn’t hurt Chance by kissing him. It was comforting to know that she wasn’t going to be some black-widow, soul-sucking demon.
“There has to be some that don’t care, that feed in other ways, right?”
“Of course. Just as there are psychos in humanity, there are psychos in any species, even yours apparently. Some attend funerals and feed off the sadness of the mourners. Some others go to support groups and feed off the sorrow and strength in the group. Others will inflict pain just to drink it in. The more adjusted deviants find a way to do it all without really hurting someone. They tend to be labeled as sexual deviants, participating in BDSM either privately or professionally. Some just acquire the taste for the pain alone, or they buy into the crap moral concepts.” Lilith just stared blankly at him. “You know, that evil is more powerful than good.”
“Uh I think you’ve got that backwards. Popular culture believes the opposite.”
“Oh really?” Cohen crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back on his desk with a smug look. “Is it not a common theme that turning to the darkest alternatives brings greater power? Blood magic being more powerful than “white” spells, the dark side being more powerful than the Force, vampires killing humans being more powerful than feeding on rats, and on and on. In fact, typically the good guys only win out of pure chance or having greater numbers.”
“Feeding on rats wouldn’t work. That’s the same Hollywood bullshit that makes us sparkle in the sun like a fairy princess.”
“Completely not the point.”
“Let’s just drop the philosophy. You don’t like me poking at your race and I don’t like you poking at mine. So let’s get past the grade school crap and just get back to the facts.”
“Point taken.” He actually looked contrite. Lilith wondered how much of that was her words and how much was Chance shifting in his chair. Cohen was definitely intimidated by him, but not enough to stop pushing the envelope.
“What about slowly and meticulously torturing a victim, keeping them alive for hours and hours of traumatizing pain? Would that over-charge the batteries?”
Cohen frowned at her but took a moment to truly think about it. “Possibly. They would be able to feed as long as there were emotions to fuel them. Pain is an energy generator. Typically a person can only handle so much pain before they die, but in theory, if the victim wasn’t allowed to die, the feeding supply would be…endless. It is also a pretty powerful source. Some of the moral followers consider it the most powerful. It’s very strongly discouraged among the families because it’s a hell of a lot harder to hide than seduction. America is littered with sex addicts. There aren’t that many lining up for torture.”
“What about the death itself? Does taking a life do anything special?”
Cohen looked deeply offended. There was the slightest micro-expression of disgust before he continued. “Beside the intense sensations involved just before the death, no. What about with your kind?”
“It has absolutely no effect, negative or positive. We aren’t supernatural. Blood is just blood.”
“Interesting.” Cohen seem to get lost in his thoughts and she needed to reign him back in again.
“Are the death emot
ions more intense than others?”
Cohen bristled and shifted uncomfortably on the desk. He rubbed at his too small chin and finally snapped an answer. “Yes, but it’s not like any of us would survive on just that. You know better than anyone how a trail of bodies can compromise everything.”
“Would it increase the other abilities? You said you were faster than us. Would that possibly allow you to…let’s say, dodge a bullet?”
Cohen’s eyebrows skyrocketed. “Well… in theory, maybe.”
“What about these side effects. You said they are rare, but I assume you’ve seen them before?” When he nodded, she continued. “What about multiple feedings? Do you think they could build over time? Maybe make someone as strong and skilled as one of your own?”
Cohen rubbed at his too small chin again and thought about that. “Possibly to some extent, but still… I don’t think that could produce those results. Even if you factored in the extreme methods of feeding, draining a hundred of my kind wouldn’t allow him to do any of that. We may be more secretive than your kind to the general public, but we are close knit. We keep ties on each other. One breach of our defenses could mean the extermination of our entire race. Believe me. We would notice if someone was draining entire families.” The sense of dread was settling over Cohen’s shoulders now. There was some sort of recognition that passed behind his cool eyes.
Lilith sighed and shrugged into her chair. “There’s still the matter of how he survived the change in the first place. The fever alone would kill him before he finished changing. How could he have survived?”
“Do you know for a fact that he was human to start?”
It was a very simple question, but one that she’d never even considered. “No actually. I was just working under the assumption…. Dr. Nichols said the original strand looked odd. It was like the original strand was feeding on the new strand, absorbing it. The Vampire markers were reflected on the original strand…”
“I don’t know much about DNA, but it seems to me that in order for the evolutionary change that your species undergoes, he would have to be a fast healing race before the attack. Not all the old families are recorded. However, when I was listening to Gregor’s story, a thought occurred to me. Ashcroft’s son sounded like some of the severe rogues among our kind. So what if Ashcroft and his family were like me?”
Lilith gaped at him as if her mind was incapable of grasping just what he was asking.
“Look, Ashcroft’s son regularly tortured and killed young women. It was almost like a schedule. One thing I’ve learned in law enforcement is that typically, these aggressive crimes are compulsive. They are crimes of opportunity. Ashcroft’s son wasn’t compulsive, he was methodical. He got what he needed and then he tossed them away like an empty wrapper. Sick as it is, what if those crimes were his way of feeding?”
“Oh my god…” Lilith ran her hands through her hair in a blazing moment of clarity. “Spencer said that Ashcroft shared his secret. If Ashcroft fed him a bit of his blood, showed him his methods for “feeding”… That’s why Malachi’s wounds resembled Miriah’s so much, why Spencer said he could feel my fear, how he was stronger and faster than he should have been. Ashcroft was never human. Gregor just never knew.”
Cohen closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. “If we don’t kill Ashcroft, my family will get involved. They will kill anyone that could possibly know about this.” His eyes opened and rested on Lilith with all the weight and importance he could muster. “We aren’t heartless, Lilith, but we can’t survive exposure. If even one human found out about the healing properties of our blood… We have to finish this fast and quiet, or we will all be dead anyway.”
“Well then we’ll just have to make sure Ashcroft dies.”
Chance finally decided to join the conversation on that note. “I blew half his head off and filled him with three clips of bullets and the bastard didn’t die. How exactly are we supposed to kill him? We have to have a plan of action.”
“We’ll have to isolate him from any possible…’food sources’ and burn him to ash. But we have to do it fast. We are running out of time.”
Lilith distractedly waved a hand. “He won’t kill Duncan until he finds whatever it is he’s looking for and for now things are still under wraps...”
“That’s not what I mean.” That caught her attention. “We are about to get hit on all sides. Whitmore, he dug up a bunch of info on the Phipps Bend Property. Apparently, Spencer bought it through a dozen or more dummy corporations. The really unusual point, though, is the fact that someone put some serious muscle on the county to sell it in the first place. Several “someones” to be exact. I can only coerce Whitmore so much…
“Wait. Coerce?”
Cohen sighed and nodded solemnly. “We can have an effect on some people, motivate them to respond a certain way. It’s not quite mind control, but it definitely helps. Still…Whitmore thinks it’s bigger than us, and, well, he is right about that. I’ve managed to suppress any calls about Goditha, but it’s only a matter of time. Whitmore is only willing to wait twenty-four hours before he has the department call in the Feds. He’s completely serious, Lilith. We have about twenty-three hours to wrap this all up in a silent, cohesive manner or all hell will break loose. Once he finds out about Goditha, it might be even less than that. And there’s a good chance he’ll be finding out about that soon. A call just came in before I stepped in here, a patrol officer reported suspicious activity around the industrial park where Goditha is.”
As if right on some universal cue, Cohen’s phone lit up like a Christmas tree. He held up a finger to Lilith and grabbed the phone. As the mystery person on the other end of the line spoke, Cohen’s face slowly drained of color. When he hung up, he barely glanced at Lilith. “We have a bigger problem.”
Her skin threatened to crawl right off her body. Whatever it was she knew she wasn’t going to like it and there was already a hell of a lot to choose from in the ‘not liking it’ department.
“There’s been a fire called in. Whitmore and Humphries are already at the scene.” Cohen finally met her eyes and they were full of apologies. “It’s the Riverfront Ramada. I think Ashcroft is making his move.”
Chapter 20
The parking lot was a cacophony of sirens, screams, and alarms that blared even through the car windows. It was complete pandemonium outside the modern concrete hotel with a sea of people running toward the flashing lights of the ambulances. The air was thick with smoke, reflecting the red and blue lights like they were in an eerie fog. Fire engines lined the front of the building with their ladders extended, dumping gallons of water onto the roaring fires breaking out the windows.
Lilith stared out of the car in utter shock as an explosion of fire and glass erupted from one of the windows, raining down on the screaming crowd below. What if Gregor and Alvarez hadn’t made it out? What if they were still in there and they were hurt, or worse? Lilith couldn’t help but see her nightmare coming true. Her father in flames, screaming and writhing. No they had to be alive. They had to be. She didn’t even realize that she had a death-grip on the door handle until her fingers started to ache.
Cohen was slowly pulling the car towards the scene as close as he could get. Lilith just watched in horror as a whole line of ambulances struggled to handle the overflow of crying, screaming, injured people. Firefighters were still pulling people out of the building. As soon as they got someone clear of the debris, they would rush back into the hellish flames. They had to know there were more people trapped inside for them to sprint towards the deadly building so fast.
“I’m sure they got out, Lily.” Chance’s voice sounded odd. It was so quiet, like he was trying to be reassuring but also trying to convince himself. Her first instinct was to scream at him that everything was not all right, that they had no idea if Gregor and Alvarez were screaming in the fire or in the hands of a mad man. But something in his voice stopped her. She wasn’t the only one that cared about Gregor and Alvarez.
Gregor was almost a father to him and Alvarez was one of us. Chance had a kinship for those of our kind that worked in law enforcement, not to mention that he saw Alvarez on a regular basis when Gregor took his weekly reports on relevant cases.
She turned around with tears stinging her eyes and saw the same horrified, heartbroken look on Chance’s face. His eyes finally left the window, catching hers and she saw all the soul-crushing guilt weighing on him. Why did he have to feel so responsible for everything? Every time someone was in danger, it wounded him to the core. I suppose she would feel the same way if she’d made her entire life about protecting people. She wanted to comfort him, tell him it wasn’t his fault, but the car rocked to a stop and all she could think about was finding her father and her partner.
“Okay. We need to play this right. First thing we need to do is find Whitmore…” Cohen was in mid-sentence when Lilith tore the door open and just ran. The sounds of Chance and Cohen screaming after her died in the chaotic clamoring of the crowd. It was absolutely overwhelming. It was like plunging head first in a tank of ice water. The sensations of despair, pain, loss, fear, anger, they were just as suffocating as the thick cloud of smoke. They vibrated painfully over her body, bringing scorching tears to her eyes. The pressure made her skin tight. Any minute she would just implode. It was enough to take her breath away, forcing her to struggle for each panting breath as she pushed past people.
Everywhere she turned there were people crying and trying to choke in breaths from oxygen tanks. Mild burn victims wandered aimlessly trying to find their kids, their wives, their husbands, their siblings. One little girl clutched a singed teddy bear crying in the midst of the churning crowd completely lost. Lilith shoved her way past EMTs and trauma nurses, grabbing one and pointing out the little lost girl with the teddy bear. She belonged to somebody out here, but Lilith couldn’t help them all. She had to find her own family first.