by E A Price
“Yes you did, and you still do. But you’ve always been so independent that you refused to acknowledge that you meant that much to me, or that I meant that much to you.”
“Humph.”
“I think you and Raf will be very happy together, and he seems very enamored with you.”
“Don’t know why, unless it’s my looks.” Her tiger agreed vociferously with her mother’s sentiment, but Isis felt the need to argue. Or maybe, even though under pain of torture she’d never admit to it, she wanted a little reassurance from her mommy.
“He seems patient and kind and perfect for you.”
“You only haunted him for like half an hour. You’re just saying all this garbage because you want grandchildren.”
Cleo’s eyes sparkled. “I do, and with your genes there’s a good chance they’ll be able to see me.”
“Keep dreaming, specter.”
Her phone trilled, and Isis made a lunge for it before they started talking more in-depth about, ugh, feelings. She’d had her fill for the day, nay, the week.
“It’s me,” chirped Jessie.
“Hey nutsy, what’s up?”
“You know you asked me to check the Vampire Directory the other day, well guess what?”
Isis waited a few beats before growling at her to get on with it.
“A vampire called Elijah Grey has just been added to the system today,” proclaimed Jessie in a rightfully smug voice. There really was no one in the SEA half as good as her. “He says he’s been in Europe and only just returned to America, which is why he never registered before now. But, he claims he is Elijah Grey, who happened to be the brother of Elspeth Grey.”
Isis blew out a breath. “Nutsy, that’s great. Have you got an address for him?”
“Sure do!” Jessie rattled it off and said her goodbye.
Hmmm, maybe they do have a witness to their grave robberies. Plus she was almost positive this guy had whacked her round the head, sending her flying into an open grave. That at least deserved a punch in the face. If not a kick to the nuts.
She called Raf; no answer. He was probably dealing with the Georgia issue. Rather than waste time she decided to check out the vamp on her own. It was probably for the best. If the vamp was a little testy, she didn’t want to have to worry about keeping Raf safe. With a hasty goodbye to her mother, currently trying out her various ‘boos’ on the cats – all to no avail, they were unflappable – she made her way over to the address Jessie had given her. Raf might be a little peeved that she went without him, but she’d find a way to make it better. Hey, she could just take off all her clothes and distract him. Ms. Kitty growled in agreement at such a good suggestion. Yep, that’d work.
*
“Igor, I think we’re finally ready,” chirruped the doctor, excitedly.
Igor grunted, unenthusiastically.
“Not long now, my love,” whispered the doctor over their beloved’s body.
“Humph. What about Igor?” demanded Igor of himself.
“What about you?” asked the doctor, puzzled.
“What happens to Igor when he’s alive?” Igor sneered and pointed at the mish-mashed corpse the doctor was simpering over. If the doctor continued, it wouldn’t be long before Igor was vomiting over it, or tearing it apart out of anger…
The doctor waved a blue gloved hand dismissively. “We’ll all be one big happy family.”
“Humph, happy…”
Chapter Twenty
Raf approached his target cautiously, as he would a wild animal. Not a sexy, wild animal like Isis when he was trying to seduce her. No, the foaming at the mouth, spitting mad kind of animal that he believed Georgia was capable of becoming. She was getting ready to leave, so he needed to pounce now. “Georgia, I need to speak to you,” he said, firmly as he approached her desk.
She looked up immediately, her cheeks tinged a guilty pink.
“I don’t want to make a big deal out of it,” continued Raf, even though he was absolutely livid. Isis had been amazingly calm about it, but Raf wasn’t. He was hanging on by a thread. How dare Georgia insult his woman that way? How dare she suggest that there was something wrong with them being together.
“A big deal out of what?” asked Georgia with far too much false innocence.
“I can’t ignore this, Georgia, you’ve gone too far.”
Even more heat rose to her cheeks, turning them apple red. “It was just a joke,” she stammered. “You’re taking it too seriously.”
“Seriously? Georgia,” he spat, incredulously. “I need to talk to the captain about this; you can’t behave this way. The picture was one thing, but what you did to my car…”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, waspishly. “That stupid picture was nothing to do with me. Do I look like the kind of woman who knows how to photoshop things?” Her hand gestured up and down her body. Apparently being attractive went hand in hand with computer illiteracy. “I spend my free time on dates not nerding it up behind a computer and I never touched your damn car.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
She blushed again. If she weren’t careful, she wouldn’t have any blood left in the rest of her body. “I just glued your desk drawers shut.”
Raf almost barked with laughter at that but he bit his tongue. What was this? Kindergarten? “You did? Why?”
Georgia balled up her fists and pursed her lips. “I… I was just pissed at you for going off with that stupid shifter.”
“You realize there was never anything between us, Georgia?”
Flicking her hair over her shoulder, she sniffed. “Your loss.”
“Sure.” More like his narrow escape. “Get my desk drawers sorted out immediately.”
Georgia fidgeted, refusing to meet his eyes. “You’re not telling the captain?”
“Not over this, no. But no more pranks, and no more trash talk about Isis, understand?”
Sucking in a breath, she bit her lip. With very little patience, he snapped at her to tell him whatever it was she had to say.
“Then I also better take out the Halloween decoration I put in your locker.”
“Halloween decoration?”
“This stupid witch decoration, I thought it would be funny if it jumped out at you when you opened your locker. Detective Barnes set it up for me. I’ll get rid of it.”
“Hilarious, see that you do.”
He walked away shaking his head, noticing that Georgia fled the room as quickly as she could. Raf wasn’t sure whether he had underestimated or overestimated her. Course that didn’t explain who had created that picture or defaced his car.
He could borrow a car from the precinct, but he wanted to stop this before it escalated. He gazed around at his colleagues, alighting on one after the other, wondering whether they were targeting him or Isis. On a whim, he tried to open his desk drawers and sure enough they were glued shut. Not even a firm yank had those suckers opening. Impressive. He wondered, idly where she got the glue. They were shut tight.
“Detective Silva?”
“Yep?” Raf looked up to find a newly familiar face giving him a mixed look of boredom and arrogance. “Officer Collins?”
“Yeah, you asked to speak with me?”
“Ah…”
“About arresting Dr. Leslie Uggams a year ago.”
“Right, yeah. Had no idea it was you.” Small, freaking world. He had just asked for the cops who had been called in to restrain Leslie; he had no idea who they were. “You remember her?”
Collins nodded, his Adam’s apple wavering furiously. “Fuck yes. I mean, ah, I was a rookie, first week on the job. My partner was Frankie Marko; he’s retired now.”
“Yeah, didn’t he move to Graceland to be a full-time Elvis impersonator?” It was kind of a relief when he took early retirement. The guy’s modus operandi when dealing with domestic disputes was to take the husband out to get him drunk and vent about his ungrateful wife. It didn’t really help the situation. Plus he wa
s stumped when he was called in to deal with a domestic dispute between two husbands.
“Sure did,” agreed Collins, ruefully. “Riding in a car with him for three months, now I know all of Elvis’ songs. I hate them all, every single last one of them. Anyway, that woman was crazy.”
Raf gestured to the seat opposite his desk. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
Collins slumped into the chair. “We responded to a call that a woman was attacking people. When we got there, Dr. Uggams was being restrained by three security guards. Before we arrived, she flipped out and attacked her boss.”
“Dr. Howler?”
“Yeah, I think that was the guy – serious looking guy, sounds a lot happier than he looks. Witnesses said that one minute they were just talking and the next, Dr. Uggams slapped him and then went for his throat. We slapped the cuffs on her and took her away.”
“Did she say why she attacked him?”
Collins snorted. “She wasn’t making a lot of sense. She kept muttering 'he’s dead, he’s gone, he murdered him'. But when we asked her who had been murdered, she didn’t respond. Before anyone could get any sense out of her, a fancy lawyer got her out and she was gone, all charges dropped.”
“Dr. Howler dropped the charges?”
“Yeah, he reckoned it was all a misunderstanding. She probably paid him off.”
“She works for him, though.”
Collins let out an exasperated sigh. “Yeah, but she’s rich. Haven’t you ever hear of Uggams' baby wipes?”
“Can’t say I have,” said Raf, drolly. Bouncing his niece and nephew on his knees was one thing; he had left the messy side of them to his sister.
“Well, she’s loaded because her family created them. Money can do anything,” said Collins, authoritatively.
“Anything else you can tell me?”
“Nothing else to tell. Frankie thought she was on drugs. I thought she was nuts.”
With those expert opinions given, Raf thanked the young officer for his time.
“Sure, no shifter today?” His eyes wandered around the station, hopefully while he sucked in his gut as if Isis was about to appear.
Raf fought the urge to slap him round his head. Maybe if he did it might knock some sense into the idiot.
“No, you can go.”
Collins shrugged and ambled away whistling.
Hmmm, why would Howler rehire her after she attacked him? Was it pertinent to their case? Were they really looking at her as a hard suspect? If she hated Howler enough to attack him, why would she want to return to her job? It sounded like she had enough money not to work, so why bother? Unless, she loved her work. But she could get a job somewhere else doing the same thing. Their current line of thinking was that an employee of the company was stealing corpses for them to test on, probably being paid by Howler. But Dr. Uggams wouldn’t need the extra cash, and it seemed doubtful that Howler would trust her to do it – given that he had to pry her fingers from around his throat just a year ago. No wonder he seemed frightened of her. So again, why rehire her? Did she know something about Dr. Howler? And who did she think Dr. Howler had murdered? Could he be opening up another can of worms by thinking about this?
Fuck, there were too many ‘what ifs’. The information Collins had provided just raised more questions, and certainly hadn’t helped them with their case. But talking to Dr. Uggams might clear a few of them up.
Raf grabbed his phone and found a missed call from Isis. He tried calling her, but it went straight to voicemail. He left a message telling her in brief terms about Dr. Uggams attacking Dr. Howler and that he was going to try and speak to her.
He had a brief moment of worry at her phone being switched off. But he fought it. If that day had taught him anything, she was one hell of a big, tough tiger, more than capable of taking care of herself. She could just be talking to one of her friends, or she could be out with one of them. He gripped his phone. Why did that idea feel worse? What if it was a male friend?
She had made no promises to him, and she barely knew him. He barely knew her, but he knew that she was important to him. It was the strangest thing. He’d been in love before, and he knew how it felt, but everything before Isis felt so juvenile, so insignificant. With Isis, being away from her gave him an ache in his stomach and being near her gave him peace – like he was meant to be with her. Lord, he sounded sappy.
He kind of thought his desire for her would wane after they’d had sex. But no, despite the fact that they’d had sex three times – count them, three! – in the shower, his ardor for her was worse than ever. His spirit was desperate to be with her again, desperate to hear her breathy moans, her roar of pleasure, desperate to feel the tightness of her body and she came again and again on his cock. His flesh, however, was still trying to catch up. In the immortal words of Zapp Brannigan, ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised’. Previous girlfriends had wanted nothing more than missionary style sex once a night – if that. Isis, on the other hand, well she was an insatiable animal. He hoped he could keep up.
Maybe this was real love. It wasn’t anything like he’d expected. With his parents, they’d fallen in love through the sheer force of will of his father, and his mother had just given in to him. It was probably more romantic than it sounded.
But with Isis, it was so easy, so right. Her smile, her snarkiness, the feel of her body wrapped around his – she was just perfect. They just fit together perfectly. He just hoped she felt the same way.
For now, he needed to focus on the case. But what happened after the case ended? She would go back to her normal life and he would be stuck here without her listening to Johnson’s complaints about his hemorrhoids, Barnes’ boasts about his sex life and wondering if Georgia might put a whoopee cushion on his chair out of spite. Not to mention the insufferable Detective Miller with his lips firmly plastered to the captain’s unappealing derrière.
No, he couldn’t think about that. For now, he needed to think about his case. Then he could start worrying about his love life.
*
“If you ever want to use that hand again, remove it,” snapped Isis at an overzealous vampire.
The bloodsucker smirked at her and leisurely removed her hand before turning back to her blood bag, also known as her date.
Yep, it was too much to expect that Elijah Grey would be at home, waiting for her to show up and pump him for answers. When she arrived at his place, a fairly swanky upscale tower block that catered to the sunshine challenged, he wasn’t home. She knocked, banged and kicked on the door before one of his neighbors came out to find out what was with the hubbub. The neighbor, another vampire, who appeared to have been turned while in his late sixties, was very crotchety and would have told Isis anything to get her out of the apartment block so he could get back to his bed. Apparently the older the person when they’re turned, the more sleep they needed. The grumpy vamp told her that Elijah was most likely at a club downtown called Donor. It was as hideous as it sounded. Vampires flocked there to find blood donors, and humans flocked there to be blood donors. The thought made Isis shudder; no way was she giving up her blood to a complete stranger. But, there was a certain orgasmic quality to being fed on that appealed to a lot of humans and shifters. She could attest to that having dated a vampire for a little while. Yeah, it was all fun and games until she started fainting everywhere. The vampire and his insatiable hunger were soon kicked to the curb.
She barely restrained Ms. Kitty as she dodged through Donor, amassing a heck of a lot of pinches and pats to her rear end. Damnit, she wasn’t fresh meat! And it was so dark and loud with obnoxious techno music pumping through the club that she couldn’t even tell which vampires were treating her like a squeezy doll and which were just leering disgustingly.
Finally, as her ass felt red raw, the bear shifter bartender pointed out Elijah to her. He was wearing a voluminous shirt with a hell of a lot of ruffles that the goth girl he was talking to probably thought made him
a romantic poet or something. Bah!
Isis stomped over to him, rolling her eyes as she caught wind of his fake British accent.
“So you really knew Byron? And Shelley?” asked the blue haired goth girl in a surprisingly high voice. She sounded like Barbie on helium.
“I was one of their muses,” boasted Elijah, in his crisp, corny British accent as he fluffed one of his ruffles. Her tiger rolled around in laughter. Jeez, he’d clearly been watching too much Monty Python.
“Wow,” breathed the young woman, and not in the sarcastic way that Isis would have if she had been in her place.
Isis coughed loudly to get their attention. “Really? Name just one of their poems?”
Elijah looked at her in surprise and then back at the goth girl who was waiting in adoring anticipation. “Well… I… uh…” he stammered.
“I know for a fact that you were born in America just over a hundred years ago,” stated Isis flashing her SEA badge. “Take a hike, Smurfette, grown ups are talking.”
She squeaked in consternation before trembling her bottom lip at Elijah. “I’ll be by the bar if you want me.”
Elijah bared his fangs. “I was onto a winner there,” he growled, reverting to his normal accent, as his eyes tracked the chubby goth girl.
“You still are, she came here to get bitten, and she doesn’t care that you’re an obvious fraud, so just bite her.” He looked over at the bar, hopefully, and the goth girl gave him a shy finger wave, and then glared at Isis. “After you’ve answered my questions,” clarified Isis.
He folded his arms and pouted sullenly. Not an attractive look and the fangs certainly didn’t help. “Fine, what?”
“You pushed me into a grave the other night.”
“Oh, was that you?” He sniffed. “Yes, it was, thought I smelled hairballs.”
Isis flexed her claws, and Ms. Kitty snarled. “I could arrest you for assault.” She wouldn’t because paperwork was just dire, but the thought of being arrested was enough to scare him. For all their toughness, vampires feared not being at home was daylight broke. They didn’t trust anyone to keep them safe and away from sunlight. They were big on nesting, and not getting burned like one of her mom’s ill-fated pot roasts.