by Terry Spear
“Watch them. Let me know if they pull anything.” Daemon said to Tezra, “I have the tissue samples in my office, if you’d like to look at them.”
“You know I would.”
His thoughts shifting over different worst-case scenarios, Daemon walked Tezra down the hall. Like most SCU staff, Tezra didn’t care for vampires, and after what had happened to her parents and Krustalus taunting her over the years, Daemon understood her animosity. But sticking up for him in front of Gavin and the other hunters took real courage. She had to know her words would get back to the SCU, which wouldn’t sit well with many. It more than pleased him to think he’d had a positive effect on the way she felt toward some of his kind.
He guided her into his office and immediately thought of how hers had looked—light and airy with paintings of windswept beaches and seagulls heaven bound. Of light oak wood file cabinets and a desk cluttered with typed papers, record files and handwritten notes. Bright yellow sticky notes had covered the edge of her computer monitor. The screen had been filled with the scene of a tropical island paradise. Cozy and small, a guest bedroom turned office. Homey and scented with Tezra’s sweet fragrance.
His office? Large, dark heavy wood, antique, neat, not a paper or pen out of its designated place. Outfitted with the latest in computer equipment. Luxuriously furnished, the brown leather desk chair, a high-backed recliner built for comfort. The massive furniture polished to a brilliant shine with lemon-scented cleaner. Paintings of dark-forested scenes hung on the walls, and the music of the ancient Celts was piped in to give an old-world feel. Even if he had to change with the times, he preferred to surround himself with some of the ages he’d lived through.
“They’ll be back and cause more problems, you know,” she said, her voice filled with soft regret.
“Yeah. Hunters are as tenacious as a mongoose with a snake. Once they discover their prey, they won’t let go.”
She looked up at him, her eyes sparkling with humor. “You’re saying I’m like a snake, and they want me dead?”
He gave her a small smile and motioned to his chair, a veritable throne in this day and age. “They don’t want to give you up. What if you worked for my side?”
“But you’re the good guys. I mean, you’re not rogue vampires.”
Not exactly the good guys, he noted with wry amusement. “What if we formed our own task force to take down renegade vampires and cut the SCU out of the business?”
“So why haven’t you done it before?”
“Like humans, not all vampires are suited to policing the world. Each of us has our special interests.”
“And yours are?” She sat at his desk.
“At the moment, protecting you and finding the killer.”
“And ruling your people.” She opened the first of the reports concerning the tissue samples from the dead police officers and began to read over them.
He couldn’t help thinking how much she changed the feel of his office—the smell of peaches lingering in the air, the sight of her fuzzy pink sweater against the dark brown leather chair and her jeans-clad buttocks pressed against his seat, the sound of her light breath and her enchanting pulse, always beckoning to him. His office would never seem the same.
More than that, he couldn’t get his mind off the way she fell under his spell when they’d made love. So eager and responsive…every kiss, every touch made him crave even more. Here he’d hoped taking the plunge would have revealed a woman who couldn’t meet his expectations. When in truth, she had exceeded his wildest dreams.
The way she pulled her hair behind her ears, chewed on her bottom lip, ran her long fingernails over the notes, made her look sexier than hell.
She tilted her head to the side, looking puzzled. Then she narrowed her eyes. “Some of these are my slides! When the hell did you steal them from my apartment?”
“You needed them here. And here are the samples from the dead police officer outside your apartment.” He motioned to a table where a microscope and slides caught her attention.
For a moment, she stared at them, then looked at Daemon. He again waved at the samples. “See if you can learn anything from them. You’re the expert, after all.”
She made a face and he figured she thought he was mocking her. After living so many centuries, he’d learned a wide variety of occupations, some of which came in handy now and again. So yes, he was somewhat of an investigative expert, but two heads were definitely better than one. Her gaze shifted to the official police files sitting next to the microscope.
Looking back at him, she parted her lips, her eyes questioning.
He shrugged. “Files on the murders. We’ll need to see all the evidence if we’re to solve this case.”
“The chief gave them to you?”
“Borrowed. I don’t trust him, Tezra. It’s just too convenient he found out who murdered your parents. I don’t like expedient solutions.”
“As much as I hate to admit it, you may be right.”
He studied her glum expression and wondered what kind of a relationship she’d fostered with the chief. “Why do you say that now?”
Sighing, she examined the slides. “I’m a friend of Mandy Salazar who speaks very highly of him. She’s a police dispatcher and has been for years.”
“For more than ten years?” He couldn’t help but wonder if the earlier police killings were related to the recent ones.
She lifted one of the slides and placed it under the microscope. “A carefully calculating vampire committed the first murders and tried to make it look like a hunter’s vendetta. The new ones are done by a raging vampire, no finesse at all. I’m almost certain two different rogue vampires killed the police officers.”
Folding his arms, Daemon tilted his chin higher. “We have already discussed that the killer could have changed his MO. Was Mandy Salazar working for the chief when the other officers were murdered?”
Tezra didn’t look at him, but nodded.
“And?”
“I didn’t know her early on. I was only sixteen at the time and she was twenty-two. While I was trying to learn what I could about the first police murders, I chanced to meet her. She said the chief had been under a lot of strain before the killings, and she was afraid this would break him.”
“A lot of strain.”
“Yes, she figured it was concerning family issues. You know, most often that’s the case. Anyway, he kept pretty quiet about it, though she could tell something was wrong because he’d become moody and ill-tempered when he normally was a pretty cheerful guy. I’ve never known him as anything but somber and serious. I can’t even imagine him being jovial. But I questioned some others, and they said the same thing, that it was like a storm cloud had settled over him and changed him permanently.”
“Before the killings?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“For a while things were worse. She said it was really bizarre. She went to get a cup of coffee in the break room and three policemen there immediately silenced their conversation. At first, she just figured they were talking about some woman they’d had sex with or something crude that they didn’t want her to hear, but then one of the men was murdered. Two weeks later, another one was. And you saw what happened to Officer Stevens.”
“So Mandy thought maybe a connection existed between the murders of the three men and the secret talks they’d had.”
“Yes.” Tezra sat back on the leather chair. “I assume the police officers had murdered a vampire friend of his, and he took revenge. When I began investigating Krustalus, he murdered my parents as a warning. The point is why would he wait ten years, change his MO, and begin killing again? It’s got to be someone else.”
Daemon looked at the files, then back to Tezra. “You alluded to the possibility that the earlier case had something to do with the chief.”
“Oh, yes. Well, after the men were murdered, the whole police force was antsy. The chief pretty much barricaded himself in his
office for weeks, then when no more killings occurred, he started to lighten up. Except he never did return to his cheerful self.”
“Not enough evidence to make anything of that.”
“Like I said, I figured the drastic change in his mood probably had something to do with his family life. So I began to investigate that.” She flipped through the files and read through each page like a speed-reader would.
“And?”
“I’m afraid there was nothing much there. He had a wife and two young sons. No mistresses that I could discover. I checked out his financial status. No gambling debts or substantial money crisis that would account for his behavior. His parents were both alive and well. No problems with the in-laws, another source of contention in bad marriages. He genuinely seemed to love his wife and children.”
“Any siblings?”
She looked up from the files. “A sister and her husband who were both police officers.”
“You know, Tezra, getting you to reveal what you suspect is like getting blood out of a tomato.”
“Nothing there either.” She closed the file and opened the next one. “The brother-in-law was well-liked and is still with the police force. The chief’s sister committed suicide some years ago.”
“Suicide.”
She paused in her reading. “Yes, clinical depression. She’d been on medication and took an overdose.”
“When?”
“A year after the killings.”
Daemon rubbed his chin while he considered the information. “Why was she depressed?”
“An organic thing, apparently. Nothing going on in her life. Oh, she couldn’t have children, so I suppose that could have been it.”
“And her husband? How did he feel about the matter?”
“Broken up about it. Same thing with the chief. Mandy told me she figured his sister’s suicide would send him over the edge. But apparently, he got over it and got on with his life.”
“Lots of siblings don’t get along.”
“I wouldn’t know. My sister and I always did.” She looked up at him. “What about you and your brother?”
Daemon gave a sardonic smile. “When he’s not getting himself into trouble.”
“Oh?”
“Usually over blood bonds. The women he chose to be blood bonds; sometimes their boyfriends didn’t like it.”
“Did he use his charms to get the women to agree?”
Daemon shook his head. “He’s always had a way with women, even before the plague made him vampiric. But in truth, the vampirism does accentuate the ability, and we really haven’t a lot of control over it.”
She hmpfed. “That’s like saying you have no control over what you eat or—”
Daemon chuckled darkly. “That is not what I’m saying at all.”
“Sounds like it to me.”
Touching her cheek with his fingers, he grew serious. “You will have the same effect on men, though from what I’ve seen, you already wrap them around your finger and render them senseless.”
“In your imagination.”
He leaned down, pulled her hair aside and kissed her neck. A shudder went through her as her hands stilled on the file she’d been reading. “I have heard the humans’ crude comments concerning you, Tezra. It is not just my imagination.” He sighed, deeply exasperated, knowing if any man approached her in an attempt to fulfill his sexual fantasies with the huntress, Daemon wouldn’t be responsible for his actions. “You still haven’t told me why you think the chief might have had something to do with the vampire killings of his police officers.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them and studied Daemon. “I think like you do—he has a connection or he wouldn’t have gotten Krustalus’s name so easily. I think the chief knew his name all along, but worried there wasn’t anyone who could or would be willing to take the vampire down until now.”
Daemon opened his mouth to speak, then his lips turned up a notch. “I like it when we’re on the same path. But you still don’t think the crimes are connected? What if the recent murders triggered Chief O’Malley to contact you?”
“It’s possible the chief was concerned Krustalus was at it again. I’m wondering if they’d had somewhat of a truce. The police officers murdered Krustalus’s friend, Krustalus took revenge, the chief turned the other cheek, end of investigation. According to these files, the inquiry into the murders was hastily conducted, then the cases were filed away as unsolved, as if no one even wanted to get to the bottom of them. I have no idea about the Council of Hunters’ investigation concerning my parents’ murder, except that they questioned several hunters who were borderline rogues. Again, the results of the inquiry were inconclusive. Anyway, that’s what I’m speculating for now about Krustalus and the relationship he has with Chief O’Malley.” She took a deep breath. “Thank you for ‘borrowing’ the files and letting me look at them.”
Daemon bowed his head in acknowledgement, but she was too busy reading the paperwork to notice. He intended to transport himself to the greatroom to allow her to look at the records alone, unsupervised. He had high hopes she felt more agreeable toward him, though he chided himself for having any feelings of the sort.
Before he left, Atreides spoke to him privately. “Daemon, the hunter named Gavin is calling on his cell phone in the front courtyard, but I can’t tell what he’s saying. They’re not leaving though. At the same time, Voltan’s overseeing matters out back.”
“Prince Daemon, hunters have made their way through the forest, but our guards have advanced,” Voltan warned.
Daemon ground his teeth. “I’m coming.”
Tezra studied the glass slides containing the tissue samples under the microscope. Safe and secure for the moment.
“I’ll be right back.” Daemon vanished before she could answer.
As soon as he appeared in the greatroom, she yelled, “Wait, Daemon! Where are you going?”
Wolf form, or vengeful vampire? Daemon grabbed his favorite bastard sword from the rack next to the patio doors. With a blade sharply honed and a more impressive size than most of his ancient weapons, either swung two-handed or single-handedly while carrying a shield or another weapon, he gripped the leather hilt. To Atreides, he said, “Keep an eye on the hunters out front and inform me if they make a move. And don’t let Tezra leave the house.”
Her footfalls raced down the hall, but before she could reach the greatroom, Daemon motioned to Atreides, vanished and reappeared in the mist near the edge of the forest. He wasn’t about to get into an argument with Tezra over whether she could come with him. Protected in the house was the only place he wanted her to be.
Five hunters stood their ground near the edge of his property. In the form of wolves, Daemon’s vampire guards kept the hunters from advancing in the direction of the house.
His sword readied, Daemon stalked toward them with Voltan at his side. “Trespassing is a crime, gentlemen.”
The hunters held their swords outstretched, trying to keep the wolves from tearing them apart. The hunters barely looked in Daemon’s direction.
“I’m within my rights to have my people shred you into bite-sized pieces. For all I know, you are hunter renegades, have to be if you’re trespassing without a warrant.”
“The word is you have Tezra Campbell, an SCU investigator, locked up in your home. We’re within our rights to remove her from it,” the tallest of the five men said.
“We should kill them, my prince,” Voltan said. “Let me have the tall one. He is more my size.”
No one Daemon knew was close to Voltan’s nearly seven-foot height.
“Daemon!” Tezra screamed at him telepathically.
Daemon turned his attention to the house, sensed Tezra’s anger, but she wasn’t scared, which probably meant only one thing. His brother was confining her to the house. “If any of the hunters slice at my guards, kill them,” Daemon told Voltan.
He returned to the greatroom and found Atreides pinning
Tezra facedown on the couch, her cheek pressed against the cushions, her hand behind her back, elevated so she couldn’t squirm loose.
“Let go of me!” she screamed.
Atreides, red-faced and with clenched teeth, growled. “She tried to chase after you. I told her you wished her to stay safely in the house, but she wouldn’t cooperate.”
When he released her, she jumped off the couch and swung her fist at Atreides’s face.
Interceding on his brother’s behalf, Daemon grabbed her wrist and pulled her away. “I thought you wished to see the evidence from the officers’ killings.”
“I want to know what’s going on with the hunters outside. You can’t kill them, Daemon, or they’ll call you and every one of your people rogues and issue a termination decree for all of you.”
“I’m touched you’re concerned for my welfare.”
She jerked her wrist free. “I don’t want you killing them.”
Daemon motioned to his back door. “The hunters have no business trespassing on my land. They’ve been told repeatedly you are here of your own freewill by your own admission. Despite being a vampire, I have rights.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I need you to live a little longer so you can keep me safe.”
He couldn’t help but smile. “I have no intention of dying by a hunter’s sword. But Voltan sometimes needs a chain to keep him in line. I wish to return to the problem out back, but if I cannot be assured you’ll stay put…”
She folded her arms and looked more cross than ever.
He turned to Atreides. “Keep her here.”
Atreides gave him a smug smile and bowed his head.
Then Daemon vanished and returned to Voltan’s side. The tallest hunter spoke on his phone, attempting to keep it private, but Daemon’s attuned hearing caught most of the conversation. Someone was ordering the siege to cease. Smart move.
The hunter shut off his phone. “We’ll be back.” He and his men turned the way they’d come, and Daemon’s wolves loped back to their posts.
Voltan resheathed his sword. “What was the woman’s problem?”
“She intended to save me, but Atreides wouldn’t let her.”