We walked out of the cell block and into the reception area.
“I’m going to have to file a motion and take it from there,” Mr. Donald said. “I’ll be in touch, Ms. Griffin.”
I nodded and shook the hand he held out to me. Tyrone chuckled when he walked away.
“Well, that didn’t look very promising,” he said.
I shook my head. I had to agree. Tyrone had kept quiet all the way through, which I really appreciated. I’d thought him being a part of the meeting was going to make things difficult but it had worked out fine, besides the small fact that the lawyer didn’t seem to be very good. Maybe it was pre-case jitters. Maybe it had to do with Tyrone standing there – he was intimidating after all. Maybe it was about the fact that the murdered was a vampire. I didn’t know where Mr. Donald stood when it came down to vampire rights, if he was for or against it.
“You know, I have a better idea to speed things along than a crummy lawyer with his ads in the phonebook,” he said. I looked at him, feeling like an idiot that he saw right through me.
“Like what?” I asked.
“Well, we can access the database and see what we can find out about the case. Things that only the police have access to.”
I wanted to say no. I didn’t really want to go off the radar with Tyrone, I liked to work alone and there was something very weird about doing illegal things with a police officer looking over my shoulder. But I wanted to know what was going on Carl’s life. I wanted to know about his past. It wasn’t just because I wanted to get him out of jail, it was also sheer curiosity. Of all the people in my life, Carl was the only person I didn’t know. And it was a personal flaw that I wanted to know enough to save my own ass.
Carl wasn’t trouble, but ignorance was, and that was enough for me. I nodded at Tyrone.
“Okay,” I said. He smiled.
“Meet me at the police station after dark.”
“Aren’t there police officers on duty twenty four hours? It’s not like they’re locking up to go home, even in a town as small as this.”
“There’s always someone on duty. Crime doesn’t sleep, after all. But the desk jobs all work nine to five unless it’s a detective. But I can get into a computer where we won’t be disturbed.” Tyrone grinned and looked very pleased with himself.
“You seem to know Fort Atkinson’s police station very well for someone who’s based in Westham,” I said.
He shrugged, followed the motion by rolling his shoulders. “I’ve been based in a couple of places,” he said.
I went back to my motel room. Tyrone disappeared to wherever he hid when he wasn’t around me. I was a little uncomfortable with him tagging along, but I had to admit that at this point I needed him. I wasn’t going to be able to find out enough without his help. It was a small town that locked down come nighttime and so far I haven’t had any contact with the locals. In fact, they seemed very scarce. I didn’t even know if Fort Atkinson was the kind of place that had a vampire population – vampires didn’t really take to mountain areas.
When night fell I got ready to leave. I opened my suitcase and took out the leathers I’d taken so much care to neatly fold into the bottom of it. Connor didn’t like me wearing my vampire-killing uniform, as he called it, but this time round he hadn’t protested. This was about Carl, and if I had to defend myself against vampires along the way, better to be prepared.
The leather felt like a second skin. I was comfortable in it. Black leather pants with lace-up boots, a black shirt so that my shoulder holster didn’t chafe me, and a black leather jacket to hide the gun and complete my outfit. I slipped my thigh sheath with my knife in it, and loaded up the Beretta 9mm and the Smith & Wesson 500 with silver shot. It wouldn’t save my life, but it would slow a monster down. Vampires didn’t respond to silver the way some other preternatural creatures did, but it was better than generic bullets.
I looked in the murky mirror behind the bathroom door. I was back. I pulled my hair into a ponytail. Somehow that made my scar look terrible, so I let it back down again.
I left the motel and straddled the motorbike I’d rented. My image would have been complete with my own bike. I drove something bad ass to complete the image. But this would do in a pinch, and no one bothered much what I looked like after they were dead. It was a terrible thing to think but it was true.
I killed the engine and parked the bike two blocks away from the police station. As I walked past homes, curtains moved – the first sign that I’d attracted some attention in this town. Until now everyone had been going about their business like I hadn’t existed. Maybe movement at night time was a big deal.
I climbed the three steps to the door at the police station. A low whistle caught my attention to the side and I was ready to attack. I didn’t show it by dropping into fighting stance or drawing my gun, but I was ready. Unless this other person was a vampire I was going to be fine. I had speed on any human out there.
“You look different,” a voice floated to me and I recognized it as Tyrone’s. He stepped out of the shadows wearing all black. It was the first time I saw him out of uniform. People always say they love a man in uniform, but the black nondescript clothes really suited him. It made his grey eyes and dark hair seem that much more sinister.
“It’s my alter ego,” I said, trying to joke about it, and then realizing it had become the truth over the past year and a half.
“I like it,” Tyrone said and smiled at me. It wasn’t the kind of smile one person gave another after a compliment. It was the kind of smile a man gave a woman when the compliment was supposed to make way for more. I didn’t know if I liked it, and I opened my mouth to say something, but he’d already turned his back and he was beckoning to me to follow him.
I didn’t like playing follow the leader. Being led meant someone else was in the position of power, not me, and I didn’t like that. But I followed him, because what else was I going to do?
He opened a side door. It had been unlocked. Either Tyrone had been busy, waiting for me, or the police here were careless. I was betting on the former. I wasn’t really sure how much I liked him being bumped up from student to officer pulling strings to full on sidekick and now leader of our little pack.
I shook it off. I was just using him to get information. That’s what it was. Soon I wouldn’t need him anymore and then it wouldn’t matter anyway. We walked through a maze of corridors that led deeper and deeper into the building. I could hear the hum of conversation toward the reception area with my acute hearing but other than that we were alone. We turned into an office and Tyrone closed and locked the door.
It made me want to demand he unlock it again, but I bit my tongue.
“Okay, so I found out the name of the victim,” he said, fishing a piece of paper out of his pocket and glancing at it. “Elizabeth Banks, but everyone knew her as Beth.”
Beth Banks. Really?
Tyrone walked around the desk and sat behind the computer, firing it up. When it was loaded he typed in the name and the file popped up. It looked like a standard vampire killing, with restraining metal and a stake through the heart. No prints on either. Lash Gartner was listed as the person to inform the police.
“I want to talk to him,” I said. Tyrone typed in the name.
“No known location. It looks like he’s a vampire.”
“That’s my specialty,” I said and fought the urge to crack my knuckles like in the movies. Tyrone cocked an eyebrow at me, I’d said too much. “I had a lot of contact with them when I was younger,” I added, but I didn’t know if that was enough. I cursed myself silently for slipping up with information like that to a police officer.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked. Tyrone nodded, still focusing on the screen. “Why aren’t you just dressed in your normal uniform? Surely you’re allowed to be here?”
Tyrone took a moment to answer me.
“I’m here to pull strings for you, and they gave me that, but they wouldn’t give me more on
the case. I asked. So I decided to see for myself. The topic of vampires is kept very low key in this place. There’s a reason why the church is right in the middle of town. It’s a religious thing.”
I rolled my eyes. I hated it when people made it a thing about religion. The way I saw it people existed, in whatever form they happened to be, regardless of what they believed. Whatever, whoever, created them remained the same whether they believed it or not. I didn’t understand the hype.
“What do they have on file about Carl?” I asked. Tyrone’s fingers flew over the keyboard again in a way that reminded me of Joel. Why was it that my job always came down to technology? No one could go out and just kill someone anymore without a digital footprint.
“Not much on the system other than the current charges. He doesn’t have any other criminal records. That will make things easier for him.”
I believed the state had nothing on him. He taught me how to be slippery. He was the master at not getting caught. For a human that was downright impressive, but I doubted Tyrone would think so.
“There is a file on his adoption, though,” he said.
“His what?” I asked. “Carl was adopted?”
“Looks like it. He grew up around these parts. Mother was killed in a brutal vampire killing and a family took him in.”
I nodded slowly. I wanted to talk to the family that had taken him in, too. Not just so that I could understand what the hell was going on, but because I wanted to know Carl. I leaned over Tyrone’s shoulder and squinted at the name. Donna and Charles Englesberg. Not his birth name, then.
I was suddenly aware of how close Tyrone was. It was like he’d shifted his attention from the computer to me, and suddenly the air around us was charged with electricity. I swallowed, and a moment later he did the same. I was hyperaware of his proximity, the smell his aftershave and the tinge of sweat that radiated from him. I backed away.
“I really appreciate your help,” I said. “It’s great getting a bit of inside information.”
Tyrone stood too, rolling his shoulders like he was trying to ease tension out of it.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. I moved toward the door and he followed, and suddenly the office felt too small for the both of us. When he was almost right up against me, hand on the door handle behind me, he stopped and looked down at me. This close he towered over me, his eyes a deep grey in the darkness of the office. I could hear my own pulse thunder in my ears. I was aware of him, of the hunger inside of him that grew the longer we stood like this.
It wasn’t just lust. It was something a lot more primal. I swallowed again. Tyrone dipped his head and kissed me, and I froze. His lips were scalding hot on mine and I felt like my heart was beating in my throat. The kiss was soft and gentle, not chaste but definitely not sloppy. He ran his tongue over my lips, and invitation, and I put my hands on his chest and pushed him away.
“I have a boyfriend,” I said. I was breathing too hard. My body was betraying me. He just looked at me with those gun-metal grey eyes and nodded.
“I know,” he said and unlocked the door behind me, opened it. He popped his head around the doorpost and then beckoned for me to follow. I didn’t want to, I wanted to get away from him as fast I could. But I couldn’t stay here alone, so I did what he asked.
Outside Tyrone stretched himself out like he’d been lounging on the couch, not breaking into a police station.
“So, where do we start?” he asked.
“Oh, I can take it from here,” I said. I felt unbalanced, like everything was wrong.
“I’ll come with you tomorrow and we’ll question Carl’s adopted parents. They might give us something useful, and with me in uniform they can’t turn us down.”
He grinned at me. Then the smile bled away from his face, leaving only seriousness in its wake.
“You can look for the other one yourself. I don’t do vampires.”
The statement was so out of the blue it caught me off guard.
“What?” I asked.
“I personally don’t believe vampires should have rights in this country. They’re an abomination. If you feel it would help to speak to Mr. Gartner then unfortunately you’re on your own.”
I nodded, speechless. Not because I was so relieved he was going to leave me alone, at least for the night, but because his sudden hatred for vampires was so apparent.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said and sauntered off into the darkness, leaving me behind in the wake of destruction.
He’d just kissed me in the office, and I’d been too stunned to do something about it. And then, on top of it, he hated vampires. Great. I thought of Connor and felt a pang of guilt. I hadn’t stopped him, not when I should have. And then, when I did, it had been for the wrong reasons. Connor had been the excuse I’d used on Tyrone, but the reason I’d held back was because if he’d gotten into my mouth he would have felt my fangs. They weren’t big enough to be prominent when I spoke, so hiding them was easy, and I never really had bloodlust so they generally didn’t elongate. But during kissing, a human was bound to notice.
And the fact that that had been the reason for my reluctance instead of the fact that I had Connor, and the fact that I didn’t really liked Tyrone, bothered me. A lot.
I walked back to my motorbike and got on it. Starting it sounded like thunder in the night air. I drove down the road back to the motel. I wasn’t done for the night, but I needed a map of the town, and I’d noticed they had one there.
The Englesbergs lived in Valley road. Number eleven. When I finally found it, nestled almost against the mountains toward the back of the town, I cut the engine again and rolled down the street. I stopped in front of number eleven and pulled my helmet off.
The smell of night plants flowed around me. Jasmine and wisteria. Humans didn’t often look for evening flowers that gave off scent after the sun went down. It was usually a vampire thing, but there were exceptions. I sent my feelers out into the night and found a lot of sleeping bodies around me in the street. They were like puffs of air that hung around your mouth during winter. But number eleven was not asleep. It was late, past then, and they were awake.
I could sense them moving around the house, calm but watchful. That was the vibe I got from them. I put my bike stand out and walked to the front door. Something about the house drew me. It was like I couldn’t stay away. Something inside felt warm, like home.
I stood in front of the door and my hand lifted to the doorbell and pressed it, and only then did I think it might have been a bad idea. There was a flurry inside, something that felt like the beginning of panic. I’d been an idiot. I didn’t know why I’d rang. It was late and I was being careless.
But then the door opened and a thin, tall man stood in front of me. He was pale in the moonlight. The room behind him was dark but a light from a next room bled into it, lighting up the background ever so slightly. His hair was black, his eyes the lightest brown I’d ever seen, so light my first reaction was to call it lilac. He narrowed his eyes at me, and he breathed in.
He was smelling me. Carl’s father was a vampire.
“Mr. Englesberg?” I asked, and he nodded slowly.
“I’m so sorry to bother you,” I said.
“It’s quite late,” he answered and his voice was hostile.
“For some,” I said and he narrowed his eyes. I smiled, wider than I ever allowed myself, and his eyes fell on my teeth. They widened slightly.
“I’m a friend of Carl’s,” I said. “I mean no harm. I’m trying to get behind what’s going on so that he can get out of there.”
“Donna,” he called over his shoulder then he turned to me. “Please come in. Miss…?”
“Call me Adele,” I said and stepped into the house. Donna appeared. She was also thin and tall, as most vampires were, with black eyes and red hair that flamed when she moved. Her eyes fell on me and her face became guarded, but Mr. Englesberg walked to her.
“She’s here to help Carl,” he said to
her. He turned to me, “I didn’t realize Carl had so many vampire friends.”
At the mention of what I was Donna’s face relaxed.
“We’re a handful of both vampires and humans that help each other out from time to time,” I said. I didn’t mention I was just half. That could wait until it was necessary to know. They led me to a family room. Couches were placed in a semi-circle around a fireplace with a flat screen television mounted to the wall above it. Charles, he’d asked me to call him by his Christian name, had sat down and Donna had disappeared to bring us something to drink.
“I’m so glad someone’s come,” Charles finally said. “The police want nothing but to see him rot in jail and I know he didn’t kill Beth. He loved her. He was here every other week to see her, even when his job called him away.”
What job, I wondered, but I couldn’t say I was his friend, close enough to help and not know what he did for a living.
“Did he know Beth long?” I asked.
Donna came in with a tray with coffee and made a fuss of adding cream and sugar. I would have preferred water but I didn’t want to be rude.
“He knew her for a long time, they grew up together, but they’d only been dating for a year before she died.”
Donna looked like she was going to burst out in tears. A year. So it had been pretty much since we’d both given up killing vampires for a living. I guess we’d both accepted a side of ourselves we hadn’t wanted to admit before.
“If you don’t mind my asking, how did it happen that you adopted a human child?”
Charles glanced at Donna, who nodded. He was allowed to tell me.
“His mom was killed one night. A rogue vampire, they’d called it, but we all knew him. He’s crazy, he believes that humans don’t belong here. Carl’s dad had already died years before. They were part of the humanists group that claimed vampires were an abomination, pure evil. There were a group of vampires that said they didn’t want any violence. We didn’t want to see humans killed for their opinion. But Lash in particular didn’t like that, and he made sure that they died. It was in that time when the rights were just in, and no one knew how to deal with it. We took the poor boy in. No one wanted anything to do with him because his parents were taken by vampires, cursed by nature, they said.
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