I left the motel room ready for war. If I was lucky, no one was going to die tonight. I needed the vampire – Lash, I was guessing – alive if I wanted him to confess to the killings. Why did I think he did it? I just had a hunch. No one came after people poking around if they had nothing to hide, not even vampires.
I could feel the darkness, prickling across my skin, and I knew it was going to be a long night. The air was thick and humid and it made it hard to breathe. I wondered if Carl could feel it too, with all his vampire hunting experience. I wondered if humans could hone their senses, or if it was just me because I naturally had them.
I stepped out into the night and headed for my bike. I knew exactly where to start.
Beth Bank’s house was in an isolated spot in the threes at the foot of the mountain. The kind of place where no one could hear you scream. The yellow police tape was still around the house, but ripped here and there and hanging loose to the ground like the scene was forgotten. There were no investigations going on here. I wondered if it was because Beth had been a vampire, or if it had to do with Carl being arrested. I hoped for the former – that meant they weren’t set on locking him up for life, but I couldn’t be so sure.
I felt her passing, felt the ominous darkness that came with death still in the air. A killing was different from any other kind of death. If it was brutal murder, it hurt. Even to those who weren’t close relatives.
The house was quiet and empty. It was a ranch-style house, but much smaller, complete with a wrap-around porch and swinging bench by the front door.
I made sure it was empty, but I sensed nothing inside. No one, human or vampire. Not even a pet. Lucky for the pet, because I doubted anyone had been by here to fill up food bowls.
The front door was unlocked when I tried it. No windows for me tonight – I usually had trouble with those, especially when it was a vampire. But the shutters that were standard on vampires’ houses were up. If it was on a timer it was because it was nighttime. If it was manual it meant she died at night, not in the day, otherwise it would have been down.
The kitchen was clean, with a few dirty dishes in the sink that had started to smell because no one had washed them in a week. There was wilted fruit in the fruit basket, because no one had been around to keep it all fresh and up to date. The house reeked of happiness and a sense of care in homemaking. Beth had been a homely kind of person, I was guessing.
The whole house made me think of the kind of place grandparents would live in, warm and homely.
What this the kind of thing Carl went for? A woman that could make a home? The big bad vampire killer just wanted a place to belong. In some ways we weren’t so different after all.
I found the room where she’d been killed. It was the living room, and there were signs of a struggle. I didn’t know if she’d fought for her life before she died, or if the struggle had happened when they’d come to arrest Carl. A side table was knocked over, a lamp and a porcelain ornament broken on the ground. One of the chairs at the dining table opposite the side table wasn’t pushed in like the rest, but at an angle like it had been knocked. I fought the urge to straighten it.
There was a small patch of blood on the carpet where she must have died. Staking a vampire was messy business, especially if she was left on the carpet for a while before either forensics or sunlight got to her. I wondered which it was. Probably forensics, considering someone had called the police.
I turned away and walked through the rest of the house. The passage was long and narrow, and the walls were littered with photos of Carl and the woman I assumed was Beth.
She’d been pretty. Long brown hair and brown eyes that smiled even when her mouth didn’t. In some photos she was looking at Carl, not the camera, and the look she gave him every time was genuine. This wasn’t a set up. She didn’t pretend just to get him into trouble.
There were other people in some of the photos, too. Or should I say vampires. One was with Carl’s parents, the Englesbergs. There were other with more vampires in them, two men that looked like they could be brothers. They stood together with Beth, one on each side. The one, he looked younger, was casual and smiling. But the other had a tightness around his eyes, and he leaned in toward Beth. His body language was protective.
I tapped my finger on the glass over his face.
“We’re going to have to find you,” I said out loud. I could use all the help I could get right now, and maybe talking to someone new wasn’t a bad idea. Now I just had to find him. And for that I needed help from someone who had access to the database. I groaned.
I didn’t have a techy here. I didn’t know anyone in town besides Carl’s parents, and they weren’t going to be able to help me. After Charles Englesberg’s story about how the vampires and humans used to hate each other in this town I was nervous about going to just anyone to ask for help.
It would be a shame to get staked from behind just because I trusted someone that wasn’t worth trusting. Actually, that would be kind of ironic.
I had to go and speak to Tyrone. Did I want to? No. He had suddenly fallen into the bracket where the humans who hated vampires belonged. But I had no one else. Was I going to leave Carl to go to jail for a murder I was mostly sure he didn’t commit? Definitely not.
I didn’t have a lot of other options.
Chapter 6
His number just kept pushing me to voicemail, and this wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted to be on a machine. I didn’t like talking to a non-human recipient when it was about life and death and taking out murderous vampires. Call me fussy.
I didn’t know where Tyrone stayed, so the only place I had to go to find him was the police station. And that was a long shot because he wasn’t stationed here. What were the odds that he would be there, doing nothing at all because it wasn’t his job in this town?
I hoped that he had a good enough relationship with old Milton that he would be there after dark.
The police station was dark for the most part, office lights off in most of the windows, but the reception area was bright as a reception area should be. Crime never sleeps, so cops can’t either.
I walked in through the double glass doors and the air-con rolled over me like a stiff breeze. At this time of night it wasn’t cool, it was unpleasantly cold. When I was through the door though I forgot about it and focused on the man behind the reception counter.
It wasn’t Officer Milton. So the man had shifts after all, I was starting to think he was just always on duty. But then again, I’d never been to station after dark.
Correction: I’d never been through reception after dark. Sneaking in didn’t count.
It wasn’t a man behind the counter, but a woman. Great. That made things harder. Men were easy for me to deal with. Either they wanted to get into my pants, or they felt threatened by me because I didn’t scare easily. I wasn’t intimidated because when it was a human male I could probably take him for a ride, being that much stronger. And my confidence was often translated as arrogance.
But with a woman there were very few times that she thought I was a friend. It took a very bold, self-assured woman not to be nervous around someone else who was confident. And I was confident, before because of the size of my guns, and now because I knew my own strength.
She had dark blond hair wound into a tight bun behind her head – a no-nonsense kind of woman. She wore no make-up and she wore her uniform like it was her right. When I approached the counter she raised her eyebrow and jutted her chin out slightly, a non-verbal ‘what do you want’.
“I was wondering if you can help me, I’m looking for Tyrone Boyd.”
She gave me a cop face, with cool eyes and a face that didn’t betray anything she was thinking or feeling.
“I’ve seen him around but he’s not on duty,” she said.
I nodded. I knew he wasn’t on duty. That wasn’t what I’d asked, was it? I hadn’t said what I needed him for. It wasn’t strictly police business. In fact, it wasn’t police busine
ss at all.
“I can put you in contact with an officer that will be more than willing to help you.”
I shook my head. “I’m not looking for police. I just hoped he would be here because it’s the only other place I could reach him.”
She shook her head. A non-verbal ‘sorry’? It didn’t look like it. Just a dismissal. I sighed and turned around, walking toward the door again. My mind was running through the options I had now. I could contact Joel back home, maybe he could get into a database for me and still find out what I was looking for. I didn’t want to involve him though. He’d gotten in enough trouble being involved me once before. I tended to get jumpy about who I dragged into my business after their houses got burned to the ground.
Joel had never held the loss against me. I did.
“Adele,” I heard the smooth voice and I turned around. Tyrone leaned against the wall behind the woman that still watched me. He looked unhappy, and I was guessing he’d been hiding somewhere, hearing me talk. But he’d come out and showed me he was here, so there was a chance.
“Can we talk?” I asked.
He nodded once, and it made me feel like this favor had a time limit. I gestured toward the door and he took his time coming to join me.
When we were outside in the night air, I felt a little more comfortable. I’d seen the inside of a police station way too many times this week. I turned to Tyrone.
“I know you’re unhappy with me,” I said and he snorted like it was an understatement. “But I need your help finding someone. I think he’ll be able to help us.”
“Why should I help you?”
“Look, I get it, okay? You don’t like vampires and you feel like I betrayed you by not telling you the truth. But to be honest with you, I didn’t lie to you. And with how things are, you can’t blame me for not throwing it out in person for every person I meet.”
“I don’t have any connections to Mr. Englesberg. There’s no reason why I should get involved in this. I was just doing it as a favor.”
“I get that,” I said. “But this isn’t about him. At least, it’s not all about him. It’s about the fact that this guy is a killer, and if we don’t put a stop to this, more people are going to die. I know of two kills already. Who’s to say he didn’t do more? Won’t do more again?”
Tyrone pulled a face at me. “You’re trying to appeal to the cop inside of me.”
I nodded. I knew I was relying on strategy, but what else did I have? Tyrone sighed and looked around us like maybe the answer would hang in the night for him to make his own. Finally he looked me again, sighed a little more exaggerated than first time, I assume to make a point, and said, “Fine. What do you need?”
I smiled in the dark and hoped that the relief wasn’t too clear. I didn’t like needing people but in the last year and a half I’d had more practice, and it showed.
“You know of two kills?” he asked. “That’s valuable information you shouldn’t withhold from the police.”
“It’s not a fact. It’s assumption.”
He looked at me, asking for more, but I wasn’t going to give it to him. After he’d tried to stare me down for long enough, I told him what I’d seen at Beth’s house. He listened, and then nodded.
“Give me half an hour to see what I can do. I’ll meet you somewhere.”
“I want to go to his house. You’re going to have to give me an address.”
“I’ll text you as soon as I have something and then we’ll meet up,” he said.
“You’re coming with me?”
He shrugged. I thought he hated me. But no one with as much hunger for action as he was would give up the opportunity to kick some ass. So I agreed that he come because I could really use the help.
“You know he’s going to be a vampire, right?” I asked. Tyrone didn’t say anything, just turned back to the station. I turned away too. I didn’t know what I was going to do until Tyrone told me where he was going to meet me. But a half an hour wasn’t that long, right?
It was lot longer than I thought. But finally the message came through, and I was on my bike and ready to roll in seconds. The house was also on the outskirts of town, but a while away from Beth’s house. This family seemed to like isolation. I cut the power and rolled the last bit so that I didn’t make too much of an entrance, but he was a vampire. He would know we were coming.
Tyrone was there, waiting for me already. I wondered how he’d gotten here so fast.
“His name is Ryan banks. The eldest of three. He has a record himself, wanted for petty crimes, but no warrants for his arrest.”
“That helps, but that might make him jumpy if he thinks we’re here to pick him up.
“Okay, I think that’s enough talk,” a voice said behind us, full of authority, and then I heard the click of a gun, a round sliding into the chamber. We both turned around slowly. I didn’t put my hands up, neither did Tyrone, but we kept our hands in sight so that there was no misunderstanding about who was going to shoot.
The vampire was more striking in person. He had dark hair and dark eyes, and they were loaded with a lot more than they had been in the photos. But it was him. He looked taller in person, and muscled for a vampire. Either he’d been a body builder in his human life, if he’d had one, or he was working out now.
I was betting on the latter.
I was also almost a hundred percent sure his shotgun was loaded with silver shot. If he was a vampire with a gun he understood. I didn’t react to silver the way other vampires did – my human blood saved me – but a shotgun was going to do enough damage whether the silver got me or not. I didn’t want him to pull that trigger.
“I’m here to prove Carl’s innocence,” I said straight away. If he was Beth’s brother he knew who Carl was. I hoped. Maybe she’d kept her human lover secret. But recognition flickered through his eyes and there was at least one thing that I had him on.
One wasn’t a lot, but it was a start.
“Way to get right out with it,” Tyrone said to me under his breath but Ryan swiveled the gun to him. Obviously he’d heard Tyrone, if he was a purebred his hearing was even better than mine.
“It’s pointless not to be honest about it,” I said, not trying to talk softly.
“You’re not human,” Ryan said, looking at me.
“Not all the way,” I answered. A vampire knew these things. “I’m a half-breed.”
Ryan and Tyrone both looked equally surprised. Ryan, because I existed at all, and Tyrone because I imagined he didn’t believe I had a slither of humanity in me.
“We’re to make sure more people don’t die,” I said again. “I was hoping you could help us.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“I think I know who killed Beth. If we can get him to confess to it, he can be locked away from a very long time. And vampire prison isn’t nearly as much fun as human prison.”
“He’s a vampire?” Ryan asked. “I thought a human killed her. She was staked.” The last bit of his sentence was strained. I shook my head.
“If I’m right, and I really think I am, he killed to make it look like a human so that Carl could get framed. Carl’s birth parents were anti-vampire laws and they were taken out for it.”
Ryan finally lowered the shotgun and I felt like I could breathe easier. I was comfortable with them, but usually when I wasn’t on the business end of it.
“Come on in,” he said and we followed him into the house.
Where Beth’s place had been neat and homely, Ryan’s place was a dump. It looked like a hurricane had been through it, with last week’s dishes sitting in the sink and take-away packets on the coffee table. The difference between the dishes here and at Beth’s place was that here someone was around to actually wash them. And they still hadn’t been done. I wondered if Beth had been the one to come round and do it.
“So, where do we start?” Ryan asked after we’d sat down. I’d removed a pile of magazines to find seating space on a couch, and Tyro
ne perched on the armrest.
“I don’t think we have to find him. He’ll find us – he’s threatened me once and tried to kill me once. I have a feeling if we wait long enough he’s going to come for me.”
“So we’re using you as bait?” Tyrone asked. I nodded. I guessed that was one way to put it, even though I wouldn’t have described it that way.
“I’m assuming everyone is armed?” Ryan asked. I glanced at him and the up at Tyrone. He was glaring at Ryan. It was safe to say he didn’t like Ryan. There were two vampires – or at least, one and a half – in the room. He felt outnumbered.
“You’re ready to just run in there, guns blazing?” Tyrone asked.
Ryan shrugged. “My little sister has been killed and the police have done nothing to investigate. I think they hate us more than the killer did. I’ve been itching to shoot someone since the night she was staked.”
The anger and vengeance in his voice made me cringe. But we could do with someone who was willing to get down and dirty about it. I just hoped that he wasn’t trigger-happy. A vampire with a gun was already dangerous enough without it wanting to shoot anything that moved. But I didn’t think it would be that bad. He looked in control of his shotgun, and we hadn’t been in too much danger when he’d found us.
I was going to bet my life on those two flimsy facts.
“Right. Well, I think we just need to get out on the streets. Or to the motel. He knew where I stay.”
Ryan got up like it was done. We’d discussed what was going to happen and all that remained was doing it. I looked at Tyrone, who looked back at me, and shrugged. We got up and followed Ryan out of the house.
I got on my bike. Ryan got in a dented yellow mustang that looked like it had escaped from a scrap yard. Tyrone walked to a sleek black car that stood parked under a tree.
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