by L. D. Rose
Once he hit I-95, he removed a pack of Marlboros and his cell phone from the center console. He brought a cigarette to his mouth and pressed the tip into his palm. He focused his chi and the cigarette lit from the heat generated by his hand. He took a deep drag and dropped his hand away before he burned himself. Since he couldn’t feel a damn thing in his lower arms and hands, he was apt to destroy them without realizing it.
Not that they hadn’t already been destroyed.
His phone vibrated in his lap, its ring tone drowned out by the stereo. He already knew who it was as he answered it, pinning the phone between his ear and shoulder as he pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and turned down the volume. Risky multitasking at its finest.
“Getting conventional, are we?” he said into the receiver without greeting.
Rome chuckled. “I’m feeling a bit conformist today.”
Blaze’s lips twitched. “What’s up?”
“You know what’s up. Where are you?”
“You know where I am.” Blaze switched into the high-speed lane, taking another drag and expelling a plume of smoke. The cool tingle of menthol filled his lungs and the nicotine kicked in, soothing his frayed nerves. He sat back in the leather seat and relaxed, cruising at eighty miles per hour.
“You know, B, we muster for a reason—”
“All right, I got it.” As the eldest of six brothers, the leadership position defaulted to Rome, and sometimes he confused ‘leader’ for ‘father.’ “My bad. I got distracted.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Man, that’s fucking disturbing. Get out of my head.”
Rome laughed. “Hate to break it to you, bro, but I’m not in your head. You’re just that predictable.”
“Fuck you, I’m hanging up now—”
“Wait, B.”
“What?”
“Swerve.”
Blaze looked up to see the minivan’s brake lights in the nick of time. He slammed on his brakes and swerved into the middle lane, tires screeching as the Chevelle fishtailed. He barely missed the minivan but the middle lane happened to be clear enough for him to make it. Angry car horns blared.
“Shit.” Adrenaline set his heart hammering and his blood pumping. He glared at the minivan in the rearview mirror to find the prick had jacked up on his brakes for no good reason. “Fucking asshole!”
Rome let out his notorious chuckle. “Pay attention.” And with that, he hung up.
Blaze blew his breath out in a shaky puff and tossed his phone on the passenger seat. He flicked the half-smoked cigarette out the window and freed his hands, deciding risky multitasking really wasn’t a good idea after all. Shifting gears, he slowed, focusing on the traffic.
Road kill was definitely not the way he wanted to go out.
Damn psychic.
‘The flourish of vigilante activity in the five boroughs has been remarkable, particularly the reported rescues at nightfall all across the city. From quiet whispers to a growing cult-like belief, does New York City truly have her own superheroes? Or are these enigmas simply militants who believe they’re above the law—’
“Are you reading that shit again?”
Detective Valerie Medeiros looked up from the front page of The New York Times to find her partner, Deron Williams, scowling at her. He held two cups of coffee in his hands and she relieved him of one, giving him an amused smile.
“What? It’s fascinating.”
“It’s bullshit.” He took a seat in front of her messy desk, his black hair freshly cropped to his head. His cornflower blue button-down shirt was wrinkled, as always, along with his black dress slacks. “Fiction to entertain the masses. I can’t even believe the Times is resorting to that propaganda.”
She set the paper down, the headline reading, ‘Is Batman truly in Gotham?’ with a blurred image of a dark figure running down an alley. The image was terrible, low resolution and dimly backlit by the sick yellow glow of the streetlights. It could’ve been anyone, really. It could’ve been a victim running from a vampire.
More than likely, it was.
Valerie grinned at Deron and took a sip of coffee. It was a little burnt, but the cream and sugar toned it down enough to make it palatable. Both she and Deron had been up all night, running patrols with the officers. Her eyes stung and her bones ached with her cumulative lack of sleep over the past week. At this point, she would drink a bucket of tar if it could keep her awake.
Although the Sarge didn’t require their presence during the day, Valerie and Deron were here, working on cases and preparing for dusk. The human crime rate in New York City had been just about nil for decades. The vampire crime rate . . . well, that was a different story altogether.
Fifty-three years ago, a vampire took the podium at a G20 summit in London and decided to show the world exactly how real he was. Needless to say, no one human came out of that building alive.
Since the Insurgency, the entire United States’ justice system restructured itself to target monsters. Both Valerie and Deron had undergone intensive training to combat vampires. To fight like them, hunt like them and think like them in order to take them down. Although the NYPD did more than their share of wiping the scum off the face of the earth, it seemed like the vampires’ numbers only doubled. With every leech they took out, two more appeared in its place.
But Valerie and Deron kept on going, kept chugging through the endless days and nights. Giving up wasn’t an option for either one of them.
“What’s the matter, Deron, don’t like a good story?”
“I like real stories, with legitimate evidence. People are making that stuff up, Val.” He gestured toward the paper. “That shit sounds like comic book material. If these guys were real superheroes, the vampires would be extinct by now.”
“Not if there’s just one woman against an entire army of villains,” she said dramatically. He rolled his eyes but smiled. At twenty-nine years old, Deron had the hardened cynicism of a thirty-year veteran. He, like all the men she knew, had seen far too much tragedy for a human lifetime. They all had, but Valerie tried to hold on to any semblance of optimism she had left.
“Oh c’mon, didn’t you like superheroes when you were a kid?”
“Let’s be realistic here.” He slouched his tall, lanky frame in his seat. “If these so-called superheroes are real, they’re making you and me look like fools. If civilians can take out vampires, why is it so hard for us to keep their numbers down?”
“Okay, makes sense.” Valerie sat back in her chair. “Ramsden was wiped off the map six months ago.” She gave him a pointed look. “Explain that.”
“The FBI took responsibility for that, remember?”
Now it was her turn to roll her eyes. “Do you really think the feds took out the General of the Temhota? Poof, just like that? The feds are good but they’re not that good.”
“Yeah, I think the feds took him out. Who else would have? Your vigilantes?”
“Who knows? Maybe.”
“Oh, Christ—”
“At this point, anyone who can take out a vampire is on my side.” Valerie shrugged. “And if our vigilantes are doing so, more power to them.”
“If your vigilantes are on our side, then why are they running?” He motioned to the paper again. “Why are they hiding?”
“Well.” Somehow she managed to keep a straight face and a serious tone. “Maybe they don’t want the world to know about their superpowers, so they must shroud themselves in the fabric of humanity and remain cloaked for all time.”
He tried to glare at her, but he cracked first, laughing out loud. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
She grinned, happy to see a smile on his face. “I got you to laugh, didn’t I?” She tapped the space bar on her computer, waking it up.
<
br /> “You dig superheroes, don’t you?” he asked in amusement, taking a gulp of coffee. “Are you a Superman fan girl?”
“Nah, Batman is more my type.” She indicated the newspaper headline. “He doesn’t need superpowers.”
“Yeah, he just needs to be a billionaire.”
“We’re all billionaires to someone.” She glanced at her monitor, finding last night’s stats glaring back.
She must’ve frowned because he asked, “Is it bad?”
Valerie kept her gaze on the computer screen, her heart sinking into her stomach. Yes, it is. It was always worse after sundown, when the vampires ruled the city. Humans cowered in fear, living like prisoners, locking themselves in their homes at dusk and never coming out until dawn.
But even with the power their houses could give them, there were still too many people who didn’t make it through the night.
“You know what I like about superheroes?” she mused, focusing on the latest body count. She turned the flat screen toward him, motioning to the number. Ninety-four. Ninety-four moms, dads, brothers, sisters, grandparents, children—just in the borough of the Bronx.
In a single night.
“They give people hope.” She forced a smile. “And sometimes, when you have hope, you can win.”
He leveled his gaze at her, sadness filling his eyes. Then he cursed softly and peered into his coffee cup, setting his jaw. She pushed the monitor back into place, feeling wretched and wishing she hadn’t pulled the reports. They never improved; they only stayed the same or became worse.
The NYPD was at a standstill now, as if they’d plateaued and couldn’t push past the vampires’ ranks any further. They had to change tactics somehow, to find some other weapon of mass destruction to take out the leeches. Washington pumped out every contraption they could conjure, and although some of the artillery was fantastic, they still couldn’t put a dent in the vampires’ walls.
They didn’t know what to do next.
Valerie spotted Sergeant Geoffrey Stein as he approached them, cell phone glued to his ear. By the expression on his face, the conversation didn’t look good. His weathered features were grim and his short dark hair had gone silver years ago, though he was only in his early forties. He wore a gray suit, as rumpled and weary as everyone else, having pulled an all-nighter himself.
Even the top dogs were taking to the streets.
“I’ve got a new case for you two,” he said as he hung up the phone. “Just called in. And it’s not pretty.”
Both Valerie and Deron straightened in their seats, exchanging uneasy looks. The cases were never pretty. “What happened?”
“It’s a fresh one, with officers already on site.” He looked troubled, and it took a lot to bother the Sarge, especially at this stage of the game. “Here’s the address. Witnesses are already being questioned. Get moving.”
THREE
Nope. It wasn’t pretty at all.
Valerie straightened from the bedside, blowing strands of her blond hair out of her face. Camera lights flashed, leaving her seeing spots. Her nitrile-gloved hands were covered in blood from assisting the forensics team with inspecting the body.
A neighbor had heard screaming and smelled something burning in the hallway, so she’d called the police.
That burning something had been a dead woman.
The stench of scorched flesh pervaded the studio apartment, so much that Deron had opened a window and stood there for a good five minutes in case he vomited all over the crime scene. Thank God Valerie had a strong stomach, so she did most of the handling. But it didn’t stop her from tasting bile when she came too close or thought too much about what she was looking at.
White sheets soaked with blood, both coagulated and fresh. Singed hair scattered all over the place, chunks of it littering the floor, melted into skin—
“Jesus, what a mess.” The medical examiner, Dr. Kat Porter, frowned. She knelt on the other side of the futon, examining the body with a gentleness that spoke volumes about her respect for the dead. “Poor girl.”
Valerie wiped the sweat off her brow with the back of her wrist. Christ, it was hot in here. “What do you think?”
“Well, the burns are all localized to her body.” Kat surveyed the futon’s devastated landscape. The ME didn’t look the least bit phased by the smell. “No charring on the sheets or her clothing.”
“She was probably already naked.” Valerie glanced around the room, if only to keep the body out of sight. “Looks like she was attacked in bed too. Any intercourse?”
Kat’s dark eyes focused on what was left of the body’s pelvis. “Hard to tell, but I’ll collect samples once she’s back in the lab. Hopefully I’ll get something between that and the scrapings beneath her fingernails.” The ME straightened, her black hair thrown up in a messy bun and her caramel-colored face pinched with worry. “I’ll tell you one thing, though.” She pointed at the body’s barbecued throat. “There are cauterized bite wounds on both sides of her neck.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Valerie muttered. She always wondered what compelled Kat to work with corpses for a living. Maybe for the same reason Valerie hunted monsters.
For Kat’s sake, Valerie hoped it wasn’t.
“You said you found a shirt?”
Kat nodded, lifting the Ziploc bag containing the clothing. “Men’s size XL, black and torn, along with a pair of socks. I didn’t see blood on them, but I’ll run them through anyway.”
Valerie managed a smile. “Thanks, Kat. You’re a life saver.”
“No, honey, you’re the life saver.” Kat’s expression grew solemn as she indicated the body. “I just pick up the pieces.”
Valerie gulped, her eyes settling on the dead woman. She’d never seen anything like this in her entire life. The body had been severely burned, especially around the torso, pelvis, face, and neck—all the way into the viscera. Valerie couldn’t even tell what the woman looked like. Her limbs had also been burned, but the wounds were scattered, likely due to struggle.
At first, Kat suspected an iron of some sort had been used, but there were prints all over the place. Handprints. This woman had handprints branded into her body. How that happened was beyond Valerie. Heated gloves? Maybe it was some kind of fetish gone wrong—
“I’ve got an ID.” Deron came up beside her, stealing a glance at the body, though Valerie knew he tried hard not to. Human nature at its finest.
Valerie turned and moved away, taking off her gloves and motioning for him to follow. She didn’t want to stare at the woman’s obliterated face as she heard her name. She tossed the gloves in the trash and tucked her hair behind her ears, running a hand through her ponytail.
Deron eyed her, still looking a little green around the edges.
Valerie let out a steady breath. “Go on.”
“You all right?”
She shot him a sardonic look. “Are you?”
He bristled, but went back to business. “Name was Elena Delgado. Twenty-four years old and she lived here alone. Family visits sometimes, no boyfriend, a few friends. Neighbor says she was always pleasant and didn’t hang out with punks. Didn’t seem like the type to have a one-night stand, but who knows, everyone has secrets.” He frowned. “I’d love to think this is random, but there’s passion here. No one would do this to a stranger. Someone hated this woman.”
“Or they loved her too much.”
“Good point. You said you found money?”
“A thousand dollars on the table, untouched.”
“Think it was prostitution? Drugs?”
Valerie shook her head. “The killer would’ve taken it. Why would she have a thousand dollars lying around on the dining room table? This isn’t Riverdale, to say the least. She wasn’t a wealthy girl.”
“Think
the perp was human or vampire?”
“Vampire. Kat found cauterized marks.”
Deron set his jaw, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. When he remained silent, Valerie continued. “It would explain why the money is still here. Money means nothing to them. She must’ve known him, or else she wouldn’t have let him in. By the amount of blood on the bed, it looks like she was alive during most of it. The leech didn’t want a meal, he wanted to hurt her, to make sure she suffered. Kat even thinks some of her organs are missing.”
An officer popped his head in from the hallway. “We have another witness outside.” He flinched once the smell hit him but stayed put. “Says he spotted a guy with the vic last night and saw him leave this morning.”
“Really?” Valerie’s heart skipped a beat. Maybe, for once, they’d get a break. “Great, we’ll be right out.” The officer nodded and took off as she turned back to Deron. “I got this.” She patted his chest. “I need some air.”
“I’m going with you,” he said, as if he were a child being left in the dark. Her lips curved and he scowled. “What? I want to hear what he has to say.”
“Sure,” she teased before she called over to the forensics team. “Let me know if you guys find anything else.”
They all nodded, focused on the task at hand. Both Valerie and Deron headed out into the hallway, walking in silence when Deron blurted, “I knew Elena.”
Valerie stopped dead in her tracks. “You what?”
He hushed her, motioning for her to turn down the volume. “Not personally. She worked at a coffee shop a couple of blocks away.” He grabbed Valerie’s arm to keep her moving. “She was a barista. I go there all the time.”