by L. D. Rose
“Who are you?” the cop asked, voice steady but body shaking. Palpable tension hummed through him, though he’d helped support Blaze despite his fear.
Blaze avoided the cop’s gaze, glad he’d kept his sunglasses on. “No one,” he said as Kaj hooked onto his free side.
“We’ve got to hurry.” Kaj eyed the cop briefly as he picked up the pace, easing the burden off them both. Using fire was as discreet as a siren; every leech in the gutter would be gunning for them now.
Kaj whipped open the passenger’s side door and shoved the front seat forward before Blaze collapsed into the back. “Get in,” Kaj ordered as he reset the front seat.
The cop obeyed without delay, climbing in as Kaj slammed the door behind him.
Smart man.
Within seconds, Kaj peeled out onto the street, racing away from the inferno. Blaze allowed himself to relax, head propped against the door with his legs folded up in the cramped backseat. A few remaining streetlights flashed by, their dull glow barely penetrating the tinted windows. Music played, but it was hardly audible, just background noise compared to the thunder of Blaze’s pulse. He closed his eyes, inhaling deeply before breathing out a long whoosh of air. He felt drained and inebriated from the power exertion.
Unfortunately, this was nothing new, especially as of late.
“What’s your name?” Blaze asked the cop, his voice hoarse and drowsy to his own ears. He opened his eyes to find the normal watching him warily from the passenger’s seat. There was a hint of fear in there, too. Blaze could smell it in the cop’s sweat. But the guy hid his fear well, and he’d better if he planned on hunting in this borough.
“Deron,” the cop said after a beat. “Deron Williams.”
“Officer?”
“Detective.”
“Detective,” Blaze repeated. “Do you have jurisdiction here in the Boogie Down, Detective Williams?”
The cop’s lips twitched and Blaze’s respect for him cranked up a notch. “Does it matter?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Who are you?” Deron asked again, his gaze flicking to Kaj briefly before settling on Blaze.
“I told you. No one.”
Deron set his jaw, dark eyes flaring in response.
So, Detective Williams didn’t like that answer. Too damn bad.
“What the hell were you doing with four vamps on your ass?”
Deron’s persistent silence meant he’d refuse to answer any more questions, which only made Blaze ask more. “And why the fuck were you unarmed? Not too bright to be prancing around these parts without a piece, Detective—”
“It was a raid gone bad, all right?” Deron countered with a tangible burst of anger. “We’d underestimated them.”
Don’t we always. “Where’s the rest of your team?”
He just shook his head and turned away with a low, ragged sigh. Blaze’s gut twisted with both guilt and understanding.
Sometimes being a survivor was worse than death.
“Where are you taking me?” Deron looked at Kaj as if he’d be more likely to give him answers.
“Back to your station,” Blaze replied before Kaj uttered a word.
Kaj stiffened in his seat, but he couldn’t object now. “Which precinct?” he asked, speaking for the first time since they’d taken to the street.
“Forty-eighth.” Deron eyed them both with the stubborn suspicion of the NYPD. “Who do you work for?”
“No one.” Blaze took the lead. “We are no one and we work for no one.”
“We’re allies,” Kaj clarified as he took a sharp turn. “We’re on the same side.”
Except when we’re not.
Blaze lifted his bare hand to his face. It was white hot in his vision, still pumping out heat. If he put the glove back on now it would melt right into his skin.
He caught Deron watching him out of the corner of his eye with a disturbed expression on his face. Blaze could only imagine what his hand looked like as he laid it flat on his chest, a warm weight over his heart.
“Shit, man, what happened to your hand? I think you need a doctor for that.”
“It’s fine.” Blaze thrummed his fingers against his sternum. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Deron looked at him like he was completely insane as the car slowed and came to a halt. Then the cop did a quick scan of the area, his focus turning to his surroundings. “This is the back end.”
“Do you have access?” Kaj asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good, then get going. Count yourself lucky, Detective.”
Deron stared at Kaj for a moment before turning his attention to Blaze. “Yeah. Thank you.” His voice held some apprehension. “For your help.”
Blaze removed one of his Glocks from his holster and fished in his pocket for a new clip. Deron’s eyes widened as Blaze dropped the used clip and slipped in a fresh one, checking the barrel and loading the gun. He spun the Glock in his bloody grip and offered Deron the handle, lips curving. The cop probably thought Blaze was going to use it on him. Which was quite amusing after all the effort Blaze put in to save him.
“Don’t lose it.”
Deron took the gun hesitantly, testing it in his grip before pushing it into his empty shoulder holster. “Uh, thanks.”
Blaze gave him a two-fingered salute. “Until we meet again.”
Deron nodded tightly, eyeing them both one last time before he opened the car door and stepped out. He shut the door behind him and spared them another glance as he walked away, picking up the pace, heading for the dim security light at the station’s rear entrance. Blaze listened for the sound of the back door closing. When it did, Kaj pulled out onto the street and hit the gas, roaring past the station.
“You better hope to God he didn’t see anything,” Kaj warned as Blaze sat up, meeting his brother’s eyes in the rearview mirror. At night, Kaj’s feline peepers looked nearly normal since his pupils were dilated.
“He didn’t.” Blaze settled against the leather seat, feeling like roadkill. He closed his eyes again, his lids weighing a thousand pounds each. “There wasn’t anything to see.”
“I’ll take your word for it, but Rome will whoop your ass otherwise.”
Blaze chuckled, sleep looming on the black horizon. He was dead tired and he would do anything for a cigarette right about now. “Yeah, well, so will everyone else.”
“You okay?”
It was the third time Kaj had asked him that question tonight. And the answer was always the same.
Blaze peered at his brother and offered a faint smile.
“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m always okay, gato.”
FIVE
“Looks like your vigilantes aren’t so innocent after all.”
Valerie paced back and forth outside the station. Dawn had just graced them with its presence, relieving the world of its demons and returning it to a livable state. After Deron’s frantic phone call in the wee hours of the morning, Valerie had thrown on jeans, a tank top, and her loaded hip holster, arriving here as fast as she could.
“Are you sure it’s him?”
“Positive.” Deron crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back against the stone building. “Covered in tats, black shades—at night, no less—and a burned hand. A severely burned right hand that looked like it had been pulverized. He wore a black glove with the fingers cut off on his left hand and he used fire against the leeches somehow. Probably a homemade bomb or an explosive of some sort. I think he threw it at them but I can’t be sure. Six foot five, big, beefy, I’d say two-fifty easily. Probably Latino, although I’d call it half, just enough to be confusing. Armed, dangerous, and he definitely doesn’t play on our side of the street.”
Valerie rested her hands on her hips, her still-rusty
gears turning. “And his buddy?”
“Not much smaller than him, still a big guy. Longish dark blond hair, tan skin, straight up white boy. I think his eyes were green but I couldn’t tell. He was more, I don’t know, pretty I guess, but his vibe wasn’t. A bit quiet, but the two of them obviously worked together before. Definitely buddies.”
Valerie stopped pacing and met her partner’s steady gaze. “And they saved your life.” She made it a statement, not a question.
“Yeah, they did, which makes this fucking hard, Val. But the guy fits Homes’s descript to a tee. Except for the ridiculous size, although I could see why our homeless brother would embellish. This guy has to be our man.”
Valerie sighed and pushed a hand through her hair, damp after a hasty shower. They’d lost five officers last night and Deron would’ve been the sixth if it weren’t for the strangers in the Mustang. However, from the sound of it, one of his rescuers seemed to be Elena’s murderer.
It didn’t make sense that a man who had saved a cop would kill an innocent.
Not to mention it was almost too good to be true. Killers didn’t just fall into their laps, never mind hand over their guns.
“Maybe he targets women,” she suggested, but it felt wrong.
“It’s possible.” Deron shrugged. He still wore his gear from last night, blood-spattered and torn, his shoulder holster reloaded with Berettas. “I mean, the Glock is stripped clean, no serials, nothing. The bullets don’t even have marks. That says black market all over it.”
“Or government,” she mused, though black market was far more likely.
“I highly doubt it.”
“It’s possible.”
“Look at you,” he chided. “Defending them.”
Valerie glared at him. “They saved your ass, Deron. I can’t help but defend them.”
“I know, I know.” He raised his hands in surrender. “And yes, I’m grateful. I would’ve died out there. I don’t think I could’ve taken out four leeches at once, definitely not unarmed. But this guy did and he did it well. I don’t want to think he’s Elena’s killer, but he is a killer. He annihilated those vamps like nothing I’d ever seen before.”
Deron’s shoulders slumped, and Valerie could tell he was ashamed. Comparing himself to someone he hardly knew, filled with guilt because he truly believed he’d failed to save his team. But it wasn’t his fault. At all.
“I’m glad you’re all right, Deron.” Valerie touched his shoulder in a gesture of comfort. “Regardless of who did the rescuing.”
He grimaced in that playful way he had when she went sentimental on him, finally meeting her gaze. “It’s a good thing you had the night off, that’s all I’ve got to say.”
She nodded, her smile fading as she dropped her hand. Sure, she had the night off, but she hadn’t slept. She had been haunted by the horrific images of a dead woman, unable to rid herself of the stench of burning flesh no matter how hard she’d scrubbed. She’d spent hours dwelling on how she’d tag Elena’s murderer and bury him in the ground where he belonged.
Now, after what she’d just heard, she needed answers more than ever.
Yet she should’ve been out there, helping Deron and his team. The loss of life didn’t make it easier on anyone’s conscience. The officers’ families must’ve been devastated. She pushed away the memories of weeping wives and crying children, the sights and sounds she saw and heard regularly since she’d joined the NYPD. These days, becoming an officer was more like a suicide mission into the gates of hell itself. Yet recruiting rates had never been higher, in both the civilian and military sectors.
There was nothing like a bunch of bloodsucking parasites to unite humanity under one roof.
“So what do you think?” Deron asked, his voice tugging her from her thoughts.
Valerie rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, trying to summon an answer. “I don’t know. None of this fits.”
“Did you get the DNA results back yet?”
She nodded. “Kat found nothing on the body, so it looks like our perp wore protection. The hair fibers on the shirt came back, but there’s no match in the database. Kat mentioned the genetic pattern looked abnormal from those she typically saw. She doesn’t think it’s human, but she’s not positive it’s vampire either.”
“Well, it’s either one or the other. Unless there’s some other monster out there we don’t know about.”
Valerie shuddered at the mere thought. One brand of monster was bad enough. “It may be some kind of artifact or contaminant. Kat will get back to me once all the testing is complete. She told me it would take a while for the blood samples on the gun since she just received them this morning. Hopefully we’ll have something by the end of the day.”
Which was yet another piece that didn’t fit. Why would this guy give Deron a gun with a bleeding hand? Did he want to be caught?
Unlikely, unless he was mocking them in some twisted way.
“What about the plates? Anything on those?”
“Zip. No car registered under bee-kay-dash-forty-eight. Either Homes read it wrong or it’s fake.”
Deron frowned. “Shit.”
Shit was right.
They sulked in silence for a moment before Valerie asked, “Do you think this guy is a vampire?”
“Hercules?”
She nodded.
He contemplated it for a beat. “No. I mean, sure, he moved like one, but he obviously had training. He didn’t have fangs. Not that I remember anyway, and trust me, I would remember. Neither did his buddy. Not to mention they didn’t try to eat me.”
Her lips twitched. Good point.
“Besides, I can’t imagine many vampires are hunting their own kind unless there’s a power struggle,” he continued. “And from what I can tell, power struggles only happen between the bigwigs. Those leeches sure as hell weren’t bigwigs.”
Valerie nodded, thinking of the cauterized bite wounds in Elena’s neck. “Remember that café you told me about? The one Elena worked at?”
Deron’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah.”
“I want to scope it out, ask her coworkers a few questions. Maybe I can get an ID on the guy. He might’ve visited her there.”
“I’ll come with you.”
She held out a staying hand. “I should go alone. I’m sure her coworkers are already shaken enough, we don’t need to cause a stir.”
“But they know me, Val.”
“Let me handle this. Besides, you should go home and get some rest. Especially after last night.”
“You think I can relax after this?”
“I think you should,” Valerie stressed. “Take a break, Deron. Go see your sister, have a couple of beers. Get some sleep.”
Be glad you’re alive.
“You’d want me to do the same,” she added with a pointed look. “Right?”
He snorted. “But you wouldn’t, though.”
She ignored him because he was right. “It’s just a few questions, that’s all. I’ll contact you if I find out anything. Promise.”
He glared at her long and hard before he gave in, nodding. He looked weary, tired to the bone, as if he’d finally let down his guard and allowed his true condition to show. Not only did they have to watch each other’s back physically, but mentally too. It was far too easy to lose oneself to war and Valerie knew Deron could easily be lost.
Hell, so could she.
“I guess I should sleep for a few hours,” he admitted. “And Toby has been calling me, wondering how I’ve been.”
Valerie smiled, relieved. “See? She’s probably worried sick about you. Take the day off. I’ll see you tonight. Maybe this time we’ll take out five of them instead.”
A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he pushed off the
wall, straightening. “All right. The place is called Bella Vista, up in East Tremont. They’re open in an hour.”
“Jesus, Blaze, are you trying to blow your hands off?”
Kasen scowled, giving Blaze that paternal glare of his. His brother’s normally clean-shaven face was scruffy, his short blond hair a tousled mess. Bare-chested and wearing a baggy pair of sweatpants, he inspected Blaze’s right hand with disapproval.
Sure, Kasen was concerned, but Blaze bet he was more irked at being dragged out of bed on a Sunday morning than anything else.
And away from his woman.
Who happened to be working on Blaze’s left hand, looking as radiant and beautiful as the dawn breaking over a tropical horizon. Dr. Veronica Kerr pulled off the tousled look much better than her fiancé, her long dark hair tangled around her model-perfect face, wearing a T-shirt and matching pajama pants. Her dark eyes glowed brightly in Blaze’s vision, along with her warm, very human skin. Not to mention that gorgeous, addictive smile.
Although she wasn’t smiling now as she picked shards of vampire bone out of Blaze’s hands.
“I’m putting them to good use,” Blaze offered wryly, lips curving.
“Good use,” Kasen scoffed. He selected forceps from the medical paraphernalia spread over the dining room table, continuing the tedious task of cleaning Blaze’s wounds. “Not if you want to keep your damn limbs.”
“Blaze, is this . . . yours?” Veronica set a tiny chip of bloodstained ivory onto a stainless steel plate, glancing at him with a mixture of concern, shock, and just a dash of horror.