To hell with this.
He surged forward and snatched Ben up by the back of his jacket. He carried him to the door, threw it open, and hurled him out into the yard. “Don't push me, Ben. Don't force me to do something I'll regret. Go home."
Ben staggered to his feet, weeping, and ran into the darkness. Cory stood and watched him go, a sick feeling crawling up his stomach to lodge in his throat. He called Boru out and shut the door behind him.
He went around the other side of the house. Grasping the doorknob on the side door into the garage, he gave a quick twist of his wrist and snapped it off. He quickly retrieved his bike, climbed on it, and pedaled out the door.
* * * *
Rachel hit the brakes as a dark figure on a bicycle, traveling one hell of a lot faster than she would have expected, hurtled through the intersection in front of her. She reached up and flipped on her siren, taking the corner on two wheels. The bicycle accelerated away as she shoved her foot down on the gas pedal.
It jumped the curb and vanished into someone's yard. She slammed her foot down on the brake pedal. The truck shuddered to a halt. She slammed her hands on the steering wheel with a bitter curse. That looked like Cory's bike.
Once she arrived home she rushed to the garage and verified by sight what she already knew in her heart. It had been Cory's bike. Question was—had it been stolen, or had it been Cory? With the speed she saw, it wasn't hard to believe something supernatural was peddling the blasted thing. A vampire on a bike? She shook her head at the thought. Absolutely bizarre.
She'd just made herself a cup of tea when the knock came at the door. As she pulled the door open she wasn't surprised to see Gavin waiting on the front porch. “It's about time."
* * * *
Fifteen minutes later they were sitting on her couch, a comfortable three feet between them. Gavin held a cup of coffee and she nursed her cup of Orange Spice tea. He opened the plastic bag he'd carried in the door and placed Cory's cap on the coffee table.
"He's been here,” he told her.
"I know. I think he was riding away on his bike when I got home."
He looked shocked at that. “Damn. So he is alive."
"I don't think so,” she said, not sure whether to laugh or cry. “I think he's undead."
"Believe it or not, there is a bright side to that,” he said softly. “You'll never have to go to his funeral."
She thought about it. “You've got a point there. So do you think that's why he hasn't contacted me?"
"Maybe,” he replied. “He doesn't know I've been here, doesn't know you know about the vampires. Hell, I'd be afraid to come home."
"What do you think he's doing, then?"
"I'm not sure, but I'm afraid he's making progeny of his own. It only makes sense. He's all alone out there, as far as he knows, and he's not going to feel comfortable being one of a kind. Unless ... you know, it just occurred to me. I wonder if it was Dave who snatched and turned him. I'm not sure why he would, but he's an unpredictable bastard. We were afraid he'd go on a rampage after he escaped. He was a killer to start with. But, near as we can tell, he's either surviving on animal blood or he's not killing or turning most of his victims. That's not the picture of the mad killer we'd been led to expect.
"If he snatched and turned Cory, he might be still be around. That would mean there's another player in the game."
"Well, at least Bigby and the rest of the crew kinda know what's going on."
"Had to tell them sooner or later."
They sat in silence for a long moment.
"Well, I guess I should be going."
"Sure,” she replied.
Neither of them moved a muscle. Their eyes met and Rachel set her tea cup on the table. “You don't have to go."
He frowned and looked down. “This time, I think I do. I find you terribly attractive, Rachel, but I just can't. Not yet."
Not yet? What the hell does that mean? “Sure. No problem.” The words came out terse, bordering on angry. Shit. What the hell's wrong with me?
He didn't respond to the tone of voice. Had he even heard it? He was staring out the living room window, distracted by something in the night. He stood, slowly. “Neither of us need this kind of distraction. We need to find that vampire before this gets way out of hand."
"Sure,” she repeated. “So what do you think she's up to, really? Creating an army of the undead to take over Central Oregon?” She couldn't keep the sarcasm out of her voice. Honestly, she didn't even try. Part of her just couldn't get over the whole vampire thing in the first place. To think Cory might have been bitten, been turned ... She sighed, feeling the beginnings of a killer headache lurking behind her right eye.
"I don't know,” he answered, apparently taking her question more seriously than she intended. Either that or he had no ear at all for sarcasm. She'd met a few people like that. “We're still trying to figure out what vampirism does to a person's mental state and personality. Renee Fontaine, the first vampire, is pretty much the same person she's always been—from what I'm told—but she has a ... rather unique ... situation."
She looked at him expectantly, hoping he'd expound on that. He didn't. “Dave was—is—a thorough bastard, but even he hasn't been very easy to figure out. What he's been doing makes no damn sense at all."
"So what do we know about this Veronica person, then?” she asked him. “Who was she before she was bitten?"
"You're going to love this. She was going to take vows—she planned on becoming a nun."
"What?!"
"Dave's sense of humor, I guess. That's assuming he meant to turn her at all. She was his first victim, as far as we can tell. He might have drained her completely by accident and not realized what would happen. To tell you the truth, we're not all that sure how smart Dave is."
A nun. It seemed almost unbelievable. The chances of a young woman planning becoming a nun—not exactly a high percentage of the population—getting bitten by one of the world's few vampires, seemed almost ludicrously low. “Well, we can assume that religion has played a large part in her life."
"We can. Not sure what that tells us now, though."
"Catholics tend to have a certain amount of respect for the Big Evil, don't they?” She wasn't asking. Her best friend when she was a kid was raised Catholic. “Almost as though evil has a purpose in God's plan?"
"Some, maybe. I'm hardly an expert on Catholicism, but that strikes me as kinda weird."
"It is weird. I could be wrong, too ... I'm remembering a few conversations I had with my best friend when I was a girl. Something about how God, being all-knowing, expected Lucifer to rebel and actually intended it to happen."
"Huh. So where are you going with this?"
"Imagine a girl steeped in her religion suddenly being turned into what she's likely to perceive as a creature of darkness. Bound by blood lust to the Dark God of the Christian mythos. And believing that evil has a place in God's plan."
"Do you believe in God, Detective Flynn?"
She laughed. “With a name like Flynn, you'd expect me to be Catholic too, wouldn't you? Probably would have been if my maternal grandmother had her way. But my mother was stubborn, stubborn enough to marry a half-breed in the first place. She'd gone through all that Catholic school stuff and ended up agnostic.
"She wanted me to be aware of religion and spirituality, but she didn't want it to rule me. I guess, in my own fashion, I believe in God. Question is—does He give a shit about us? The God of the Old Testament was a raging asshole—how much of a bully does it make you to be omnipotent and brow-beat your followers into obeying your every whim? Even going so far as to rain tragedy after tragedy down on a single hapless mortal to prove a point?
"And then the Redemption—the gift of his ‘Only Begotten Son’ and his sacrifice to make it all okay, to turn that Old Testament bully into a ‘just and loving’ God? It's awfully hard to swallow ... What about you? Do you believe in God?"
"Nope,” he answered. “I thi
nk all mythology has been our attempts to explain the unexplainable. All of this—” he waved his hands as if trying to encompass the whole world—"is just one big cosmic accident. No gods, no plan, just the spaceship Earth and its terribly confused inhabitants. And if there is a God, I would tend to give more credence to the Gnostic interpretation than anyone else's. God is a complete bastard and we owe him nothing at all."
He gave a great, gusty sigh, almost a groan, and turned to look at her again. “We'll start again tomorrow. Right now I need a stiff drink and a good night's sleep."
Without another word, he strode across the living room and went out the front door, closing it tight behind him.
Leaving behind a very confused Rachel, who wanted very much to sleep with him but knew as well as he did that it would be exactly the wrong thing to do. Sex wasn't what she needed right now and she knew it. For someone like her, sex was like a drug ... she'd used it to cover up the gaping holes where her self-image had grown tattered. If she couldn't be anything else, at least she could be desirable.
Five
Thursday night—later.
Cory wasn't even sure what he was doing here, standing outside Jason Keening's house. His preternatural sight allowed him to see clearly into the house, where Gina Keening, Jason's mother, sat alone on the couch, watching television and nursing what he suspected was a mixed drink.
Gina Keening was the kind of mom every one of her son's friends had a crush on. She had the kind of fragile beauty that so many former models seemed to cultivate—steeped in such well-groomed artifice that even the smallest thing might shatter it into a billion pieces.
These days Gina Keening managed the Firehouse, one of Redburn's many taverns. Some people might have seen this as a large step down from being an almost-famous runway model, but she seemed satisfied enough with her job. If she wasn't, she'd never complained within Cory's hearing.
Probably would have been more satisfied if she could keep a man in her life, Cory mused absently, wondering, for the hundredth time that night, what the hell he was doing out here spying on a woman old enough to be his mother.
A woman whose son he'd stolen from her the night before.
He'd had a crush on her since he was thirteen, since they'd first moved to town. He'd known how pointless it was even then. The only thing he'd had going for him was that she was single. Jason's father had split on them when Jason was only six.
One of the many things he and Jason had in common.
In his eyes, Jason's mom wasn't only gorgeous, she was one of the nicest people he knew. He always treated her son's friends with casual affection and basic respect, acting as though they were really grown up instead of just being teenagers who liked to think they were grown up.
She looked horribly sad right now, he noted. Her mascara streaked down the sides of her face and her frosty blond hair, usually so elegantly groomed, looked like a haystack perched on her head. She was still dressed for work, in a pair of black slacks, a white shirt unbuttoned just far enough to show cleavage, and a dusky brown leather vest.
Just being there, watching, was making him feel itchy. So why am I even here?
Because he owed her something, maybe? He couldn't do anything to ease his own mother's distress, but he wanted to help Gina Keening cope?
And what could he do, really? Walk in on her, tell her that her son would be fine, he was just temporarily dead?
Cory snorted and started to turn away when something truly disturbing caught his attention. She had picked up a bottle of pills, something with a pharmacy label on it. She popped the cap and poured them freely into her hand.
No way! He slipped up closer to the window and watched. She held her cupped hand in front of her, piled high with little white pills. This is crazy. She isn't really going to try to kill herself, is she?
She was. He knew it.
He tapped on the window—hard enough that it shook. As she shot a startled glance in his direction, Cory spun and sprinted for the front door. He reached it just as it was thrown open. Gina stared down at him—she was still wearing heels and pretty much towered over him. Not that she wasn't tall to begin with—she'd always towered over him and most of Jason's friends.
Who's afraid of long-leggedy beasties? he thought crazily. “Cory?” She sounded puzzled, not depressed.
"Mrs. Keening.” He gave her a sober nod, inclining his back a little to make it appear more like a bow.
"Cory ... your mother's sick with worry about you. Where have you been?"
His mouth opened but he couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound completely stupid. Or unbelievable.
She gave him a quick once-over and led him into the house. “You look healthy enough, you little rat. So what are you doing here? Jason's not here. I don't know where he is, but I'm thinking his father might've snatched him. We've been in the middle of several large scale wars lately, and—"
"—oh, you don't need to hear all this. Come sit in the living room, have a soda. I'll grab the phone and you can call your mother."
"No.” How do I tell her I saw what she was doing? That I know ... “I'm not ready to talk to my mom yet."
It didn't please her to hear this. “Why the hell not?” she asked, sounding just shy of disgusted.
"Because I'm more interested in knowing why you were about to swallow a handful of pills,” he said.
They'd made it into the living room, and, when he made this comment, she seemed to fold up and collapse onto the chaise lounge closest to the door. “You saw that?"
He squatted down beside her. “Why, Mrs. Keening? Why would you want to kill yourself?"
"My name is Gina, Cory. When you call me Mrs. Keening I feel like looking around to see if my ex-mother-in-law snuck in behind me.” She moaned and buried her face in her hands. “Jason's father called me a couple of days ago. Said he wanted Jason, and he wasn't going to let anything stop him. Not this time. I thought—I thought he meant he'd start a real custody fight. He didn't fight the first time ... he didn't want a brat around screwing up his chance to re-sew his wild oats. He didn't say that, but I was pretty sure that's what he meant.
"Now he's older, Jason's older, and I guess he's through sowing.” She shrugged. “He's got money now ... and you know what I do. Sure, I'm the mother, but ... money speaks louder than anything when you're talking about this sort of thing. I'm just a bartender ... a legal drug dealer. I'm gone nearly every night when he goes to bed, and still asleep when he leaves in the morning. If I'm lucky I see him a couple of hours between school and when I leave for work, and maybe a few more hours on the weekend.
"But I don't think that's what he meant. Not now. I came home and Jason was gone. It doesn't even look like he was here last night. I don't know what the bastard did to convince him, but Jason must have just gone with him."
The esteemed Mr. Keening was going to get a nasty surprise if he wanted custody of his son, Cory thought ruefully. He reached out and took her hand. It was shaking. Her whole body was shaking. “Mrs. Keening ... Gina ... Jason didn't go anywhere with his father. He's around."
She looked at him with red-rimmed, tear-filled eyes and, at that exactly moment, the Thirst hit him, roaring across the boundaries of his awareness like an avalanche of red-hot need. Sensing something odd, she glanced up into his eyes and a wave of something rolled between them. She swooned and he caught her in his arms.
She seemed to weigh nothing at all. The sound of her heart beating pounded in his ears, the scent of her ... not only her blood, but all the little things that screamed woman ... seared their way into his brain. His own heart started to beat in time with hers and he felt a tightness in his groin. Pulse hot in his throat, he pulled her close and tore her neck open with his teeth. He drank until she lay still in his arms. He let her go. Her body fell back into the chaise lounge in a heap. Ohmygod, what have I done?
* * * *
Friday morning.
The next day dawned bright and hopeful. Rachel pulled bac
k her shades and grimaced at the bright sunlight streaming down. Now if we could just coax the bitch into going out for a little tanning, we could take care of her once and for all, she thought sardonically.
She took a shower while coffee brewed and fixed herself a cup while glancing through the newspaper. Nothing of interest, she decided, then folded it up and deposited it in the recycle bin. She'd had the insane thought last night, just as she was fading into sleep, that maybe Gavin was gay. It would explain a lot.
She didn't think so, though. Not really. It might bolster her self-confidence a little to think that was why he'd turned down her overture, but the heat in his eyes when he looked at her wasn't something she'd expect from a gay man.
Which meant ... what? Married? He didn't wear a wedding ring, but that didn't mean anything. Either he took it off when he was away from home or he wasn't in the habit of wearing it anyway. He said, “not yet."
Not yet? Disgusted at herself she drained the last of her coffee and hurriedly got dressed.
* * * *
She arrived at headquarters half an hour later to find Gavin deep in conference with Bigby. When the big man saw her outside his office window, he waved her inside. The other detectives were nowhere in evidence.
"Still hard to take this vampire crap seriously,” he said as she closed the door behind her, “but it's pretty obvious Agent Chase knows what he's talking about. Tooms and Shine were out late last night, checking the motels up in Bend. Came up empty. They're both still home in bed.
"Chase here tells me you two were brainstorming last night and came up with something interesting. She's got a religion fixation?"
Rachel aimed a glance at Gavin and shrugged. “Could be."
"So vampires aren't repelled by religious symbols, then?"
"They don't have to be,” Gavin answered. “It's a psychosomatic thing."
"She'd be the type who'd be affected by that sort of thing, wouldn't she?"
"Could be. Can't say for sure."
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