“Stay here,” I yelled to Ben over my shoulder. “And call the sheriff’s office.”
Ben’s eyes bulged. “Not 911?”
“Sheriff’s office.”
I didn’t have time to explain there was no 911 in the paranormal community.
As soon as I pushed open the inner door, saliva pooled in my mouth.
I kept moving, pushing aside overturned furniture.
In the cramped back bedroom, I took in the vintage shag rug with a considerable amount of animal fur and crumbs carpeting the floor. Dark wood grain paneling lined the walls. Stacks of yellowed Readers Digests and Sports Illustrated sloped off end tables and bookcases. A heavy wood and tweed couch with a matching armchair (seat patched with duct tape) completed the room’s furnishing.
On the far side of the bed along the floor, I spied Griz’s worn cowboy boots. And the rest of him. He was a big man and it was a small room. And by the smell of him, he was dead.
I took in the bloody twisted bedsheets and books knocked onto the floor. He’d put up a fight against his attacker.
Oh fuck. I had no way to reach him without tramping all over the scene more than I already had.
“Here.” Ben appeared at the bedroom door. He tossed me a stack of white paper plates from the office area.
I tossed them on the floor like Frisbees. They were makeshift tiles for me to step on. We used plastic tiles at a crime scene for the same purpose.
Not bad for a human. Not bad at all.
I made my way to Griz. At the weight of my step, each paper plate was soaked in blood. Too bad Griz hadn’t sprung for some higher quality tableware. It might have yielded more clues.
Dark red blood congealed all around Griz’s body like a macabre outline. I touched his shoulder. My hand came away bloody.
I swallowed my excess saliva. I didn’t remember my bad dreams as a human but this was as close as I could get. I wanted to wake up from this scene.
“You want towels?” Ben asked from the doorway.
“No!” Ben’s voice reminded me I was very much awake. “Stay there. And don’t touch anything.”
“Is he still alive?”
“No,” I said quietly.
We were way past that hope. I smelled death when I entered the room. Like everything it has its own scent. There is nothing else like it in this world that I encountered. The best I can come up with is that death smells like the absence of the soul.
His death was recent though, probably less than an hour. I cursed my lack of disposable gloves. In my rush to get out of town, I hadn’t packed my medical examiner’s kit in the car. I’d stupidly assumed everything I would need would be here but Nowhere was not Los Angeles even by a longshot.
I squatted, surveying the scene. Griz’s blood-covered right hand was curled into a soft fist. His index finger was slightly extended.
I glanced around, searching for something to use to examine him without touching him.
“Hey.” Ben reappeared in the doorway. He carried my MD bag, with a white disposable suit draped over his arm. He waved blue disposable gloves.
This was better than nothing. I could have kissed him for more than just remembering my tools of the trade. The blood scent triggered my libido. Well, that and being here in Nowhere.
Memories. Too many of them to tamp down right now. It was like a tidal wave being back at the motel.
“You are a lifesaver.” I stepped my way over to him to take the supplies.
“What do want me to do?” he asked.
“Go back to LA.”
Ben’s eyes narrowed. “Do you need to feed? You sound cranky.”
The fresh blood brought my normally tightly controlled emotions closer to the surface. I didn’t like to be reminded of that by my human, no less. But it was more than that.
This wasn’t just finding a dead body. This was a violently murdered shifter who while not exactly a friend, was known to me. It wasn’t how I pictured my arrival back in Nowhere.
I wasn’t a creature that operated on feelings. Maybe it was that damn Djinn spooking me. Regardless, suddenly I felt vulnerable and I didn’t like it. And I’d dragged Ben and Mr. Figgles into this out of selfishness.
I didn’t do weakness of any kind. I was a vampire, dammit, not some human or god forbid, a sentimental shifter.
“Wait for the sheriff. This whole place needs to be dusted for prints. And keep Mr. Figgles away from the donut crumbs. The last thing I need now is his gluten issue acting up.”
“I’m not sure when we’ll see the sheriff. No one answered when I called. I left a message. What kind of place doesn’t have 911?”
“You wanted to come, remember?”
But you could have made him stay and you didn’t, a little voice nagged in my brain.
I balanced on paper plates one leg at a time, donning my crime scene suit. It was a disposable jumpsuit with a zipper. In this case, function did not marry fashion.
“You need me here to take care of everything. Are you sure you don’t need to feed?”
I did feel better with him around, but I didn’t like feeling that dependent.
I slid the hood over my hair and pulled on the latex gloves. There. That was better already. This was my battle armor.
I returned to study Griz. His neck was almost severed through. He’d been attacked from behind with something very thin and strong. Piano wire? There was an old piano shoved up against the corner in the other room. He’d been a fan of blues music. Whoever had killed him made sure this was a slow and painful way to die. I couldn’t imagine any circumstances where he deserved that.
For this attack to have been so successful, two options came to mind. Griz didn’t know his attacker (unlikely in Nowhere given its size) and he’d never seen the assailant until it was too late (possible but still he was a powerful bear shifter). How had he been distracted? Finally, it was most likely to me that Griz knew his assailant, trusted him and underestimated him. In Nowhere, the latter was more likely.
The security cameras, if there were any, would be checked. Griz ran this as a bare-bones operation, so I doubted there were any, but a vamp could hope. The locals would know about other staff or relationships Griz had. Anyone who came or went in the motel recently would be a person of interest. Odds were that pool of suspects was very small.
The biggest lead I had was from Griz himself, reaching out from the grave. It was likely his attacker never noticed his message scrawled in his own blood. When I gently lifted his hand with my gloved one, he’d used his finger to write in his own blood two overlapping circles. Or maybe the initials O.O.? Or two zeros? That didn’t make any sense. I didn’t know what it meant yet, but it was a start.
I wanted to look around for any hidden drugs, especially Glytr.
I was still tiptoeing around on the cheap paper plates. The floor looked like a pizza party gone very wrong. I returned to the body, squatting next to Griz, taking in everything I could about the scene.
“Looks like the sheriff got my message. He just pulled up.” Ben was back in the doorway. His eyes were wide. The shock was beginning to wear off. Now he was getting scared. Smart boy. “Want me to send him back here?”
I absolutely did not want that.
“Go out there and head him off. I’ll be out in a minute.”
The outer office door chimed. If Griz’s attacker came in that way he would’ve had some warning. No windows were broken and that appeared to be the only exterior door.
“Hi, sheriff, I’m--” Ben began in the other room. I picked my way out of the room on the paper plates quickly.
“Where is she?” The sheriff asked.
“You know Dr. Silverthorne? She said to wait here. ”
“Son, get out of my way because if I move you, it’s going to hurt.”
A shiver rippled through me at the sound of his voice. Despite my current surroundings, something suspiciously like butterflies fluttered in my stomach.
I pushed through Griz’s bedroom d
oor, pulling it behind me just as Sheriff Caleb Fang came through the connecting office door.
Sheriff Caleb Fang was broad-shouldered and rangy, a good six feet two inches tall without his signature beige cowboy hat, leather duster and boots. He had just the right amount of weather-beaten squint around his gray eyes.
He hadn’t changed much in the ten years since I left Nowhere except that his thick reddish-brown hair was now silver. He squinted harder, the heel of his right hand resting on the butt of his pistol at his hip.
Some females prefer their lover have a limited amount of body hair. I don’t truck with anything so superficial.
Me? I go straight for forbidden.
“Whatever you’re packing, don’t shoot. Bull tranquilizers make me break out in hives.” I pulled back my hood.
“I remember.” Fang didn’t move his hand off his weapon.
That hurt. It wasn’t like I tried to kill him last time I saw him. Though come to think of it, things were pretty chaotic.
Fang’s nostrils flared.
It’s not like I chose to meet my former lover with my forensic jumpsuit smeared with the blood of his dead mentor.
“Griz was dead when I found him. Murdered.” I realized how empty the words were as I spoke them. I wasn’t in the habit of delivering bad news to anyone I actually knew. “I’m sorry.”
Griz was a foster parent to Fang even though they were different species of shifters. When Fang was found as a teenager, no one wanted a lone wolf shifter around except the bachelor brown bear Griz.
Or at least he could tolerate him, according to Fang.
“Bullshit. Move.” Fang’s flinty eyes peered down at me. He was squinting pretty hard. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. All I was getting was a peek. Despite the evidence to the contrary, he didn’t believe me.
Not surprising, paranormals aren’t any better at dealing with death than humans.
I placed my arm across the door, blocking him.
“It’s a crime scene. I just started processing it. Wait until I get him to the morgue. You can see him then.”
“Hattie, if you don’t move away from the door, I’m going to throw you across the room.”
Under very different circumstances I wouldn’t have minded this at all.
Ben had trailed in behind Fang. His eyes went from me to Fang and back again like he was taking in a tennis match.
Hattie, he mouthed at me, his face lit up with glee. It was the first time my human every heard anyone address me by my given name.
I felt a slip in our employer-employee relationship, such as it was. I like my world in tidy boxes. There was nothing tidy about coming to Nowhere. And being here was going to mess with my life on every level.
Standing a few feet apart from Fang was more painful than I could have guessed. I had an actual pain in my chest like I’d been punched. Such a silly thought. This would be why I stayed away all those years. Fang got me all turned around.
Well that, plus fear of getting staked and a few other things I’d rather not dwell on.
“I’ll count to three,” he warned.
“Still showing off?” I asked. My mind scrambled with ways to redirect Fang. My main worry wasn’t his emotional trauma although knowing shifters were sentimental, this argument seemed the best course.
Above all else, I wanted to keep my crime scene pristine.
“If you try to touch me, I’ll fight you, which means any evidence here will be the casualty. Plus, I’ve added Krav Maga to my training regime.” I met his eyes. I was determined not to look away first.
Then I remembered my crime scene was the body of the only one who’d shown Fang kindness as an orphan. “I’ll be as quick as I can,” I added.
I anticipated Fang’s movement. It was the fingers on his right hand that gave him away. He always flexed them before an attack. It was a small movement but when you knew someone as well as I knew him, it was easy.
I leaped toward him, guessing he’d favor shunting me to one side to access the door.
Instead of repelling me, though, that fucker grabbed me in a bear hug. He wrapped his arms around me like a vise. With his forward propulsion, we slammed so hard against the closed bedroom door that the door cracked. Thankfully we didn’t break through the door and explode into Griz’s room.
For the record, I am as strong as Fang. I’d wager I’m even stronger. But between the element of surprise and the feel of his body against mine, I was taken aback.
With his arms around me, the urge to fight evaporated. That was probably because even though I don’t have a soul, something pretty damn close to whatever was within me sighed at last.
It’d been a long ten years for someone who generally finds time irrelevant. Being immortal will do that. Being lonely for forever is a real stretch.
“Fang, you idiot.” I angled my head up to him. “What are you doing?”
“This.” He kissed me hard. I used to call his kisses “soul burners.” They were the closest thing I’d get to the sun without combusting. He hadn’t lost the knack in the last decade. His kisses had a way of demanding that I open myself to him.
And that was a problem.
3
In the dim recesses of my mind, I grew aware of the outer motel door chiming again. I prayed it was just Ben taking Mr. Figgles out for a pee break.
Anything to not interrupt Fang’s kisses, no matter how forbidden they were. I wanted to forever remain like this, blocking out the world.
“Silverthorne, help!” Ben’s anguished cry from the outer room penetrated my brain.
I broke Fang’s kiss.
“Sorry,” I whispered, feeling the pain at pulling apart from him.
“There’s nothing to apologize for.” He touched my cheek so gently I wanted to break apart in a million pieces.
“Actually there is.” I closed my eyes, kneeing him in the balls.
Fang dropped to his knees.
I really couldn’t have him touching my crime scene.
I stepped around him, hurrying back to the front room. I paused at the doorway, resting my hands on the doorframe. I blinked.
Ben was pinned backward on the motel counter by what appeared to be a sumo wrestler. I’m not an expert on Japanese culture but the jet-black hair slicked back in a topknot and folded white cloth resembling a diaper covering his genitals were my clues.
And his equally hefty fangs were six inches from Ben’s jugular vein.
Who the hell was this vamp?
I scanned the rest of the room. If I had a heart, it would’ve sank at the sight of the other two vampires present. I knew them. The man was African American and completely at ease wearing a three-piece bespoke English suit in a Nevada roadside motel. His hair was closely cropped with a touch of gray at the temples. He leaned on an umbrella for effect, but no one needs an umbrella in Nevada.
“What?” Fang wheezed behind me. He’d recovered faster than I anticipated but he was still going to be hurting for a while. I batted away the deliciously distracting thought of what he may do to punish me.
Under the table holding the donuts and coffee, a girl of seven offered Mr. Figgles a donut. Not surprisingly the dog was the smartest one in the room when faced with a room full of vampires, he rolled over to his back, stuck his feet in the air and played dead.
“Silverthorne,” the child spoke but didn’t remove her attention from Mr. Figgles. Her voice was high but her enunciation belied her childlike appearance.” Since when did you become so fond of pets that I find you with two?”
I glanced at Ben. His face was white. A drop of the vampire’s saliva was on his cheek. I could smell it.
“Master,” I bowed to her.
She’d asked me to come here to investigate. I was here. Why was she?
It was official. My life sucked. I well and truly thought things couldn’t have gotten more complicated in Nowhere. I was so wrong.
“Did you kill him?” Fang’s voice was hoarse behind me. “Decide to
come back for an after-dinner snack?”
At this point I was pretty sure this was a general question to all the vampires in the room. And not without merit.
I kept my hands on the doorway, keeping us out of the room. Acting rashly with Ben in the grips of another vampire was the last thing I wanted.
Elsbeth bopped Mr. Figgles on the nose with the donut a few more times before crawling out from under the table. My maker, Elsbeth Vandergraff favored gingham dresses. Her long blond hair was set in sausage curls with giant bows. She wore white tights and black patent leather shoes. She had pale skin, wide blue eyes, a button nose and fangs. She was made vampire in the early eighteenth century but in matters of wardrobe she preferred the Victorian era. It was less a surprise Elsbeth was here than the speed at which she showed up and who she’d brought with her.
She’d asked me to come here and I agreed. But coming here herself and bringing Idris was a sign of how little trust (if any) she had in me.
“Silverthorne, meet your brother Junior.” Elsbeth indicated to the sumo holding Ben. “And of course you know Dr. Idris.”
For the first time in my vampire life, I wished I was a witch. I’d do anything for a magic wand to make them all disappear.
Elsbeth always had a flair for the dramatic. I knew Idris all right. I wasn’t jumping up with joy, professional or personal to see him. As was his way, Idris bowed his head slightly to me but said nothing. It was deadly to take his stillness for hesitancy when all along he was waiting for the perfect time to strike. Too bad he was vampire—he’d have made a wonderful cobra.
Elsbeth wasn’t here for a social visit or family reunion. I’d only arrived there. I should’ve taken the Djinn more seriously. I could have been better prepared. As it was, everyone I cared about, whether I wanted to or not, was suffering in this room.
Junior didn’t lessen his hold on Ben but wrinkled his nose in Fang’s direction. “Dog?”
“Wolf.” Fang’s reply was laced with a growl. “Caleb Fang, Sheriff.”
Shifters have a strong scent to those with supernatural olfactory senses. To me he smelled like the desert after a rain in the spring. It was likely others had less flattering opinions.
The Undead Detective Bites: Book 1 Page 3