Day Reaper

by Melody Johnson

  Instead, I gritted my teeth and simply raised an eyebrow. “Yes?” I asked, as if being caught necking in an interrogation viewing room during a mass-murder investigation was a common occurrence.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Greta said, but I could see the very minute twitch of her lips. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was amused.

  “It’s a lead, not a problem,” Rowens interjected. He eyed us and added, “However, this is a problem.”

  Dominic snorted. “It’s an inevitability, not a problem.”

  “So much of this case is already breaking procedure, we can’t afford another liability,” Rowens said, dead serious. “Besides the obvious, everything else needs to be by the book.”

  “Procedure?” Dominic laughed. “Where in your book is there a procedure on a hostile vampire takeover?”

  “I said, ‘besides the obvious.’ That includes the existence of vampires, Damned, Day Reapers, and night bloods. Otherwise, we can pretty much follow procedure for a terrorist attack.” Rowens eyed us critically. “And nowhere in that procedure does it outline the need to fuck in an interrogation room.”

  I jerked back from Dominic, and this time he let me go. “Can we focus on the case, please?”

  Greta shrugged. “Keep it professional at work, and we won’t make it personal.”

  “My bad,” I said, grimacing. “It’s been an intense few days. It won’t happen again.”

  I felt the vibration of Dominic’s growl on my back.

  “We have a lead?” I asked, attempting to get the conversation back on track.

  Greta rolled her eyes heavenward. “We’ve got something, all right. The woman in interrogation room three claims her son is a vampire and leading the ‘vampire revolution.’”

  Dominic made a choked noise behind me. “Well, we can rule her testimony out as false. Jillian is leading the uprising, and in case you haven’t noticed, she’s a woman.”

  “Still, I figured you’d want to talk to her, see what inside information you might be able to squeeze out,” Rowens said.

  “It’s bullshit,” Greta snapped. “She just wants attention. She’s scared and lonely and wants to be a part of our efforts here.”

  Rowens shook his head, unconvinced. “That’s not the read I’m getting from her. She doesn’t want to be here. She’s never trusted the police, and it took a ‘vampire revolution’ to get her here. Maybe she’s misinformed or confused, but she isn’t doing this just for attention.”

  “I don’t like encouraging false testimony,” Greta said tightly.

  “A few more questions can’t hurt.”

  I frowned. “Who is she claiming as her son?”

  “Someone named Kaden Alexander,” Greta said.

  I turned my head to look at Dominic, the denial on the edge of my lips—Dominic had sentenced Kaden to his final death for his crimes against the coven, for his crimes against me, and that sentence had been carried out weeks ago—but his expression had smoothed to unyielding, unfeeling stone.

  Chapter 22

  The woman sitting at the interrogation-room table had had a hard life. Granted, the past week had been rough on everyone, but for Luanne Alexander, life had been rough long before this past week. The deep frown lines scoring her face and between her brows, the nicotine-stained fingernails, the pockmarks on her cheeks, her gaunt frame, and, most telling of all, the cut of her sharp green eyes as she stared me down told a story of struggle and abuse that had started years before vampires had ever darkened her doorstep.

  But I’m sure the vampires hadn’t helped.

  Rowens and Greta had already teamed up, playing good cop-bad cop, and when that hadn’t worked, bad cop-bad cop. When that hadn’t worked, Greta had let Rowens try to peel the truth from her by himself. His FBI-trained interview skills were honed and dangerous—I knew firsthand how he could crawl under a person’s skin without flexing a muscle—but even he couldn’t quite crack Luanne’s hardened exterior.

  I don’t know what they thought was missing from the puzzle, but I knew exactly what was missing from mine. Kaden Alexander was supposed to be dead—he’d been sentenced to death, and his sentence had been carried out by Dominic Lysander, the Master vampire of New York City, himself—but according to this woman, by her account Kaden’s mother, he was alive and well enough to lead a vampire revolution.

  Jesus wept.

  I walked into the interrogation room and held out my hand. Luanne eyed the proffered appendage like I might a cockroach. “Mrs. Alexander, it’s a pleasure to—”

  “Like I told that one-armed officer, it’s Ms. Pyle now. Husband’s dead, good riddance, and I’m taking back my maiden name,” Luanne said, her voice nothing but gravel from decades of chain-smoking.

  I resisted the urge to glare through the one-way glass. So much for building a rapport. “Ms. Pyle, my apologies. I’m Cassidy DiRocco, a reporter with the Sun Accord, and I—”

  “I know who you are,” she rasped. “You’re the idiot who tried to pass off vampire attacks as animal attacks. When Lysander caught wind of that, he shut you down right quick.” She made a terrible sound, almost like clearing a throat filled with tar, over and over again until I realized she was chuckling.

  Fuck it. “Good. Then let me be frank. From all accounts, your son is dead.”

  Luanne shook her head. “Still an idiot, I see.”

  I narrowed my eyes. That hadn’t been quite the reaction I’d anticipated. “Lysander sentenced him to death after finding him guilty of treason and attempted murder.”

  “Killing a human ain’t murder for them. It’s good eatin’,” Luanne snorted. “Fool girl.”

  I struggled to keep my face composed. This woman was unreal. Even if her son was a vampire, she was human, for Christ’s sake. “Your son attempted to kill Lysander, Master vampire of New York City, and me, his night blood at the time. He was found guilty and his death sentence was carried out.”

  Luanne narrowed her eyes at me, considering. “And when did all this nonsense take place?”

  “A little over a month ago.”

  “Thought so,” Luanne said. She leaned back in her chair, unconcerned.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Don’t you care about your son’s well-being?” I asked.

  “Not when I saw him alive and well just yesterday.”

  I let a mocking smile tip my lips, so Luanne would think I didn’t believe her. “Sure,” I said, and every vertical wrinkle around her mouth crinkled.

  Luanne struck me as a woman who, despite her sharp eyes and keen sense, hadn’t been listened to very much over the years. Put on the defensive, she might trip over her own good sense to prove her version of the truth.

  Sure enough, Luanne tilted her head and pulled aside the collar of her shirt, baring a neck ravaged by mounds of keloid scar tissue. “What do you make of this, then, hmm?”

  I stared at her scars and forced my expression to remain bland. “Whoever you let munch on your neck did a slipshod job of healing you afterward. Doesn’t look like the work of a loving son to me.”

  “Never said he was loving,” Luanne said, releasing the collar of her shirt.

  I remembered the untamed savagery of Kaden’s bite all too well. Unlike Dominic, whose bite was pin-needle precise, Kaden feasted on flesh like a dog with a bone; Ms. Pyle’s neck could certainly be the result of Kaden’s enthusiasm, but it could just as likely be the result of any number of savagely enthusiastic vampires.

  “That doesn’t prove shit, lady,” I said. My words were deliberately harsh. People didn’t hear you unless you spoke to them in a language they understood, and for Luanne, direct and abrasive seemed to be her fluent language.

  “You want proof?” she sneered.

  I crossed my arms. “It doesn’t matter what I want. You came to us. Most of the people here today want to file missing-persons reports. Th
eir loved ones are missing, and they came here looking for answers. But here you are, telling us that we’re wrong, that you saw your son just yesterday. If you don’t have a missing loved one and you already have all the answers, than why the hell are you here?”

  It was a risky move. If I pushed her too hard, she might lose her temper and just leave, but if I pushed her just right, maybe she’d lose her temper and spill her guts.

  “I’ve got fucking proof,” she snarled, reaching in her jeans back pocket.

  The door slammed open, gouging its handle into the wall, and Greta and Rowens burst into the interrogation room, guns aimed at Luanne’s head.

  “Freeze!” Greta and Rowens said, their movements and command simultaneous, nearly choreographed.

  Luanne froze.

  I thought about telling Greta and Rowens to back down; even if Luanne was pulling something nefarious from her back pocket, like a gun—which was unlikely, considering everyone had received a thorough pat-down before entering the waiting room—at this distance, I could probably disarm her before she even pulled the trigger, and if I wasn’t close enough for that, I could dodge the bullets. With the exception of Walker’s weapons, guns weren’t a threat to me anymore.

  I could do many things now that Greta couldn’t, but I remained silent and let Greta do her thing. No matter how much I had transformed from my former self, I was still just the crime reporter she’d invited into this investigation, and the moment I allowed my newfound vampire strength and abilities to interfere with Greta doing her job, that would make me something else entirely. And I very much liked being a crime reporter, even if I had to report to work with fangs. I’d never been particularly conventional anyway.

  Besides, if push came to shove, I could lunge forward to shield her and Rowens from the bullets.

  “Raise both hands, slowly, into the air where we can see them,” Greta said, her voice low and steady. “Now.”

  Luanne did, slowly, just like Greta said, and her hands were empty.

  Rowens jerked his head, his aim as steady as Greta’s.

  Greta put up her gun and approached Luanne. She patted her down again, and when she reached her back pocket, found what the woman had been reaching for: her cell phone.

  Greta held up the phone and glanced meaningfully at Rowens.

  Rowens put up his gun.

  “That’s what I thought,” Ms. Pyle said, her glare as sharp as ever, but she couldn’t hide anything from me. I could hear the most minute, nearly undetectable quaver in her voice. She was shaken.

  Greta slapped the phone onto the table with the flat of her hand and leaned down to hiss into Luanne’s ear. “One wrong move, and your brain is nothing but bullet spatter. Got it?”

  Luanne glared back, but nodded.

  “Good. Got anything else in your pockets you want to whip out now before we go back behind that glass?”

  Luanne shook her head mutely.

  “Last chance. You move to pull anything else from your behind, and we shoot first, ask questions later. Hear me?”

  “Loud and clear,” Luanne ground out from behind clenched teeth.

  Greta nodded curtly, and she and Rowens left the room.

  Luanne didn’t watch them leave, however. Her eyes were all for me.

  I lifted my eyebrows. “Problem?”

  “Renfield much?” she sneered.

  I stared at her for a long moment and tried to compose myself, I really did, but in the end I couldn’t help it, not even after years of conducting interviews and being at the receiving end of a few from Greta and Rowens myself. I laughed. “Hypocrite much?”

  Luanne shook her head, the disgust she felt etched into every wrinkle across her weathered face. “It was bad enough when the vampires were psychopaths stalking the night, but at least I knew the rules. If Kaden murdered someone and I kept my trap sealed shut, no one remembered come morning. Kaden was stronger and more powerful as a vampire, which was hell on our neighbors—the few who survived—but at least I didn’t have to worry about covering his tracks like I did when he was human.”

  I blinked. I’d always suspected Kaden of having serial killer tendencies, but having his mother outright admit it still took me aback.

  “Now here you are in daylight, exposed as the monster you are, with human friends and part of an investigation to hunt and kill my son.” She shook her head. “And here I am jumping from one cage to the next, trapped first by the secrets and lies of knowing the truth about your existence, and trapped now by the truth. I prefer the first, thank you very much. At least then I had my son. At least then I knew my place.”

  I shrugged, feigning nonchalance, and forced myself not to grind my teeth. “So leave,” I said.

  Luanne stared at me for a hard moment, and I tensed, doubting whether I was playing this right.

  Luanne came to us, I reminded myself. No matter how tough she acts, she has something to say or else she wouldn’t be here.

  “Fuck you,” she spat. But she didn’t leave.

  I hid the self-satisfied grin that spread like fresh blood through my limbs.

  I blinked. Warm coffee, I corrected my thoughts. The self-satisfaction I was feeling spread like warm coffee.

  Luanne leaned forward, unaware of my internal struggle. “Mark my words, my Kaden will take you out,” she said, her voice more growl than words through her smoke-damaged throat.

  “Is that a threat?” I asked, my own voice low and menacing, and unfortunately becoming familiar.

  She shook her head. “It’s a fact. He’s had a vendetta against Lysander for years, and since you helped imprison him, he’s got one against you now, too. Nothing, and I mean nothing will stand in the way of that monster. He’ll rule this city. He won’t be satisfied until he’s king of everything he’s destroyed, and even then, he’ll be on the lookout for whatever peon might have survived, so he can bathe in its blood, too.”

  I let out a huff of a breath. “‘That monster’ is your son.” Supposedly, I added to myself.

  “Only by blood and not anymore.” She picked up and unlocked her phone, and for the first time during our interview, Luanne’s fingers visibly trembled. “He ripped out my heart.”

  I raised my eyebrows, staring at the smooth, unblemished skin of her intact chest.

  “Figuratively speaking,” she clarified.

  “You can’t be too literal these days,” I commented.

  Luanne cackled that terrible, rattling laugh of hers and turned her phone toward me to show me a photo. My mouth watered. My throat closed in a burning ring of thirst and convulsed hungrily. And my face transformed. I couldn’t help it; I could feel my fangs elongating, my ears pointing, my forehead thickening, and my nails lengthening to talons from a mere photo, and I couldn’t stop my reaction any more than I could have stopped my stomach from rumbling as a human; it was an automatic, physical response to being hungry.

  But Luanne wasn’t showing me a photo of a hamburger.

  Although the synapses in my brain could fire faster than a human’s, all my eyes could see at first was the blood. The volume of blood that had sprayed from her wounds and saturated the carpeting, walls, and curtains around her was astounding.

  Eventually, I saw past the blood and recognized the human toddler at its center, and I pried my eyes from the image. I was still hungry, my fangs hadn’t retracted, my talons hadn’t receded, and my face hadn’t returned to its human-like curves, but my voice when I finally spoke was calm. For that small accomplishment—that and not attacking Luanne on the spot to satisfy the swift, overwhelming hunger—I gave myself a few brownie points. But only a few, considering my rumbling stomach.

  “Your heart, I presume?” I asked.

  Luanne nodded. “Lucy was my granddaughter, the only good that bastard ever produced in this world. She was my second chance at doing it right, at raising something
that didn’t take joy from tearing someone’s throat out.”

  “Goal of the year, right there: don’t raise a serial killer,” I muttered.

  “I made a go of it all alone,” Luanne said, her voice as hard as her face, and I suspected, as hard as life had been to her. “I didn’t beat him any more than I’d been beat. I protected him from the rapes and scars and sights I’d seen and survived growing up, but somehow, he became one of the fucking monsters I’d always protected him from.”

  Her eyes filled with tears as her gaze swept over the photo. She relocked the phone and let it lie on the table, its screen black.

  “What happened?” I asked softly.

  “We holed up in my apartment when the Damned stormed the city. Kaden would visit to feed from me, but I’d fortified the back hallway bathroom against vampires. Lucy and I spent the majority of our time in that bathroom, except when Kaden visited, but even then, I locked her inside until he left.”

  I frowned, wanting to know why she’d chosen the bathroom of all places to hide a child, but that detail wasn’t important enough to interrupt her story, so I let it go and just nodded.

  “A week in, we ran out of food,” Luanne continued. “I left the apartment to see what I could find and locked Lucy in the bathroom. I didn’t know how long I’d be gone—God only knew what was left of the city in the wake of those fuckers—but I told Lucy I’d be back soon.”

  I bit my lip, knowing exactly where this story was headed, and tasted blood. Damn fangs. “You were away longer than you expected.”

  Luanne nodded. “And Kaden visited to feed while I was gone.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She met my eyes squarely. “Have you tasted young blood yet?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s sweeter, supposedly, and doesn’t have that cinnamon heat that you creatures find so irresistible. Not ripe enough, I guess,” Luanne said, shaking her head. “But my Kaden was always fond of children; even as a human, he took pleasure in carving flesh and spilling blood. I think killing was just an unfortunate by-product. The body doesn’t bleed as well once the heart stops, you know. He told me that once as a boy, staring at the neighbor’s butchered dog, and I knew then that he wasn’t right. Never would be.” Luanne sniffed coldly. “He was a monster long before becoming a vampire.”