The blood-bond shivered and a short pornographic film featuring her flashed through her mind.
She twisted in her seat to punch Varik’s arm, startling Buddy and causing him to nearly collide with the remains of a compact car. “Knock it off!”
Laughing, Varik flooded the bond with his thoughts. You put the idea in my head.
I did not!
Were you or were you not the one who suggested I push you up against a car and—
That was not a suggestion, and you know it.
The bond shivered with the heat of his thoughts. Perhaps not but it’s not a bad idea.
We’re on our way to a body dump, as you pointed out. How can you possibly be thinking of sex?
I think the bond is affecting my judgment.
Alex snorted. I thought it was because you’re male and breathing.
Varik chuckled behind her but didn’t respond.
As they neared an isolated corner of the salvage yard, Buddy slowed the cart and stopped behind a white van with the JPD’s logo and the words CRIME SCENE RESPONSE UNIT emblazoned on the side. “This is as far as I go,” he said. “The lieutenant is over there, other side of the van. Look for a dark blue Ford.”
Alex stepped from the cart and she heard Varik scrambling to exit the flatbed.
“I’ll go fetch the other two,” Buddy said. “Y’all be careful. There’s a lot of broken glass around here.”
The cart motored away and wind swept across the pasture. Alex breathed deep, instantly regretting it as the overwhelming smell of decay assaulted her. Gagging, she clamped her hand over her nose and mouth, trying in vain to block the odor.
She’d heard humans describe the smell of decomposition as akin to a Dumpster filled with rotting fruit—sickly sweet mixed with a slightly musty odor. To the heightened senses of vampires, the smell was that of both a fruit-filled Dumpster and an open sewage line.
Varik assumed a similar stance to hers. “No need to look for a fucking Ford. Just follow the damn smell.”
Tasha appeared from opposite the van. Her clothing was covered by a white Tyvek jumpsuit, plastic booties enveloped her shoes, and a paper cap protected her hair. The overall effect gave the lieutenant the appearance of a displeased Pillsbury Doughboy. “You’re going to want to suit up for this one.”
Alex and Varik moved to the rear of the van, where Tasha was pulling out matching jumpsuits for them.
“Tony’s with the body,” Tasha said while they stepped into the Tyvek suits. “What’s left of it, anyway.”
“Have you found any ID?” Varik asked, slipping plastic coverings over his boots.
“Not yet. Yard owner says the car isn’t part of his inventory. One of my guys is running the VIN number on the car now. Hopefully we can at least figure out the owner.”
Alex adjusted the paper cap to cover her hair. Cross-contamination of evidence was a huge risk at outdoor scenes. The protective gear they donned couldn’t prevent it with one hundred percent certainty but it did greatly reduce the odds. “How sure are you that it’s Mindy Johnson?”
“I’m not even sure it’s a person.”
Neither Alex nor Varik responded, allowing the severity of what they were about to see penetrate their minds. When they’d finished dressing in their protective gear, complete with latex gloves, Tasha led them toward a Ford Focus.
“Were you able to get anything from Mindy’s car?” she asked. “Anything that would lead us to suspect she’s still alive?”
“No, but I do have a working theory.” Varik offered a quick review of the morning’s events as the three slowly walked through the waist-high weeds.
“So you think this Dollmaker guy is here, in Jefferson?” Tasha asked. Suspicion and doubt weighted her words.
“It’s possible,” Varik said. “The similarities between what I saw in 1924 and today are too great for me to ignore and pass off as a coincidence or a copycat.”
“But you’re not ruling it out,” Tasha added.
“No, not yet.”
“If you’re correct, why would the Dollmaker come here? Everything you told me makes it sound like he prefers larger cities.”
“I don’t know why he’s here or if he even is here, Lieutenant. As I said, it’s a theory.”
Alex blocked out most of their argument in favor of stretching her senses to learn as much as possible about the scene around her. She focused on the battered Ford Focus. Large dents covered its exterior and the windshield was smashed. Mud caked the passenger’s side as though it’d been sprayed from the front wheel.
The trunk was open to its widest point, and Tony Maslan, JPD’s chief crime scene investigator, dressed in an identical Tyvek jumpsuit, snapped pictures of the trunk’s interior with a digital camera. He glanced up as they approached. The green tinge to his skin let Alex know whatever the trunk held was far worse than she was imagining.
She tried to set aside the nauseating smell of decomposition and search for other clues. The wind carried the metallic bite of rust mixed with the earthy scents of various animals. A faint but pungent strand of garlic made her nose wrinkle.
“What have you got, Tony?” Varik asked, bringing Alex out of her musings as they stopped.
“A goddamn mess,” the forensics tech responded. “Best I can tell is that we have a Caucasian female with red hair. Anything beyond that will have to be left for the medical examiner to sort out.”
Beside her, Varik hissed in disgust.
Alex forced herself to look into the trunk and struggled to make sense of what she saw. She fixated on a cluster of swollen black protrusions. A few of the misshapen lumps sported strange jagged lavender tips, but all rose from a sea of fine coppery threads that were matted and stained with a dark substance. It wasn’t until her mind recognized the black masses as fingers and the threads as hair that the gruesome scene fell into place like a macabre jigsaw puzzle.
“Who or what could have done this to a human being?” Tasha asked softly.
Varik moved in for a closer look. “It’s hard to say with this level of decomp but it looks almost like some kind of animal.”
“An animal?” Tony echoed. “How could an animal do that much damage to a person?”
“We have no way of knowing if it’s an animal or something else,” Alex answered, moving away from the gruesome sight. She worked her way alongside the car, searching for anything that seemed out of place. “Until Doc Hancock gets her on the table, we won’t even know who she is. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions until we have more facts.”
“She’s right,” Varik said. “Let’s just stick to what we see here and save the speculation for later.”
Tony and Tasha mumbled their agreement, and Varik began directing where Tony should concentrate his photos. Tasha stood back and watched, hands on hips and her expression unreadable, but her eyes followed Alex.
Alex ignored Tasha’s unusual amount of scrutiny and continued to circle the car. She traced the dents in her mind but avoided touching them until the exterior could be properly examined for prints. A pattern began to form and a sickening realization crept into her thoughts. She focused on the windshield and its spider-webbing cracks.
“Find something?” Varik asked as he joined her.
“Look at this.” She pointed to the double impacts from which the cracks radiated. “See the dark spots in the center?”
He leaned forward and after a moment nodded.
“I’ll bet a week’s pay when Freddy tests those stains it will come back as vampire blood.”
“What makes you think it’s vampire?” Tasha asked from the opposite side of the car. “Could be from a deer.”
Alex shook her head. “A deer is possible but unlikely. I’ve seen this kind of damage before. Look at the dent pattern.” She swept her arms over the crumpled hood. “It’s as though something attacked the car, rather than hit it by accident.”
“But why attack the car itself?”
“It held something the attacker wanted
. Add in the condition of the body, and I think we’re looking at a vampire hyped on Midnight.”
Midnight was possibly the deadliest drug on the black market. A potent mixture of the human street drug Ecstasy, garlic, aspirin, and animal blood, it was highly addictive for vampires. The garlic and aspirin thinned the vampire’s blood, allowing the Ecstasy to have a greater hallucinogenic effect.
Animal blood, however, was the real danger. Vampires fed on the residual psychic energy in blood, rather than the blood itself. Animal blood carried a more primitive psychic signature, which in turn caused any vampire who consumed the drug to revert to a more animalistic state, and deaths—both vampire and human—were all too common.
“Shit,” Varik murmured. “There goes my theory.”
“An attack by a Midnight vampire makes sense but at the same time it doesn’t.” Alex placed her hands on her hips and shook her head. “If that body is Mindy Johnson, what the hell was she doing to run afoul of a Midnighter?”
“Mindy is a registered donor with a private recipient waiver,” Tasha said. “Maybe her recipient can answer that question.”
“Did her parents know who she was donating to?” Varik asked.
“No.”
“Even if we find her recipient, we still have the issue of finding whoever ditched her car,” Alex interjected. “It’s unlikely a Midnighter would even remember attacking her much less have the sense to get rid of her car.”
“Plus her car wasn’t damaged,” Varik added. “This one, on the other hand, has been beaten to Hell and back.”
They stared at the battered car, lost in thought. The whir of an approaching motor signaled the return of Buddy Coone and the arrival of Damian and Morgan.
Alex’s loathing for the Special Investigator and her anxiety over being forced to perform for the Tribunal’s benefit spread over the bond to Varik.
He brushed against her, sliding his hand across her lower back, as he moved into position at the front of the car. The intimacy of his touch shivered up her spine and made her gasp as a memory snapshot of their most recent lovemaking session flashed through her mind.
“Are you all right?” Tasha asked.
Alex nodded, chewing her bottom lip. She glanced at Varik from behind her dark shades and saw the knowing smirk on his face. You did that on purpose, you bastard.
His smirk turned to a grin.
“Is there something going on here I need to know about?” Tasha asked, annoyance evident in her tone.
“Yes.” Morgan’s voice drifted to them from nearby. “Please do fill the rest of us in on your obviously private joke, Enforcer Baudelaire.”
Varik’s smile disappeared. “If I did then it would no longer be private, would it, SI Dreyer?”
“Then bring us up to speed on everything instead,” Damian said, intercepting Morgan’s response. He moved to look into the trunk. “Who is she?”
As Varik recited what they knew so far and Tasha interjected information she’d learned from her interview with Mindy’s parents, Alex studied the salvage yard, noting the repaired fencing and the car’s proximity to it.
Whoever had disposed of the body and the car had gone through considerable effort. The land beyond the fence was flat pasture with a few clumps of oak trees. No road or path was visible along that side of the fence. Whoever ditched the car here would’ve had to drive or tow it across the neighboring field.
She frowned. But why leave either the car or the body where they could be found? Why not burn the vehicle with the body inside, thus reducing the amount of evidence as well as the odds of making a positive identification?
Movement beside a nearby rusted hulk drew her attention. A black shadow hovered close to the derelict vehicle. The shadow’s form wavered, elongated, and shifted into something vaguely humanoid.
Fine hairs on the nape of her neck stood on end. The sense of menace radiating from the shadow caused her to back up.
As she retreated, it moved forward.
“Alex?” Varik asked, heading toward her.
“Don’t move. Stand perfectly still.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Trouble.”
“What kind—”
The shadow charged.
Alex clambered to get out of its way but it moved too quickly. It caught her squarely in the chest and seemed to meld with her flesh as though her body were absorbing it. An unearthly cold passed through her, stealing her breath.
Voices rose in alarm around her. Varik’s hand clamped onto her shoulder. She could see him shouting her name but heard nothing beyond the increasing beat of her heart.
A presence entered her mind along with a sense of malice, directed not at her but outward. The blood-bond reached a fevered pitch as the entity seized upon it.
NO! Alex screamed at the possessing force.
The intruder left her in a rush, following the path of the open blood-bond. Too late, Varik attempted to throw up protective mental barriers. The shadow slammed into his body, lifting him from his feet and throwing him to the ground several feet away.
“Varik!” Alex hastily erected protective shields around her psyche, severing the bond. She rushed forward and slid to her knees at his side.
His eyes were wide, staring at something only he could see, and his mouth was open but no breath filled his lungs. A tremor traveled the length of his body and became a series of convulsions.
“He’s having a seizure!” Tasha shouted for Tony to call paramedics.
“No, he’s fucking possessed!” Alex straddled him, trying to hold him still. She used her hands to steady his head. “Where are you, you son of a bitch?”
“Enforcer Sabian!” Morgan shouted. “I demand to know—”
A shadow darted within Varik’s eyes.
“Gotcha.” Alex threw open the bond and sent her consciousness chasing after the invader.
She was vaguely aware of strength leaving her body. The sensation of falling distracted her for only a moment, and then she was plunging through the darkness, searching for a shadow in an endless void.
eight
“FUCK!” KIRK SLAPPED THE BUTTON TO PAUSE HIS VIDEO game as the doorbell sounded. He jumped to his feet and the handheld controller bounced on the carpeted floor. Whoever was interrupting his playtime was going to get their asses kicked.
The bell chimed again before he reached the foyer, intensifying his anger.
“What?” he demanded, wrenching open the door.
Piper and a tall blond girl both jumped back in surprise. Nearly incoherent words tumbled out of Piper’s mouth, her tone rising so it sounded like she was asking a question rather than making a statement. “Hey, Amber Lynn is—I mean, she and I wanted to—You asked me to bring Amber Lynn by.”
Kirk glanced from Piper to Amber Lynn, one of his newest bunny recruits. He leaned against the doorjamb. “What are you rambling on about?”
Piper laughed nervously and cut her eyes over at the other girl. “You told me about that thing this morning and asked me to bring Amber Lynn by to talk to you about it.”
The thing she rambled about finally clicked into place and he smiled. “Oh, right.” He shifted his attention to Amber Lynn, a pretty blond with pale brown eyes. “Come in,” he said, moving aside as he gestured for her to enter.
Amber Lynn ducked into the foyer, her long hair brushing against his bare chest as she passed.
Piper moved to follow, and Kirk stopped her by placing his hand in the center of her chest. “Make yourself at home,” he called to the other girl and stepped outside. “I’ll be right in.”
“Kirk, what about—”
He whipped Piper around and led her toward her car. “You need to leave now.”
“What? Why?”
“Amber Lynn and I need to have a private conversation, and you still need to find me a replacement redhead.”
“But how will Amber Lynn get home?”
He opened the driver’s door of Piper’s white Nissan Sentra and encour
aged her to sit. “Don’t worry.” He gave her a quick kiss on the lips and then smiled. “I’ll take care of her.”
Piper seemed on the verge of protesting but then sighed and cranked the car.
Kirk closed the door and waved to her as she backed out of the driveway. Once she was headed down the street, he dropped the caring-boyfriend façade and returned to the house. He entered and found soft music issuing from the living room. Suspecting what he’d find, he strolled through the foyer, down the short hallway, and into the spacious living room.
“Is she gone?” Amber Lynn asked. The cardigan sweater she’d been wearing lay draped over the back of the sofa and her shoes were tucked under the coffee table.
He nodded and sauntered over to the sofa, positioning himself behind her.
She pushed off from the sofa, drifted to him, and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Good, because I’ve been dying for an excuse to see you again.”
He pulled back from her attempt to kiss him. “Before we get down to business, Amber Lynn, you and I need to have a little chat.”
Unfazed by his rejection, she giggled and slipped her hand over the front of his jeans. “You mean the thing Piper was talking about?”
“I have a problem.”
“Oh, I can help you with it.”
“I’m sure you can.” He smiled and stroked her cheek. “Someone’s been talking about my little business. Someone with a big mouth.” His hand cupped her jaw and tightened until she cried out and her eyes widened in fear. “Who’ve you been talking to, Amber Lynn?”
“I-I don’t know what you mean,” she whimpered.
Kirk shoved her, watching as she tumbled over the sofa and onto the floor. The back of her head banged against the corner of the coffee table. A crimson ribbon soaked into her pale hair.
“First, you blab around campus about my business, and now you’re bleeding on my carpet.” He grabbed her hair and dragged her across the floor to the tiled eating area separating the living room from the kitchen. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to get blood out of carpet?”
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