by A. D. Ryan
If that was the case, though, why was every one of my instincts telling me to watch my back?
The thirty-minute drive from the precinct to the Warehouse District in Phoenix had my stomach in knots and my heart pounding so hard and fast that it became uncomfortable. In order to assuage the feeling, I chose to focus on how the color of the blue sky was streaked with the gold and orange hues of the setting sun.
When David and I rolled the car to a stop outside the address on the card, the sun was dipping even lower on the horizon. My skin hummed, a dull throb beginning in my shoulder at the point of my almost two-week-old injury. The pulse was hot in my veins, moving down my arm and throughout the rest of my body, and I swallowed the warm saliva that gathered in my mouth. I don’t know why I felt this way, but I tried to push it aside, because now was clearly not the time.
A Phoenix PD car was here waiting already, the two male detectives on the sidewalk, having a smoke. We waited a few more minutes for O’Malley and Keaton to arrive, and when they pulled up behind us, we stepped out of the car and onto the sidewalk. The first thing I did—only because it seemed to be my first impulse now—was sniff the air, picking up faint traces of something familiar and unpleasant.
I sniffed again in an effort to place the smells, drawing strange glances from the three men around me, before I shrugged. “Thought I smelled a hot dog vendor.” A horrible lie, because my nose told me the nearest vendor was ten blocks away…
Weird.
Pushing through the mental detour, I turned and nodded toward the waiting Phoenix detectives. “Come on.”
The taller of the two men tossed his cigarette butt to the curb and stomped it out. Dressed in a brown suit, he looked to be about fifty, his eyes brown and his head bald, and he was no taller than David. His frame was heavier, though, most of his weight resting in his slightly distended belly. He reached out his hand toward me. “You must be Detective Leighton,” he said as I gripped his hand. “I’m Detective Burns.”
“Pleasure,” I said, eyeing his approaching partner.
“Adams,” his partner said, his dirty-blond hair slicked back and his hazel eyes soft and inquisitive. He was new. I could smell the inexperience on him. His apprehension, too.
They told us about the three homicides they’d been investigating, all of the details sounding eerily similar to our own investigation. Naturally, they scoffed when I told them about my underground vampire club theory. It annoyed me. My nostrils flared, and my vision was clouded with red.
“Got me this far,” I snarled through gritted teeth. “So, if you wanna continue to ride on my coattail, I suggest we get moving.”
That shut them up. Satisfied, I turned abruptly on my heel and led the way toward the entrance. The closer we got, the stronger the scent was. My stomach rolled, and I fought to suppress the urge to retch. I tried to focus on the scent of the trash that wafted from the alley, but even the smell of rotting food wasn’t enough to relieve the assault on my nose. I inhaled deeply, thinking I could hold it until we got inside and away from the stench, and just like that, my sensory memory kicked in. I was instantly transported to when I smelled it last: in Samantha Turner’s apartment, just the other day. It was death I smelled in the air, only this time, it held the coppery notes of blood…and a lot of it.
But where was it coming from?
The combination of smells attacked each of my senses, burning my throat like acid, and my skin prickled as tiny beads of sweat formed all over my body. Blood pounded through my veins, my heart increased in tempo and strength while my arms trembled, and every muscle in my back tensed almost painfully. I didn’t know what to make of what was happening to me, but it worried me. A lot.
Even though I found it repulsive, I followed the scent to the door, reaching out and grabbing the doorknob. It didn’t turn all the way. Locked. I considered knocking to announce our presence, but something pushed me to try the door again. This time, the muscles in my arm tensed as I turned the knob one more time. Something metallic snapped within the door, and the knob turned effortlessly in my hand before the door swung open. The guys didn’t notice, which was fortunate, because I wouldn’t have known how to explain it if they did.
What happened next caught me completely off guard. The smell that plagued me in the alley hit me like a freight train, knocking all the clean air from my lungs until my entire body felt polluted. We’d found the source of the smell, and my skin crawled as I took the first hesitant step into the building with David, Keaton, O’Malley, and the two Phoenix detectives on my heels. Waves of nausea crashed in my stomach the farther inside I walked, and my eyes adjusted to the dark quickly. Much quicker than normal.
The stench filled the air like a heavy smog. It was hard to keep moving forward, my movements slow and staggered, almost debilitated. My eyes scanned the dark for anything out of the ordinary as my fingers curled like talons. It didn’t take long for me to realize that my reaction to this smell wasn’t just disgust, but that my body seemed to be readying itself to attack.
David noticed this, coming up beside me and looking at me with concern etched into his forehead. “You feeling all right?” he asked.
The warehouse was suddenly bathed in light. David and I to whipped around to see Keaton over by the wall, pointing at the light switch with his thumb. “Not all of us have natural night vision,” he joked, and I realized that it hadn’t even occurred to me how dark it was.
The six of us looked around the open space together. It looked like any night club would look after a wild night: chairs knocked over, bottles and glasses littering the floor and tabletops. There was nothing special or particularly memorable about this place; it looked like an abandoned building that had been turned into a night club with little to no renovations.
David, O’Malley, and Keaton had their hands on their guns while I didn’t. It took a minute before finding it weird that my first instinct wasn’t to reach for my weapon in the off chance we might be ambushed. Normally, having my gun ready to grab would give me a sense of security, but I didn’t feel like I needed it. I felt like if something were to jump out at me, I could deal with it without the use of a firearm.
It was a very strange feeling…but at the same time, a very powerful one.
“I’m okay. It just smells in here,” I confessed to him, only to be met with a quizzical stare. “Doesn’t it?” I inhaled another big whiff and instantly regretted it when the smell hit the back of my throat, making me gag.
I expected David to look at me as if I’d lost my mind, but instead he urged me to continue. “I don’t smell anything other than stale beer and alcohol that’s been spilled and left to dry, but that doesn’t mean you don’t. You seem to have picked up an uncanny sense of smell, so if you say you smell something, I believe you.” My lips curled up into a relieved smile, and he continued. “What do you smell?”
I glanced over to where O’Malley and Keaton were currently looking around the building, then over at Burns and Adams behind the abandoned bar. “Well, in addition to the alcohol, the most dominant smell is…decay. It smells like something rotten has been in here for days—maybe even weeks.”
“Anything else?”
“Blood,” was all I said. “And a lot of it. This could be where the murders were committed.”
I don’t think it was intended for me to see, but David’s entire frame shuddered. “Okay, we’ll get CSU down here to check the place out.”
David talked to Burns and Adams, who made the call while I continued to look around the building. Glass bottles littered the floor, and we walked carefully to keep from kicking them as we navigated the room so we didn’t disturb anything. Our shoes stuck to the alcohol that had been spilled, and we weaved around upturned tables and bar stools as we looked for something useful. Really, I’d been hoping to find actual people to question, but this place looked abandoned. And recently.
It was beginning to look like we were too late. Maybe they decided to move onto another location when th
ey found out the police had been to Donovan’s club back home. My frustration mounted quickly, the rage at being too damn late making my entire body shake. By the time CSU arrived, I was too anxious and unable to take it anymore; there were too many people in one space, and I couldn’t focus on anything other than how trapped I felt. Always underfoot.
I started for the door when David stopped me, catching my hand. “Where are you going?”
I looked through the open door and caught sight of the full moon in the darkening blue sky. Freedom, a soft voice—mine—whispered in the back of my mind. I was…drawn to it in a way that I couldn’t even begin to describe, and, suddenly, being outside was all I thought about. All I wanted. “I need some fresh air to clear my head. It’s crowded in here, and I can’t think straight. I’m going to take a walk around the area, see if there’s something there.”
David nodded, understanding. “Okay. Hurry back, though, okay?”
“I will. I’ve got my phone. Call me if they find anything,” I told him before squeezing his hand and heading outside.
The minute the cool air hit my face, I closed my eyes. It felt amazing against my skin, and I inhaled deeply, the air out here seeming so much cleaner than it did inside. It was still tainted, though, and I wandered a little farther down the sidewalk, rounding the corner in search of a less polluted source of air.
When I found it, my entire body felt rejuvenated, and my feet picked up their pace. I was speed walking, and I didn’t know where I was heading; I was just happy to be outside and moving. All of my frustration and anxiety slowly faded as my legs moved a little faster than before.
Cars passed on the street, and I noticed all the people milling by me, sidestepping. The city never bothered me before, but for some reason, now it was too busy—suffocating, actually—and claustrophobia threatened to grab hold of me again. My palms were sweaty, my heart still racing. Every pair of eyes seemed to turn to me, like I was on display, so I ran.
I didn’t know where I was going, but the feel of the wind through my hair and on my face as I ran faster and faster was exhilarating. For a moment, all I heard was my pulse pounding in my ears, my adrenaline spiking as I rounded another corner and followed a path away from the bustling activity of the city. My body temperature rose, which wasn’t uncommon when I ran, but my skin itched, crawling and rippling, and every muscle in my body burned like it was on fire. Instead of making me want to stop, though, it pushed me forward. It struck me as weird. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before, but I accepted it because it felt oddly natural.
The sensation of running with wild abandon wrapped around me, allowing me to get so lost that I didn’t hear my phone ringing at first. Even when the sound did register, I ignored it. I was no longer in control of my own body. Something else was. It should’ve worried me, but I felt strong—stronger than ever before—and I welcomed the feeling.
When my phone rang again, my hand, feeling dislocated from my body, pulled it from my pocket and tossed it to the ground. Shocked by this, I considered going back for it, but was quickly overruled by whatever force controlled me, and I kept on my path toward the outskirts of the city. Soon I forgot all about the phone and civilization as the bright full moon pulled my focus again, and I darted into the night.
Chapter fifteen | confused
Warmth surrounded me as my mind breached the barrier between sleep and reality, and I groaned as my eyes fluttered open. The instant the sunlight streaming in from the window above the bed caught my eyes, pain pierced my brain and forced me to slam them shut again. A painful jackhammer-like pounding lingered even as I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, plunging me back into darkness. Sadly, this did little to cease the relentless throb, so I pressed harder until bright white spots formed, eventually merging into one bright white spot.
The moon.
I knew that wasn’t what it really was, but for some reason, it invited a flashflood of images that felt both dream-like and real at the same time. While I had trouble sorting through them, one thing remained constant, and that was the silver orb that hung in the darkness like a full moon on a starless night.
The threat of rain was thick in the air as the wind rustled through the leaves of the trees overhead. The rich smell of the cool soil was almost intoxicating, but that feeling soon dissipated when a sharp growl cut through the blackness. Yellow eyes and a threatening flash of white directly below them gleamed as the animal—a large wolf—stalked out from its hiding place amongst the bushes that appeared out of nowhere, but that wasn’t where the growling came from.
Its light brown fur gleamed in the silver light of the moon, and it looked oddly familiar as it stepped closer. I passed the thought off as ridiculous because all wolves looked alike, didn’t they? A deep pulse—a heartbeat, I realized in my conscious state—filled the silent night air as it stalked forward, one deliberate step at a time. Its amber eyes shined bright, never blinking as its hot breath mixed with the cool desert air, forming a thick cloud of fog that spiraled up around its head.
Then, with a threatening bark, it leapt, its jaws open wide and ready to strike.
With a jolt, my eyes snapped open, my pulse thundering in my ears as I stared at the white wall in front of me. In addition to my headache, my memory of last night was somewhat muddled, mixing with the strange recurring dream I’d been having of the wolf attack. My mouth was dry, feeling like it was full of cotton balls. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear I was suffering the world’s worst hangover. The problem with that theory, though, was that I didn’t have a single drop of alcohol. This didn’t negate the very real fact that something was seriously wrong with me.
Slowly, I pushed myself off the bed, focusing my attention on anything other than how my arms trembled under the physical exertion this one simple act used. Every muscle in my back tensed and ached as I struggled. When my eyes fell to my hands, I gasped upon finding them filthy, dirt and bits of grass wedged beneath my fingernails.
Confused, I tried to jog my memory, but came up empty time and time again. As I continued to rise, the cool bed sheet fell from my body—my apparently very naked body. My eyes wandered over my arms, noticing thin, pink scratches running the length of them beneath the dirt and grime that covered my skin. They also covered my chest, upraised, and they tingled slightly like newly healing skin when I touched them. I should have been able to remember how I got them, but I didn’t.
White teeth and amber eyes flashed against black again and again, but I continued to shake it off as another bad dream brought on by the memory of the wolf attack. For some reason, it wasn’t so easy. I let my head fall back, staring at the roof, as the flashes continued and the faint taste of copper formed on my tongue. Each of these little revelations made my head hurt more, and I sat up tall, stretching my arms up over my head in an effort to release the tension in my spine as my eyes wandered around my room…
…or, what I thought was my room up until I really took in my surroundings. The haze of sleep snapped back like a recoiled spring, slapping me in the face. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I made this mistake to begin with. The white walls were the only thing in common with my bedroom. Gone was all of the artwork that adorned my walls, and my furniture was missing, having been replaced with contemporary black pieces I didn’t recognize at all. Plus the windows weren’t in the same place as the ones in my room, and the bed was on the opposite wall.
Frantic, my heart raced when I failed to recognize where I was. Last I knew, I was in Phoenix… Was I still? I took several deep breaths, running my trembling fingers partially through my tangled hair as I tried to figure things out, but my fear and anxiety continued to rise, making my stomach churn. Where was I? What the hell happened last night?
Unable to answer my own silent questions, my eyes tingled and burned, but I couldn’t afford to break down right now, not while I could be in very real danger… Though, the more I considered that possibility, the more I realized I didn’t actually feel threatene
d in the least. If anything, I felt like I was in a safe place.
The bed dipped behind me, and a low groan filled the room. At first, I was relieved, until I realized it wasn’t David behind me. Startled from my feelings of security, I stood up and rushed across the room in a flash. I pressed my back to the cold wall and stared at the uncovered and equally naked body of a blond man. But not just any blond man. No, this was a man I knew all too well.
Nick rolled over on the bed, which I noted was covered in dirt transferred from my body—and, as it would seem, his as well. I was so incredibly lost and confused, unable to even begin to piece together the events of last night. All I knew was that guilt quickly built inside me, and my head pounded as I tried to make sense of everything.
Propping his head in his hand, Nick’s dark eyes found me pressed against his bedroom wall, and a goofy smile played at his lips. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said, his voice still low and gravelly with sleep. “Sleep well?”
The way his eyes devoured me made me suddenly aware of how very naked I was in front of a man who wasn’t David, and I leaned forward, snatched the corner of the sheet that hung from the corner of the bed, and held it against my body as a shield. Admittedly, I didn’t really think far enough in advance to realize that this would leave Nick completely exposed, and I quickly forced my eyes to his so as not to stare. He seemed unfazed by his own nudity, but he’d always been pretty confident in his own skin.
And rightfully so, I mused inwardly, my eyes betraying their orders and glancing south.
“Wh-what happened last night?” I stammered, looking around the room as though it would somehow hold the answers. “How did I get here? Where are my clothes?”
“That’s a lot of questions for a guy who just woke up after a long, exhausting night,” he replied cockily, and I had the extremely violent urge to rush across the room and attack him. “Your clothes are probably still in the woods, but you’d better forget about finding them in one piece.” With a wink, he scratched his stubble-ridden jawline, and an image of my tongue running along it surfaced in my mind. A memory? Fantasy? I couldn’t tell, but I swear the sensation of the act, as well as subtle notes of copper, still lingered on my tongue.