“What do we have so far?” Katamori asked.
“There’s a vampire smell in here, very recent,” Dahlia said.
“Besides the half-demon, I’m getting humans, a werewolf, at least two vampires.”
Werewolves. Dahlia’s mouth twitched. But first of all, she had to interrogate the only living creature in the cavernous room. “Demon girl,” she said, “explain yourself.” Now that Dahlia spared a moment to take in the half-demon’s ensemble, Dahlia’s eyes widened. The skinny creature, whose short hair was dyed a brilliant lime green, was wearing black Under Armour from top to bottom. Her red sneakers were a fine clash with the lilac miniskirt and a buckskin vest lined with fleece.
“I’m Diantha,” the girl said. And then she began a long sentence that was possibly in English.
“Stop,” Katamori said. “Or I’ll have to kill you.”
Diantha stopped in midword, her mouth open. Dahlia could see how very sharp the half-demon’s teeth were, and how many of them seemed to be crammed into her little mouth. Katamori would have quite a fight on his hands, and Dahlia found herself hoping it wouldn’t come to that.
“Diantha, I’m Dahlia. Our names are similar, aren’t they?” Dahlia said. She hadn’t tried to sound soothing in a century or two, and it sat awkwardly on her. “You must speak so that we can understand you. Maybe it will help you to be calm if we tell you we know you didn’t do this thing.”
“We do?” Katamori knew the reason, but he wanted Dahlia to spell it out.
“No blood on her, except on her shoes.” She didn’t bother to lower her voice. Diantha’s bright eyes were on her so intently that she knew the girl could read her lips.
“I’mtherunnerformyuncleinLouisiana,” Diantha said. She didn’t seem to need to breathe when she spoke, but at least this time she spoke slowly enough—at less than warp speed—that the vampires could understand her.
“And you are here at the ascension party because . . . ?”
“Rhodesdemonswereinvited, Iwasstayingthenightafterbringing—” And the rest of her sentence ran together in a hopeless tangle.
“Slower,” Dahlia said, making sure she sounded like she meant it.
Diantha sighed noisily, looking as exasperated as the teenager she appeared to be. “Since I was here for the night, they invited me to come with them.” She put an almost visible space between each word. “Nothing else to do, so I came with.”
“You’re visiting from Louisiana on a business errand, and you came to the mansion with the Rhodes demons because they were invited.”
Diantha nodded, her green spikes bobbing almost comically. If Dahlia hadn’t seen demons fight before, she might have laughed.
“How did you happen to enter the kitchen?” Katamori asked. During Dahlia and Diantha’s conversation, he had circled the table to stand at Diantha’s back. She had turned slightly so she could keep both vampires in view, since she was now bracketed between them. Despite Dahlia’s assurances, the half-demon girl didn’t like her situation at all. Her knees bent, and her hands fisted, ready for a challenge.
But when she spoke, her voice was steady enough. “I was going to the refrigerator,” Diantha said, still making the effort to speak slowly. “You guys were out of Sprite, and I thought it would be all right if I checked to see if there was more in the refrigerator. Ismelledtheblood—”
Dahlia held up an admonishing hand, and Diantha slowed down. “I yelled because I smelled the blood as I stepped in it.”
“Not before?” Most supernaturals had a very sharp sense of smell.
“Smell of vampire had deadened my nose,” Diantha said.
That made sense to Dahlia. Though the scent of vampire was naturally delightful to her, she had been told many times that it was overwhelming to other supernaturals.
“Was the blood still running when you came in?” The thicker trickles from spurting arteries were barely moving down the shiny surface of the appliances, and the cast-off drops that had been slung away when the throat had come out were beginning to dry at the edges.
“Little,” Diantha said.
“Was anyone else here?” Katamori said.
Diantha shook her head.
The two vampires glanced at each other, eyebrows raised in query. Dahlia couldn’t think of any more questions to ask. Evidently Katamori couldn’t, either.
“Diantha, in a second you can move.” Dahlia and Katamori closed in on each side of the body. “All right,” Dahlia said. “Step out of the blood. Take off your shoes and leave them.”
The half-demon girl followed Dahlia’s instructions to the letter. She perched on the wooden table to remove her red high-tops. She placed her stained shoes neatly side by side on the floor. “Stayorgo?” she asked, looking much more cheerful now that she wasn’t so close to the corpse. Demons didn’t often eat people, and proximity to the body hadn’t been pleasant for her.
“I think you can go,” Dahlia said, after a moment’s thought. “Don’t leave.”
“Gobacktotheparty,” the girl said, and did so.
By silent agreement, the two vampires bent to their task. With their excellent vision and sense of smell, they didn’t need magnifying glasses or flashlights to help them analyze what they saw.
“The human donors came into the kitchen and ate and drank,” Katamori began. “A vampire shepherded them.”
“As always,” Dahlia said absently. “And that’s a vampire we need to talk to, because somehow this human got left behind, or he hid himself. Obviously, the shepherd should have noticed.”
“A werewolf came through here, probably after the death. Perhaps more than one werewolf,” Katamori continued. He was crouched near the floor, and he looked up at Dahlia, his dark eyes intent. His black braid fell forward as he bent back to examine the floor, and he tossed it back over his shoulder.
“I don’t disagree,” Dahlia said, making an effort to sound neutral. Any trouble that involved the werewolves would involve Taffy. “I think we should tell Joaquin that the shepherd needs to come here now, or as soon as he’s returned.”
Katamori said “Yes,” but in an absent way. Dahlia went to the swinging door. As she’d expected, one of Joaquin’s friends, a wispy brunette named Rachel, was waiting in the hall. Dahlia explained what she needed, and Rachel raced off. Cedric had forbidden the use of cell phones in the mansion, and Joaquin had not rescinded that rule yet, though Dahlia had heard that he would.
In two minutes Gerhard, the shepherd of the evening, came striding down the hall to join Dahlia. She could tell by the way he walked that he was angry, though he was smiling. That perpetual smile shone as hard as Gerhard’s short corn-blond hair, which gleamed under the lights like polished silk. He’d lived in Rhodes for fifty years, but he and Dahlia had never become friends.
Dahlia didn’t have many friends. She was quite all right with that.
“What would you like to know?” Gerhard asked. His German accent was pronounced despite his long years in the United States.
“Tell me about taking the humans out of here,” Dahlia said. “How did you come to leave this one behind?”
Gerhard stiffened. “Are you saying I was derelict in my duties?”
“I’m trying to find out what happened,” Dahlia said, not too patiently. “Your execution of your duties is not my concern, but Joaquin’s. The man is here. He isn’t supposed to be. How did that come about?”
Gerhard was obliged to reply. “I gathered the humans together to leave. We came to the kitchen. I followed procedure by showing them the food and drink provided. After ten minutes, I told them it was time to go. I counted as we left, and the number was correct.”
“But here he is,” Katamori said, straightening from his crouched position by the body. “So either your count was incorrect, you are lying, or an extra human took his place. What is your explanation?”
“I have none,” Gerhard said, in a voice so stiff it might have been starched.
“Go to Joaquin and tell him that,”
Dahlia said, without an ounce of sympathy.
“Well, then.” Gerhard became even more defensive. “This man and I had come to an arrangement. I left him here because upon my return we were to spend time together.”
“Though he had already donated this evening,” Dahlia said.
“His name was Arthur Allthorp. I have been with him before,” Gerhard said. “He could take a lot of . . . donation. He loved it.”
“A fangbanger,” Katamori said. Fangbangers, extreme vampire groupies, were notorious for ignoring limits.
Gerhard gave an abrupt nod.
Neither Dahlia nor Katamori remarked on the fact that Gerhard had initially lied to them. They knew, as did Gerhard, that he would pay for that.
“He was my weakness,” Gerhard said violently. “I am glad he is dead.”
This sudden burst of passion startled Dahlia and disgusted Katamori, who let Gerhard read that in his face. Gerhard whirled around to leave the kitchen, but Dahlia said, “What time did you leave with the humans? Was anyone in here with the man Arthur when you took the others away?”
Gerhard thought for a second. “I bade them get into the vans at ten o’clock, since that was the time appointed by the agency that sent them. There was no one in here. But I could hear people coming down the hall as I waited for the other donors to exit. I’m sure one of them was Taffy.”
Dahlia would have said something unpleasant if she’d been by herself. As it was, she was aware of Katamori’s quick sideways glance. Everyone in the nest knew that Dahlia and Taffy were friends, despite Taffy’s unfortunate marriage. Dahlia’s own brief marriage to a werewolf had been forgiven, since it had lasted such a short time. But Taffy showed every sign of continuing her relationship with Don, and even of being happy in it, to the bafflement of the other vampires of Rhodes. “We’ll have to find Taffy and Don and ask them some questions,” she said. “Gerhard, would you request this of Joaquin?”
Gerhard gave a jerky nod and barged out the door, shoving it with such force that it was left to swing to and fro in an annoying way.
Dahlia turned her attention back to the spray of blood on the fixtures and the blood pooled on the floor, still wet. “In my experience,” she said to Katamori, “it takes over an hour for blood to begin to dry. Given its tacky quality and the low temperature of this room, I believe the body has lain here for at least thirty minutes, give or take.”
Katamori nodded. They were both experts on blood. They looked up at the clock on the kitchen wall. It read ten forty-five.
“If Gerhard did leave with the humans at ten o’clock . . . say it took him five minutes to encourage them to put their dishes by the sink, and to get them out the door . . . then this Arthur was left by himself at ten oh five or ten ten. I talked to Cedric, and then I danced with Melponeus.” Dahlia was trying to figure out when the scream had brought the party to a halt.
“We heard Diantha at ten thirty,” Katamori said. With some surprise, Dahlia saw that he was wearing a watch, an unusual accessory for a vampire.
“And we were in here within a minute and a half of that. We’ve been investigating for perhaps twenty minutes. So someone entered the kitchen between ten minutes after ten and twenty-five minutes after ten, by the narrowest reckoning.”
“And this Arthur died of his throat being ripped out,” Katamori said.
“Yes. Though he may have been choked before that. Without the excised material it’s hard to say.”
“It’s over here.” Katamori pointed to a grisly little mound of skin and bone half-hidden under a chair.
Dahlia squatted to peer at the discarded handful. “This is so mangled, I still can’t say whether he was choked. This tissue was tossed aside, not consumed.”
Katamori made a moue of distaste.
Dahlia said, “I was thinking of the trace of werewolf, and all that that implies.” Werewolves would eat human flesh, at least when they were in their wolf forms.
“Do you think we’ve seen everything there is to see, smelled everything there is to smell?” Katamori asked, tactfully bypassing the werewolf issue.
“Let’s go through the human’s pockets,” Dahlia suggested, and Katamori squatted on the other side of the body. Dahlia had quick, light fingers, and she was thorough. Folded and stuck in a pocket on her side of the corpse, she found a sheet from the donor bureau containing a rendezvous point and a scheduled donation time for tonight. Just as Gerhard had said, the donors were to be picked up at eight, then returned to the pickup point at ten.
Dahlia wondered if Gerhard had told Arthur to make sure he was included on the donor list. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Gerhard’s favorite banger had been included in the donor party. In the last four years it had become a regular practice for the hosts of parties to which vampires had been invited to hire donors from a registered donor bureau, so they could be sure that all the human snacks on offer had been examined for blood-borne diseases and psychoses. There was a disease vampires could catch from humans (Sino-AIDS), and donors had been checked for hidden agendas ever since a donor in Memphis brought a gun and opened fire on the assembled partygoers.
Dahlia opened Arthur Allthorp’s wallet to get his donation card, which was perforated with seven holes. The card was punched every time the agency sent him out. After Dahlia had turned over the body to go through the other pants pocket, Katamori patted down Arthur’s legs. To their surprise, he found a knife in an ankle sheath. Very careless. Gerhard’s inefficiency was now a mountain rather than a molehill.
After a glance of silent agreement, the two stood, having gotten all the information from the body. They looked all around the vast kitchen for any clue they might have missed. The blackness continued to stare in through the big windows. The blood continued to cling wetly to the stainless steel surfaces. Arthur Allthorp, fangbanger, continued to be dead.
After Katamori deadbolted the outside door, he and Dahlia left the kitchen. Rachel had resumed her post in the hall, and Dahlia asked her to keep guard over the swinging door. “Let no one into the kitchen until we’re sure we don’t need it anymore,” she said. “No one will be able to enter from the outside.”
Rachel nodded, her expression intense. She was still proving herself as a vampire, and Dahlia felt sure Rachel would stand her ground against anyone who wanted to see the body.
Back in the reception room, Joaquin had resumed his seat in the thronelike chair reserved for the sheriff. His ascension party had taken a definite downturn in tone. The festive atmosphere had degenerated to uneasy apprehension. The partygoers were milling around anxiously. The demons and part-demons had established a tight knot in one corner with Diantha in its center, and the fae (an oread, a rare nix, and an elf) clustered close to them.
Bernie Feldman, Don’s enforcer, was watching the French doors with unmistakable worry. Bernie was standing oddly, as if nursing a hurt in his stomach. Dahlia followed his eyes. Approaching, obviously disheveled, were Taffy and Don. Taffy had her shoes in her free hand. The other hand was holding Don’s, and the two were looking at each other with what Dahlia could only describe as goo-goo eyes.
“Disgusting,” she muttered, and Katamori glanced at the happy pair. “They went through the kitchen,” he said. “We’re going to have to question them.”
“Better report to Joaquin first.”
The two vampires went to stand in front of their new leader. Dahlia bowed her head to a carefully calibrated angle. Katamori’s head was perhaps a centimeter lower than hers. Joaquin accepted their gesture and waited for them to report. He looked better in the chair than Cedric had. Joaquin was slim and tall, with thin dark hair and large brown eyes. The new sheriff hadn’t been a vampire as long as Dahlia (only two of the Rhodes vampires had been), but jobs didn’t always go to the oldest.
Glenda was draped over the back of the sheriff’s seat as if being Joaquin’s new fuck buddy gave her some special status. Dahlia eyed the vampire with no expression. Her dislike of Glenda went from vague to specif
ic.
“What have you discovered?” Joaquin asked, giving the two investigators all his attention.
Dahlia was pleased with the mark of respect. “The human was named Arthur Allthorp. He was a pet of Gerhard’s.” Dahlia had already spotted the blond vampire, who was trying to look stoic but only managing gloomy. “Gerhard allowed Arthur Allthorp to remain in the kitchen while Gerhard took the other donors back to their rendezvous point. I see that he has told you that.” Gerhard was flanked by Troy and Hazel, the vamps Joaquin had named as his punishers.
“Furthermore,” Katamori said, “I found a knife strapped to the human’s ankle.”
Another nail in Gerhard’s coffin, perhaps literally.
“He died very quickly when his throat was torn out,” Dahlia said. “We know he died in a fifteen-minute window, give or take a minute or two, between ten ten and ten twenty-five.”
Katamori said, “Passing through the kitchen close to the time of death were the human donors, Gerhard, another vampire or two I can’t identify, and at least one werewolf.”
All eyes went to Don and Bernie, who had been whispering furiously into Don’s ear. Don looked shocked and grim. Taffy was the only vampire standing anywhere close to them, and she took her husband’s arm. He patted her hand to show her he appreciated the support. Bernie stood to Don’s other side, and he had an expression Dahlia had seen before. It meant, I’m ready to die, but I’d rather not.
“It won’t make any difference to you, Joaquin, but I didn’t do it,” Don said in his deep voice. “I can’t imagine why I’d have any reason to kill the poor bastard, though maybe motive doesn’t interest you.” If Dahlia had had a moment to do so, she might have advised Don that this was not the time for sarcasm.
“Don and I did go through the kitchen,” Taffy said. “But we were on our way out into the garden to have a talk.”
“What was that talk about?” Glenda asked.
“You were right on our ass, so you probably know already. But I don’t answer to you,” Taffy said, and the light of battle flashed into her eyes.
Down These Strange Streets Page 3