She looked from him to Jackson, handsome, kind Jackson, whose cheeks were blazing, and who looked ashamed.
“Be sure of me,” she said.
“Because you know the vampire in question,” Nash said.
“No,” she said, feeling dizzy.
“We think the reason he’s been killing these women is because they resemble his mother. We have cause to believe that the vampire in the tomb is his father, and that he killed his father after his father killed his mother because she was unfaithful to him. In the seventeenth century.”
“He,” she said, swallowing hard, not wanting to think about who had easy access to her hair follicles.
“The perp—the son of the vampire in the crypt—began his attacks approximately two and a half years ago—after he became convinced that you were being unfaithful to him.” He looked at Jackson.
“I discussed our relationship with Agent Nash,” Jackson said to her. “We’re partners. Nothing unprofessional has passed between us.” He leaned toward her. “I went along with all of this to clear you, Claire. And to make you safe.”
My husband is a vampire. My husband is the vampire. My husband is a serial killer.
She didn’t know how long she sat there. She became aware that Nash was holding out a shot glass of whiskey to her. She took it and tossed it back.
“The ten other agents in your class know all this,” Nash said. “DeWitt is the agent in charge of the task force.”
“This was a sting operation,” she said shakily, “in case I was the guilty party.”
“We got a search warrant for your condo,” Nash continued. “We found a diary your husband’s been keeping. It’s written in Romanian, which, as you know, is not a problem for the Bureau. The entire document has been translated. If what it says is true, Peter Anderson has had several dozen aliases, and he’s hundreds of years old.”
“I need a moment,” she said, feeling ill. “I need a bathroom.”
Jackson moved to help her up. She waved him away and pulled herself to her feet. Then she swayed out of the room and made it down the corridor to the bathroom. On her knees, she threw up. Then she tumbled against the cold metal of the stall and began to hyperventilate.
“Claire,” Jackson said, opening the door and hoisting her up. He wrapped his arms around her. “They’ve gone to get him.”
“Oh God, oh God,” she murmured against his chest.
“They recruited me a month ago,” he told her. “All they told me was that they thought your husband was involved in a crime, and that he was planting DNA evidence to make you look guilty. But they didn’t tell me it was murder, and they sure as hell didn’t tell me anything about goddamn vampires. If they had, I would have staked that son of a bitch first chance I got.”
She hitched a breath, and he leaned his cheek against the crown of her hair. He did not kiss her. “As soon as we arrived here at FSU, and I found out what exactly was going down, I pitched holy hell. Nash and DeWitt came down on me hard. You were under surveillance before we got here, and it’s been going on here, too. Hell, I’ve been standing outside your window at night myself, to protect you.”
“You faked me out,” she said accusingly, pulling out of his arms.
“I’m a hell of an FBI agent,” he affirmed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “But I’m an even better . . . friend.”
“Did he kill someone tonight?” she asked. Her voice sounded as if it belonged to someone else. It sounded like someone who was about to completely lose it.
“An undercover cop has been posing as a coed at MIT,” he said. “She fits the resemblance pattern of his victims, and he moved in fast. She was supposed to go over there tonight. I’m guessing he made his move, and that’s why the team went out.”
Anger surged through her, burning away some of the trauma. “So, what, was he building up to murdering me?”
“Escalation is consistent with what we know about serial killers,” he said.
“Is it consistent with what we know about vampires?” she countered.
He held her. “I don’t know, Claire. Life was simpler when it was just basters.”
“I want to be there,” she said. She swallowed down all her emotions except for grim determination. “For the takedown. I have to be there.”
—
They got him.
They didn’t kill him.
They dragged him out of her condo in the pouring rain. He was hissing like a rattlesnake, his fangs protruding, hands cuffed, manacles and chains around his ankles, but otherwise he looked like Peter. Handsome, not evil, not a supernatural creature. MIT, red wine, and reading, and with a little cheating on the side.
“Murderer,” Claire said, keeping to the shadows beneath an eave as they fitted a hockey mask over his face and forced him into a van. The growing neighborhood crowd was being held back, prevented from seeing anything. Acting as a curtain, the rain aided and abetted. She was sick, and livid, and a tiny bit ashamed. It was because of her feelings for Jackson that he had been triggered. Triggered this time, Jackson had reminded her. They’d translated his entire diary. She was only one of many wives, and he had wound up murdering most of them.
“I’m sorry I had to lie to you,” Jackson said.
—
Half an hour later, when they brought Peter into an interview room at the Boston field office, Claire insisted on standing behind the one-way mirror as Jackson and Nash interrogated him. DeWitt was with the team. Jackson had asked to be there, and Nash and DeWitt had thought it was a good idea. See if they could shake up the enraged, jealous, psychotic husband.
Peter was no longer wearing his hockey mask. Claire was alarmed. She didn’t know why they’d removed it. Jackson had taken off his wet FBI raid jacket. Raindrops clung to his silvery blond hair.
Claire stood beside Lisa Shiflett, the undercover cop who had posed as Peter’s winsome Thanksgiving feast. Shiflett was trying very hard to appear unfazed, but it was clear her near-miss of dying at the hands of a vampire had unnerved her.
“Crosses don’t work on them,” she said quietly to Claire. “At least, they didn’t work on him.”
Claire remembered the iron cross in the ceiling above Vampire Number Two. Peter’s father. Maybe in the old days they had worked. When people had faith.
“Why were you planting evidence to frame your wife for murder?” Jackson asked Claire’s husband as Nash looked on, seemingly oblivious to the one-way mirror where Shiflett and Claire observed. Jackson leaned across the table and glared at Peter. Peter was still cuffed, his ankles still manacled.
“I want a lawyer,” Peter said to Nash. Ignoring Jackson.
“Dream on,” Nash said, moving toward him. “You’re not even human. You have no rights.”
“Escalation is consistent with serial murder,” Jackson said, still looming over the perp. “I would assume you were building up to killing Claire.”
Peter—the vampire—looked up at Jackson and smiled thinly, and Shiflett caught her breath.
“I can’t believe it’s the same guy,” she said. “He was so . . . elegant, you know. He just charmed me. Like in those Stookie Stackhouse books.”
“Sookie,” Claire said faintly, her eyes riveted on Jackson as he gazed levelly at Peter. He was too close. Being in the same room with Peter was too close.
“Maybe you were going to make it look like a suicide,” Jackson continued. Knowing him as well as she did, Claire detected the tremor of fury in his voice as it crackled through the interview room speaker. “She murders all those girls out of, say, jealousy, then takes her own life.”
Peter just chuckled. Then he said, “I could rip out your throat right now, if I wanted to.” He looked at Nash. “Both of you. You’d be dead before you knew I’d done it.”
Shiflett took an involuntary step backward, but Claire moved protectively toward the mirror.
“I don’t think you can,” Jackson retorted, remaining where he was. “I think that vampire super-strength thin
g is just a myth.”
“One way to find out,” Peter said, and Claire thought about her weapon. Nash and Jackson were unarmed. For obvious reasons, you didn’t take guns into interview rooms. But she could shoot Peter through the mirror.
And if it came to that, she would.
“Maybe younger vampires are stronger than older vampires,” Jackson said, still not backing down. Claire wanted to press the speaker button and tell him to move away. “You were pretty young when you staked your father. But it’s been a few centuries since then. Since you’re so old now yourself . . . maybe you don’t have it anymore, Count Dracula.”
Peter shifted in his chair, guilt and rage pouring off him. That was the crime he was upset about—killing his father. “My father? I don’t know what you’re—”
“We read your diary, scumbag,” Jackson said, holding up a photograph of the cover of a plain brown leather journal.
Peter quietly stared at the picture in Jackson’s hand. Claire considered that Peter’s prints on it probably glowed after an application of Luminol. The thought made her tremble.
“And we’ve got custody of Daddy Dearest in the Salem crypt,” Jackson said.
Peter visibly reacted, looking frightened.
“I’m so freaked out,” Shiflett muttered. She looked at Claire. “Not meaning to be rude, but was anything different . . . anatomically? I mean, was there anything about him that struck you as odd?”
Claire shook her head. That answered one question: The cop hadn’t slept with Peter. Claire was glad . . . for Shiflett’s sake.
“So the stake, Peter. If we pull it out, does your dad come back to life?” Nash asked, walking toward him. Adding a little pressure.
And Claire cracked a little smile. Because the question coming as it did after the cop’s question, plus Peter’s name, made it a doozy of a triple entendre.
“Why should I tell you?” Peter asked.
“Because we’re going to shove one into you,” Jackson said. “As big as a goddamn turkey baster.”
Claire snickered. Shiflett looked at her with astonishment. Claire shrugged.
“FBI humor,” Claire said.
“But how can you laugh? You’re married to him,” Shiflett said. “You lived with him, and had sex with him, and all that time, he was a vampire. And he was murdering girls. Sucking out their blood.”
“You don’t need to remind me,” Claire said. “Anyway, we hardly ever had sex.”
“Good.” The cop blanched. “If anything like that ever happened to me, I don’t think I’d come out of it okay.”
“Then you’d better not ever get married,” Claire said, and this time she chuckled.
“Ha-ha,” the cop said weakly. “Wow.” Then, “So, you want to go out for coffee once this is done?”
“Sure, but I need to make it a quickie.” Claire actually winked.
This time the cop smiled back, just a little. A little was good.
“I’ve already made calls,” Peter said. He lifted his chin and looked straight at the mirror. “I have relatives, Claire,” he said. “I have brothers.”
“Love the flaccid posturing,” Jackson said.
“Bring it, sucker,” Claire said back at Peter, wondering if he had super hearing or eyesight. Maybe he could see her standing there. She hoped he could. “I’ve got eleven VSI agents backing me up.”
And as soon as Peter was history, and forensics school was over, damn straight they were all moving to Washington, D.C., to work in the basement of the Hoover building. Laughter and all.
And somehow . . . Jackson.
The Bad Hour
THOMAS E. SNIEGOSKI
Thomas E. Sniegoski is a New York Times bestselling author of the young adult series The Fallen as well as the popular urban fantasy books featuring angel-turned-private-investigator Remy Chandler. The Fallen: End of Days is the latest in the Fallen series, and In the House of the Wicked, the next of the Remy Chandler books, was released in August 2012. Tom lives in Massachusetts with his long-suffering wife, LeeAnne, and their French bulldog, Kirby. Please visit him at www.sniegoski.com.
NOW
The trees bordering the winding back road bent in the breeze, forming a natural canopy that prevented the light of the nighttime heavens from reaching the road below.
Still, it seemed darker than usual in Tewksbury, Massachusetts.
“Bascomb Road should be right up ahead,” Remy Chandler announced. He leaned forward in the driver’s seat, peering into the night, straining to find the street sign that would signal his destination.
“Yep, here we are,” he said, taking a right onto Bascomb and then a quick left into the parking lot of his client’s property.
There was a shifting of weight in the shadows of the backseat, and Remy gazed into the rearview mirror to see Marlowe’s dark brown eyes staring back at him.
The Labrador retriever whimpered, his eyes temporarily leaving the rearview mirror to take in his surroundings.
Remy pulled the car into a space in front of a large wooden building, his headlights illuminating a handcrafted sign that read, KINNEY KENNELS AND OBEDIENCE SCHOOL.
“You ready?” Remy asked, putting the car in park.
“No,” the dog answered in the language of his species, eyes once again meeting Remy’s in the mirror.
Eyes filled with the question of why it was necessary to come to such a horrible place.
NINE HOURS AGO
Remy sat behind the desk in his Beacon Street office putting together an expense report for a client whose job he had finished the previous week. Marlowe snored in the grip of sleep, lying on the floor beside Remy’s chair, flat on his side with his legs stiffly outstretched as if he’d been tipped over.
It was a slow day at Chandler Investigations, which wasn’t unusual, and why Remy had decided to bring his four-legged pal to work with him. Some paperwork, maybe a few follow-up phone calls, and then he’d be free for the rest of the day.
Unless something unexpected came up.
Some of the more interesting examples of the unexpected he’d experienced over recent months passed through his thoughts as he double-checked some math on the report: investigating the possibility of a demon incursion in a Southie housing project, making sure that a cache of Heavenly armaments didn’t fall into the wrong hands, a lunch meeting at the Four Seasons with the archangel Michael to discuss his possible return to the Golden City, and of course there was the time that he had to avert the Apocalypse.
Not the types of jobs usually associated with a typical private investigator, but Remy Chandler was far from typical.
Remiel, as he had been called when serving in the angelic forces of the Lord God, was of the Heavenly host, Seraphim, a warrior angel who had fought valiantly in the Great War against the forces of Lucifer Morningstar. It was that war that had soured Remiel to the ways of Heaven, and he had abandoned the Kingdom of God, choosing instead to live on the earth with the Creator’s most amazing creations, losing himself amongst them for thousands of years; suppressing his angelic nature, doing everything in his power to be one of them.
To be human.
But that had proven to be far more difficult than he had expected, as things of a supernatural nature had a tendency to find him, even though he did everything in his power not to be found.
He opened his desk drawer to remove the stapler, the clattering of items in the drawer disturbing the Labrador lying ruglike at his feet.
“Why noise?” Marlowe asked in annoyance.
“I’m sorry,” Remy responded, using the gift of tongues common to all those with an angelic heritage, and one that Remy didn’t mind using, especially when dealing with the four-year-old black Labrador.
“Didn’t mean to disturb you, Your Highness,” Remy joked as he stapled the sheets together.
“Noisy,” Marlowe grumbled again, then settled his head back down on the hardwood floor with a disgusted sigh.
Remy laughed as he found an envelope in another d
rawer, and a sheet of stamps in the drawer beside that one, making as much noise as he could to play with the puppy a bit.
“Bite you,” the dog said, sitting up and glaring at him.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Remy warned, fighting the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth.
The dog sprang to his feet, his thick tail wagging so furiously that Remy couldn’t understand how it was that the dog didn’t take flight.
“Joke,” Marlowe said, shoving his large blocky head into Remy’s lap, looking to have his floppy ears scratched. “No bite—joke.”
“You’re such a bad dog,” Remy said, as he lovingly petted the animal.
“No bad dog,” Marlowe argued.
“Oh, yes, you are,” Remy said. “Only bad dogs threaten to bite their masters.”
Marlowe stood on his haunches, resting his front paws on Remy’s thigh so he could lick his best friend’s face. “No bite, joke!” Marlowe barked. “Joke! Joke! Joke!”
The private eye laughed, trying to avoid the dog’s pink, slobbering tongue.
The door into the office suddenly opened, and both Remy and Marlowe turned to see who had interrupted their play.
An older woman strode in as if she owned the place. She was tall, close to six feet, wearing a lambswool jacket and faded blue jeans. Her white hair was pulled back tightly in a long braid, her blue eyes slightly magnified behind her silver-framed glasses.
“Sounds like somebody has a bit of a discipline problem,” she said with a hint of a smile, as she closed the door behind her.
Seeing a new face was all he needed. An excited Marlowe bounded happily across the office to greet what he was certain would be another best friend to add to his collection.
“Stop,” the woman suddenly commanded, hand outstretched.
And Marlowe did just that, coming to a complete stop, staring up at her with large, attentive eyes.
“Sit,” she said, motioning with the same hand, slowly lowering it.
And Marlowe did that too.
“It appears he has the aptitude for the basics,” she said, looking to Remy, who was now coming around the side of his desk. “I’m guessing a lack of consistency in discipline might be the culprit.”
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