“While you were finishing up at Saunders’ place, I came back here to look at these files,” Xander said. “And I noticed some things. You might have had a hunch about them, but you may not have all the information to see what it means.”
“Look at you,” Allison said with a smile, trying to lighten the mood. “Using your spidey-sense.”
Xander smiled back. He looked more grim than usual, but he did respond to her joke. Something was bothering him, she could tell. Beneath his cool exterior, she could see something had him unnerved.
“Saunders wasn’t the killer,” Xander said.
“I figured as much,” Allison replied. “He’s a dirt-bag, but he’s not exactly a master criminal.”
“He’s most likely the bag man. He just targets and delivers the prey.”
“Prey?”
“Oh yes. There’s no doubt that these were more than just murder victims. They were meals.”
Allison felt a shiver run down her spine. Stacy’s words rang in her mind: Even if he killed someone. I still love him. That don’t stop me from feeling. I will always forgive him. I have to.
“The pattern I saw in these was that they were evolving, getting more sophisticated as they went on,” Allison said.
Xander looked at her and smiled. “Good eye. You’re right.”
“People were saying it was some animal attack,” she added.
Xander scoffed. “Some animal.” Then he laughed.
“This killer isn’t human, is it?” Allison asked.
“No,” Xander said. “You know what did this.”
“Someone like you.”
Xander nodded silently. Then he pointed to the autopsy photos, which he had laid out in order by date.
“The killer stampeded towards the neck at first,” he said. “Literally went straight for the jugular. That’s a messy kill. Only a young vampire would do that.”
“A young vampire?” she asked.
“Yes. One who has been recently changed. The craving for blood is just too strong to control. Even the anticipation of it will cause a violent feeding frenzy.” He paused for a long moment, then said, “Trust me, I know.”
Allison felt a chill, and for the first time since Xander had come back to her, she physically pulled away from him.
Even if he killed someone...
“But,” Xander continued, pointing to the later photos, “the kills become less violent. It doesn’t take long to mature. Just a few weeks. Once those first kills are out of your system, someone like me will be more calculated. He’ll take his time.”
It was as if Allison wasn’t hearing all of Xander’s words, though her brain was internalizing them. Instead, her mind was on what he was saying and what it meant about him. A year had passed between Xander’s death and his return to her. How long had he been possessed by this craving for a feeding frenzy? How many lives had he been responsible for.
I still love him. That don’t stop me from feeling. I will always forgive him. I have to.
After a long moment, Allison said, “There’s no way that Ed Saunders killed any of these victims. He was terrified of you in that alley. He isn’t a vampire.”
“No, he isn’t,” Xander said. “But I don’t think he was terrified of me because he didn’t know what I was. I think he was terrified of me because he knew exactly what I was.”
“Someone else was killing these people,” Allison said. “And you think it was...”
“Another vampire.”
Allison nodded. That makes a lot of sense. A vampire would want to hide his form, so he would need someone to bring him his prey, or at the very least lead him to it.
Then something occurred to her, which she had never asked Xander: “Just how many vampires are walking around this city?”
Xander grinned. “There are a few. More than you’d expect, but this place isn’t exactly overrun like New Orleans or anything like that. Like any animal, they will settle where there is an ample supply of food. And since nature abhors a vacuum, when a major predator leaves an area, that opens up a hole for another one to step in.”
It suddenly became clear to Allison what was going on. After they had killed The Sieve and his minions, that left room for another predator to move into town. That new predator was doing the killing.
“So we need to find the vampire that Saunders was giving these victims to,” Allison said.
“It’s a little more than that,” Xander said, pulling out the photos of the most recent victims. He pointed to the wounds. “Look at how clean these are. Look how little blood was left on the bodies. These victims were not the result of feeding. These victims were harvested.”
Allison’s jaw dropped. She had figured the bodies were drained somewhere else and dumped. She did not consider the possibility that they were dispatched so clinically.
“So there’s more than one vampire,” she said.
“At least,” Xander added. “Possibly more.”
“A coven,” Allison said.
Xander chuckled and shook his head. “Please,” he said. “You’re mixing up your terms. It’s a colony.”
“A colony?”
“Yes. A coven of witches. A pack of werewolves. A colony of vampires,” Xander said. Then he added with a grin, “Don’t believe everything you read.”
“Got it. Also a wrap of mummies and a school of gill men, right?”
Xander raised an eyebrow and winked. “Yup. We’ve got names for all the monsters.”
Allison smiled. Xander was loosening up again. However, she knew this information bothered him. There was something about this new colony of vampires showing up that had him unnerved.
“This is going to be tricky,” Xander said.
“You’re not kidding,” Allison replied. “You’re not the one who has to go into a police interrogation and ask a suspect to tell me who his vampire contacts are.
CHAPTER 12
Allison walked into the precinct to utter chaos. People were yelling. Cops were racing around the office. She could hear a woman screaming.
Instinctively, Allison put her hand on the butt of her pistol and hurried to the epicenter of the problem, right in the middle of the desks where the perps were booked.
She pushed through the crowd of police officers, along the way noticing who was screaming: a woman being booked and processed. She looked like she might be a prostitute, and she was restrained to the chair. The woman was cowering behind the desk, dragging the chair with her. She was hysterical, but no one was paying attention to her.
The real commotion was three desks away. Several officers had their guns drawn and were pointing them at a gaunt, expressionless junkie sitting in a chair next to an overturned desk. Next to him, Allison saw the dead body of Ed Saunders on the floor. His head was impossibly turned around, his chin buried in the hoodie of his sweatshirt. His dead eyes stared at the ceiling.
The junkie sat calmly in his own chair. He was painfully thin and alarmingly pale. To most of the other officers, he probably looked like any other typical junkie they might pick up off the streets after being busted for scoring smack. However, Allison had seen this type of person before.
Her mind flashed back to several months ago when she had been captured by The Sieve. This prisoner reminded her of the emaciated man who had held her in wait for The Sieve.
“What the hell happened?” Allison asked an officer next to her.
“It was the damnedest thing,” he replied. “They brought your perp in and started to book him. Easy peasy, you know? Then, this guy comes in. Drug bust up near Superior. Nothing special, and the guy barely looked like he could walk, let alone do something violent.”
“But he did,” Allison said.
“You bet. Only a minute or two after he sat down, this junkie literally picks up the desk and throws it at us. Then he attacks your perp. Snapped the other guy’s head back like he was a Pez dispenser. Then he spun it clean around, as if he needed to make sure. It happened so fast, I don’t think
anyone even was on their feet before it was over.”
“Jesus.”
“Then the junkie just sat back down like nothing had happened. He’s been zoned out ever since.”
Allison stepped forward, looking at the junkie. He immediately noticed her, looking up, surprise washing over his face. The junkie’s mouth opened to a large O.
The other officers in the room were yelling at the man to lay down on the ground, but the junkie wasn’t listening to them. He was fixated on Allison.
She stepped closer to the junkie, and he stood up slowly. Allison winced. If she didn’t play this carefully, the junkie would be shot dead, and she too would be in danger of catching a wild bullet if her colleagues were too trigger happy. But she couldn’t stop herself from walking forward.
The O of the junkie’s mouth turned into a grin, showing black, rotting teeth. He leaned forward, careful not to get too close, and breathed in heavily through his nose. His eyes closed, and he rolled his head back, letting out a soft, “Ahhhhhhh.”
“Why did you kill him?” she asked, knowing the truth herself. “Did you also kill those women?”
The junkie only smiled. Then licked his lips. She could see his incisors start to grow.
“It’s you...” he said with a raspy voice. “You’re the one.”
“What?” Allison asked.
“Oh, he will be so pleased,” the junkie hissed.
“Who?” Allison asked. “Who will be pleased?”
The look of insane happiness on the junkie’s face suddenly turned to dread as he grew even more pale. His skeletal body tensed up, and his arms stiffened at his side. Allison was vaguely aware of the other officers around her yelling for him to freeze.
She knew he wouldn’t. She knew this was his end.
Then the junkie’s throat opened up. It was not cut. He did not tear at himself. As if cut by an unseen knife in an unseen hand, his skin simply opened up like a rubber squeeze change purse. A scarlet ribbon flowed from the junkie’s neck and burst like a firework when it hit the cold concrete floor. The circle of cops around him instinctively scuffled backwards to avoid the mist of blood.
It only took the junkie a few seconds to bleed out, and he said nothing else to Allison. She looked down at him, specifically at his mouth. His incisors, which had grown to sharp points only a moment ago, had receded back to their normal shape.
“Get an EMT up here!” someone shouted from the room. The prostitute in booking had started screaming again.
“That’s not going to do any good,” Allison said softly. “Call the medical examiner.”
CHAPTER 13
It was less than an hour before dawn when Allison finally got home. Xander was in bed waiting for her, but first she needed to get out of her clothes and take a shower. She threw her shoes and jeans out, as they had been partly covered by the junkie’s blood. The rest of her clothes, she threw in her hamper to wash later.
Even though she had precious little time left with Xander that night, she took a long, hot shower. She needed it. What started out as a promising day had ended with such emotional weight.
Allison knew she should feel proud. She had apprehended one of the men responsible for the kidnapping and murder of a dozen unsolved cases. And yet, he had died, most likely at the hands of the literal monster who had done the killing.
The questions she had answered tonight only opened the door to others, and those were even more troubling.
Also, the words of Stacy Keane still haunted her: Even if he killed someone. I still love him. That don’t stop me from feeling. I will always forgive him. I have to.
Had she been living in ignorant bliss these past few months? Would she still be able to trust Xander so implicitly? Did she really want to know what happened to him in the first few months after his change?
But the most disturbing thing Allison thought about while she stood under the hot shower, letting the night wash away from her, was who was behind these murders for real. Who was starting the new vampire colony in town? And why did they know who she was?
† † †
A hot shower always made Allison feel better, and after she emerged from the bathroom, with water still glistening on her naked body, she did feel better.
Xander was waiting for her under the covers, and she crawled in next to him, snuggling up to his cool flesh. She knew there were worries she still had about him, his past, and their relationship. But those could wait for another night. Now she just wanted to be with him.
They did not make love. They did not sleep. They did not even speak. They just held each other, for as long as they could, until the glow of the morning threatened to come over the horizon. That’s when Xander silently got up and dressed, then leaned across the bed to kiss Allison deeply before he disappeared out the window.
Again, there were no words between them. There did not need to be.
A moment after Xander was gone, Allison disappeared into a much-needed sleep.
CHAPTER 14
Anton Leigh prepared himself for the day. He cleaned up his dishes, turned off the television, changed his clothes, and put food in the bowl of his black cat. Then, he closed the shutters and pulled the heavy blinds to block out all sunlight.
He yawned. It had been a strange night. Xander Reese had visited him for the first time in almost a year. However, it wasn’t the presence of Reese earlier in the evening that bothered him. It was the questions he had. Questions about a new colony.
Anton had been cagey with his answers, not because he was protecting anyone, but rather because he did not like to release any information he had collected if it didn’t benefit him personally.
And telling Reese too much about this new colony might not benefit him.
Still, Anton liked Reese, and he wanted to help him out. He was just scared that this could be dangerous for himself more than anyone else.
As Anton headed into the cellar where he kept his bed, his fears were confirmed. Standing at the bottom of the stairs was a dark figure. Anton could not see the details of his face, but he was certain who it was.
“Hello, Anton,” the figure said.
Anton nodded. “What can I do for you?” he asked nervously.
“I need some information,” the figure continued. “I need to know who Xander Reese has marked.”
CHAPTER 15
Even before she was fully awake, Allison knew she was alone in the bed. She could sense Xander’s absence even without reaching over to find the soft depression his body left in the mattress.
She understood, of course, especially when she cracked her eye open to see sunlight streaming through the slit between her drapes. Xander could no more hold her tightly in bed at this time than he could were he truly dead. Sunlight would be deadly to him, that much she knew for certain.
Still, that didn’t make waking up alone any more pleasant.
Allison rolled over, tangled in the covers, and grabbed her phone from the bedside table. She squinted as she looked at the time. It was only 2:30 in the afternoon, much too early for Xander to be anywhere nearby.
It was late and early, both at the same time. It was early for her because the buzzing of her phone had woken her up, even though the stress of the past few days had caused her to sleep more than nine hours.
Still, it was late for a normal person, sleeping well into the afternoon. Such behavior should have been a thing of the past, in her college days after spending too many late nights at the bars drinking and dancing. This wasn’t the normal behavior of a professional woman in her 30s.
However, Allison was hardly a normal professional woman in her 30s. She was a detective currently in a relationship with a vampire trying to solve a string of murders most likely committed by another vampire.
No, not most likely. Most definitely. The events at the police station the night before convinced her of that.
Surrounded by dozens of witnesses, she had seen a man killed by an unseen hand. After a mysterious junkie brutally at
tacked a murder suspect in the middle of the station surrounded by cops, she had seen the man’s neck simply open up, like an invisible knife had sliced his throat.
The official word was the junkie had somehow done this to himself, tearing his own throat open with his fingernails. What other worldly explanation was there, considering there was no weapon found on him?
But there was an otherworldly explanation. And it seemed ridiculous, a thing of fantasy, to anyone who had not been living her life the past few months.
Allison was certain it was another vampire, the same vampire who had been starting to build his own colony of followers in town after The Sieve was killed months before.
Among powers like incredible speed and strength as well as an ability to communicate and influence others telepathically, vampires could manipulate their surroundings without touching it. Call it telekinesis, or call it magic. The power appeared to be something that came with the curse. Allison had really only seen Xander use it himself while he traveled. Xander didn’t exactly fly, but rather hopped across the air, pushing himself upward and forward. It was rather clumsy at times, especially because he was new at the trick. Even the most experienced vampire jutted along the dark clouds haphazardly like a bat. However, it did offer Xander a way to travel quickly across the skies and perch on rooftops.
Allison knew it would take a lot of concentration for a vampire to focus enough to tear open the junkie’s throat from an unseen distance, but she also knew it was entirely possible if the vampire was experienced enough. The use of this power was severely limited, mostly to just a few feet. They could manipulate themselves and some smaller objects within a room. However, the farther a vampire got from the object it was trying to influence, the less control it had. From this, Allison knew the vampire who had killed the junkie was closer than anyone would want to admit.
And that really scared her. While Xander was her protector, and he had marked her blood by feeding on her, he was also inexperienced. In vampire terms, Xander was just a baby – barely a year old. There were many more out there with far more experience as monsters, and sometimes experience can be the most powerful thing.
Love In Death Page 6