by Jenna Black
“I haven’t. But come on, how dangerous could it possibly be for me to dust an envelope for fingerprints?”
“You won’t find anything.”
“What, there’s no such thing as a vampire with a criminal record?”
She had him on that, she could tell. With a resigned shake of his head, he went back into the house and retrieved the envelope, holding it gingerly by the corner. She put her gloves on before she took it from him, then gave him an encouraging smile. He didn’t return that smile as he offered her his elbow.
Carolyn shrugged and took his elbow. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimmer of movement from across the street. She tried to focus on the area from which she’d seen the movement, but her eyes kept sliding away against her will.
Jules, she decided. Using his glamour as he followed Gray around the city, convinced he was tracking a murderer.
Carolyn’s world had tilted on its axis tonight, but one thing she knew for certain: Gray was not a killer.
11
JULES WONDERED IF HE was getting dangerously obsessed. Eli had specifically suggested—in a way that had most likely been meant as an order rather than a suggestion—that he take a night off from his surveillance, let someone else take his place. In fact, Eli had sent in Michael and Thomas, the Freeman twins, for the assignment. Jules had refused to leave, and he outranked the twins, so they’d been forced to back down. Thomas was even now watching the bolt hole, his brother promising to come relieve him in a few hours. Jules had parked himself in his favorite booth at the coffee shop. No doubt he was going to catch hell from Eli about this, but he couldn’t bear the thought of going home, where he’d brood endlessly about Courtney.
He didn’t suppose that he’d been in love with her, but he had liked her a lot. Certainly he’d never wanted to see her come to harm. More than anything, he hated that she had died because of him. Was the Banger through with him? The threat seemed dire enough that Jules had urged his grandson—the only member of his mortal family who knew what he was—to take a “vacation” in his Lancaster County farmhouse. Jules’s elderly son and his great-grandchildren were there too, and he prayed they were far enough away to be beyond the Banger’s reach.
The waitress passed by his table, taking a peek at his coffee cup to see if he needed a refill. He gave her his best flirtatious smile, and a pleased blush colored her cheeks. She left without noticing that his cup was still full. Amazing how unobservant mortals were. Night after night, he sat here without ever taking so much as a sip of his coffee, and no one ever noticed. Sometimes he used a touch of glamour to make the waitress think she’d refilled his cup, but he wasn’t sure even that was necessary.
His cell phone started beeping an SOS. “Marde,” he muttered, his instincts telling him what this had to mean. He flung a couple of dollar bills on the table as he slid out of the booth, shoving his arms into his coat and charging out into the night.
“What?” he barked into the phone as he crossed the distance to Gray’s house.
“He slipped by me!” Thomas said, and his distress would have been almost comical under other circumstances.
“Niaiseux!” Jules snapped.
“Huh?”
Jules swallowed another insult. That could wait. “Which way did he go?”
“Down Walnut. He ducked through Gorman, but I lost him.”
Jules jogged toward Gorman, which billed itself as a street but was nothing more than a glorified alley. He closed his phone as he caught sight of Thomas at the other end of the street, shifting from foot to foot and looking helpless.
Damn it! Jules should have taken the bolt hole himself. Even Thomas could have handled surveillance on the front door—Gray would have had a hard time losing himself so quickly if he hadn’t come out on a side street.
Jules reached Thomas’s side and saw how the younger man was bracing himself for an attack. Jules controlled his temper as best he could. “Do you know which direction he was going when you lost him?”
Thomas pointed halfheartedly down the street, and Jules started to jog in that direction, reaching out with his vampire senses, looking for a familiar psychic footprint. For a fleeting moment, he wished Drake were here, for though Jules was old and powerful for a Guardian, he didn’t have a very long range. He thought he felt a hint of a vampire presence in the distance, faint and fleeting. Without a word, he picked up the pace, not caring if Thomas could keep up with him or not.
SOMETHING STANK, DRAKE DECIDED as he sat huddled against the wall that bounded the subway entrance in the City Hall courtyard.
Tonight, he’d decided that instead of patrolling, he’d park himself here, in the epicenter of the string of murders. He’d been here for hours, reaching out endlessly with his senses, searching for the hint of a vampire in his range. He’d had quite a lively argument with Deirdre and Fletcher last night when he’d insisted they allow him to patrol alone. In the end, when they’d presented their arguments to Eli, the Founder had sided with Drake. If the killer was using their known patrol routes to mask his movements, then Drake would be better off knowing he was the only vampire supposed to be on Broad Street.
He’d have thought that minor victory would have bolstered him. Instead, he was left with this uncomfortable, disturbing sensation that he was missing something.
Certainly he wasn’t having any luck in his new strategy. He’d concentrated all his energy on reaching out with his mind, searching for the presence he had yet to touch. His range was considerable, but no immortal presence intruded. Maybe it really was the Broad Street Banger who’d killed Jules’s little chippie. If so, he’d clearly moved on to a new type of prey, and Drake’s usefulness here was questionable.
Stiff and impatient after more than six hours sitting motionless in the cold, he opened his eyes and shook his head. Every instinct in his body told him this was hopeless. It was so late he rarely sensed a mortal presence, much less a vampire one.
The moment he thought this, he felt a pair of mortals approaching from the Broad Street North entrance. He would have dismissed them as completely uninteresting, except they stopped before entering the courtyard. Probably teenagers looking for a good make-out spot, he thought. At two in the morning. In single-degree weather.
Although this had nothing to do with the Banger, Drake rose from his hiding place and crept toward the entrance. His keen senses picked up angry voices echoing through the cavernous spaces under City Hall.
The first chamber of this entrance was easily the most bizarre of the decidedly quirky walkways that tunneled through City Hall. Known as the Crypt of the Tower, because it was directly beneath the tower upon which Billy Penn stood, the room was dominated by four red granite columns. At the top of each column, near life-sized human figures strained to hold the ceiling up. One column was topped by African Americans, one by Native Americans, one by Asians, and one by what looked like classical Greek or Roman figures. The statues’ eyes, particularly those of the African Americans, had a tortured expression to them that made Drake uneasy. In stark contrast, faux-columns built into the surrounding walls were topped with jolly cherubs.
The two black teenagers who squared off against each other in the shadows behind the columns no doubt didn’t care about their surreal surroundings.
Both were dressed in the kind of baggy jeans and oversized coats that declared they thought themselves dangerous. Their postures screamed of belligerence as they shouted at each other, their slang so thick Drake could barely understand them. Their anger—hatred, even—was a palpable force, a sinkhole of negative energy that tainted the very air. Drake was just old-fashioned enough to label them “evil.”
He hadn’t fed in over a week, and though he was not desperate yet, the hunger stirred.
In their own little corner, in their own little world, the hoodlums continued to posture and curse each other, a battle that could only end in violence. Sure enough, one of them pulled a knife and lunged. He missed, and his opponent also drew a knife
. They faced off against each other, looking more like a pair of mad dogs than like human beings. Drake scented fear in the air, but neither hoodlum showed any inclination to back off.
Drake didn’t even need glamour to keep them from noticing him. There was murder in both sets of eyes as they crouched and circled. The knives flashed, and one of the men cried out in pain. The other laughed, his knife now coated with blood. The wounded man fell, clutching his belly. The victor gloated, the virulence of his language so foul that Drake flinched. Then, after kicking the wound, the victor strutted away, proud of his night’s work.
The wounded man gasped and moaned, still clutching his belly. The scent of his blood spiced the air. Drake approached and knelt beside him, turning him over onto his back.
Eyes that had moments ago shone with a kind of hate no one of his age had earned the right to feel were now wide with pain and terror. “Help me!” he cried, reaching out to Drake with one bloody hand. Sweat glistened on his face, and his breath came in short, desperate gasps.
“Shh,” Drake said, meeting the dying man’s eyes and reaching out with his glamour.
The hoodlum’s whole body relaxed, his hands sliding away from the still-bleeding wound, the tension easing from his face. The fear in his eyes was erased by a slack-jawed blankness.
A familiar sadness descended over Drake as he slid his arms gently under his victim and raised him to a sitting position. The boy was too young to die, but Drake very much doubted he could survive the wound. And even if he did, he would have learned nothing. When he recovered, he’d be back on the streets, his veins pulsing with hate and violence, a lost soul beyond redemption. His death would likely save lives.
Letting his glamour envelope the boy completely, blanking out every flicker of fear and pain, Drake bent his head and bit.
CAROLYN STUDIED THE NEWSPAPER with single-minded intensity, willing herself to ignore Hannah’s piercing, unwavering stare. It wasn’t working.
“Well?” Hannah prompted.
Carolyn folded the newspaper to the article she’d been reading, pushing it across the table to Hannah. “Looks like there’s been another Broad-Street-Banger-type killing. A thirty-two-year-old white male, found in his home. His throat was slashed, but there was very little blood. No sign of forced entry.” As with the other killings, the police speculated that the man had been killed elsewhere and then transported to where the body was found. A circumstance that baffled investigators—why would the killer bother to transport the bodies? But investigators without Carolyn’s new-found knowledge would never guess that the victims were killed by a vampire.
Hannah pushed the paper aside. “I wasn’t asking for the six o’clock news.”
Carolyn clasped her hands around her cup of coffee, and for the millionth time tried to decide what to tell her best friend. When she’d returned to Hannah’s the night before last, Carolyn had told her she needed to sleep on it before deciding how much of what she learned she was willing to share. When Hannah had badgered her yesterday, Carolyn had pleaded for one more day. Now that one more day was up, and she still had no idea what to say.
Hannah was her best friend and a damn good investigator. If Carolyn didn’t tell her what she’d learned, there was a good chance Hannah would dig into it on her own. Maybe she, like Carolyn, would get lucky, if you could call it that. Or maybe she’d get spectacularly unlucky and get herself killed. Of course, if Carolyn did tell her, Hannah would no doubt think she was crazy.
Hannah huffed out an exasperated sigh. “Oh come on, Carolyn. It just can’t be as bad as that!”
Carolyn grimaced. “It’s worse.”
“Well then tell me anyway. You look completely miserable. Share the burden. Let me help.”
“Hannah, you don’t know what you’re asking for.” Damn, Carolyn thought. Now I sound like Gray.
Hannah reached across the breakfast table and gave Carolyn’s hand a squeeze. “It doesn’t matter. I’m your friend, and I’m here for you, and whatever it is you’re carrying, I can help. Now come on, spit it out.”
With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she realized she had to tell Hannah. If she herself was the potential target of a renegade vampire, then by staying with Hannah she was putting her in the line of fire. Hannah had a right to know what she was dealing with. No matter how crazy it sounded.
“How open-minded are you?” Carolyn asked with a sick grin.
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, HANNAH looked a bit green around the gills. Carolyn could see that her friend was trying to believe her, but the effort didn’t appear to be spectacularly successful.
“Well,” Hannah said, “you tried to warn me, I suppose.”
“Do you think you can suspend your disbelief for a while? Just pretend you don’t think I’m ready for the men in the white coats?”
Hannah grinned, but it was a weak grin. “Hey, I’m loyal, remember? I think Gray’s the one who’s ready for the men in the white coats. You’re just an innocent victim of his delusions.”
Carolyn supposed she would have felt the same way, had their positions been reversed. And if she hadn’t seen the fangs come and go, hadn’t felt the powerful, inexplicable sway of the vampire glamour, she might even now be trying to rationalize away what she’d seen. “Pretend anyway, Hannah. If you pretend it’s serious, and it’s all an elaborate hoax, then the worst thing that can happen is you’ll feel a little silly when it’s all over. If you close your mind to the possibility that it’s real, and you’re wrong …”
Hannah thought about that a moment then nodded. “All right, I can see the sense in that. So, what’s our next step, Van Helsing?”
“Ha, ha.” The next step? If only Carolyn knew! “Well, I was able to get a smudged partial thumb print from the glue strip on the envelope. I sent it to my friend Ted at the lab. He’s agreed to check it out for me. I’m going to have a hell of a lot of questions to answer if it turns out to match the Banger’s prints.”
“That’s for sure! Are you sure the print isn’t Gray’s?”
Carolyn nodded. “I talked him into giving me his fingerprints last night. He wasn’t thrilled about it.” An understatement, to be sure, but when she’d pointed out she could break in during the day and dust his house, he’d reluctantly given in.
“All right, so you’ve got the fingerprint angle covered. It’ll take awhile to get results. What do we do in the meantime?”
“First, we have another interview with Gray tonight.” At which time Carolyn would get him to convince Hannah he really was a vampire. Boy, that would be fun! “Then, we gently persuade him to get us another interview with Jules. I’ve got to think that the killer was purposely trying to frame Gray when he killed Jules’s girlfriend, and that suggests they have a common enemy. If we can get both of them to talk, maybe we’ll get a lead or two.”
“And if Gray goes into his pseudo-macho, protect-the-little-lady mode and refuses to help us find Jules?”
Carolyn grinned. “Well, I did do an Internet search on the name, and there appear to be only six thirty-something men named Jules in the entire city. It shouldn’t be too hard to find him.”
“Uh, Carolyn?”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you forgetting something? I mean, based on this ridiculous theory I’m keeping my mind open about.”
For a moment, Carolyn had no idea what Hannah was talking about. Then it hit her, and she groaned. “I’ve got to get used to this dealing-with-vampires business. Just because he looks thirtyish doesn’t mean he is.” But still, she suspected the list would not be overwhelming.
“So, Gray should be rolling out of his coffin at what, six o’clock?”
Carolyn rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t sleep in a coffin.” Unbidden, an image came to her mind of Gray lying asleep on his bed, the covers giving her a tantalizing view of his naked chest. She shivered. “But yes, he should wake up around six.”
“I guess we have a date then.”
“I guess we do.”
> Carolyn stifled a yawn and drank another swallow of lukewarm coffee. Vampires wreaked havoc on the sleep schedule. Even though she hadn’t gone to see him last night, thoughts of Gray had still kept her awake. When she’d drifted off, he’d invaded her dreams, and though she didn’t remember those dreams in the morning, the loneliness that had stabbed through her when she woke was stunning.
JULES FELT MORE THAN usually reluctant and uncomfortable as he made his way through the hall and into Eli’s meeting room. Bad enough that he’d been staking out Gray’s house against Eli’s orders, but to have actually lost the bastard under the circumstances … Eli was going to give him hell, and he deserved it.
Jules and Thomas had followed the elusive vampire presence for almost an hour before they’d lost it completely. They’d spent the rest of the night futilely wandering the streets, hoping to stumble upon him accidentally. When they’d returned to Gray’s house an hour or so before dawn, a quick check showed that he was safely ensconced within. But where had he gone during the hours he’d been missing?
The moment Jules stepped into the room, he felt a subtle sense of wrongness. The Guardians—and Drake—were all present, most of them sitting in their accustomed positions like schoolchildren. Eli was as usual sitting in his throne-like chair before the fireplace. But something was different.
For one thing, there was not a single smile in the room, nor any hints of lighthearted conversation. Those Guardians who were talking looked tense and serious. Jules frowned as a tingle of foreboding buzzed up his spine. Then, he caught sight of Fletcher, sitting on a straight-backed chair instead of in his usual place. His elbows rested on his knees, and his head was bent, a glazed, miserable look in his eyes. Jules’s heart sank as Eli beckoned him in.
