by Lauren Dawes
He quirked a brow at me. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t like me fussing?”
Nope. It was quite the opposite. I was enjoying the hell out of it. But he was my partner, and there were boundaries we had to respect. I stepped away, putting some more space between us. “We should go in there and speak to the clerk.”
Great deflection, Cat.
“Yeah, we should.” His eyes drifted down to my waist. “Reaver not with you?”
“He was this morning.” I shrugged my good shoulder. I had to figure out the pattern with him.
Reaching into his under-arm holster, he pulled out my side arm. “You might want this back then. Fully loaded, and I cleaned it for you too.”
I placed it into the holster and clipped it in. “Thanks.” He was being sweet, and it was shoving me off-balance. I had to get myself back on track. I jerked my chin at the E-Z-Mart. “Okay, so what happened here exactly?”
“Sanjeet Kapur reported a young boy wandering around his shop at two o’clock this morning. When Kapur approached the kid, he attacked, but Kapur fought him off.”
“How? Those little bastards are strong.”
“I don’t know. That’s why we’re here to find out.”
Following Sawyer inside, I tried to think of some good questions to ask Mr. Kapur. The main one I wanted to know was how in the hell did he fight off a baby vampire? I’d grappled with them and they are inhumanely strong, especially given their size.
The minimart was just as I imagined it would be. Row after row of snack foods guaranteed to give any pot smoker their munchie hit. Two out of the four walls were floor-to-ceiling fridges filled with everything from milk to soda to that manufactured blood source that had just been put on the market by a well-known drug company.
“Mr. Kapur?’ Sawyer asked as he approached the raised front counter.
“Yes?”
Sanjeet Kapur was a Sikh. His ocean-blue E-Z-Mart polo shirt complimented his warm apricot colored dastar, the steel bracelets on his wrists jangling melodically as he moved. His long beard had flecks of gray in it, and I figured anyone who worked at a twenty-four-hour stop and rob like this would have more than their fair share of gray hair.
“I’m Detective Sawyer Taylor.” Gesturing to me, he added, “And this is my partner, Officer Cat McKenzie. We’re from PIG, and we’re here to ask you some questions about what happened last night.”
His dark brown eyes lit up. Yes, the cavalry had arrived. He walked around the counter and joined us on the main floor. Shaking our hands, he said, “What would you like to know?”
Pulling out his phone, Sawyer started the recording app and got down to business. “What time did your shift start yesterday?”
“I was here from five o’clock, like normal.”
“How long are the shifts?” I asked.
“Twelve hours. My normal shift is five a.m. to five p.m., but my replacement didn’t show up yesterday, so I stayed on.”
“What does your boss have to say about those hours?” I asked.
He smiled, and I saw the younger man he used to be. “I am the boss, although my wife will be upset with me for working more than twelve hours. She worries.”
“I don’t suppose what happened last night filled her with comfort either.” I glanced around the store, looking at the door and the corners of the ceilings as Sawyer continued his questions.
“What time did the young boy come in?”
“It was a little after two o’clock.”
“Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Check the security footage. The controls are behind the counter. Just go around through the door there.” He pointed to the end of the counter.
Sawyer nodded to me, and I did as he asked, finding myself on the raised platform. I looked out over the counter and saw that my view of things was actually amazing. From this height, whoever was working could see what people had in their hands, or whether they were carrying a weapon.
Ducking down, I found a computer monitor where I could see real-time black and white versions of Mr. Kapur and Sawyer. I glanced to my left to see the camera that was streaming, then watched the pattern.
Back left corner. Back right corner. Front right corner. Directly in front of the doors. The front left corner camera was just a dummy. I’d heard about it being done before. A lot of places only had one camera and placed dummy ones around the store in order to save money. Having all but one was strange though.
Using the keyboard, I scrolled the footage back to two o’clock that morning and hit play. A kid—or what looked like a kid—strolled casually inside. Dressed in jeans, a jacket and a sweet set of kicks he walked directly up to two-o’clock-Sanjeet and talked to him for a moment. Sanjeet, who had been stocking some shelves, stood up, towering above the child. The kid looked directly into the back, left corner camera, winked, then attacked without warning.
I would give Mr. Kapur credit—he was an absolute kick-ass fighter. I watched the pair of them grappling, the baby vampire wrapped around Sanjeet’s upper body. It looked as if the vamp was trying to get them to the floor, where he could dominate. Whether Mr. Kapur knew that or not, he didn’t let his attacker do that.
I pressed my face closer to the video when there was a faint glow coming from under Sanjeet’s shirt. It got brighter and brighter, and the vampire was reacting. It tried to claw at his chest, but Sanjeet was raining down punches on him.
“Such a badass,” I muttered under my breath.
Full respect to Sanjeet and his mad skills.
Eventually, the vamp just disappeared. One minute, he was there. The next, he was gone. I rewound that bit and played it back, frame by frame. That’s when I realized he didn’t just disappear, he moved so quickly it was just a blur. To the naked eye, it looked as if he’d poofed from existence.
When I stood up again, Sawyer and Mr. Kapur were still talking.
“What did you see?”
I gave him the run down, leaving out the part where the vampire actually winked at the camera before launching his attack.
“I must say, Mr. Kapur, I am very impressed with your fighting skills.”
The older man blushed. “Thank you. It’s been so long since I’ve had to use them.”
“Right before the vampire fled, there was a glow from under your shirt. Do you know what happened?”
Reaching into the top of his shirt, Sanjeet pulled out a necklace with a gold Khanda pendant hanging from the bottom. It consisted of three swords, with a circle around the middle weapon.
“The circle or Chakra surrounding the Khanda is a metaphor for the eternal God,” he told me.
“It’s a symbol of your faith.” I glanced at Sawyer, and he nodded.
“Symbology carries a lot of power in the supernatural world. This Khanda would have the same effect as any Christian symbol, or any other religion for that matter.”
“Where did you learn to fight, Mr. Kapur?” I asked, because I had to know.
He puffed out his chest a little, standing taller. “Twenty-fourth Battalion, Sikh Regiment. I retired in 2001.”
I grinned at him. “You’ve still got it.”
Bowing in thanks, he smiled back at me.
“Alright, I think we have everything we need,” Sawyer announced. “If we have any additional questions, I’ll be sure to get in contact, Mr. Kapur.”
“Thank you both for coming.”
As we walked from the minimart, Sawyer murmured, “What did you find out from the surveillance tapes?”
“That Mr. Kapur is a badass.”
“Anything else, other than hero worship?”
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, Sawyer,” I said sweetly. “But yeah.” I took the helmet he handed me and slid it over my head. As soon as Sawyer had his on too, I heard the coms crackle to life in my ear. “The fangy bastard winked at the camera before he attacked.”
He swung his leg over the motorcycle and got into position. “Winked?”
I slid on behind him,
wrapping my arm around his waist. “Winked. How many cameras do you think are in that store?”
“Maybe one functional one. The rest are probably dummies.”
“Nope. He has five cameras. Only the front left is a dummy. The vampire looked directly at the camera that was on the cycle and winked right before he attacked.”
He started the engine, and I scooted even closer. Easing out of the parking lot, he didn’t talk again until we were on the road. “Okay, so it was premeditated.”
“You’re goddamn right it was. I don’t know why Kapur was the victim, maybe it was just bad fucking luck, but he was. The E-Z-Mart, however, was not a coincidence.”
“How do you figure?”
“It’s just within our jurisdiction, right? One more block over, and it becomes Reynard PD’s problem.”
“Right.” Sawyer’s agreement of my assessment didn’t fill me with confidence. “But why? Why attack anyone? Whoever is making these kids is creating them, then kicking them out of the nest right away. They have no idea of the rules.”
“Or they’re creating them to break the rules…”
“What do you mean?” Sawyer slowed the bike as he approached a red light. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking what if these baby vamps are being made on purpose? Not a late nineties Britney, ‘Oops I Did it Again’ kind of thing, but an actual reason.”
“And what would that reason be?”
I shook my head, feeling like the answer was just out of my reach. “I don’t know.”
He touched my knee. “We’ll figure it out, pussy cat.”
My stomach lurched when he accelerated once more, blowing past the oncoming traffic almost recklessly. When we arrived back at the station, we walked back into the office.
“I’ve sent you the voice clip,” Sawyer said, just before I heard the notification ping on my phone. “Would you mind taking notes while I go and follow up some other leads?”
If it meant I didn’t have to get on the back of Sawyer’s motorcycle again, I’d take his clear dismissal of me. Taking a seat at my desk, I plugged my AirPods into my ears and began typing.
When I finally finished the report, along with a dozen other things Sawyer kept passing off to me, it was just ticking over six p.m. I tilted my head from one side to the other to loosen the kink that had formed from hunching over my keyboard. Sawyer had been at his desk sporadically throughout the afternoon, but always disappeared before I could ask him what was happening next in our investigation.
He was finally back.
“Any developments I need to know about?”
“Yeah,” he replied, tapping something out on his keyboard without looking at me. “Go home. Get changed. I’ll be picking you up in an hour and a half.”
“Why?”
He turned to me. “I got a call from Alistair. His mistress agreed to see us tonight.”
I wanted to whine, ‘More vampires?’ but held my tongue in check. See? I was learning. “Okay. What should I wear?”
“Something that covers the bite. If they see you’ve been taken from, they’ll think you’re easy pickings.”
“Got it. Don’t show the steak to the hungry dog.”
“And wear your hair down.”
“Why?”
“It’ll help cover up your neck a little more.”
Hey, if it saved me from becoming a vampire snack, I was all for it. “Got it. Anything else?”
“Yeah. Come with me.”
I followed him into the weapons room, my fingers getting all twitchy when I thought about all the mischief I could get up to in here. Sawyer grabbed a leather holster then picked up four wooden stakes.
“Bring these with you.”
I eyed them speculatively. “Won’t they strip us of weapons?”
His mouth titled up in a grin. “Of that I have no doubt, but I’m hoping Reaver will be able to work his magic on them.”
I returned his grin. “You wicked bastard.”
He looked at the sling. “Think you could go without this tonight?”
Glancing down, I took stock of how my body felt. My shoulder was still sore, but the pain meds were good, making the pain a dull throb rather than an all-out bellow. “Why?”
“I don’t want you to have weaknesses in front of them. Vampires are a dangerous enemy to have.”
Thirteen
I pulled at the neck of the black turtleneck sweater and scratched at my chewed-on throat. It was beginning to itch, which meant it was beginning to heal. I had to take that as a win. With a sigh, I looked at my reflection and wondered if I’d done enough. Coupled with my sweater, I managed to pull on a pair of black skinny jeans and my motorcycle boots. The harness that would carry the stakes was crisscrossed over my chest, bisecting my breasts and making them look weird. I shrugged. Nobody would be staring at my breasts.
I was covered in black from head to toe, and even though I looked like an emo-goth circa 1990, my bright teal hair certainly pulled me out of any emotional tail-spin.
Right at seven-thirty, there was a knock on my door. Sawyer stood on my doorstep wearing an almost identical outfit—he’d just added a black leather riding jacket.
“Did you get your outfit from Oh shit, we’re meeting vampires tonight too?” I asked.
He ran his eyes down my body, and I sucked in a breath. When he finally returned his eyes to my face, his gaze simmered with heat. “Are you ready?”
I managed to nod. “Almost. I just need to get these stakes strapped in.”
“Let me give you a hand.” Sawyer helped me position the smooth ash wood, his fingers brushing against mine every so often. I tried to ignore the way that made me feel. It helped to remember that he was an incubus and he could literally create those feelings of lust with no more than a well-timed smile.
I strapped Reaver to my back using another holster Sawyer had given me and touched the glyph of my freaking face to will it away.
Outside, it was a dark night. The new moon was doing sweet fuck all to illuminate anything, which wasn’t a problem until we hit the city limits and were plunged into hick country.
“This is where the kiss lives?” I asked through the comms.
“This is where the mistress said we could meet with her. I doubt she’d allow cops into her actual place of residence.”
I looked around the dark landscape, seeing nothing but murky, vague shapes of barns and trees. “Well, if she was going for creepy, #NailedIt.”
“It’ll be fine. Alistair will be there as our liaison.”
“Not filling me with warm and fuzzies, Sawyer. In fact, I’m getting filled with the opposite.”
He patted my knee. “Trust me, pussy cat, I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
“You let me wander into Wonderland.”
His abs flexed under my hands as he laughed. “I was in a shipping container nine feet in the air. I didn’t even know what you were doing.”
I sighed, hoping he heard how put out I was. “I’m like a child, Sawyer. If I’m not constrained in one of those weird tether things parents put on their kids, then I’m going to just wander off.”
He laughed again, and I smiled. I liked it. I had a feeling he didn’t laugh too much.
It only took another ten minutes before he slowed the bike and drove through a pair of stone plinths with carved gargoyles on the top. The avenue was tree lined and long, and when the house came into view, I thought we’d maybe traveled to Mississippi because it was Antebellum and plantation house all over. Sawyer parked his bike, and just as we lost the helmets, Alistair appeared at the top of the grand house’s wraparound porch stairs.
“I see you didn’t get lost.”
I glanced around. “Is your mistress reliving the glory days of being a plantation owner?”
The vampire laughed. “No, she just has an appreciation for Neoclassical architecture.”
“Top marks for her. Although, if she wanted to actually blend in around here, she’d have
to seriously downgrade the house to a banged-up trailer.”
“Humans can’t see the property. Well, they can see the gates, but at the end of the driveway, there’s nothing there but a field.”
I wanted to scream ‘How in the hell was that possible?!’ but then I remembered I was but a puny, weak-minded human and the supernatural community was more advanced than us and scary as fuck. “Noted.”
“How is she?” Sawyer asked, coming to stand beside me. Showing a united front, good for him.
“Angry.”
“About?”
“The attacks last night.”
“Attacks?” I asked, stressing the plurality. I looked at Sawyer, who gave me an indecipherable look. To Alistair, I demanded, “How many were there?”
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled wickedly. “You really don’t want to know.”
I hated supes. No, correction—I hated vamps. They were so snooty and holier than thou. I got that they may have been on this earth for a lot longer than I had, but they were a bunch of douche bunnies who were too smug for my liking.
“Let’s get on with it,” Sawyer pressed. He walked up the stairs, and after a moment of hesitation, I followed. I didn’t like the idea of being inside a house I had no idea how to get around in with a bunch of fangers who wanted nothing more than to strip me of my hemoglobin.
Call me paranoid, but there it was.
Alistair flowed into the house like he was made of water, waiting until both Sawyer and I were inside before slamming the door. Something heavy and metallic slid into place, and I jerked around to see a foot-thick steel crosspiece barring the only easy entry and exit point. I guessed defenestration it was.
“That’s a bit much, isn’t it?” I jerked my chin in the direction of the door. “It’s not like this is a crime hotspot.”
Alistair indulged me with an innocent-looking smile, flashing his fangs. “Speaking of crime, I have to ask you to take off your weapons before you see my mistress.”
He snapped his fingers, and two more vampires appeared, startling me. My heart began to pound, fear kicking the bastard against my ribs in an effort to get them both the hell out of there. I tried to stay cool, to follow Sawyer’s lead. He opened up his arms like he was being frisked by security at the airport, looking cool and nonplussed.
