by J. R. Ward
As Butch stepped through the jambs and looked around, the walls of the empty storage area glistened in the icy illumination of his lamp. But at least all that appeared to be groundwater seepage as opposed to plasma.
The beam rose to the ceiling and moved in a slow circle before stopping in the center of the room directly over the congealed puddle. “This was where she was hung up. On one of these.”
A series of iron eyelets, thick as a male’s thumb, were set in rows in the ceiling’s heavy beams. It was hard to imagine what they had been used for. Maybe as part of a dyeing system for fabric?
“Was it by ropes?” Boone asked. “How she was hung up, I mean.”
“A meat hook.” The Brother got down onto his haunches and looked around, his lamp illuminating the Jello-like blood too many times for Boone’s comfort. “Boy . . . if she wasn’t dead before he hung her up, she did not last long.”
“Him?” Boone tried to cough the tightness in his throat away. “I thought you said we shouldn’t draw conclusions.”
“Fair enough, you caught me. But statistically, the vast majority of serial killers are male. And the ritual nature of these killings, with the females strung up, throats slashed, all of them bleeding out here at the club, is a clear pattern. The killer finds what they’re looking for and does what they have to with the victims out of sight down here.”
Boone coughed into his fist again. “What exactly did he do to her?”
“I didn’t show you the pictures, did I?” The Brother held his phone out behind him on an arm stretch. “They’re in the camera section.”
Boone swallowed hard as he took the unit and went into photographs. When he called up the first of . . .
“Oh . . . fuck,” he breathed.
One terrible image, after another . . . after another. There seemed to be an endless number of them—and abruptly, the smell of the rotten, moldy earth, and the cold pool of blood, and the idea that someone had lost their life right down here where he was made him dizzy.
“Excuse me for a moment.”
The polite words were spoken fast, and he didn’t wait for an acknowledgment. His body moved before he was aware of his brain ordering his legs to lift his feet so he could back away. When he hit the door opposite the one that was open, he coughed a couple more times and turned the phone screen into his leg. Dropping his head, he breathed through his mouth and felt the world spin—
The smell of fresh air in the springtime, of delicate flowers, of . . . sunshine . . . had him lifting his eyes.
Down by the stairwell’s door, a figure was standing still as a statue and focused on him. And in spite of the black hooded robe that covered the head and draped down to the feet, he knew it was a female.
And that scent of hers. It went in through his nose and didn’t stop there. Somewhere along the neuropathways of his mind, or maybe it was in his very veins, what started as a thing he smelled became a full-body sensory experience.
Like touch.
Like . . . a caress.
Straightening, he took a step forward. And another. Sure as if she were calling his name and he were powerless to resist the entreaty. But before he made it very far, she disappeared back through the stairwell’s door quick as a gasp.
Desperate not to lose her, he took off in her wake, his stride nothing short of a bolt. By the time he got to where she had been standing, the distorted steel panel was easing into its poor-fit position against its jambs, and he yanked the weight open. Following that springtime scent, he jumped up the steps three at a time and broke out into the club proper.
She must have been going at a dead run, he thought. To have gotten up those landings that fast.
Boone looked around to assess whether she’d gone all the way out of the building or was trying to get lost in the crowd. If the latter was her goal? Mission accomplished. There were too many people dressed in black with too many cloaks covering their heads—
There she was. Heading for the exit. Fast.
Shoving humans out of the way, Boone didn’t care if he created chaos—and unlike her, his big body couldn’t bob and weave through the tight squeezes between the men and women. By the time he ran through where the coat check was, she was out the door, her scent already beginning to fade.
Out in the cold, he barraged past the bouncers and looked left and right—
There, going around the far corner of the building. The tail end of her cloak billowing out behind her.
Boone closed his eyes, intending to pull his dematerialize-in-a-pinch trick—except then he realized he had a movie theater’s worth of human eyeballs focusing on him. Not exactly the kind of PR stunt the vampire race needed: Surprise! We really do exist!
Cursing a blue streak, he took off on foot and tried to follow her prints in the snow. There was no way of isolating which were hers, however, and her scent had dissipated into the night.
The female was no doubt gunning for some privacy so she could ghost out of here. And if she did that, he was never going to catch her.
Boone rounded the corner of the building and slowed his roll to a walk . . . which then petered out to a standstill. There were no security lights on the exterior flank of the old building. None on the warehouse next door. And the illumination from the distant streetlights only carved out a narrow visual slice down the space between the structures. Even with the reflective quality of the snow cover and a set of supercharged vampire retinas, there was a lot that he couldn’t see.
“Goddamn it—”
The soft click of a gun safety being taken off duty ripped his head around.
Staring into the dense shadows, his nostrils flared as he caught her scent on the cold breeze.
Yes . . . he thought. There you are.
“You can trust me,” he said into the darkness. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”
• • •
I’m not going to give you a chance to hurt me, Helania thought as she kept her nine-millimeter trained on the vampire who’d tracked her outside the club.
The dark-haired male was standing in the dim glow of streetlamps that were a good block and a half away, but there was more than enough light to assess him. And damn . . . he was downright enormous, with heavy shoulders, a barrel chest, and long, powerful legs. All that so-called real estate was covered in black leather, the jacket he had on open in spite of the cold, his hands bare of gloves.
His deep-set, pale eyes were trained right where she was standing in the darkness.
You’re too good-looking to be a killer, she thought to herself.
But come on, like only hump-ugly males killed people?
Still, she was shocked at how handsome his face was: Strong, even features, as well as a pair of lips that made her think of things that should be last on her cognitive list given the circumstances of their acquaintance, as it were.
“I just want to ask you a couple of questions.” He flashed his palms at her and slowly raised them up like he was on a TV cop show. “My name’s Boone. And you can lower that gun.”
Maybe he could see her, although she doubted it. She was very far back from the glow he was standing in. How had he found her? Oh, wait—he’d probably heard her taking the safety off.
And was that an aristocratic infliction to his words?
“Can you tell me what you were doing down in that corridor just now?” he asked.
“It’s not restricted access. Anyone can go there.”
There was a pause. “It’s you. You were the one who called us.”
Helania felt her heart rate double. Which was saying something considering how fast her pulse had been to begin with. But yes, she had called the Brotherhood’s emergency number. Yes, she had reported what she had walked in on last night. And yes, she had gone down to the lower level just now to find out what he and the other male he’d come with were doing.
Two large males enter the club and ignore all the sex opportunities? While they make a beeline for the back where the stairwell was?
Who the hell else could they be?
“You’re a Brother?” she asked.
“I’m a trainee. But I came with one and I’ve been put on this case.” He lowered his hands. “I swear, I just want to ask you about what you saw last night. That’s the only reason I followed you out here. You haven’t returned our calls, and I was worried I’d lose you.”
Helania stared down the barrel of her gun at him. For a split second, an image of her sister came to mind and she teared up. Was this the mistake Isobel had made? Letting her guard down around a male she thought she was safe with . . . only to pay for that misstep with her life?
“You can trust me,” he said softly.
No, she couldn’t. But as the image of that female hanging from the ceiling came back to her, she realized she might need him. Assuming he was who he said he was.
And that was not a given.
“What do you want to ask me,” she said. “I told the operator all I know.”
“What’s your name?”
“Helania.”
“I’m Boone. And I’m sorry that we have to meet like this.”
If they were not separated by twenty feet—and a gun—she had a feeling he would have offered her his hand, and she was glad he couldn’t. She didn’t want to touch him—although not because she was repulsed by anything about him.
It was the opposite, and that was the problem.
“So what happened last night?” he prompted.
Helania cleared her throat. Like that would pull her thinking together. “I saw a male of the species go down to the lower level with a female. They didn’t come up for quite some time, and I had to check and see if she was okay.”
“Do you come to the club regularly?”
“In the last few months, yes.”
Make that the last eight months, she thought. Since Isobel had been killed.
“The female in question—you were a friend of hers, then? You knew her.”
“No, I was just worried for her safety.”
“Had you seen her at the club before?”
“That I don’t know. She was wearing a mask, and she still had it on when I . . .” Helania swallowed hard as horrible images flooded her mind’s eye. “Anyway, with all the costumes, it’s impossible to say whether she’d been there before.”
“Why were you concerned about her welfare?” Boone held up his hands like he was trying not to offend her and make her defensive. “I mean, people have sex at the club, and it happens down there, I’m sure. It’s all part of the experience, right? I’m just wondering why you felt the need to check on her.”
“Females are allowed to watch out for each other.”
“No doubt. But I’m trying to figure out how you knew she was in trouble—”
“I didn’t kill her.”
The male—Boone—recoiled. “I didn’t think you did. Why would you call the body in if you had?”
“I have to go—”
“Was the male she was with wearing a mask? Can you tell me what he looked like?”
She shook her head. And then remembered he probably couldn’t see her. “No mask, but he had sunglasses on, so I couldn’t see his eyes. He was also wearing a black skull cap pulled low. He was big, bigger than you.” It seemed odd to use the male’s body as a comparison, as if she had crossed some line of propriety. “He carried her down there while they were kissing. That’s all I know.”
“How long was it until you went to check on them?”
Helania was unaware of deciding to lower her gun. One moment it was still pointed at his chest; the next it was settled down by her leg.
“I should have gone sooner.” She felt her shoulders slump under her cloak. “I let them go for too long.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.” She’d gotten distracted searching the crowd for other signs of unrest or danger. “I was people watching. I didn’t . . . I should have gone sooner.”
“Can you give me any idea of how long it was?”
“It might have been well over an hour, but it could have been longer. I thought I smelled the blood, you see.” In her mind, Helania replayed her descent down those stairs step by step. “I caught the scent emanating from the basement and had to follow it.”
“Were you here with anybody?”
“No, I only come on my own.”
The male—Boone—crossed his arms over his chest, and didn’t that make him look even bigger. Especially as he frowned. “Do you have any specialized training?”
“What do you mean?”
“As in self-defense? You said in the message you left that there had been another victim. And yet you went down there, away from the crowd, to track the scent of blood. Weren’t you worried about your personal safety?”
She pictured Isobel clear as day. “Not at that time, no. I was only worried about her.”
EIGHT
The female was either blindly heroic . . . or utterly reckless, Boone decided as he stared into the shadows thrown by the old building.
Thanks to his eyes adjusting, he could make out her form, the black of her cloak offering a subtle contrast to the density of the rest of the darkness she had hidden herself in. She had lowered her weapon down by her side, but she seemed poised to bolt, her body weight tilted back on her feet and leaning to one side. He wanted to see her face with a desperation that was unsettling, but that hood was still up—and for no good reason at all, he wondered whether she had held it in place as she’d run off.
He wanted to catch her scent again, but the wind was being blocked by the buildings on either side of them. Given that heat rose, even from bodies that were clothed, all that wonderful natural perfume was being wasted on the heavens above—
Wow. Since when had his romantic switch gotten flipped?
Before that question could be answered, Butch came tooling around the corner of the club. He was striding fast and came to a stop as he saw Boone.
“What’s doing over here,” the Brother demanded. “And I’ll take my phone back, thank you very much.”
“This is Helania,” Boone said by way of apology. “She’s the one who called in the victim.”
Butch’s aura changed immediately, and he walked forward, halting in the snow next to Boone. As his phone was held out to him, he accepted it with a nod.
When he spoke next, his voice was soft and very grave, and he addressed Helania in the shadows. “Thank you for letting us know about her. I’m really sorry you had to see her like that, and I want to reassure you that you did the right thing. We’re very grateful for your help, and we’re going to find who killed her.”
The female—Helania—stayed silent, but at least she seemed to nod. And that gun stayed at thigh level, Boone noted.
“We’d just like to talk to you,” Butch said. “We’re here to find out who hurt her, and that was the reason you called the Brotherhood, isn’t it? You wanted to help her.”
“I told him everything I know. I have nothing to add.”
“Then maybe you could just repeat it all for me?”
There was a long silence, during which the background thumping of the music and the chatter of humans in the wait line around front seemed to get louder. If she were calming herself to dematerialize, Boone thought, they were never going to see her again. Sure, he had her name, but courtesy of having to live among humans, vampires were good at disappearing themselves—and that included from people who were of the species.
If she ghosted out, he would never see her again.
And why did that strike him as such a tragedy?
“We can go back inside where it’s warm,” Butch offered. “We can find a corner in the coat check area. I promise this won’t take long. We’re just trying to gather as much information as we can so we can help her—”
“How do I know you are who you say you are?” she said.
Butch lifted his hands slowly to the front of his cashmere coat. “Don’t shoot me, please. I’m not wearing a
vest.”
That gun came back up in a snap, and the quick movement made Boone think the female—Helania—might have had some training and experience with the weapon. Good to know—and it offered him some reassurance given that she’d been at the club alone.
“Go ahead,” she said.
Moving with care, Butch opened the two halves.
A gasp came out of the shadows. Then again, it might well have been the first time the female had seen a set of those famous black daggers, strapped handles down to the chest of a warrior: As per the Old Laws, it was a violation punishable by banishment or even death for anyone not in the Brotherhood to possess a black dagger, much less wear them in the traditional way.
That gun didn’t just go down again. It got buried somewhere in her cloak. And then the female came out of the shadows. As she emerged, the first thing Boone did was try to see under her hood, but he couldn’t make out anything of her face.
“You are safe with us,” Butch told her.
“I don’t feel safe anywhere anymore.”
“Come on, let’s go somewhere warmer.”
Back around front, the bouncers at the door let the three of them inside, and then Butch commandeered some folding chairs in a corner of the coat area, pulling them into a little circle behind a half curtain that hung from the ceiling. There was an awkward moment as everyone stood around, and then Butch took the lead in the downward-butt pose.
As Boone sat across from the female, he tried to look like he was focusing on her in a professional, not personal, fashion. And the former was true. He was thinking of her as a witness who might well possess more information than she’d so far shared.
But there was also an undercurrent that he could not deny.
“Like I said,” the Brother stated as he took out a small, spiral-bound notebook, “this will not take long. I’m Detective O’Neal—I mean, the Brother Butch. I’m Butch. And you are?”
“Helania.” She shook her covered head. “But I told him everything I know, and it’s not much.”
Crossing his legs at the knees, Butch stared across at her with hazel eyes that were full of compassion and understanding. “I’ll bet you haven’t been able to sleep or eat since you found her.”
