by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
He kissed her mouth, even as she bit his lip. “See,” he teased, “you still like the taste of my blood.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Marco.”
His eyes grew fiery, and he reached down with one hand and ripped open the zipper on her pants. “You will be mine. I will break you until you are begging for me.”
Tessa felt the cold night air on her pelvis as he started pulling down her pants. She fought against him with all her strength, but she was weak from the fighting. Her arms were sore from swinging her sword, from the tension and the exertion.
Suddenly, they both heard a clatter as Flynn slammed open the door and burst onto the roof.
Raising his gun, he seemed to gauge whether he had a clear shot at Marco. Tessa could see his cop’s mind calculating the odds. He lowered his gun. He wasn’t going to chance it. But the distraction gave her just the edge she needed. She pulled her knee up and jammed it into Marco’s testicles. He groaned momentarily, and she took her fingers and rammed them into his eye sockets. As he reacted with pain, she rolled with all her might and grabbed at her sword, then swung it sideways and sliced his back. In fury, he rose, preparing to fight her. Tessa scrambled to her feet and swung her sword again. She missed him but, swinging the other way, caught his neck, slicing a vein. As the blood sprayed her, he moved his hands to his throat. She then lunged with the sword in a classic fencing move, piercing him straight through the heart and out his back.
He could still speak, but she knew he was dying.
“Did you ever love me?”
She nodded. “But it was based on shadows and darkness. You were my prince. My prince of darkness, just as Flynn is my prince of light.”
She yanked out her sword, watching the color drain from his face, and then, with all the strength she could muster, she pulled back and swung her sword for what she hoped was her final time.
“It is ended, my love.”
She sliced, and his head rolled off to the side, his body poised for a second before it folded to its knees and then fell forward.
Flynn rushed to her side. “I didn’t know what to do.”
“It’s okay—it’s over.”
The two of them clung to each other. Flynn was bleeding.
“Were you stabbed?” she asked.
He shook his head. “My stitches ripped. I’ll have to tell the doctors my girlfriend did it to me while we were making love.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if they would believe it happened in a vampire war.”
“So, what do you think this has done to the vampire population of New York City?”
“It’s lowered it considerably—but there will be more. But we also made a dent in the drug trade. No more Shanghai Red.” She kissed him. “Let’s go downstairs before the sun rises.”
“You know, Tess…I think I’d rather stay here while the sun comes up and make sure that head and body over there don’t figure out some way to get reunited.”
Jorge, Cool and Alex Williams surveyed the club’s interior with its sloshing puddles of blood and piles of bodies.
“Now what?” Jorge asked.
“We get this cleaned up. My God, can you imagine what would happen if this was sprayed with Luminol?” Williams asked.
“What’s that?” Cool asked.
“A chemical. When it comes in contact with blood, even months later, it will, with special lighting, glow, revealing evidence of past crimes. This would light up like the tree at Rockefeller Center.”
“I think I’m numb,” Jorge said. “I mean, we got vampire heads all over the place and I’m not even flinching.”
“Good thing, ’cause now we’ve got to get them all into trashbags. I suggest we take a boat out on the Hudson and then out to deep water, and dump,” said Williams.
“What happens if they ever rise to the top again?”
“If they’re vampires, they’re probably so old that they’re long forgotten. No missing persons reports. No DNA matches. But we weigh ’em down to make sure they don’t rise.”
“And you? You’re a cop,” Cool said warily. “How do we know we can trust you?”
“My friend, there isn’t any way on God’s green earth that I could file a report that told one fraction of what went on here tonight and hope to keep my job and stay out of Bellevue,” Williams said.
Tessa waited in her bedroom. She had given Flynn the keys to all the locks—including, she supposed, the one to her heart. She waited as she looked at the clock. After sunrise, she heard the sound of the keys, and he came through the door.
“Well?”
“Fried like a sunny-side-up egg.”
“Tired?”
“Exhausted.”
“Need a bath?”
“Desperately.” He smiled crookedly and followed her into the bathroom while she drew a steamy bath.
She stripped and climbed in, spreading her legs seductively and waiting for him to climb into the space between them.
“You know what this relationship means, don’t you?”
She shook her head.
“I’m going to have to learn to live in the night.”
With that he leaned down and kissed her as he slid into the tub.
Epilogue
Tessa, Flynn, Alex, Jorge, Cool and Lily took the Circle Line around Manhattan. The boat was nearly empty as the bitter December night kept away all but the most stouthearted. The lower outside deck was abandoned except for the six of them. Each held a glass of champagne.
“To my friend Hack, who bravely fought with me. Brave to the end, a dear and gentle soul who is in a better place.”
Everyone lifted a glass. “To Hack.”
With that, Tessa furtively opened the urn. Flynn had told her she would need a permit to scatter the ashes legally—but who would be out on such a cold winter night? She turned over the urn and the ashes flew out on the wind, then down into the black waters of the Hudson.
“Peace, my friend,” Tessa whispered.
The six of them were silent.
After a respectful length of time, Cool and Lily, and Jorge and Alex went inside to the warmth. Tessa and Flynn remained outside, the wind causing tears to roll down their faces.
“Do you think differently about me, love, now that you’ve seen what vampires are capable of?”
“No. Do you think differently of me knowing I can shoot a man?”
“I don’t think it’s the same, Flynn.”
“It is.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because…we’re here, saying goodbye to your friend Hack. And I know, as well as I know anything, that you, my dear Tessa, fight the good fight.”
“Always,” she said, and with Flynn’s arms around her, she turned to face the lights of Manhattan.
Hot Case
By Patricia Rosemoor
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG
STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID
PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Prologue
Feathers of fog curled around the hood of my Camaro as I crossed the Chicago River on my way home. It was one of those weird spring nights when the downtown area looked ghostly, half-lit skyscrapers rising out of the mists like skeletons.
I was totally exhausted after a long workday and what had felt like a longer family get-together with my mom and sister. Stifling a yawn, I tried t
o ignore my cell phone when it trilled and politely informed me, “You have an incoming call…. You have an incoming call…. You have an incoming…”
I had a real love-hate relationship with technology.
I checked the caller ID and sighed wearily as I flipped open my phone. “It’s after midnight. This had better be good, Junior.” Junior Diaz was one of my most reliable informants and the only reason I’d bothered answering.
“Where you at?”
Nice opening. As if this was a social call or something. “I’m on my way home. What’s up?”
“You gotta see for yourself, Detective.”
“See what?”
“The body. This girl…she ain’t got no blood left. It’s all been drained outta her.”
“And you know this how?”
“I saw…”
A muffled sound on the other end sounded like Junior heaving his guts.
“Where are you?”
It turned out he was maybe a half mile from my present location, west and north of the Loop.
“And don’t you call for no backup,” Junior gasped. “My deal’s with you, no one else.”
“I’ll be right there. Alone,” I promised. “Don’t go anywhere.”
In a little more than two minutes, I made the intersection in an area anchored to the expressway. Not really a neighborhood, just a couple of blocks of red bungalows and two-flats with little to recommend them. I turned down a side street, went a quarter of a block and turned again. Then I slammed on the brakes.
My headlights cut into the fog-shrouded alley. I flicked on the brights but still didn’t see anything.
No Junior Diaz.
What was his game? I’d told him not to move. Was he simply lying low until he was sure I was alone? I grabbed my cell and speed-dialed him.
“Hey,” his recorded voice grunted. “Gimme reason to call you back.”
Part of me really, really wanted to go home and forget he’d called at all. But another part of me—the cop who wouldn’t let go of a lead—made me look hard enough to pierce the darkness and the blanket of fog.
Something lay in the middle of the alley. Junior or this girl supposedly with no blood?
Only one way to find out.
Cursing under my breath, I removed my weapon from its holster under my navy blazer, grabbed the combination lantern-flashlight from the floor in back and cautiously opened the door. This wasn’t a particularly bad area, and I wasn’t afraid, but it never paid to let down my guard.
“Junior?” I called out, turning and swinging the light around to make certain there were no nasty surprises waiting for me. “You there?”
No answer. My stomach knotting, I moved toward the lump in the middle of the alley. As if the fog decided to cooperate, it rolled off the body and framed it, giving me a picture I would never forget.
She was sprawled across the alley pavement, her skirt up around her waist, panties shredded, legs spread and bruised—she’d obviously been sexually assaulted. I moved closer, my eye caught by an intricate design high on her outer thigh—a winged gargoyle. A tattoo. Even in the dim light I could see how young she was. A teenager. Just a kid. Her jaw looked as if it had been dislocated, one of her eyes rolled partly out of its socket and an ear was half ripped off.
She’d fought her attacker like hell, I thought. She’d fought and lost.
Her caramel skin was ash-pale, and I knew a person’s skin color came from the oxygen in the blood. Her body hadn’t been oxygenated in a while. Even so, I set the lantern down next to her and felt for a pulse. Her flesh was icy against my fingertips. Nothing moved inside of her.
I looked for wounds and on the inside of her arm found a nasty slash that severed the median cubital vein—the primary site used to draw blood by medical personnel. Her arm was smeared with red and the gashed flesh lay open. If she were still alive, it would have been a gusher, but it wasn’t bleeding because her heart wasn’t beating and maintaining blood pressure. No other wounds that I could see. Only that gash, meaning she must have died of blood loss.
The problem was…where had all the blood gone?
I flashed the light around through the fog, but there were only a few splotches on the ground near her arm. The short hairs at the back of my neck rose, and I tried to tell myself that this wasn’t the primary site. That she had been killed elsewhere and dumped here. Only it didn’t look that way.
Junior had said he’d seen her being drained of blood.…
Where the hell was he?
I looked all around me again, but the only thing I spotted was a book bag tumbled on its side as if it had been tossed in the struggle. Fog rolled over it and swallowed it whole.
I heard a muffled noise, maybe a garbage can hitting a garage door.
“Junior, are you here?”
No response. No nothing.
Continuing to call out for him would be futile, so as the fog drifted over the body once more, I checked for my cell phone but couldn’t find it. I raced back to my car where I’d left it. Since I was off duty, I didn’t have a radio to call in to dispatch, so I dialed 911.
“This is Detective Shelley Caldwell, Area 4 Violent Crimes Unit,” I said, squeezing my ears against a sudden weird, high-pitched noise. What the hell was wrong with the damn cell phone? I’d never heard anything like this before. I raised my voice as I settled back into the seat. The fog was too thick to see anything anyway. “Call Dispatch. I have a body…”
Or I’d had a body.
By the time they arrived on scene a few minutes later—uniforms followed by a case supervisor and CSI—the fog had lifted, leaving me with a few bloodstains, a book bag and nothing else.
The dead girl’s body had vanished.
Chapter 1
Three months later…
He was a hell of a lot bigger than me. Bigger and frickin’ scary-looking.
With lightning speed, I grabbed his wrist and twisted, and before he could turn, I used my free arm—palm to forearm—to slam him hard in the back below the shoulder.
Bam! He went down.
As I pushed a knee in his back to keep him there, the room went up for grabs.
“Woo-hoo!”
“Sweet!”
“Yo, Jackson, I thought you was a tough guy,” someone said with a snicker.
I climbed off him. “At ease!” I commanded. “You’ll all get your turn.”
An embarrassed Gary Jackson quickly rose from the floor without looking at me. I couldn’t spare him a moment’s pity. He wouldn’t get any out on the street.
“That’s what we call rolling the ball,” I told the recruits who’d just reported to the gym. “If you do it right, it works, no matter how big the suspect.”
That’s why I’d picked Jackson—I might be tall and strong but he beat me on both counts, and I’d wanted to make a point and fast.
The regular gym instructor was out on sick leave, and because I was PSS certified—the Police Safety System, which combined moves from several different martial arts—and because I was a novice instructor at the training academy, I’d been pulled from my assignment with new detectives to teach control tactics to recruits.
I’d been one of them about nine years ago. That’s when I’d joined the Chicago Police Department in hopes of following in my mother’s footsteps.
But that’s another story.
The story of the moment was that I was under-whelmed by the work I’d been doing for the past month. It took a certain talent and patience to be an instructor—traits that I didn’t have. Just as it took a particular talent and yes, guts, to be a detective.
That was me—Detective Shelley Caldwell, formerly Violent Crimes Unit, Area 4. Now I was an instructor at the training academy, and the sucky situation wasn’t one I could easily correct. If ever. I should have been hip-deep in investigations, identifying offenders and getting them off the streets of my city. That was what I was really best at—using my brains to solve crimes rather than brawn.
“All right, it’s your turn,” I said to the room of more than thirty kids in their early twenties, mostly fresh-faced and without a clue as to what they were getting into.
Most of them were just out of college, idealistic, and few of them knew the reality of the streets…or the hell they would be in for during training, courtesy of all the instructors. That was standard CPD practice—breaking them down like the army did to boot-camp soldiers and then building them up to be cops tough enough to survive the mean streets. They wouldn’t all make it through the training.
I told the class, “Time to pair up and take turns being the offender and the uniform.”
“You want us to do what you just did with Jackson?” one of them asked.
“To start,” I said. And then demonstrated again, with another recruit, this time in slow motion, step by step. “Your turn.” I picked up the stopwatch from a cord that hung from my neck and shouted, “You’ll have thirty seconds to get your partner on the ground…starting…now!”
I kept an eagle eye on the pair-ups working on mats, mostly guys but a few young females with male partners, as well. They were dressed alike no matter their gender—navy shorts and gray T-shirts with their names on the back, so I could keep track of who was who.
Recruits fell like sacks of potatoes in half the time allotted. Good. A few more seconds and everyone who was supposed to be down was down.
But before I could blow my whistle, a female cry got my attention. I whipped around to see a slender brunette on the floor beneath the knee of her decidedly bigger partner, one Fred Guerro. She started sobbing and Guerro popped right up, his expression disconcerted.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he mumbled.
The name across the female recruit’s back identified her as Lara Morris.
