A car rushed by, skidding because the driver didn’t know how to handle the slippery road. Lore stepped back, avoiding the clumps of snow kicked up by the tires.
Once he’d talked to Talia, then he’d visit some of the vamp clubs and bars. This wasn’t the work of a local troublemaker. He was looking for a new face, and someone there would have gossip.
Normally, a newcomer asked permission of the ruling monarch to hunt in their territory. It was a means of keeping track of who was where. Sires owned the members of their clan; deserters were punished. Rogues on the run—like Talia—tried to stay off everybody’s radar.
Come to think of it, the ugly vampire he’d arrested earlier was an unknown, too. Interesting. Was Mr. Ugly just another bloodsucker dropping in to cheer on the first-ever fanged candidate? With election fever in high gear, plenty of Undead had come to see history in the making. It would be easy for a murderer to get lost in the crowd.
Great. Just great.
Lore headed back toward his building and Talia, his protective instincts on alert. He went around to the back door, planning to use the stairs. As soon as he rounded the corner into the parking lot, he stopped dead. An unfamiliar scent hung in the air, plain as a billboard to a hellhound’s sense of smell.
Lore’s shoulders hunched, instinctively protecting his neck from attack. The presence was vampire. Male. Dominant. Enemy.
Lore searched the shadows of the parking lot, scanning for a darker shadow, a flutter of movement. Nothing. Even as he stood there, the scent trail began to dull in the cool, wet wind.
The stranger had passed through recently, but hadn’t stayed. That was something to be thankful for. Still focused on Talia, Lore approached the cop standing outside the stairwell door.
“Did anyone come past here in the last few minutes?” Lore asked as he pulled out his driver’s license to prove he lived there.
The cop shook his head. “No.”
Lore pulled open the door and began the climb to his floor. With a low growl, he found the male had gone all the way up to his floor and beyond. Here the scent was fresh.
The cop was out to lunch. Or hypnotized. Vampires could wipe memories from a human’s mind.
It didn’t matter. He would find the source of the stink and remove it from his territory. There was no way a strange vampire was going to roam Lore’s building. Even the big ones taste like chicken. Rotten, disgusting chicken, but whatever.
Shoulders aching with tension, Lore forced himself to stay on task. Talia first. Vampire after. He pushed out of the sixth-floor stairwell door and crossed to his suite.
When he turned the door handle, it was unlocked. A jolt of anxiety raised the hair on his arms. Intruder!
Lore burst into his condo. Empty. He slammed open the bedroom door, chest heaving.
The room was empty.
Talia was gone.
With a snarl, Lore wheeled and ran back into the hall.
Chapter 10
Wednesday, December 29, 1:25 a.m.
101.5 FM
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If you’re a member of the vampire community, we have representatives standing by to arrange an appointment with Fairview’s Undead registry. With many election visitors in town, appointment times are filling up fast. See us, and secure legal feeding privileges now. Bite safe; don’t bite sorry!
Wednesday, December 29, 1:30 a.m.
Lore’s condo building
Talia’s anger and determination had careened into a brick wall.
She hid in the stairwell, the fire door open just enough to give her a crack to peer through. Carefully, she’d opened the noisy push bar without anyone hearing it. She’d assumed that late at night, the cops would have gone home. She had been wrong. There had to be a dozen still scouring the condo for clues. A few stood just feet away, almost close enough to touch.
If she let go of the door, the mechanism would close with a clatter and reveal her presence. A vampire could run faster than human cops, but she wasn’t exactly sure where she was going to run to. All her ID, her money, her car keys, and her warm clothes were in her condo. Leaving Lore’s bedroom hadn’t improved her circumstances very much at all.
She couldn’t go forward. She couldn’t go back. She was stuck. Talia’s skin shivered with the tension screaming through her muscles.
A uniformed cop walked out of the condo, interrupting someone who looked like a plainclothes detective. The latter was talking to a guy whose jacket was dusted with melting snow.
“Freaking vampires.” The uniform was stowing a camera in his shoulder bag. “That was something else, eh?”
“Just wait till you see a werewolf kill,” said the man with the snow on his coat. “I needed a wet vac to collect the remains.”
The detective snorted. “Nice mental image, Bob. I’m going to remember that next time I have chili.”
“Up yours, too, Baines.”
“It’s not funny,” snapped the cop with the camera. “What’s in there is not freaking funny. Sir.” He added the last with a baleful glance at Baines.
The detective looked sympathetic. “Murder is never funny.”
Bob lifted his voice, yelling into the condo, “You guys done yet? Can I bring in the gurney?”
With a jolt, Talia realized Bob was a paramedic. Or maybe a morgue attendant. He’d come to take Michelle’s body.
“Just about!” came the reply.
No! Talia hadn’t said goodbye. I’m not done. I haven’t had any time with her!
The uniform was still rambling on. “Things are getting worse. It didn’t used to be like this. Not before the monsters came out and started pretending to be all nice and normal. Their ordinary clothes and jobs and homes are just like the feathers on a decoy. Camouflage.”
Bob murmured agreement.
“The nonhumans are not going away,” Baines pointed out. “We know they exist now.”
Bob folded his arms. “Then we should kill them. Plain and simple.”
Talia shuddered, the hand gripping the door handle giving a slight twitch. It rattled faintly, making her still heart give a single thump of alarm.
“Whoa, Bob.” Baines held up his hands, palms out. “Don’t hold back. Seriously, though, is this any worse than a human kill?”
“That’s a fair fight, sir,” said camera cop. “The monsters are too strong for one of us.”
That was true. Even without Undead strength, how could a human best the pure animal hunger in a vampire? Our thirst is a ravenous, selfish monster. Destroying others to slake it? Natural as breathing. From the first moment she woke to the night, Talia had learned how flimsy inhibitions were. Beneath that tissue-paper layer of reason was pure, bestial id.
“Okay, Bob,” someone yelled from inside the condo. “Come and get it!”
“Just wait till they get themselves elected.” The paramedic’s voice was dour with warning. “They’ll turn our own laws against us, and even monster lovers like you will start to see just how helpless we are.”
Baines frowned. “Part of me wants to agree with you, but the evidence doesn’t support that way of thinking.”
The paramedic gave a short laugh. “Then I’ll bring her out so you can take a good look.” With that, he collected his gurney from farther down the hallway and pushed it into the condo.
Talia’s eyes blurred with tears. She’s not evidence. She’s not a thing—she was a warm, living woman! A wave of hatred for the men rose in Talia’s belly, followed by a flood of shame.
She was the monster. It was her presence in Michelle’s life that had caused an ugly, violent death. Talia deserved whatever low opinion they had of her
kind.
Baines turned to the uniformed cop. “All right, you want to arrest a vampire, here’s a reason I’ll buy into. I checked the registry for rogue vampires.”
Registry? What registry?
“And?”
“The dead woman’s cousin, Talia Rostova, is on there. A big-shot vampire from down east was her sire, and he’s looking for her. Apparently, she’s trouble. A thief, among other things.”
Crap! Why did I keep my own name? What an idiot! Of course the sires had a registry. It was a simple way of finding rogues so that they could be returned to their clans for punishment. And why wouldn’t they enlist the human police to help out?
Suddenly, switching identities seemed like a basic precaution. Naturally, there would be forgers, people who made new identities—but she didn’t know who any of them were. That was way too James Bond. She’d counted on sheer distance to hide her, and the fact no vampire king would dare to enter Queen Omara’s domain—especially not Belenos. He’d learned that the hard way.
She’d counted wrong.
I’m such an incompetent fool. The Hunters had trained her to fight, but not to hide. Now she would pay the price for that oversight.
No, Michelle’s memory would pay the price, because they’d be looking for Talia instead of the real killer. Suddenly, making sure justice was served seemed more important than anything else.
It was the only thing she could do for Michelle.
The gurney came rattling out of the condo. All that was left of her cousin was a misshapen lump in a zippered bag. Talia felt a scream building in her throat. She began to shake so violently, she had to brace the door with her foot. Her shuddering rattled the safety bar.
Oh, God, Michelle. There were no tears. She was beyond that. It was more as if her body couldn’t contain what she was feeling anymore. Any strength she possessed leaked from her body.
All that existed was the sight of her dead cousin.
She didn’t hear Lore approach. Suddenly, she felt him like a hot wall behind her, and was drowning in the scent of him. He reached around her and put his hand on the door. She stared at it, barely comprehending what his presence meant. Dully, she noticed his knuckles were scuffed as if he’d been fighting.
“Let go,” he whispered in her ear. “Hellhounds have power over doorways and the places between places. I can close it without anyone noticing.”
Talia hesitated, unable to tear her eyes from the last glimpse of the gurney as it rattled toward the elevator. At last, though, she stepped back, colliding with the solid wall of his body. She stiffened as if she’d encountered an electrical field.
He closed the door silently, and then closed his hands around her upper arms. “You escaped.”
“No, I didn’t,” she returned dully. “Here I am, back in your power.”
He turned her around, never releasing her completely. Not for an instant. Almost funny, since what she’d just seen and heard had drained the fight out of her. Right at that moment, he could do what he wanted.
“We’d better get out of here,” he said quietly.
Talia didn’t have the will to move. She felt like a black hole, a pit of negative space. Lore, on the other hand, radiated urgency—not just impatience, but the hot fire of vibrant life. At first, she wanted to shrink away—not just because he was taking her captive all over again, but because he was simply too much. Too alive. Too male. She wanted to be alone with her grief, because that was all that seemed real.
Worse, with both of them on the landing, it was crowded. He had her trapped against the wall. She turned her face away, wishing she could sink into the hard concrete behind her.
“Come on,” he urged, giving her arm a light tug. “The last thing we need is for Baines to walk through this door.”
Talia finally looked up at him, meeting his eyes. She’d expected anger, but instead saw sadness. Not pity, but a tightening around the mouth and eyes that mirrored the ache in her throat. He saw her grief, and that dulled the hostility between them.
A part of her wanted the anger. It was easier to navigate. It would be simpler to strike out, push him down the stairs, leap over his body on the way out into the snowy night. Yet she couldn’t—not when he was looking at her like he could read her soul. “Are you going to lock me up again?”
“Probably.”
“Why?”
“I still don’t know if you’re telling the truth. And now there’s another vampire prowling this building. Can’t you smell him?”
The moment he said it, the trace of another’s presence penetrated her fog of distress. Talia shivered, suddenly freezing cold. “I heard the cops talking. There’s a registry for rogue vampires. Maybe my sire figured out where I am and sent a bounty hunter.”
His eyebrows twitched together. “Then what are you doing standing here?”
“I . . .” She couldn’t answer. She’d been completely derailed by the scene playing out in her old home, which was now anything but a haven. All she could see in her mind’s eye were scattered images of the cops, the gurney, the body. She gripped the wall, light-headed. Vampires can’t faint, can they? Do we go into shock?
Lore gave her a grim look. “Trust me, you’re safer downstairs. I’ll make sure you’re protected.”
“I don’t trust anybody.” It had been her mantra for a long time. Michelle had been the exception.
“Suck it up. They have all the exits covered. Unless you’ve got that vampire hypnosis thing down pat, you’re not getting out of here for a few hours.”
He wrapped an arm around her waist, both supporting her and effectively capturing her against his tall body. She wasn’t ready for that. She pushed him away, putting distance between them. He let her, but kept an iron grip around one wrist.
They went cautiously for the first few flights, but then picked up speed once the sound of their footsteps wouldn’t carry to the crime scene.
“So what was so vital you had to risk your life to go get it?” Lore demanded once he closed his condo door behind them and steered her back into the bedroom.
“My personal laptop. My money. My driver’s license. My everything.” Talia pulled away and turned to face him. She was feeling steadier, but not by much. “Maybe I needed to say goodbye.”
Oh, God, I’m back in his bedroom. Ugh! The thought suddenly gave her back her anger. “Don’t you get it? My life just crashed and burned. Again.”
He leaned against the door, blocking her exit with his body. The posture showed off the worn softness of his jeans. “Again?”
“What do you think?” She folded her arms and walked toward window. “There’s a lot of starting over involved when you wake up a monster. A lot of losses. And they just keep coming.”
Her mother. Her humanity. Her family. Her vampire clan. And now this. Her head was starting to clear, and a low, dull throb of anger was building. Someone had stolen her last ray of light, and she was going to make him pay. Michelle needed justice. That was something Talia the Hunter and Talia the vampire could agree on. No, not justice. That was too soft. Vengeance.
I am not a victim. I am the avenger.
Outside, the snow was still falling, but she barely saw it. She was still too shaken to take in much new information. She turned around to face him again. “You have to let me go. I’m going to find out who did this to Michelle. Then I’m going to chase him down and shred him with my teeth.”
Lore gave her a startled look. “That’s usually my line.”
“Was that a joke? Because I’m completely serious.”
Lore looked her up and down, from her dainty boots, up the length of her tight jeans and the curves of her sweater. His eyes warmed at what he saw, suddenly becoming intimate. Despite everything, she felt a rush of heat under her skin.
His gaze finally made it to her face. “I’m trying to find the killer, remember? Telling me you’re going to bite your enemies probably isn’t smart.”
Talia’s cheeks burned, but his words focused her. She
had to be careful. She had to think. “We want the same thing. We want to find out who did this.”
Not that she had any intention of working together. They’d just met, and she could tell by his expression that she wasn’t quite crossed off the suspect list.
“What do you know about that vampire who was in the building? Do you really think your sire sent him to drag you home?”
“I don’t know anything. It’s just a strong possibility.” Especially since Talia had not left empty-handed. Older vampires didn’t like banks. She bet Belenos used one now that he was missing a few million in neatly bundled stacks of hundred-dollar bills.
She really hoped the cops didn’t tear up the floorboards upstairs.
Chapter 11
Wednesday, December 29, 1:45 a.m.
Lore’s condo
She was so damned beautiful, Lore felt himself struggling to keep his upper brain in charge. The hound part of him didn’t sweat things like murder and interspecies differences. It liked the little brain much better. Female. Pretty. Soft.
The part of him that could still string thoughts together realized that this was the first time Talia seemed open to conversation. Now was the opportunity to question her.
“Baines invited me into the crime scene,” he said, doing a reasonable imitation of a rational being.
Her expression had gone from angry to thoughtful. “What did you find out?”
“I found out that you’re a teacher.” He gave a slight smile. “That’s a very honored profession among my people.”
She looked down, as if shy all of a sudden. This was obviously important to her. “I used to teach in a private high school. Now I tutor first- and second-year literature. My classes are online distance education.” She grimaced. “That way I can’t eat my students.”
The sudden regret in her voice made him flinch. She raised her gaze to him, her guarded expression slipping a little. Her eyes were a striking bronze color. The shade reminded him of a hawk’s—neither brown nor gold, with a hint of green rimming the iris. They’d probably been hazel when she was alive, but once a vampire tasted living blood, their eyes took on a metallic cast. It was an easy way to pick them out of a crowd.
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