Blood of the Innocent

by Cheryel Hutton

  “I hate that lotion.” Veronica scrunched up her nose as she remembered the scent. She keeps telling me it would do wonders for me. Yuck.”

  “Tell her you’re allergic too.” Charlene touched her arm. “I’m sorry she stays on you all the time about being girly.”

  “Doesn’t bother me.” Veronica touched her sister’s hand. “But I know it bothers you when she nags you about losing weight, you’re fine just the way you are.”

  “But not thin and long-legged like you.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t understand the problem. My appearance is simply a result of the genes I inherited. Honestly, why we would want to adopt the human’s skewed idea of what a woman should look like is beyond me.”

  “That’s why I love you, Veronica. You always have something smart and logical to say.”

  “You love me because I’m your sister.”

  “That too.” Charlene took her jacket from the hook by the door. “I’m heading out so you can get some rest. I know you have to work tonight.”

  “Be careful in the sun.”

  “Always.” Charlene touched Veronica’s cheek where a burn still healed. “Besides, I think you’re the one who needs to be careful.” She pulled on a jacket and a huge hat before heading out the door.

  Alone again, Veronica was left to think about what she’d discovered in the Guardian’s database. She told herself she needed rest, instead she found herself at her laptop logging back into the Guardian’s info. She was close to some important new information. She just knew it.

  “Oh good grief. Feelings aren’t logical.”

  Logical or not, she spent the next several hours plodding through Guardian personnel files determined to see the logic to their system. And to use that insight to find if any of the files related to the DNA profiles she’d discovered earlier.

  Even if it took her all day.

  ****

  The sun was warm, even if the breeze coming from the ocean was chilly. Joe was comfortable sitting at the rustic wooden table outside while he and Mike ate their lobster rolls. The relaxing roar of the waves crashing, the sound of seagulls crying overhead, even the ubiquitous fishy smell he’d finally gotten used to, all of it was feeling familiar and good. He shook his head to clear that thought and focused on the present.

  “So how do you know this Vince guy?” Friend of Mike’s or not, something about the man rubbed Joe the wrong way.

  Mike took a sip of his Coke before he answered. “His daughter was in an accident a few years ago. Hurt pretty bad. I was the surgeon on call, and I managed to save her life.”

  “So he thinks you’re awesome now.”

  “I am awesome, thank you.”

  Joe laughed. “Yeah, and modest too.”

  “Enjoying your lunch, gentlemen?”

  “Delicious,” Joe told the middle-aged man standing beside their table. “Your food is always great.” Across from him, Mike nodded agreement while chewing a huge bite.

  Ned Rutherford owner of Ned’s Lobster Shack, smiled. “Good to hear.”

  “Ned, do you happen to know a man named Kennedy?” Joe asked.

  Ned frowned. “Sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t put a face to the name.”

  “Any idea who might know? It’s kind of important.”

  The man thought for a minute. “You know, Charlie Burns might be able to help you. He’s a lobsterman from way back. Finally got to the point where he couldn’t work anymore, so he handed his business over to his kids and grandkids. Now he sits down by the pier and keeps track of everything going on. He probably knows everybody around here.”

  “Thanks, we’ll talk to him.”

  Ned nodded and headed on to the next table.

  Joe looked at Mike. “I think we should take a walk after lunch.”

  Mike sighed. “I knew you were going to say that.”

  ****

  Veronica’s neck and back screamed at her, and she was so tired she could barely sit up straight. “I should get some rest,” she told herself, knowing if she didn’t, tonight at work would be hell.

  Instead of listening, she gave into the need to continue the search just a few more minutes. After all, she had no idea if, or when, the Guardians would figure out what she was doing and stop her. If she could find out something, she’d get the information to Joe as soon as she could. Just in case the Guardians took her away or something.

  What did the Guardians do with vampires who didn’t follow the rules? Nobody she’d ever talked to knew. The only thing everybody seemed to be in agreement about was that you didn’t mess with the Guardians.

  Ten minutes later, she clicked a link and a face she knew popped up on the screen: Spencer Drake. The brother of Ethan Drake—and a Guardian. She looked carefully at his info, seeing if anything made sense.

  The answer popped into her head. The file code ended with Spencer’s birth date. Okay, that was helpful information. The profiles she’d seen didn’t include birthdates, so she wouldn’t have figured it out if she hadn’t happened to know Spencer’s.

  Okay, so she’d broken part of the code. She searched through Spencer’s profile to see if she could find any other hints. Then she saw a code that looked familiar. Pulling her printed list close, she scanned the codes. Yes! She’d found a match. In seconds, a DNA profile that had to be Spencer’s popped up on her screen.

  Okay, but if she had to search through all the files it could take years. She tried an automated search, but it wouldn’t work. The files must be locked in some way to prevent exactly what she was trying to do. In a last ditch effort, she decided to compare all the numbers to find some connection. It took her almost two hours, but finally she figured out the link between the codes.

  It took some headache-inducing work to link birthdates and year of joining the Guardians, place of birth, and male or female, but eventually she got some parameters. She still had to go one file at a time, but at least she’d narrowed down the field.

  She was just about to decide she would have to either skip work or stop digging until morning, when a photo came up that shocked her to her toenails. He couldn’t be a Guardian. She’d have known, wouldn’t she? After all they’d worked together for almost two years.

  Pushing all that aside, she checked his DNA code to see if it related somehow to the other codes in the files, only to get an even bigger shock. The code on the profile, and the one of the killer matched.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Todd Kennedy was Justin’s killer.

  ****

  “Hello, Mr. Burns, my name is Joe Sullivan. I wonder if you might be able to help me out.”

  Burns narrowed his eyes as he studied Joe. “You’re not kin to Roark and Dawn Sullivan who own Mariner’s Fish Fry are you?”

  “Not that I know of, sir.”

  “They have some excellent blueberry pie. You should try a slice.”

  “I’ll do that, sir. Do you happen to know a man named Kennedy? His first initial is T.”

  “Well, let me see,” the old man said as he scratched his white beard and thought for a time. “I believe I do know of a Kennedy. Don’t know his first name though. He’s from someplace away. Hadn’t seen him around much.” Burns leaned closer to Joe. “He’s not very friendly.”

  “Do you have any idea where he lives?” Joe asked, trying hard not to tell the old man to hurry.

  “Nope, but I tell ya, I believe he’s one of the science folks. We get a lot of them around here.”

  “Do you have any idea where he works?”

  The old man thought for a long minute. “Nope. Some science place, I’d imagine. There’s a few of ’em ’round here.”

  “Anything else you can tell us about him?”

  Again the beard scratching and thinking. “Can’t say as I can.”

  “Thank you, sir. You’ve been a big help.” Joe shook the man’s hand.

  “You be careful, son. There’s something going that’s not right.”

  “What do you mean?”

>   “Don’t rightly know. It’s just that I’ve been around a while and know a few things. And I know something’s going and it don’t feel right.”

  “Thank you.”

  Mike shook the man’s hand, then he and Joe headed out. “I guess we need to make phone calls.

  Joe nodded. “Sounds like. Want to split the work fifty-fifty?”

  “Sure.”

  They made a list of the nearby labs and any businesses likely to have a scientist on staff, split the list, and began calling. Excitement rose in Joe’s chest. They were close. He just knew it.

  ****

  Veronica tried to call Joe’s cell, but once again the call went straight to voicemail. “Damn,” she muttered. She read over the email she’d just written and sat back to consider. In the email she had admitted what she’d done and what she found. The document could get her in big trouble, but it might just bring some justice to one dead human. Maybe. Killing a human, after all, wasn’t an illegal act for a vampire. It was all she could think to do, though. Spencer was the only Guardian she trusted, and wondered if she was being smart to even send the information to him. If she didn’t do anything, though, all her work would be in vain.

  With a little prayer to whoever was up there, she added blind copies to Ethan’s email, and an online based email account of her own before she clicked send.

  She tried once more to call Joe. When she got his voicemail again, she texted him to call her ASAP, grabbed her car keys, and paced. The sun should be going down soon. Until then she was stuck. Without a full protective outfit, which, unlike her sister, she didn’t have because it was a pain in the ass. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Damn! She had to find Joe and let him know what she’d found. Something was wrong here, something she didn’t understand. Something that could put Joe’s life at risk.

  ****

  Joe growled at his cell phone.

  “Down boy.”

  Joe scowled across the Lobster Shack table toward Mike. “The damn battery’s dead.”

  Mike put his own phone down. “It’s getting a little late in the day to be calling labs and businesses anyway.”

  Joe rubbed his aching neck. “We’ve called just about every place a scientist was likely to work. Maybe that old guy was wrong.”

  “Which puts us back at nowhere.”

  “Thanks for your encouragement, buddy.”

  Mike smiled. “No problem.”

  Joe glanced at his watch. “Veronica should be up, she’s a scientist, maybe she knows who the hell this guy is.”

  “You can use my phone.”

  He shook his head. “Nah, I’d rather talk to her in person anyway. Let’s go back to Justin’s place. I’ll plug in my phone, and we can grab heavier clothes. It’s already getting chilly. By the time the sun’s down, it’ll feel like the air’s full of ice.”

  “Boy that’s the truth.”

  They headed toward Joe’s rental car.

  ****

  Dressed in gloves, long sleeves, and a wide-brimmed hat, Veronica braved the last rays of the sun to knock on Joe’s door. When there was no answer, fear tightened her throat, making it hard to breathe. After knocking one last time, she tried the doorknob, but the door was locked. She tried once again to call him, and the call once again went straight to voicemail. “Where could he be?” Anywhere, as she realized his car wasn’t in the small gravel parking lot.

  “Think,” she whispered, “where would he have gone?” He was investigating his brother’s murder. Where was that likely to lead him? Into town probably.

  With no better idea, she turned and headed toward town. She kept to the areas with trees as much as possible, so she could use their shade to help protect her from the long, harsh rays of the slowly setting sun. She had plenty to worry about; she didn’t want to add getting burned again to the list.

  ****

  Joe squinted in the sunset as he unlocked the door to Justin’s apartment. As soon as he was inside, he reached for the cord to plug in his cell, but stopped in mid-movement. “We don’t have time to charge this thing, let’s just head over to Veronica’s.”

  Mike had gone straight for the coats. “Sounds like a plan.”

  Joe dropped the phone on the coffee table and took the jacket Mike handed him. The two of them jumped into Joe’s rental car again and headed toward town. They’d just turned from Main Street onto Pine Avenue, when Joe caught sight of a familiar form.

  “What are you doing?” Mike asked as he pulled the car into the empty funeral home parking lot.

  “That’s Conner over there.” He pointed to a hooded figure standing between the funeral home and the Historical Society building.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Trust me, it’s him.” Joe got out and rushed off toward the man.

  Letting out a huge groan. Mike slid out of the passenger side of the car and followed him.

  “Conner,” Joe kept his voice just loud enough so the man could hear him. “Is that you?”

  The hooded figure turned. “Yes, it’s me.”

  He caught up to Conner. “Can you tell me anything that might help me find my brother’s killer?”

  Conner sighed. “So you are still determined to do this.”

  “I have to, for my brother’s sake.” Joe swallowed. “I’ve come to believe that if I don’t find the killer, he won’t be caught.”

  The man was quiet for a moment. “You’re right about that.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Mike asked, from his position behind Joe.

  “Because Justin’s killer was one of our kind.”

  “Whatever he is,” Mike said, “We think his name is Kennedy.”

  “That would make sense,” Conner said. “Todd Kennedy is vampire.”

  ****

  Kevin sat in the shadows on a small hill overlooking a dirt area near the back of a big church. He watched as the man dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, a man he knew to be a priest, threw the basketball toward a hoop attached to a pole. The ball took a long, curved path up and over, and dropped easily into the middle of the net.

  The kids scattered around him cheered laughed and fist-bumped each other and the priest. “Way to go, Father Zack!” one of them yelled.

  Eleven kids were playing ball with the priest, most of them about Kevin’s age.

  “I guess I’m not as old as you guys thought, huh?” the priest said. “It’s getting late. Why don’t we call an end for tonight?”

  There was a round of objections, but the priest only shook his head. “I’m quite sure you have homework. Now get on home.” The man, who looked nothing like Kevin thought of as a priest, waved a hand in the direction of town. Still complaining, the kids headed out.

  Chuckling, the priest turned and walked toward the church, which led him in front of where Kevin was sitting. He looked up. “You didn’t want to play?”

  The man had noticed him? Strange. Most people either didn’t see him or ignored him. “Not really my thing,” Kevin told him.

  “We play most afternoons, if you change your mind.”

  I’d love to.

  “Nah. Got more important shit to do.”

  He’d expected the dirty word would get a rise out of the priest, or maybe encourage him to leave. Instead, the man climbed the small hill and took a seat beside him.

  “So what do you like to do?” the guy, who looked like Santa Claus in a tie-dyed T-shirt, asked.

  Kevin kicked at the dirt. “Just stuff. You know.”

  “With your friends?”

  What was with this guy? “I’m not Catholic.”

  The priest chuckled. “That’s okay, I’m not a teenager.”

  “How do you know if somebody’s evil?” Kevin shot his gaze into the distance so the priest wouldn’t see how surprised he was that his mouth had taken off by itself to ask that question.

  “Well,” the priest said. “I don’t believe anyone is completely good or evil. We all have the potential for both inside us. The c
hoices we make are what’s important.”

  “What if somebody tells you a group of…of people are all evil? Should you believe them?”

  “What do you think, son?”

  Kevin dropped his gaze to the ground. “I don’t know.”

  The priest put a firm hand on his shoulder. “Would you like a soda? Or maybe something from Julie’s Sweet Shop? It’s right around the corner.” He pointed.

  It sounded so good he almost drooled. “Sorry, I gotta go.”

  “If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be.”

  Kevin nodded. “Thank you.”

  The priest moved his hand, and Kevin made for the woods. Things were making less sense all the time.

  ****

  The darkness was almost complete, allowing Veronica to remove the hat. She’d always thought of Lobster Cove as a small place, but today it seemed huge. Where in the world was Joe? Her heart beat hard against her chest, and her breath came in big hard gasps. What if the killer had gotten to him while she was asleep? What if she lost the man she loved?

  That had her stopping cold. What the hell was that? She couldn’t be in love with Joe. He was human. She didn’t want to mate with a vampire male, but she had with a human. But then, it wasn’t just sex that she craved with Joe. It was something much stronger, much more intimate.

  She sat on a bench and dropped her head into her hands. She had obviously lost her mind. When a vampire bonded with another—not just a casual mating, but a commitment—the two of them became mentally connected. Linked. But a vampire couldn’t Link with a human. It was impossible.

  In the midst of her confusion, she realized something she had managed to ignore over the last few days, she sensed Joe. When they were together they could read each other’s minds. When apart, she could feel his mental touch. A psychic conduit connected them.

  All at once, she realized two things: Impossible or not, she and Joe were already Linked. And she could use that Link to find him.

  She shot to her feet and headed in the direction the mental pull was strongest.

  ****

  Joe stood in the shadows near the mansion where he knew Veronica’s lab to be. They’d parked in a small nearby clearing so as not to alert anyone to their presence.

  “Are you sure about this?” Mike asked from beside him.