by Laken Cane
Despite the crowd, the situation appeared controlled and the atmosphere was subdued. News vans were parked along the street, but they were wrapping up.
“Captain,” I called, when a uniform reached out to stop me.
Captain Crawford lifted the tape and motioned me through, but refused to allow Clayton to accompany me.
“There’s something wrong with that man,” he muttered when I stood beside him. Then he forgot about Clayton as he took my arm and walked me toward the dead woman on the ground.
“We pulled traces of the rape drug off the corpse.” He blew out a heavy breath, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. New lines radiated from the corners of his eyes, and he could’ve packed for vacation using the bags under his eyes. “Someone is using the Foam of Aphrodite on human women, and the vampires are draining her. What is going on here?”
“Captain,” I murmured.
He narrowed his eyes. “You know something about this, Sinclair?”
I wanted to say no. I nodded. “We should talk.”
He stared at me for a few seconds, his expression going from angry to suspicious to weary before he finally put his hands on his hips and nodded. “I’m listening.”
I glanced around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear the conversation. “The absolute last thing the supernats need is for word of this foam to leak to the public,” I said.
“I’m not worried about the supernatural community right now, Trinity,” he barked. “I’m worried about the piles of dead human women I’m carting to the morgue.” Still, he lowered his voice. “What do you know?”
“Vampires aren’t killing these women,” I told him. “It’s an incubus. We think he’s making the foam from…” I swallowed, suddenly hesitant. “From his…er…sperm, blood, and the sexual energy he steals from the women he kills.”
He frowned, absorbing my words, then shook his head. “The bodies are drained. There are fang marks—the lab confirmed both those things. And incubi, not that I believe your story, don’t kill when they feed. They rape and terrorize, but they don’t kill.”
“Usually they don’t,” I agreed, “but this one is sick. He’s stuck here. Maybe he was banished as punishment for something. The longer he’s here the sicker and weaker he becomes. He can’t exist here on sips of humans. He needs all of them. They will keep him alive until he can get what he needs to propel himself back to his world.”
“And that would be…”
I shrugged, offering him an uneasy grin. “Me, I’m afraid.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You.”
“He needs the energy of a bloodhunter to gain enough power to return to his world. We’re pretty rare, as you know. He discovered me, and he’s been trying to eat me ever since.”
“How long?”
“A little while now,” I mumbled.
He nodded slowly and pursed his lips, wondering how angry he should be with me. “A little while now. You knew about this incubus from the beginning.”
“Of course not,” I snapped. “We just—”
“We meaning you and the supernaturals.”
“Yes. And if word gets out that it’s not actually vampires killing these women, the humans will go after the supernaturals. You know they will. You have to protect them.”
“No,” he said. “I have to protect the women this incubus is killing.”
My stomach hit the ground. “Captain. Frank. Please.”
“Captain,” one of his men called. “Have a minute?”
“When this gets out, and it will, I’ll make sure the public knows the foam is coming from a demon,” the captain told me, turning to stride away. “That’s all I can do.”
I stared down at the ground, trying to avoid the woman’s face as I searched for tracks. They weren’t difficult to find. I picked up a few of them, but two of them, both vague blue—one darker than the other—were the most vivid. Both of them swirled not only around her body but inside it. Blue fog drifted from her mouth, her ears, even her eyes.
But why?
Before I could think too hard about it, I knelt beside the woman, closed my eyes, and put my nose close to one of the colorful fog tracks. I pulled in the scent, latched on, then straightened, only realizing when I heard horrified shouts of disgust and anger how I must have looked to the watching crowd.
“Corpse sniffer,” someone screamed.
“Oh hell,” I muttered, climbing to my feet. “That’s not how I want to be labeled.”
Captain Crawford hurried to me. “What the fuck are you doing?” he muttered.
“Picking up a trail,” I told him. “Vampires were here. I want to find out why. I want to find out what they know.”
He ran his hand over his face, then blew out a hard breath. “If you bring him to me and he agrees with what you said, I’ll put the story out to the public.”
Maybe I could save the supernaturals. With that one vampire, I could save them. I just had to find him.
I nodded. And then, ignoring the jeers from offended humans, I lifted my nose to the air and began to follow the scent one of the vampires had left behind. Clayton joined me once I left the taped-off area, and I became vaguely aware that he was keeping irate humans from my back.
I jogged down the street, ignoring everything but that scent, and at last, we left the outraged humans behind.
Sometime later Clayton clicked on a flashlight when we entered darkness not penetrated by streetlights, and when I glanced at him, I saw he held a silver chain in his free hand.
I sniffed the air and slowed my jog to a walk, determined that before the night was over, I would give the humans yet another reason to hate the vampires.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I had to be careful—vampires full up on blood would be stronger than ever. But they’d also be careless. One human body to share between two scavengers was a feast they had likely, depending on their ages, never before experienced.
They’d stumbled behind a huge, empty brick building, climbed into a dumpster, then pulled the lid over them.
I motioned quietly to Clayton, then pointed. He nodded and started toward the dumpster, moving like a silent shadow.
I reached for Silverlight. The sword slid from the sheath with a barely there snick and then expanded with a light so intense it was almost a sound.
She attached seamlessly, her light traveling up my arm and over my shoulder, and half a second later, Clayton flipped the lid over the side of the rusty container.
I was ready for them when they leapt screaming from the dark depths. Silverlight sliced through one as Clayton slapped the other one with the silver chain. It spun around the vampire’s neck like a lasso and began to incapacitate him immediately.
The chain had burned halfway through his throat before I withdrew the sword from his dead friend; Silverlight went immediately for the silvered vampire, but I sheathed her before she could fight me for him.
I needed one of them alive.
And I also needed him to be capable of speech, so I dragged the chain off his throat and down his body, leaving it to rest over his heart.
Clayton held the flashlight while we waited for him to recover his vocal cords. I hunkered down beside him, watching the glistening rawness of his throat slowly darken and close.
When he spoke, his voice was almost too hoarse to understand. He tried to lift his hand to the silver burning into his chest, but he was simply too weak, and the silver was too strong. “It hurts a lot,” he admitted, matter-of-factly, and with an absolute absence of hope.
I blinked and reached for the chain before Clayton took my wrist. “Answers first,” he said gently.
Killing vampires was one thing. And maybe a couple of weeks ago, torturing one of the assholes would have given me pleasure. But now…
Now it didn’t.
I cleared my throat. “Answer my questions and I’ll release you. If you lie to me, I’ll walk away and leave you here with this chain until the sun comes to finish you off. Do y
ou understand?”
“Yes,” he said. “Ask.”
He was young. Very young. Most of the old vampires had dealt with torture, either by humans or by their masters. This one wasn’t hardened, and he wasn’t tough. He just cried quietly from the agony and the fear, the human’s blood leaking from his eyes in crimson tears.
“I don’t want to die.” His dark stare pinned me in place. “I’ve seen people return from the after. I don’t want to go to where there’s such desolation.”
“God,” I whispered.
It didn’t help that he reminded me of my little cousin William, who’d died in a pool of blood, died because I hadn’t saved him. I hadn’t even told him goodbye. But I’d led Amias to him. I’d done that.
“Trinity,” Clayton said, sharply. “Ask your questions.”
Maybe this was my job. Maybe this was what I was. But maybe I didn’t want it anymore. I didn’t seem to be very good at it.
I cleared my throat and tried to remember what vampires had done to me. What they’d done to my family. What they were. “Tell me about the human you just ate.”
He didn’t hesitate, another trait of the young. An older vampire would have died to keep his secrets, not because the secrets were worth keeping, but because he was a vampire. Vampires didn’t give in to human torture.
“The demon killed her,” he said. “We watched him. When he finished, we fed. She was already dead. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Simple, quick, and to the point. And exactly as I’d expected. I leaned closer. “Where does the demon live?” Because that was the information I really needed.
He coughed, and blood spurted from his mouth, splattering my face.
I recoiled and wiped my face on my sleeve, but the blood seemed to burn my skin. “Tell me. Where is he? I know you know.”
And when he hesitated, I put my palm on the chain and pressed. I cringed, but I did it.
He would have screamed if he’d had the strength. “I don’t know,” he said, finally, wheezing. “I would tell you if I did. Ask the country vampires.”
I stared at him, silent, considering.
“I swear I don’t know,” he said, into my silence. “I could have lied but you’d know, wouldn’t you? Being a hunter.”
And hurt as he was, young as he was, there was still hatred and resentment in his tortured voice.
I wouldn’t have known, but I nodded. Maybe being able to tell the difference between a vampire’s lie and his truth would come with experience. The young vampire wasn’t the only baby there that night. “Gordon Gray, then,” I threw in. “He’s in the woods off Raeven’s Road?”
“Yes. Different spots every day.”
“What do you know about him?” I asked, not sure where I was going with the questioning. Gray was guilty of killing Lucy. The captain wanted him. I didn’t need to know anything else.
“He’s worried.” His voice was croaky and broken but determined. “He knows he’s being blamed for her.”
“Shouldn’t he be?” I asked. “He killed her, after all.”
He hesitated. Then, “I guess.”
I glanced at Clayton, who stood like a watchful statue. There was nothing else to ask. I dropped my stare reluctantly to the vampire.
“Let me go now?” But he was only a little hopeful. Deep down, he knew I wouldn’t let him go.
“No,” I murmured. “I can’t do that.”
Crawford wanted him, and if it came down to a choice between the vampire and the supernaturals, I was choosing the supernaturals.
But I could ease his pain.
The chain had seared its way deep into his flesh, and I dug it out, almost unable to bear it. But at the same time, I took a grim satisfaction from my pain, because I should have pain. I was sympathizing with a vampire. After everything they’d done, I was feeling sorry for one. What did that make me?
Still, I was about to hand him over to people who would hurt him even more than I had.
And that was saying something.
When I’d finally dug the chain free, I slipped it into the vampire’s pocket. With his current damage, the power of the silver would render him too weak to fight or escape, but it wouldn’t burn holes in his body.
He’d heal, but it wouldn’t do him a lot of good because he wouldn’t heal until after Crawford had him completely secured.
“I don’t want to die,” he said.
“They won’t kill you,” I told him, “but they might make you wish you were dead.” And I turned away because I couldn’t continue to look at him.
It was Clayton who called the station and requested a car.
It came too soon.
Clayton dragged the vampire to his feet, then slung him over his shoulder and carried him to the police car.
“Get in the front seat,” he told me. “I’ll ride in the back with the vampire.”
The ride to the station took only six minutes, and in that time, no one spoke. Something hung in the air, something heavy, and I finally realized I was the only one who felt it. There wasn’t anything in the air. There was something inside me.
I’d changed. Not that night, but earlier, when I’d thrown myself in front of Amias Sato to protect him from the silver of Shane’s gun.
What a laugh. I was a vampire hunter who sympathized with the vampires. That should make for some interesting hunts.
I was fine with killing them. I was not fine with torture. I would never be—but there’d be a lot of times when I had to hand the vampires over to people who were going to hurt them. There’d be times when I hurt them. And I would harden. I didn’t have to enjoy torture to do my job.
When I realized that, when I accepted it, something eased inside me.
I wasn’t a monster, even if I had to play one sometimes.
The captain was waiting. He had some men take the silvered vampire to a cell in the basement, one in which the sunlight couldn’t penetrate, and then Clayton and I followed him to his office.
“He’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” I said.
“Good. Good. What did he tell you?”
“The vampires are feeding from the bodies. They’re just waiting for the incubus to finish, then they’re taking the blood. Their tracks were all over her.”
He shuddered, his lip curling. “The vampires are drinking from corpses.”
“Yes. They’re not killing these women, but they’re…”
“Eating the dead,” he finished, when I trailed off.
“Yeah.” That was somehow much worse than sipping from a living being.
“I have a press conference in twenty minutes,” he said. “I’ll put the word out.”
I sighed. Even though the vampires weren’t killing the women, they were drinking their blood. They were drinking the blood of human corpses.
That story was going to make things just a little rougher for the vampires.
Maybe it would be enough to keep the supernaturals safe.
I didn’t break down until Clayton and I were once again ensconced inside my battered car. Clayton let me cry—he didn’t touch me or offer meaningless words of comfort. He was just there, patient, quiet, nonjudgmental.
Finally, I stared out the windshield, drained. “I’m a horrible, vicious person.”
“You’re not vicious. You’re fierce. There’s a difference.”
“What difference?”
“The first makes you a brute. The second makes you a warrior.”
Ah, the power of those words.
I straightened my shoulders and started the car.
“Going home?” he asked.
“No. I have to track Gray. Also, we need to find the demon before he finds us. Someone has to know where he’s hiding. And we need to find a priest or someone to help us get rid of him when we do find him.”
He took his cell phone from his pocket. “I might know a man.”
And as he murmured into his phone, making plans to meet with the aforementioned man, I drove us to the
country.
Gordon Gray was waiting, and I had a feeling he wasn’t the only one.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I stood once again on Raeven’s Road, my nose to the wind, concentrating on picking up the thread of Gray’s scent. It danced teasingly right in front of me, but just as I grabbed for it, we got company.
A truck pulled in behind my car.
Shane Copas’s truck.
I stiffened immediately, but Clayton remained relaxed—for Clayton—as we waited for Shane to leave his truck and join us.
Shane grabbed his shotgun, slammed his door, then strode by me. “Catch his scent, Sinclair, and let’s get going.”
I traded mystified looks with Clayton, then shrugged and closed my eyes, shutting out the sounds as I pulled in the scents.
“Got him,” I said, a few seconds later, then hurried to catch up with Shane. He wanted to ignore what had happened at the last hunt, and I wasn’t about to argue with that.
“How’d you know where I was?” I asked him.
“Didn’t.”
“Oh.” I resisted the urge to grab his arm to make him slow down. “So you just came here to track Gray on your own?”
“Yeah.”
“But…you don’t have his scent. You can track a group but one single vampire? You can’t do that.”
He grunted, his head swiveling as he played his flashlight along the ground.
“So you’re just tracking vampires then,” I said. “All of them.”
“Yeah.”
I was a little shocked at the surge of possessiveness I’d felt when I’d realized Copas had come to hunt alone. In my territory.
Without me.
“Red Valley is mine,” I blurted.
He laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh, but a nasty, harsh little laugh.
I wanted to tell him he was an asshole. I said nothing, just put my mind to finding Gray. I didn’t need Shane Copas to be my friend.
I turned to glance at Clayton and saw him a few yards back, his phone to his ear. I stopped walking. “Clayton?”
“She has him on a short leash,” Shane said. He stood with me, watching Clayton, his face a mask of contempt.
