Blood Cruel (Gods of Blood and Shadow Book 1)
Page 9
“What’s in there?” Katie asked the man.
“He’s dead.” The businessman turned his attention to his phone.
“You should go in,” Loki whispered from nearby. “Have a look.”
Katie frowned and moved to the door, pushing it open. Jaden put his hand on her shoulder, shooting her a questioning glance.
“We need to know how he died,” she said. “Don’t we?”
He frowned and withdrew his hand.
Going inside, she stepped into a short corridor, at the end of which was an open door. She saw a man’s boot sticking through the doorway.
She hurried to the door before her nerve could fail, looking through the gap. The driver was overweight, with greying hair. It was his skin that stood out. So pale, tinged with blue. He didn’t even look human anymore. She’d never seen a dead body before.
Stepping over his outstretched leg, she moved around until she could see his neck. Sure enough, two ragged holes showed how he’d died.
“We need to go back outside,” Jaden called from the door.
“He was killed by a vampire.”
“And the police are on their way,” Jaden said. “We can’t be standing here, or they’ll ask questions we can’t answer.”
She nodded and followed him back out into the cold. When they emerged, she could hear the siren drawing closer.
“Why did you go in?” the businessman asked. “I said he was dead.”
“We had to check,” Katie said. “In case we could do anything for him. We know CPR.”
The businessman nodded, apparently satisfied with her explanation. Katie was surprised with how calmly she was dealing with it all. A vampire had killed someone a hundred paces from where they were standing and she’d barely blinked.
She and Jaden returned to the queue and their bags. As they got there, a police car pulled into the bus station and sped toward the terminal, stopping in front of it. Two officers got out, and the businessman talked to them. After listening for a moment, they headed into the terminal office.
A moment later, one of them re-emerged and talked to the businessman again. With a shaking finger, he pointed over at Jaden and Katie.
The officer nodded and walked over to them, fixing Katie with a stare. She took a deep breath and tried to appear innocent.
“Good morning,” the officer said in Norwegian. “Mr Gustavsen there says you were in the office?”
“Just to see if there was any way we could help,” Katie said. “When we saw how… he was obviously dead, so we came back out.”
The officer nodded and returned to the terminal, his hand on his radio to speak into it.
“We should leave,” Jaden said.
“Then we’ll look guilty,” Katie said. “We didn’t do anything.”
They huddled together, their gaze on the terminal office. After another few minutes, an ambulance pulled into the station. From the lack of sirens, Katie knew they’d heard the man was dead, with no chance to save him.
The ambulance personnel got out and disappeared inside with a stretcher. They emerged a moment later without the body. Instead, the police officer was talking to them.
The paramedics nodded and got back in the ambulance, driving away.
“They just realised it’s a murder,” Loki said, appearing nearby. “But they won’t think it’s a vampire. At worst, they’ll suspect it’s a killer with a vampire obsession.”
The officer came over again, this time standing a short distance from the whole queue. “Good morning, folks. I’m afraid there’s been a death here, so there’s unlikely to be any buses for a few hours. Please line up and give me your names and contact details. A detective may have questions for you later, so please be available.”
“What is he saying?” a woman asked in English with a thick German accent.
“Someone was killed,” Katie said. “He just wants your name and phone number, in case he has questions.”
The woman nodded and Katie saw a few other people echoing her nod. She realised that a queue of people headed to the airport might not all speak Norwegian.
“Should we give our real names?” Jaden hissed.
Katie nodded. “We’ve no reason not to.”
They joined the line and when Katie’s turn came, she gave her name and number. Then she gathered up her things and moved a short distance from the dispersing queue.
Jaden joined her after giving his own details. “We could have made something up.”
She shook her head, nodding toward the nearest CCTV camera. “If we had, they have our faces. They could have found us eventually. All we’d have done is raise suspicion. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Someone did,” Loki said. “Someone with long, pointy teeth.”
Katie nodded, thinking. “It has to be about us. Someone didn’t want us to take that bus.”
“I agree,” Loki said. “They couldn’t, or didn’t want to, move directly against you, so they stopped you indirectly.”
“But why?” Jaden asked. “To stop us going to Dublin? Did they know that’s where we were going?”
“Maybe,” Katie said. “Or they just want us to stay in town. Loki, how many vampires are there?”
“Three,” Loki said. “Counting the one beside you.”
“So it was either Rans or Caterina,” Katie said. “One of them murdered someone to stop you leaving.”
“It could have been either,” Jaden said. “Should we try a taxi, or the train?”
“You can’t,” Loki said. “Not if you don’t want to see another dead driver.”
“Then what?” Jaden asked. “How can we get any answers, if we can’t leave?”
“You’d better figure it out,” Loki said. “Because in two weeks, it won’t matter anyway.”
Chapter 18
Research
They huddled in Katie’s bedroom, staring at each other. Outside, it was still dark, long before dawn. Her father was sleeping and the house itself seemed to be holding its breath. Katie tried not to think of the dead bus driver, lying there. She pushed away thoughts of his discoloured skin, the bites on his neck.
“How are we going to figure out the truth?” Jaden asked.
She thought he was wondering out loud, but then saw purpose in his eyes. He wasn’t despairing anymore.
She racked her brain, running through the possibilities. “Just because we can’t go there in person, doesn’t mean we can’t investigate more. We have a computer; we have our phones.”
She stood and walked over to her computer, switching it on and sitting down. Jaden joined her, his hand on the back of her chair. She did her best to ignore the urge to lean back against his hand and pulled up a browser.
Finding an Irish phone book online, she did a search for anyone with the surname Beck. A handful of results came up.
“He’s a vampire,” Loki said, appearing on the other side of her chair. “Any relatives he had will have died centuries ago. That’s assuming he didn’t change their last name when they hid here.”
She nodded, suddenly feeling tired and sluggish. She should have thought of that. It wasn’t like tracking down a human. Instead, she did a search for Irish vampire society. Dozens of results about Bram Stoker filled the screen. According to the first result, Stoker invented the myth of vampires.
“He was a fun host,” Loki said. “Vampires used to love preying on theatre audiences, until he showed up and put an end to their fun.”
Katie kept scrolling through the results, but she couldn’t find anything promising.
“Do a search for Hector Berlioz,” Loki said. “He wrote Symphonie Fantastique for me. He was an even better host.”
She ignored him and turned to Jaden. “What about back in your house? Could anything there tell us who to talk to? Old documents, photo albums?”
“Maybe,” Jaden said. “Photo albums, at least.”
“They might help,” she said. “Could you sneak back in the daytime and get them?”
Strident classical music burst from the computer and Katie turned to find Loki with a grin on his face. The mouse had moved under her hand without her noticing it.
She turned the computer off, quieting the music. “How about we get some sleep?”
“Good idea,” Jaden said. “I’m bushed.”
Jaden got up to leave, but she realised if he left her alone, the dead bus driver would come back to her in a rush.
“Don’t go. Can you sleep here?” She saw hesitation on his face. “As friends. I… I’d rather not sleep alone right now.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
They moved to her bed, and she took the side with a wall. Then he slipped into bed beside her, still fully clothed. It was a squash, sharing a single bed, and she found herself pressed up against his arm. Jaden turned away from her, lying on his side, and she could curl around him.
She longed to reach up and stroke his hair, to put her arms around him and hug him, but she held back. It was enough that he was there. She knew he didn’t feel the same way about her as she did him.
Soon, she drifted off, thoughts of dead bus drivers drowned under sweet dreams of Jaden.
Chapter 19
Return
When Jaden woke, his shoulder ached. He’d been sleeping on the same side all night. He sat up on the edge of the bed and rolled his arm, trying to work life back into it. Glancing over, he saw Katie was sleeping with her mouth slightly open. Her brown hair had tumbled over her face.
He smiled, then longed to kiss her awake. He knew the kiss would be returned with interest, she’d made that much obvious. But he had two weeks left as a human and he couldn’t have her fall in love with a corpse.
He stood carefully, trying not to wake her, and went out. After a quick shower, he dressed and walked downstairs to the kitchen. On the table, a piece of paper had been propped up: No Trip?
He realised Aidan had noticed they’d come back. With a start, he wondered if Aidan had seen Jaden in his daughter’s room. He knew if he tried to protest how innocent it had been, he would only seem all the more guilty. But that was a worry for later. He fetched a glass of water, downed it, then headed for the front door.
When he closed the door behind him, he realised Katie had invited him in. Would that invitation count after he turned? According to Loki, he was already turning, halfway between the living and the dead. If he became an unfeeling monster, she wouldn’t be safe from him.
He found the way to his house, more questions than answers popping up in his head. They needed a reliable source of information, or they’d never find out anything for sure.
When he got to his own front door, he slipped his key into the lock and turned it slowly, hearing the bolt click free. The house inside was dark and quiet, as his father liked it. Jaden ignored the living room and headed upstairs. The study there was the most likely source of information.
The room was sparse, with a desk, filing cabinet, and shelves. Most of the shelves were filled with the trashy novels his father enjoyed reading. He ignored them and took down the photo albums.
A quick flip through them revealed nothing. All the pictures were from after they’d left Ireland. Even then, there were few from earlier than eight or nine. He put them back on the shelf.
The filing cabinet was filled with papers. The top drawer only had bills, with the word Paid scrawled across them. He wondered if people knew vampires had to pay their bills as well. Would they be so romanticised if people imagined them trying to balance a household budget? Of course, if they needed money, they just killed someone rich and took it.
The bottom drawer of the filing cabinet was more promising. The papers there were older. He took out a few folders and put them on the desk. Flipping through them, though, he saw they were too old. They went as far back as the early 1800s. A few of them even had Property Deed written on the top. He wondered what would happen if he turned up with a two-hundred-year-old deed and tried to claim someone’s house.
After checking everything, he put the folders back and closed the filing cabinet. Nothing there had any personal details. Unless they wanted to track down where his father had had a haircut and shave in 1903.
He took a quick glance around the two spare bedrooms next. They didn’t even have furniture in them, and no loose boards squeaked when he trod on them. If there was a hiding spot in those rooms, it had to be buried under the thick dust.
He skipped his own room, figuring if anything was hidden there he would have spotted it. The bathroom only had copies of his father’s magazines. Flipping through them didn’t reveal any hidden messages.
Done with the upstairs, Jaden headed down to the kitchen. There wasn’t anything there of any use, so he only had one place left to check: the living room. He headed to the door and put his hand on the handle. Taking a breath, he opened the door and stepped through.
His father’s coffin dominated the room, on its trestle. He watched it for a while, waiting for the lid to open, but nothing happened. It was late morning outside, bright sunshine filling the sky, so his father would be fast asleep. He had trouble enough waking him when it was dark, so he shouldn’t stir.
Giving the coffin a wide berth, he made for the shelves on the far side of the room. They had dozens of Jaden’s DVDs on them, along with more of his father’s magazines and books, but nothing of any use. Jaden searched them anyway, just in case, but there was nothing there.
He’d gone through the house from top to bottom. Either his father hadn’t kept any personal things from his days in Dublin, or he was better at hiding them than Jaden was at finding them. Jaden moved back toward the door, skirting around the coffin, and then his gaze fell on the coffin itself.
If his father was going to hide something, where better to do it? Jaden moved closer to the coffin and reached out. There was more than enough dirt in there to hide something. He held his breath and opened the lid, ready for his father to wake up.
His father lay still, not even his chest moving up and down as he slept. To anyone who didn’t know better, they’d assume he was dead. Jaden supposed technically they’d be right.
He slid his hands into the dirt beside his father and felt around. The earth was loose at the edges, but packed tight under his father. He ran his fingers through it, letting the dirt run between them. Making sure not to touch his father, he sidled around the coffin until he came to his father’s head. His fingers met the edge of something hard; something resting under his father’s head.
He could feel it was a book. Whatever was in it was important enough for his father to sleep on top of it. He held his breath and pulled gently. The book didn’t move for a moment, then jerked and slid out in small increments until he could work it free of the soil.
He held the book in his left hand and reached up with his right, closing the lid of the coffin. When it was almost closed, his fingers slipped, and the lid fell the last few centimetres to close with a hollow boom.
Jaden froze, listening.
“Keep it down out there!” Rans called sleepily.
Jaden padded from the room, heading for the front door and sunlight. Only when he was out in the day did he let in a breath. With a start, he realised he’d held his breath for minutes at a time. It hadn’t even felt uncomfortable to do it.
He sucked in another breath and another, as if to convince himself he was still alive. Then he strode back to Katie’s house, the dirt-stained book in his hands. He didn’t stop to read it, not even giving it more than a casual glance. The book was small and leather bound, with brown streaks on the cover where the moisture in the dirt had damaged it. But what secrets could it contain?
Chapter 20
Molly
Reaching Katie’s house, Jaden pressed the doorbell and waited. She answered after a moment, the smell of bacon drifting out around her.
“You found something?” she asked.
H
e nodded, holding up the book. “Not sure what it is yet. I came straight back when I found it.”
“I made breakfast,” she said, leading the way to the kitchen. “We can eat while we read.”
He closed the front door and followed her gladly. His stomach rumbled at the smells of the bacon crackling in the frying pan. From the doorway, he watched Katie dole out healthy portions of bacon and eggs, then they carried their plates to the table. She’d already put out two glasses of orange juice.
He sat and started the food with relish, putting the book aside until his hunger was sated. Once he’d mopped up the last of the egg yolk, he sat back and sighed. “Thank you for breakfast.”
“You’re welcome,” Katie said. “Now let’s see what we can find out.”
He nodded and reached for the book, reluctant to open it now the moment had come. He ran his finger down the inner edge of the cover and flipped it open. The pages inside were yellowed with age. They held random notes in his father’s handwriting, along with what looked like doodles.
He scanned the words as he flipped the pages. Camden St. 7:30pm… Meeting with Sean… No way to feed until Tuesday. It looked like random thoughts jotted down. The pictures were no better. Some of them seemed to be images of dead people, their stick figure throats spraying lines of blood.
Katie got up and crowded close, standing over him on the right side to see. He caught a breath of her scent and had to collect himself. She smelled of lavender, with something else under it, a sharp copper scent that made his throat tingle.
He shook off the feeling, turning back to the book. Near the end, with only a few pages left, he reached a large note in the centre of a page. Molly Meisels. Beside the name, a heart had been drawn with an arrow through it.
“That’s sweet,” Katie said. “It must have been his girlfriend after Caterina broke up with him.”
Loki appeared on the other side of Jaden. “This isn’t a good idea.”
Katie sighed. “Do you have any better ones?”