The Unmasking (Dhampyre the Hunter Book 1)

by David Burkhead

  "Am I under arrest?"

  Ware smiled. "Not at the moment. However, we do have some questions."

  I tilted my head.

  "Your from East Ridge Tennesee?"

  "I suppose you've seen my driver's license," I said. "I just moved to Greenbrier. I hired on at a new office in Nashville, and East Ridge would be an awfully long commute. Haven't had my license updated yet." I gave him my home address. No harm in that. He could get it easily enough.

  Ware looked at his notebook. "Private investigator? Does that pay well?"

  I laughed. Another safe question. My business was strictly above board. "I make enough to keep the bills paid. We've got some regular security consulting contracts. That and the constant stream of divorce and skip tracing keeps the cash flow up."

  Everything I said about my job with McIntire Investigations was true as far as it went. I just also hunted vampires.

  "You're not licensed as an investigator in Indiana," Mulryan broke in.

  "I wasn't on an investigation," I said. And there it was, the first lie I'd said. "More than that I'm not at liberty to say."

  Ware cocked his head at me.

  I suppressed a sigh. I had to be careful. A bunch of witnesses had seen me stab somebody with a pointed stick. Not under arrest "at present" would likely change to "under arrest now" if I tried to leave the hospital.

  That the person I had stabbed had just killed two others in brutal ways made a good case for justifiable homicide unless I said something stupid. So, there was only one thing to say.

  "I'm sorry, Detective, but company policy is that I'm not allowed to answer any questions beyond simple identity without a lawyer present."

  Ware snapped his notebook closed. "That's the way you want to play it?"

  I thought about using Push but decided against it. Not only would it be unethical but if I influenced them the wrong way others might question their actions and that could open a whole can of worms I did not want to deal with.

  I shrugged. "It's worth my job to do otherwise. Sorry."

  I had probably just guaranteed my arrest. Still, I could recover as easily in the infirmary at the county lockup as I could here. And my boss had good lawyers. If the lawyers weren't enough, he had his own ways.

  Ware kept his face coolly professional as he left the room. Mulryan shot me a look of frustration and anger as he followed his partner.

  After the police left, I lay quiet for some time. Simply talking to the police took a lot of energy. Finally, I took a deep breath and considered my position.

  What I needed more than anything was food. Real food, not hospital food. My body could heal the damage, but it took energy as did my enhanced strength and speed. And that meant food, food with lots of protein.

  I could move my right arm enough to reach the bed controls. I raised the head of the bed to a half sitting position, a better position from which to survey the room.

  I was not a prisoner so I presumed there was no problem with using my phone. If I could move enough to find it. Brace immobilizing my left wrist, cast on my right hand and the arm stitched and bandaged. My fingers at least worked. Mostly. I pressed the call button.

  Shortly, a nurse came in. "Yes?"

  "I wanted to call my home office, let them know where I am and that I'm okay. But..."

  I turned my palms up, indicating my inability to rise.

  "Is my phone maybe somewhere around?" I asked.

  "Let me see." The nurse removed a bag that hung on the back of the room door. She started laying objects out on the rolling table next to the bed. My wallet. My shoes. They hadn't needed to cut those off. My holster, empty. The nurse raised her eyebrows at that, but I just flashed a small smile. Keys to the car that was no doubt accumulating parking tickets if not towed to an impound lot. And, finally, my phone.

  No clothes. They no doubt had needed to cut them off me for treatment. And no back sheaths for my stakes. Probably held as evidence. Yes, I wore them on my back. Awkward to reach, but where else were you going to keep good, vampire slaying stakes so they were both discreet and accessible? Stuff them down my pants where they'd poke me in the thigh every time I try to bend my hips? I didn't think so.

  The nurse handed me my phone.

  "Thank you."

  "Just ring if you need anything."

  I nodded. The nurse let herself out of the room.

  I picked up my phone and swiped the security pattern. A quick check on an app I had for that purpose showed that the sun had set back in Nashville.

  I punched in the saved number and hit speaker. With my hand and arm injuries, that was all I could do.

  "McIntire Investigations."

  "It's Dani," I said. "I need the boss."

  The phone went silent for a moment then a click indicated that someone had picked up the line.

  "Dani, you okay?" My boss, Matei Antonescu's voice was flat, with no more emotion than if he'd been asking when we should break for lunch.

  "I'll live," I said. "Probably need a lawyer, though."

  "Already working on that. Looks like they're not going to press charges. The guy brutally killed two people in front of witnesses before you intervened. Clear cut case of self-defense."

  "What about..."

  Matei cut me off. "We'll talk about that later. For now, you just recover. Any word on that?"

  I listed off my injuries. "Between the arm, the ankle, and the rib I'm not going to be walking for a while. And that's a deep wound in the arm. If there's any sign of infection—" We both knew there would be. I was immune to vampire bites but until my body fought it off my white cell count would be through the roof. "—they'll probably want to keep me here until that's under control."

  That gave us three days. It would take that long for my body to burn off the vampire saliva and my blood to return to normal. The bones would, of course, take longer.

  "I need a pickup, Boss."

  "Can't do it."

  "Oh, come on, Matei, what am I supposed to do? Push my wheelchair down the street? Do you know where the nearest hotel to this hospital is? I don't." I did not mention that I could look it up on the phone. "I'm sure that will give the passersby a good laugh."

  "Nobody's available. Things have gone to shit here."

  I blinked. Matei never talked that like that. As my mother used to say, he wouldn't say shit with a mouth full of it.

  "That bad?"

  "That bad."

  I sighed. "Great. Can't walk. Can't drive. Wheelchair down the street it is, then."

  "We'll arrange for a short-term care facility until you're mobile again."

  "Short term... a nursing home?"

  "Short-term care. They don't just serve the aged. They'll have transport for dealing with people with limited mobility." His voice never wavered. I knew what he was—I was even comfortable with it—and still he could creep me out.

  "There's got to be a better option, Boss."

  "If you had a companion, or even a roommate we could make private arrangements, but as it is..."

  Yeah, I knew what he meant. He wanted me to find a nice dhampyre boyfriend and go out and breed dhampyre children to continue the fight. There were never enough of us.

  "Fine. Nursing home it is," I said. "But if some orderly tries to stick a thermometer up my butt I will break his arm and make him eat the thermometer."

  "You need to keep low profile," Matei said. "Don't draw unnecessary attention."

  What he meant was that there was already too much attention, too much oddity that might stick in people's minds. If people noticed a pattern of pointy sticks being shoved in hearts, that would be bad. The vampires, most of them, seemed content to skulk in the shadows and my boss worried about what would happen if they came out into the open. Fears started with bloodbath—literally, as in Elizabeth Bathory was a pure amateur compared to real vampires—and went up from there.

  So, the vampires kept their presence secret and we, God help us, helped them do so even while we hunted
them, and they hunted us. We did that because in history, the real history, not the edited forms most people received, vampires only operating in two ways. One way was as ambush predators, skulking in the shadows. The other was true reign of terror, reign of blood stuff. Vampires, for all their fearsome abilities, also had their weaknesses. Only by keeping people unaware of their presence, or too terrified to coordinate against them, could they survive against the sheer numbers of humanity.

  "All right. All right," I said. "Can't I at least rant a little?"

  "Rant all you want," Matei said. "Just quietly."

  I hung up. Quietly, he says.

  Over the next two days the nursing staff remained calm and unhurried, but I could feel the tension in them. My white cell counts remained quite elevated and I could not tell them why, so they assumed infection. Regular doses of antibiotic went into my IV and it made me sick to my stomach. And that did something unheard of. It destroyed my appetite.

  While it was uncomfortable, I wouldn't die of it and I only had to tolerate it one more day.

  I finished, as much as I could, the dinner the hospital had provided. Dry toast, Jell-O, and some soggy vegetables that being the most that my stomach could handle. My phone rang.

  I picked it up. "Herzeg."

  "Check the news." Matei's voice. I had heard nothing from him after my previous call except a brief text with the contact information for a local lawyer. Before I could ask any questions, he hung up.

  I shut down the phone and picked up the remote for the room's television. After some browsing, I found a local news station.

  It came on in the middle of a report on local sports scores, then the station cycled back to the big story of the day.

  Massacre at county morgue.

  Oh shit.

  The overnight staff at the morgue had been slaughtered. No survivors. Bodies drained before being hacked to pieces and their blood spattered on the walls and floors in "ritualistic patterns".

  So, the coroner had performed an autopsy. He, or she I suppose, had removed my stakes. He wouldn't remove the head. No need. They might, I suppose, remove the heart if they had reason to examine it in detail. But if they left even one cell inside, the heart would regenerate and with it the vampire.

  So at least one of my two kills, probably both, were back on the street. Somehow they'd retained sufficient sanity to provide a cover for the excessive violence of their hunger rage. It would not do for the police to find bodies with the only injuries being fang marks in major arteries. I glanced down at my arm. I had already heard one doctor make a vampire joke about the spacing of the two puncture wounds in my arm.

  I had to get out of here. Four vampires in the city, two on a rampage. Matei had made it clear that I was on my own, no backup.

  I tried to sit up. My right side screamed at me, but I forced myself upright anyway. I lowered the rail on the left side of the bed.

  Sanity returned before I could try to get to my feet. Between my ankle, my rib, and my arms of all things I couldn't even walk, not even with crutches. I certainly could not fight vampires.

  Dammit.

  I closed my eyes and squeezed my eyes tight.

  How many more were going to die while I was laid up in here?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Two more days, one for my white cell count to come down and one for the doctors to be convinced they could take me off the IV antibiotics and switch me to oral. The doctors were sufficiently satisfied—astonished more like it—at the healing of the wounds in my right arm to remove the immobilizer so I had some use of it.

  "Ms Herzeg?" The nurse stood in the doorway a few minutes after the attending physician completed his final exam.

  The television played in the background. I'd left the news channel running.

  "Nobody else here," I said.

  "Transport has arrived. You ready to go?"

  I managed to sit up before the nurse could cross the room. Yes, it hurt, but I had to see how mobile I was. I suppressed a chuckle at the reproof in the nurse's eyes.

  No tubes in my arm. That was heaven right there. My clothes had been cut off when I was brought in and I was not going out in one of those paper gowns. Someone had scrounged a set of scrubs for me.

  I scooted to the edge of the bed and dropped my feet over the side. I bent left hip and knee enough to keep my cast from dragging the floor as I set my right foot down. My left hand found the rail and I gripped for balance as I stood on my one good leg. The nurse stood close, her hands positioned not so much to support me—she needed to see if I could do this too—but ready to catch if I fell.

  A moment later I was standing, shaky but on my one good foot.

  "You got it?" The nurse asked.

  I nodded.

  She flipped the footrests of the wheelchair up, then wheeled it close. I turned, back to the chair as she locked the wheels.

  She stood at my side again.

  "Okay, one hand at a time. Can you find it?"

  I reached back with my right hand. Despite the break, I could use that hand for balance if I placed it right and didn't apply too much force. I followed with the left. Both hands on the arms of the chair, I prepared to lower myself into it. Neither hand could stand much force, so I had to make sure my balance was right.

  "Slaughter at the canal walk."

  I looked up at the television and froze.

  "Police this morning report finding bodies at the famous Canal Walk in what was clearly a ritual homicide."

  The display shifted. Detective Ware frowned at the camera. "No, I cannot tell you who the victims are. You know policy. We do not release names of victims until next of kin have been notified."

  "But they have been identified?" A female voice. Someone off camera.

  "No comment."

  "You said 'victims'. Does that mean more than one? How many were there?"

  "No comment. That's all I have to say. Anything further you'll need to discuss with media affairs."

  "Detective, can you at least..."

  "I said 'No comment.' Damn, what does it take to get through to you?"

  "Miss Herzeg?" The voice brought me back to myself.

  "Sorry." I jerked my head in the direction of the TV. "That's...awful."

  "Isn't it though." Her voice remained professional. "Now if you could just..."

  "Oh, right." I lowered myself into the seat.

  The nurse busied herself with the seat. She lowered the right foot rest then extended the leg rest on the left, so my broken ankle would rest elevated, nearly straight in front of me.

  "Now. Shall we go?"

  "Absolutely," I said, then more softly. "And we can free up this bed for someone who needs it." I looked back over my shoulder at her. "Thank you. Really. Thank you."

  Vampires raging in the city. This was bad. This was very bad.

  Why hadn't Matei sent someone else?

  Short Term Care, where I would have to stay until I was mobile enough to get around on my own. Having injuries on both sides complicated things. Between my left wrist and right hand, I couldn't use crutches. And I needed them because I couldn't exactly hop around on one foot until my left ankle healed enough for a walking cast.

  "Come on, Matei," I said into my phone. "You've got to get me out of here."

  "Nobody's available." Normally, Matei's inflectionless voice did not bother me. This time it infuriated me.

  "What do you mean, nobody's available? It's not like I'm asking for a week-long road trip. Drive up. Get me. Take me home. Overnight, day trip if they start early. I can recover in my own bed as easily as..."

  "Nobody's available." Matei's voice, if anything was even colder. "Gerald's in Seattle. Ephraim is in Tampa. I've had requests for assistance from Vancouver and Suarez. I would come get you myself but I cannot do a...day trip."

  "Son of a... That bad?"

  "It would seem so."

  I swore. There were very few of us. Creating a dhampyre bordered on the impossible. Male vampires, unless
freshly infused with a great deal of blood, were sterile. Never mind that they were uninterested in sex. They were not human. They did not have human drives or personalities. They were the ultimate psychopaths with no regard or empathy for anyone other than themselves. The only thing they cared about was their own needs, which involved personal security and a constant supply of blood.

  Females were no better but they found they could produce their own daytime servants and guards if they were impregnated by a human and carried the child to term.

  The problem was that normally, female vampires were no more fertile than the males. The answer to that problem was blood. Enough blood every day from the beginning of one cycle until the child was born. The usual result was slaughter, hundreds of people drained to death in order to produce one dhampyre child.

  That described the vast majority of vampires. But some few, if they lived long enough, developed not a conscience, but an understanding that an accommodation with humans could be to their advantage. Willing servants on which they could feed drew less attention than a train of fang-marked corpses. And the advantages of working for a vampire ensured there were always those willing. Chief among those advantages was wealth. When one had centuries, what was the line from the movie? "I've put a little away for a very long time."

  I realized Matei was still on the line, waiting while I mused.

  "All right, Boss. I'll manage."

  "As soon as you're able, pick up where you left off."

  I shook my head. I had left off with two staked vampires and two free. I was pretty sure that both staked vampires stalked the cit again, leaving me not where I'd left off, but where I'd started.

  "Will do, Boss," I said, and disconnected.

  I sighed. Nothing I could do about it tonight, so I might as well go to bed.

  I looked at the bedpan on the small table next to the bed then, looked past it to the bathroom.

  I set my jaw and swung my good leg off the side of the bed. I was going to get to that bathroom and I was going to do it on my own. The room was small enough that I should be able to make it, balancing myself with my injured hands against the walls even while hopping on one foot.