by L. J. Red
We were standing close. Close enough I could see the gray outline around each blue iris. Close enough the deep black of his pupils pulled me in, the red of his lips looked soft and inviting, and his sharp fangs ever so wicked. I hated him, hated him with a passion that I couldn’t express, and yet his presence was like a drug. I drank in the sight of him like I’d been dying of thirst and he was the first drink of water I’d had in years. I felt it again. The power rising between us, uncontrollable, unstoppable, fueled by something I couldn’t name. Something I couldn’t even begin to understand.
Chapter 15
“Do you feel this,” he whispered, the words falling into the disappearing space between us.
I couldn’t lie. I nodded my head. I felt it, like the beginning of a storm. Raising the hairs on my arms and charging the air. His eyes darkened as he looked down at me and I recognized the desire within them. He looked at me like that once before. Back when everything had seemed so perfect, so right. I’d never seen the end coming. The sensible voice in the back of my mind was shouting at me to step back, to run away. To run away from Valerian and the vampires and never look back. But my body was warming to his presence and waking up under the dark look in his eyes. I wanted… I wanted…
“I never expected this,” he said roughly, his voice so low he was almost talking to himself. “I never meant for this to happen.”
Did he know? Did he know what it was that was causing this? But before I could ask, he reached for me, his broad palm landing on my shoulder. I shuddered under his touch, a complicated snarl of emotions rolling out through my limbs. Want, fear, hate, desire. All of them thick and heavy and violent enough to roll my eyes up in my head and run through me like a lightning bolt.
My skin under his hand was taut, and my awareness of him bloomed into life as if I was already in the half world. I dragged my eyes open again and I saw him edged with light. I swear I could see electricity crackling in the air as he ran his fingertips across my shoulder. His touch, so delicate, so light, yet I could feel it all the way through me. Wonder dawned in his eyes. Could he feel it too?
His fingertips brushed the edge of my throat, my choker. My heart clenched, the voice in my mind was screaming. “Don’t,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper.
“Tiana,” he said, and his voice sounded hazy, drugged, as if the power arising between us was working on him too. He drew me in close, his hand slipping round to the back of my neck, fingers sinking into my hair. My gaze fastened on his mouth. I licked my lips even as terror ran, icy, down my veins. Desire tangled with fear. Memories of his kiss tangled with memories of his bite. My heartbeat fluttered, kicking too fast against my ribs, but I couldn’t step back. I couldn’t break the connection.
“Give in to it,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, the words escaping between red lips. “Give in to the feeling.” I wanted to. Oh fuck, how I wanted to.
His eyes caught mine, darkness expanding out from the pupil, eating the blue and sucking me down deep. Delicious languor flooded through my veins and into my limbs, wiping clear the terror, the pain, and the memories until all that existed was right now, this moment and my body a livewire, full of need. Desperate for more of his touch.
I arched up toward him, wanting him so badly my desire seemed to swell right up and out of my body into the air around us. His lips were a hair’s breadth away when a shrill ringing broke through the air.
Like a drill into my brain, it shattered the connection between us and shoved me out of the dreamy haze of lust. I gasped a deep breath, stumbling away and knocking his hand from my neck. I felt like I had been doused in cold water, gasping and floundering for air.
The noise, the ringing. I realized it was coming from my back pocket. It was my cell phone. I took another step and turned away from Valerian, shaky from what I had almost let my desire lead me into. I pulled out the phone with trembling hands. It took me a couple of tries to hit the answer button. “Yeah?” I said. My voice was hoarse, as if I’d been screaming.
“Tiana.” A curt voice came down the line. “What’s all this about a break-in?”
It took me a moment for my brain to switch gears. A break-in? I pulled the phone away from my head and glanced at the caller ID. Detective Pierce’s scowling face looked back up at me from the photo I’d snapped for my address book.
“Break-in,” I said, “right.” I drew in a shuddering breath and tried to focus. Tried to ignore the overwhelming presence of Valerian behind me.
“You okay?” she asked. “You sound a bit—”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine,” I said. My hand crept up to my neck, trailing over my choker. “Rough night,” I said.
“You were supposed to come in and give a statement.”
“Shit, yeah. I forgot.”
“You forgot? Tiana these three guys are lucky they’re not smears on the ground. I heard there was a vampire on-site? What the fuck?”
Shit. “Yes.” I drew out the word. “I wanted to speak to you about that. It’s… it’s connected to the two murder victims, the drained ones.”
“Fuck.” She sighed. “I didn’t want you involved in that.”
I knew why. Detective Pierce knew most of my whole sordid history with the vampires.
“I’m in it now,” I said dully.
There was a short silence then. “Meet me at the morgue,” Detective Pierce said shortly. “I’ve got to go; see you soon.” And she hung up. Never one to waste words.
Steeling myself, I turned back to Valerian. He looked nothing like the magnetic, desire hazed temptation of a moment ago. Instead he was as calm and unruffled as if the last few moments hadn’t happened. How the fuck did he do that? I was still a shaking mess, still chewed up tight on the inside. I firmed my spine and forced my shoulders down from around my ears, glaring at him. “I don’t know what you’re playing at,” I said, and I hated that there was a shake in my voice, almost imperceptible unless you had a vampire’s hearing. Then again, he could probably hear my heart battering away at my chest.
I swallowed roughly and tried again, more firmly. “Whatever that was.” I gestured to the air between us. “It doesn’t change anything,” I said firmly. Everything looked normal now, just the usual darkness of the Seattle night, but it had been there. I was sure. The edging of golden light, the electricity. I hadn’t imagined it.
“Whatever you say,” he said silkily, his expression cold and remote.
I didn’t trust him at all.
Chapter 16
We drove back over Lacey Bridge in a silence just as charged as the way here, but much more uncomfortable. My mind kept replaying that moment over and over. His eyes, his lips, the sensation of his hand on the back of my neck. Shivers ran up and down my spine and it took all my strength to tear my mind away and focus on what I was going to say to Detective Pierce.
The morgue was in the basement of the medical examiner’s building, and I left Valerian to negotiate parking, not wanting to spend any more time with him than I had to. The night was getting on, and part of me was hoping Detective Pierce would keep me inside long enough that Valerian would have to go to ground before the sun came out. The medical examiner’s office wasn’t that far from central district. I could get back home without him.
Detective Pierce met me at the doors. She was a black woman of medium height, curvy and deceptively soft, when she smiled you might mistake her for an easy mark, suspects often did. But there was a sharp mind behind her dark eyes, and muscle under the fat. She’d had my back every step of our fight with the werewolves, and I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else. Her hair was trimmed close to her head, short curls with a much heavier dusting of gray than four years ago.
“Nice car,” she said, looking over my shoulder.
“It’s not mine,” I replied, brushing past her.
She took the hint and turned the subject. “You look like shit, Tiana,” she said.
I glanced at her, sidelong. “You’re not looking so sparkly yo
urself, Detective.”
“What the hell happened last night? You didn’t put those guys in that condition by yourself.”
“The officers didn’t say?” I asked.
“I wanted to hear it from you,” she said.
“It was a vampire,” I said, and she reached out to pull me to a stop.
“Tiana,” her voice was tired. “What the fuck are you doing with vampires?”
“It’s fine,” I said, shrugging her off. “Show me the bodies.”
“Oh no,” she said. “You don’t get to do that, not with me.”
“Do you want this case solved or don’t you?” I snapped, rounding on her. I was at the end of my tether and taking it out on her.
She glared right back at me. “Don’t be a bitch, Tiana,” she said. “I’m just looking out for you.”
“Maybe I don’t need you looking out for me, all right? Maybe I’m doing just fine as I am.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Take a moment,” she said, her voice hard. “And step the fuck down. I don’t have to let you in here, you realize that?” Her hands were on her hips. “What the hell has you so chewed up?”
The answer was still parking the car outside, not that I could tell her that.
“Look, can we just focus on the case,” I said, the fight going out of me.
She wasn’t happy, I could see that, but she was a cop and she knew how to prioritize. She wanted this case solved as much as I did.
“Fine,” she said, “but afterwards you’re giving me an explanation.”
I nodded, hoping I could find a way to escape without telling her anything. We kept walking.
“I didn’t expect to see you on this case,” she said after a moment.
“I didn’t expect to be on it,” I said.
“So why are you?” she asked.
I couldn’t tell her about the vampires; she’d only blow up again, and with good reason. She knew too much of my history to let that slide. I racked my brains for an answer. “Eve,” I said suddenly.
“Eve?”
“Yeah,” I said. I tried to remember if the girl had given me a last name. I didn’t think so. “She works for the court, she knew Sevda, and she asked me to look into the case.”
Detective Pierce opened the doors to the morgue. Cold air rushed out to meet us.
“Well then, let’s see what you can find out,” she said.
Chapter 17
Sevda’s body looked small in death, her skin a pallid grayish color, her eyes cloudy. Her dark blonde hair lay lank around her shoulders. I could see her natural brown that had started coming through at the roots.
I imagined her face with a fresh coat of makeup, a new dye job. I glanced at her nails, noting the chipped polish. She would have been stunning, just the kind of polished go-getter Alexandra would have wanted fronting the vampire marketing machine. Just the kind of person Gloria would feel threatened by.
I could see her sipping lattes, clacking down the sidewalk in high heels, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous. That was over now. She’d never see any of them again. Not until they all joined her in the ground.
Detective Pierce reached out with gloved hands and turned Sevda’s head to the side, exposing her neck and the two distinct, jagged bite marks beneath her jaw. For a second I was paralyzed, but I forced myself through the dread that coated my limbs and stepped up beside her.
“You sure you’re up for this,” she said, noting my hesitation.
“Just fucking get on with it,” I said gruffly.
She quirked a smile. “Ah, that winning personality. This is why no one else in the precinct wants to work with you.”
I was pretty sure it was because of the necromancy actually, but hey, whatever works. “The bite marks,” I said. “Any matches?”
She shook her head. “Neither of them match the molds we took from the Seattle vampires.”
“All the vampires?”
“Yes.”
“The queen too?”
“Yes,” she said.
Huh, Alexandra must really want to sell this whole innocence schtick if she had sat through someone making a mold of her mouth.
“Can I continue?” Detective Pierce asked.
“Yeah, sorry.”
“So, the bite marks. Deeper and messier than you might see from a casual feeding.”
The skin around the holes in her neck was paler and slightly cracked, dried out.
“How much did they take?” I asked Detective Pierce.
“She had maybe three pints left in her when her heart stopped.”
A common misconception was that vampires could drink an entire body’s worth of blood in one sitting. You ever seen those videos on YouTube where people try to drink a gallon of milk in one go and then end up vomiting all over themselves? Well that was about how much blood was in a human body, and vampires were far too image-conscious to want to risk vomiting up all the blood they just drank all over their fancy clothes. Most vampires took little sips regularly to keep their fresh blood topped up. That also minimized the risk of losing themselves in the bite. It didn’t just feel good for humans after all.
My skin crawled.
“So, you think someone got a little too blood happy and didn’t know how to stop?”
Detective Pierce hummed, noncommittal. “We can’t say exactly how much was sucked out of her and how much was pumped out by her failing heart.”
“What about the crime scene?”
Detective Pierce shook her head. “She was killed somewhere else and left in an alleyway well after she was dead.”
“So, someone kept the dead body around long enough to dump it?”
This was sounding less and less like an impulsive, accidental kill. It was sounding planned, premeditated.
“Come on,” she said. “Do your thing.” She stepped back and I took her place by Sevda’s body.
The police didn’t like to refer to the victims by name, easier for them to keep it impersonal. I was different. I wanted anything that would give me a personal connection to the dead. Anything I could use to call them out of the half world to speak to me. I raised my hand, hovering above Sevda’s head for a moment, then I dropped it, my skin connecting with her cold forehead. I closed my eyes and sank into the half world again.
The presence of the dead around me suddenly bloomed into life, flickering shadows everywhere. I hated doing this in the morgue. It was always so noisy. The clamor of voices rushed my ears and I felt the sensation of ghostly hands plucking at my clothes. They were stronger than usual, or perhaps it was just my exhaustion talking, but it took all my focus to block them out. Each and every one of them miserable and confused.
Morgues were worse than graveyards; at least in graveyards most of the spirits there had died peacefully from old age. Morgues were more likely to contain the violently murdered, and they were the hardest to ignore. But using my physical connection, my hand on Sevda’s forehead, I was able to hone in on her body and I reached my senses into it. Nothing. It was cold. Empty. I could have been touching the table for all the resonance I got. I snapped my eyes open.
“That was quick,” Detective Pierce said. “What did you get?”
“Nothing,” I said, in shock.
“Nothing?”
I turned to look at her. “It’s like she’s been wiped clean.” It was just like the empty nothing I got from the humans’ rooms on Mercer Island.
I forced my eyes closed once more and reached again into Sevda’s body. It was like someone had wiped every trace of her essence away and left just an empty shell. I have never experienced anything like this before. Maybe it was something to do with Sevda herself. “Is she magical?”
“Why do you ask?” Detective Pierce said.
“I should be getting something off her. Some kind of presence.” There was nothing left on her body except for the tag on her toe. No amulets, no charm. “She have any tattoos or strange scars?” Detective Pierce walked over to the computer in t
he corner and pulled up Sevda’s records. I sent my senses into her body over and over again as Detective Pierce clicked through, but every time I came up empty.
“No,” Detective Pierce said, coming up to join me. “Nothing. Just holes in her earlobes for earrings.”
“Show me the other one,” I told Detective Pierce.
We rolled Sevda back into her drawer and pulled Oliver out. Something about him was more pathetic than Sevda. Perhaps because he was younger, perhaps because his innocence still seemed visible on his grayish face. I wasted no time reaching for his forehead and opening myself to the half world once more. Again, I pushed away the clamor. Again, it was a little harder, exhaustion making sweat break out on my skin. I grit my teeth and reached into Oliver.
Nothing.
I snapped my eyes open. “Fuck,” I swore under my breath, pulling away from the body. “I don’t get it,” I said. “There’s nothing there.”
“You run out of juice or something?” Detective Pierce asked.
I rounded on her, feeling shaky. “It’s not me,” I snapped.
She held up her hands. “Okay. I believe you, but maybe you need to take a break. You don’t look so great.” She eyed me with concern.
“It’s not—” I broke off. Was that it? Could it just be that I was tired out? But then, how come I could still feel the presence of the rest of the dead around me? I shook my head. “That’s not it. I said it’s not me.” I pointed to one of the drawers. “Hit and run,” I said. I pointed to another. “Heart attack.” I pointed to the other side of the room. “Stab victim.” I could sense each of those ghosts perking up and paying attention as I pointed them out. I turned back to Detective Pierce, closing my mind to the half world. “I’m getting impressions from everything else, but not from them. Not from these two, and I don’t know why.”
Detective Pierce frowned. “I can try and get a clairvoyant in here. There is that man who practices down in San Diego.”
