Last Vampire Standing

by Nancy Haddock

  “Which means,” I added, “that unless someone is making artificial blood in a Florida orange flavor, the citrus smell is out of place.”

  Jackson almost cracked a grin. “You say Laurel had this scent on her on Saturday?”

  “Yes, but Ike had been making her clean the residence. I figured the smell was from a cleaning product on her skin. But why would it be on this knife?”

  “Could it be in the blood instead?”

  I frowned and thought about that. When Normand had served dinner, had I ever smelled what the servant du jour had eaten the day before? Probably not, since I’d buried my nose in the servants’ skin as I drank. That way I blocked the smell of blood, which blocked a smidge of the taste.

  “I doubt the scent is coming from Ike’s blood. Even if he ate food, I don’t see Ike being the orange juice type.”

  Jackson shrugged. “It was worth asking. Now, here’s another question. If you’re right about the silver content, does that narrow the field to a human killer?”

  Again, Saber and I exchanged a glance.

  “Ten days ago, I would have answered an unqualified yes,” Saber said. “Since then, we’ve learned about one vampire who appears to be immune to silver.”

  “I take it that vamp isn’t in the club?”

  “He’s in Atlanta. Or we’re reasonably certain he’s still there, but I’ll have to check it out.”

  “In the meantime, we need to question the vamps inside.” Jackson ran a hand over his military short hair and eyed me. “How about taking a whiff of the vampires while we question them? You can smell for blood and this citrus odor.”

  “Not the most appealing offer I’ve had all night, but I’ll do it on one condition.”

  “Which is?”

  I looked at Saber. “Will you shoot first and ask questions later if Laurel gets in my face again?”

  “Hell, I won’t even ask questions later, but I have a condition, too. If you pull Laurel’s aura, you drain her into submission. Clear?”

  “Crystal.”

  “Good.” He took my elbow. “Let’s go see what we can get out of Donita before we go in.”

  Saber and Jackson let me approach first, and I spotted Pandora under the ambulance.

  “Donita, it’s Cesca,” I said as I sat beside her. “Can you hear me?”

  A full minute passed before she blinked and slowly turned her head to look at me.

  “Donita, what happened?”

  “I’m going on a trip today,” she said, her voice soft and scratchy. “To meet my girlfriends. We do this every year.”

  I nodded. “Go on.”

  “I-I went to his office. To tell him I was leaving. He wasn’t there.”

  Her hands clenched into trembling fists, and I laid my hand over hers. I meant the touch to be only comforting, not to get sucked into an instant mind connection, not to see Ike through her eyes, not to feel her pain. When the vision rose like a rogue wave, I could do nothing but ride it to the end.

  “I unlocked my car. I got in. I saw him.”

  Through her mind’s eye and emotions, I saw him, too. Propped with his back to the passenger door. Blood spatter on the windshield and dashboard, and a trickle on his white shirt. His head tilted back to expose the obscene wound. Brown eyes open, staring. Surprise, disbelief, then stark terror ripped through me, and I found myself in Donita tumbling out of the car and onto the pavement, keening in horror.

  A fierce squeeze of my hand jerked me back to the moment. Donita’s nails dug into my skin.

  “Francesca,” she whispered. “I didn’t get to say good-bye.”

  Tears tracked down her face then, and Saber hunkered down to ease her hands from mine.

  “Donita, did you see or hear anything when you came outside? Was anyone near your car?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you know who could have done this?”

  “Laurel was always angry, always pushing.”

  “Yes, you told me Saturday you were worried that she was out of control. Did she argue with Ike again?”

  “She wanted him to fire me. To stop seeing me.”

  “And what did Ike say?”

  Her lips tightened. “He told her to mind her own business, not his. I was ready to quit just to have some peace.”

  “Do you think Laurel killed Ike?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. God, I’m so cold.”

  “Just one more thing. Does the club have some sort of an air freshening system?”

  The question jarred Donita. “What does that have to do with someone killing Ike?”

  Saber shrugged. “Probably nothing. Just a loose end.”

  Donita shook her head. “There’s nothing but central heat and air conditioning that I know of.”

  “All right. The paramedics need to take you to the hospital now, but Cesca and I will check on you later.”

  “Can we call anyone for you?” I asked. “Your girlfriends?”

  “No, I’ll do it.”

  She wouldn’t call them, though. I was still just connected enough to hear that she didn’t care about anything at the moment. Who could blame her?

  Jackson, who’d stood by and listened, motioned to an officer as the paramedics helped Donita onto a gurney. I knew he was putting the man on hospital guard duty, but I didn’t object. Sure, it was ludicrous to think Donita could’ve taken out a vampire, but she’d been his lover, and she’d found the body. That gave her two tickets to suspect city.

  We headed for the club’s back entrance, Jackson in the lead. I didn’t see Pandora, but supposed she was on shape-shifter stealth reconnaissance.

  “I doubt we’ll get anything useful,” Jackson was saying, “but we’ve seized the computer to check the security feed. I figured you should be here when we questioned the vamps, so my guys took statements from the humans.”

  “I suppose no one saw a thing,” Saber said.

  “Not that they’d admit to.”

  “Have you released them?”

  “Yeah, even the waitstaff. We’ll have to question them away from the club, because they’re too frightened to say a word against a vampire.”

  When we stepped into the club proper, it was obvious that humans weren’t the only ones who seemed frightened into silence.

  Tower and Zena, Coach, Suzy, and Ray—the Antonio Banderas look-alike vamp who had been Ike’s attorney—sat at a table in the center of the room. Suzy dabbed her eyes with a napkin, and Ray looked grim, but the rest were deadpan and dead still. That is, except when Laurel, dressed like a slutty biker vamp, brushed behind them as she paced. Then I saw the tiniest twitch of an eye or tightening of a mouth. Ike’s vamps might not be grieving him, but they didn’t look overjoyed that he was forever dead, either.

  Charles and Miranda weren’t present, but then they had likely gone back to their jobs at Ike’s residence after Laurel was released from punishment. I wondered if Jackson had thought to search the lair.

  I’d scanned the men Jackson had fanned out around the room when my skin prickled and I knew Laurel had spotted us.

  “Fires of hell,” she screeched, startling half of Jackson’s people into drawing their weapons. “Ike told you two never to come here again.”

  From twenty feet away, she flowed across the room in a one-second rush, but I was ready. I pulled hard at her aura, her life force, took it into myself and held it. Laurel, though, stopped fast enough to send a whiplash of energy through the air and through me. I held what I’d already taken and pulled again.

  “No!” She threw up a hand and backed up a few paces, her mocha skin gleaming with a fine sheen, bone beads in her cornrows clacking. “You will not humiliate me again, bitch.”

  “I don’t want to humiliate you, Laurel.” Which was true, since I’d just as soon see her shipped to the Antarctic. “I don’t want you in my face.”

  “And I do not wish you in this club.” Her flat black eyes narrowed. “Why are you here?”

  “They’re assis
ting in the investigation,” Jackson said.

  Laurel flipped a hand. “Arrest Ike’s little whore and be done with it.”

  “Come on, Laurel,” Saber said as he strolled toward the table of vamps. “Donita didn’t kill your boss.”

  Laurel spun on Saber, those damn beads clacking again. “And you presume that why? Because she is a weakling human? Fool. She ensnared the affections of Lord Ike by trickery. She could easily have killed him the same way.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you, Tower?” Saber asked.

  Jackson and I had taken advantage of Laurel’s distraction to approach the table of vamps from the other side, but no one missed Tower jerk in his chair.

  “Lady Laurel is the new mistress,” the ebony-skinned Tower said carefully.

  “Lady Laurel?” I blurted.

  She moved closer to the vamps she now ruled.

  “It is not so exalted a title as yours, Princess Ci,” she drawled snidely, “but it is a customary one.”

  “It’s also one more reason to move you to the top of the suspect list,” Saber said.

  “What do you mean?”

  He caught my gaze and jerked his head ever so slightly. Smell the vamps. I sensed his message more than heard him, and began a slow pace behind each chair, pausing to sniff, while Saber kept pressure on Laurel.

  “How long have you been plotting to kill Ike, Laurel? Since he punished you, or longer than that?”

  “You are accusing me? Ike’s second-in-command? I was sworn to protect him.”

  “You were also supposed to follow his orders, not question them.”

  “I advised my lord, as was my duty.”

  “Come off it, Laurel. You fought with Ike over Donita. You were so jealous, you reeked of it.”

  I completed my circle around the table, and stood behind Suzy as Laurel drew herself tall.

  “You are mistaken. I saw that changing the club would not be in Lord Ike’s best interest.”

  “And, since he wouldn’t dump Donita, you decided to run the club without him.”

  “You plan to arrest me?”

  Saber turned to me and arched his brow.

  “Suzy.” I lightly touched her shoulder.

  She startled and let out a small squeal. “Yes?”

  “Has Laurel changed her clothes tonight?”

  “N-no. She never changes once she’s dressed for the night.”

  I met Saber’s gaze. “I don’t smell Ike’s blood or anything else on any of them. Not citrus, not even sex.”

  Saber looked puzzled, and Jackson scowled. I could’ve sworn something furtive crossed Laurel’s face, but then she laughed.

  “Did you hear, my nestmates? The great vampire princess came here to smell us like a dog.”

  “Arf, arf,” I said. “Now you can thank me.”

  “Why should I lower myself to do that?”

  “Because, unfortunately, I just cleared your spiteful self of murder charges.”

  Laurel gave me a slow blink. “You dare to speak to me like that?”

  I shrugged, and Laurel moved.

  Saber shouted even as I sucked her energy like a mega Hoover. This time she didn’t block me soon enough. I had her. She faltered, and Saber was on her like lightning, forcing her to the floor, straddling her leather-clad butt. Jackson had drawn his weapon but kept it trained on the unmoving vamps.

  “Laurel, vampire of the Daytona Beach nest,” Saber said over her thrashing and the crash of beads in her hair. “You’re under arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder. As a duly sworn VPA agent of the United States, I declare you a Rampant, subject to immediate arrest and execution. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to mediation.”

  He jerked her arms back and slapped silver-laced handcuffs on her almost faster than I could see. I expected her to scream when the silver touched her skin. She didn’t. She hissed and spat, and cursed us all while Saber gave her the executioner version of the Miranda warning, but she didn’t seem to react to the touch of silver.

  A knot formed deep in my gut.

  “Saber, hold on a minute.”

  He glanced over as I knelt beside him. “What?”

  I peered at Laurel’s wrists twisting in the handcuffs. They were reddening, but because of her struggle or the silver?

  “The cuffs should be burning her.”

  “They are burning, bitch,” Laurel gritted out, “but I will not show weakness before my nest.”

  A chair scraped on the wood floor behind us. Jackson called out, and Saber whirled with his semiautomatic in hand.

  I spun, too, crouched and ready to suck energy again, but Ray held out his hands.

  “Please, I mean no harm.”

  No one eased off. Not Jackson, not his contingent of cops, not Saber.

  “If I may speak?” Ray said, arms spread.

  I gave him a curt nod.

  “You know that I am an attorney, but I also have some modest knowledge of medicine. I created a salve for Laurel’s silver burns that also contains anesthetic properties.”

  “You mean it numbs her skin?” I glanced at Saber. Had Ray made the salve Saber had given me?

  “Yes, Princess. The salve creates a barrier to pain, which may be why she is tolerating the handcuffs, but the silver is seeping into her system.”

  “If that’s all you have to say,” Jackson growled.

  Ray cut him off. “It is not. Saber, could you perhaps allow Laurel to stand?”

  Saber grabbed the back of her sleeveless leather vest and hauled her to her feet. I stood, too, moving so I could keep an eye on Ike’s former bodyguards, Zena and Tower. If anyone objected to taking Laurel out of here, they were my top choices.

  Laurel stood proud, chin up, black eyes holding scorn. “Ray, you will see to my release, of course.”

  Ray slowly shook his head. “I think it is best that you go peacefully, Laurel. You see, Ike willed his worldly possessions and properties to me. I am now in command.”

  I wasn’t the only one to suck in a shocked breath. Laurel’s eyes narrowed, and her mocha skin flushed as if she were burning with the fever of bloodlust.

  Which, in that moment, I guess she was.

  “I will go free,” Laurel snarled. “Then we will see who holds this nest.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Saber said, keeping a tight hand on her jacket. “Jackson, I take it there’s a vamp cell available in lockup?”

  Jackson lowered his weapon with only a slight tremble in his hand. “There is. I’ve got special transport waiting, too. I’ll radio them to pull up out front, but you’ll have to come down to book her in.”

  Saber nodded and began marching Laurel toward the front door, grasping the back of her jacket in his left hand, his semiautomatic pointed at her back in the other. Jackson covered Saber, but there was no need. The more steps Laurel took away from them, the more the vamps at the table relaxed.

  A cop near the door held it open. Through the opening, I saw the cop car pull up to the curb. Saber propelled Laurel over the threshold to the sidewalk and toward the cruiser, everything under control.

  Until two steps later.

  A whoosh of movement too fast to track, a back breeze through the door, and Laurel and Saber were gone.

  SEVENTEEN

  The club echoed with my feral cry, terror for Saber crushing every coherent thought save one. If Laurel had hurt him, I would kill her.

  I found myself outside, but she was gone. Vanished. Saber sprawled on the sidewalk against the building, pale and still.

  I moved in a fog of fear, fell to my knees at his side. I ran my hands over his face, down the buttons of his shirt, across his chest. An inhale, an exhale. Thank the deities, he lived, but how badly was he hurt? When I picked up his left hand, he moaned.

  “Saber, how bad is it?”

  A very brown hand covered mine and held me still.

  “It will be best,” Ray said, “if you do not pull on his wrist. I am fairly certain it is br
oken.”

  “Oh, Saber, I’m sorry,” I whispered, tearing up as I sensed Jackson standing over us.

  Ray cradled Saber’s lower arm and laid it on his chest, then probed his head and collarbone with gentle fingers.

  Saber’s eyes snapped open. He gazed blankly at me, then at Ray.

  “What the hell?” he ground out, struggling to sit.

  Ray restrained him with a touch.

  “Saber, be still, please.” I said. “You were body slammed into the wall.”

  “It’s just my wrist, and a bump on the head,” he said irritably. “Damn it, Laurel got away, didn’t she?”

  “More like she was whisked away.” I patted his thigh, more to comfort me than him. “You couldn’t have stopped it.”

  “A hit like that,” Jackson said from behind me, “you’re lucky you didn’t break your back.”

  “Be better than the paperwork I’ll have to fill out for losing a prisoner.”

  Ray snorted. “He will live.”

  I gave him a grateful smile. “I need to get him to the ER.”

  “I’ve called for another ambulance,” Jackson said.

  But Saber insisted on standing, and Ray carefully hoisted Saber to his feet. I tucked myself into his good side, or what I thought was the one less injured. Since he groaned and shuffled sideways a step, I figured his ribs had suffered from meeting the cinder block wall. Did he have internal injuries? Damn, where was that EVAC unit?

  Saber gripped my shoulder, then looked at Ray and Jackson. “Any clue who snatched Laurel?”

  The cop and the vamp shook their heads.

  “Cesca?”

  “Other than it had to be a vampire, just one. You smell like an orange.”

  “I do?” He let go of me to lift his shirt by the buttons and sniff. “Shit. Who the hell is this?”

  Saber insisted that Jackson try to get evidence from his shirt. When Ray helped remove the shirt, I’d bitten my lip to keep from crying over the bruises and scrapes on Saber’s back and arms.

  Jackson had patted my shoulder in comfort—huge points to him for touching me. As soon as the EMTs had loaded Saber into the ambulance, I’d taken off at a dead run for Saber’s SUV to meet him at the hospital.