“Who?” Brian’s tone was all business.
“No one from here, I don’t think. Whoever found the DB couldn’t do an ID, and this place is like a small town. Everyone knows everyone else.”
“They have a coroner, medical examiner? Anyone who can do a post-mortem?”
“A medical doctor who’s a jack-of-all-trades, apparently. I don’t think they have much need for a full-fledged coroner. We’ll be dropping by there in a bit, to see what she found out.”
“Christ, we lead boring lives, don’t we? Was this what we had in mind when we enlisted in the army, all bright-eyed and eager after graduating UCLA? The excitement of finding dead bodies?”
“No, I think our eagerness had mostly to do with them paying off our student loans.”
“Oh, right. So, how long will you be there?”
“I already told you. A few weeks.”
“Ah, but some of the boys and girls are threatening to visit you. They want to get there before it’s too late.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know, it’s warm and sunny?”
“It’s warm there, too. Besides it’s hot as hell today, and I forgot my hat.”
Brian laughed. “That’ll be ten demerits, Captain.”
“Don’t remind me. I was in a hurry. My dad was up and back down from the wall before I even woke up.”
“Wow. You’re really slacking off on your vacation.”
“Fuck you. I have to go see a dead person. Talk to you later.”
THE DEAD PERSON turned out to be a very young woman, barely more than a teenager, with black hair to her waist, coffee brown skin, and what would have been lovely and delicate hands if the fingertips hadn’t been chewed off. Her eyes were also missing, along with her lips, which made identification nearly impossible without DNA. Although maybe the doc could salvage enough of a fingertip or three to assist an ID. She had nothing in her pockets—no wallet, no money, no ID—but was dressed in stylishly distressed blue jeans and expensive athletic shoes. Her teeth were intact, and she’d benefited from excellent dental care during her short life, with no cavities, and evidence that orthodontic work had probably given her a pretty smile. She wouldn’t be smiling ever again, unfortunately. They’d be lucky if they even managed to identify her.
“I’ll have to call the authorities on this,” Dr. Nowak said, pulling the sheet back over the young woman’s ruined face. “She definitely has dental records somewhere, and she’s been taken care of, but even if there’s a missing person report, it could be from anywhere in Europe. Hell, we don’t know for sure that she’s even European.”
“Cause of death?” Layla asked.
“Gunshot chewed up her heart and lungs—9mm, which I believe is what we use.”
“So does everyone else, so that doesn’t mean much. Could be someone just wanted to dispose of a body and decided to lay it at our feet.” She turned to her father. “Have we had any fighting in the rear quadrant lately?”
He shook his head. “No, it’s been a straight up frontal strategy.”
“She could have been shot and crawled away, I guess. Or someone dragged her there to get her away from the fight, but she died first. It sure doesn’t help us figure out who’s behind this. Not without ID.”
Dr. Nowak looked up at her. “That’s a cold way of looking at it.”
Layla shrugged. “That’s reality, doc. Tell me, when you call the local authorities, do they come here? Or do we take the body to them?”
“I don’t know,” the doctor said. “This is a first.” She looked over at Layla’s father who shrugged.
“I don’t think it’s ever happened before,” he said. “The vamps don’t usually die, and when they do . . . ” He made a phttt noise to indicate a vampire dusting. “As for the human population, they mostly choose cremation, which we do onsite. It comes from living with vampires, I guess.”
“Right, then,” Nowak said. “I’ll make the calls and let you know what I find out.”
“Thank you, Łucja. I know this isn’t what you signed up for,” her father said.
“Not true, sir. Death is a part of life, and I signed up for all of it.” With that, she pulled off her gloves, dropped them in the biohazard disposal, and walked over to her desk, turning her back on Layla and her father.
“Well,” Layla said, as she walked into the courtyard with him. “I believe we’ve been dismissed, Commander.”
“Ah, Łucja’s okay. It’s just the culture she was raised with. Not everyone lives in everyone else’s underwear like we do.”
“Papa! That’s disgusting. I think it’s time for you to leave for Barcelona.”
“Why? You want the dead body all to yourself?”
“No.” She pointed upward. “Because your wife is standing on the balcony surrounded by suitcases.”
He looked up and waved. Such a simple thing, a wave. But there was so much love on her father’s face as he waved to her mother. They’d been together nearly forty years, and he still smiled at her as if she brought the sunlight to his day. Layla wanted that. Wanted someone she could still love just as much after four decades as they had the first time they’d held each other.
She sighed and looked away. Fat chance she had of that.
THINGS MOVED QUICKLY after that. Layla’s mom made sure of it. She knew her husband, knew he’d delay until it was so late that he’d postpone their departure to the next morning. Fortunately, Ramlah was the one person who could order Ferran around and get things done.
Less than an hour later, Layla was waving at their car from her perch on the wall above the gate. And when they were finally swallowed by the dusty twists and turns of the road, she felt . . . empty. And alone. Fuck that. Every person in the Fortalesa was depending on her to do her job. And that didn’t include moping around like a teenager.
She headed for the stairs. She needed to check in with Dr. Novak, and then finish her review of the Fortalesa’s personnel. They’d been running the same duty schedule for too long. People became complacent and not as sharp as they needed to be.
And then maybe she’d call Brian, just to hear a friendly voice. Even if all he did was complain about France.
Chapter Seven
THE SKY WAS brilliant that evening. An entire palette of pink and red, with the occasional spike of blue sky shining through. It was the kind of sunset that tourists travelled to Barcelona to witness at the end of a long day of sightseeing.
Layla appreciated the beauty. Appreciated even more the end of a peaceful day, with no Rambo wannabes hiding in the trees, taking potshots at the Fortalesa or its people. The gates remained shut, as they’d been all day, and Layla had doubled the guard contingent on the gate controls so that no one person could admit the enemy. Some would call her paranoid for taking that step. But these attacks felt like a prelude to her—as if they were softening up the Fortalesa’s defenders, letting them think the enemy was nothing but some vampire-hating troublemakers.
But Layla believed there was something more. She just didn’t know what. Not yet. But she’d figure it out. And in the meantime, she wanted security tight and the guards on alert.
What she wanted, what she needed right now, however, was food. She’d skipped lunch and was starving. She could take thirty minutes for dinner, if she hurried. After that was the nightly briefing with Xavier, which she assumed would be more thorough, since this was her first day on the job.
She completed a final walk around the wall, and finding no immediate threats, met Danilo above the gate.
“The watch is yours,” Layla said, formally putting Danilo in charge. They’d agreed that Layla would take the day shift, and Danilo the nighttime, when only a few human guards remained, mostly to supplement the vampires who took over after sunset. Danilo wouldn’t have any authority over the vamps
, but Layla would need a detailed report every morning on anything that happened during the night. Layla knew she’d be fighting her inner control freak the whole time, stopping herself from constantly checking by phone, or just dropping by for some cool night air. She’d read every page of Danilo’s file, and knew that she hadn’t seen the kind of fighting that Layla had. Nor anything close to the hostage rescues or bodyguard jobs that turned violent, which she and her team were frequently contracted for. The French vineyard was an aberration, not their usual duty.
But Danilo did have field experience, and had been promoted twice before completing her active service with the Spanish military. There was also the fact that Layla’s father had hired her, and she trusted his knowledge and judgment more than anyone else’s.
She checked her watch with a hissed curse. The thirty minutes she’d planned for dinner had somehow shrunk to less than twenty. But she had to eat. Xavier could just wait a few damn minutes. It wasn’t as if he had nothing to do while he waited. Hell, he could use the time to set up his own dinner for later on. Some buxom beauty who spent all her time looking beautiful and wouldn’t know what to do with a gun to save her life. She’d probably never cracked open a serious book either, but spent all her time studying fashion magazines.
Layla shook her head, amused by her own thoughts. She had no idea where Xavier got his blood fixes. She’d watched women come and go when she’d been younger, before she’d left for the U.S. But there’d been too many of them to pinpoint which one was Xavier’s. If he even had one. More likely, he selected from the buffet each night.
“Stop,” she said out loud as she walked into her parents’ apartment. It was odd being there without them. Plus there was no Mama at the stove, no wonderful smells filling the kitchen. Shit. She had to fix her own dinner. She hadn’t done that in years. Ever since graduating from university, she’d been living communally, one way or the other. And on the rare occasions when she had an evening all alone, she’d order take-out, or walk to the nearest bistro. Fuck.
“Please tell me you left food, Mama,” she said, still talking to herself. Crossing her fingers, she opened the refrigerator and found a casserole just waiting to be heated. “Yes!” She threw it in the microwave, which her mother would never have done, picked a number of minutes at random, then went to wash the day’s sweat from her face and hands.
She gobbled down her dinner right out of the dish. She was already late for the meeting with Xavier, and feeling . . . not guilty. She had nothing to feel guilty about. But since she’d taken on this job, she was compelled to do it right, just as she did every other assignment.
Even worse was the image dawning in her brain of an impatient Xavier showing up at the apartment door and . . . Correction. He wouldn’t stop at the door. He’d simply stroll in and demand her attention. Xavier didn’t get angry. He just did what he wanted and assumed everyone else would go along with it.
“Merde!” She’d been working in France long enough that the curse came easily to her tongue. Grabbing the dirty dish, she dropped it into the sink with some soap and water, ran wet hands over her face and dried it with the dish towel. (Her mother would be appalled!) Then, tossing a breath mint into her mouth, she ran out the door.
XAVIER SIPPED A glass of red wine, liberally seasoned with blood, and waited for Layla. He’d kept track of her through the day. Not in detail, not the way he could have if they’d shared blood. But in monitoring the general ebb and flow of the Fortalesa and its people, he was confident in his assessment of her activities. She’d been diligent, which was nothing more than he’d expected. He’d known her for most of her life. She’d been born in the Fortalesa, though she hadn’t come to his attention until her father had been elevated to Commander of his daylight guard. He’d noticed her more after she was old enough to follow her father around, announcing to anyone who would listen that she was going to be a soldier just like her papa. No one had believed her then, not even her father. Her ambition had been dismissed as a young girl’s fancy, grown out of love for her father.
Xavier hadn’t dismissed it, though. He’d known she meant it. Even as a small child, she’d had a core of steel, a strength of character that drove her to excel at everything she did. And when she persisted in her determination to be a soldier, her parents winced and said nothing, hoping she’d leave it behind once she went to university and understood the full variety of professions available to her.
Even Xavier had privately hoped she’d seek a quieter vocation. Not because he’d thought she couldn’t do anything else, but because, above all, he’d wanted her safe. Humans were too fragile, too easy to kill. And no one knew better than he that even in the safest countries, the most secure cities, the world was a violent place. It was enough to survive a normal life of home and family, without courting death by throwing yourself in its path. Not that what he wanted mattered, in this case. Layla had always nodded and smiled at those who urged her to choose another path, that she was much too smart to become a common soldier.
There’d never been anything common about Layla. He’d seen her in a way that others didn’t—not even her parents. And though he’d fought the knowledge until the day she left for the U.S., he’d always sensed an indefinable something special about Layla. A connection that shouldn’t have been there, something unique to her and no one else.
Human mystics—those who claimed to speak to the dead or to see the future—would have said he’d known her in a past life, that their souls were drawn to each other. Xavier believed in magic. How could he not? He was a vampire who could stop a man’s heart with a thought, or tear that same heart from his enemy’s chest and force him to watch it burn. Maybe vampire abilities weren’t magic the way humans understood it. Maybe people simply hadn’t advanced enough to understand it for what it was. Some vampires believed that vampirism was an evolutionary change in the human race, that they were more advanced beings than ordinary humans.
Xavier didn’t know about evolution and didn’t spend much time worrying about it either. He knew who his parents were, knew who his Sire was, and how he’d changed from human to vampire. After that, he’d been too busy learning to use the new powers he’d been given, and then finding his place in a world dominated by a few extraordinarily powerful vampires. Because he was one of them. No one knew what factors determined which vampires would rule and which would go about their lives in much the same way they had before being turned, except for a few specific changes. For his part, Xavier had always known his destiny and had pursued it with the same single-minded ambition he saw in Layla.
Layla. The flame inside him flared with heat every time he thought of her. The unique connection he’d felt when she’d been a child hadn’t disappeared as he’d thought it would, when he’d dismissed it as a protectiveness for the child of close friends, which Ferran and Ramlah had grown to be.
His feelings for her had instead grown stronger. And he’d been forced to look for other explanations. He’d even considered the possibility that she was a danger to him, that his vampire senses, which far exceeded those of a regular human’s, were trying to warn him. He hadn’t been able to make himself believe the logic of that one. How could even the most finely tuned vampire brain know that a young girl would grow up to assassinate him? It made no sense.
He’d cautiously explored the topic with another vampire or two, those whose discretion he could count on. But he’d never told even them whom it concerned, or even if he was the one involved, not willing to risk drawing the wrong kind of attention to Layla. The unique was always desired by certain people—both vampire and human—but especially by vampires whose long lives sometimes made them subject to a desperate kind of ennui which lusted after anything to relieve the boredom.
But the inquiries turned out to be useless anyway, since none of those he’d spoken to had experienced anything like it, nor even heard of it happening to anyone else. So Xavier sto
pped worrying about it, deciding it was the product of a long-forgotten hindbrain fart that humans were no longer able to utilize, much less explain.
He looked up at the muted sound of a door closing far down the hallway and smiled. Layla had arrived at last. Standing, he picked up his wine and walked around his desk to the conference table where he took a seat facing the door. She’d be angry when she walked in, knowing she was late and choosing to take it out on him. He wondered if she treated others the same. If, for example, she’d snarled at her commanding officer when she’d been in the army. He doubted it. He’d observed her enough before she left to know her ire was reserved for him.
The door swung open without a knock and Layla rushed in, stopping short when she saw him sitting alone. She scowled and asked, “Is everybody late? I wish I’d known that. I have a million other things I need to take care of. You could have just texted when you were ready to start.”
He grinned. He’d certainly called that one. “No one else is coming,” he said calmly. “Since this was your first full day as commander, I thought you might have questions, or want to go over details that don’t concern the others.”
Her scowl deepened. “What about the attacks? Don’t they concern everyone?”
His grin widened. “Of course. But my people are fully capable of making any necessary preparations, and even launching reconnaissance teams, without consulting me on every detail.”
“And I’m not?”
He sighed. “Get yourself a drink, Layla, and sit down. I’m not your enemy here.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she came close enough to drop a few files on the table, then went and poured herself a glass of whiskey. But not until she’d sniffed the wine decanter, then grimaced and shot him a suspicious glance. Xavier could have told her there was unopened wine on the shelf, but didn’t see the point once she’d decided on whiskey instead.
Xavier: Vampires in Europe (Vampires in America Book 14) Page 9
