“I did lock up,” she said. “So I’m guessing you flashed your badge at poor Jed and intimidated him into letting you walk right in without calling me first.”
“Jed was asleep,” he told her. “Not what I call protection, especially not when you’re doing valuable research on a serial killer.” His voice lowered. “You fit the profile of the victims far too well to be this exposed. Not only are you a young, beautiful female, but you’re directly in the path of the killer.” A shiver of warning sizzled a path down her spine, the compliment sliding past her, while the threat of danger did not. “I’m ten years older than the victims.”
“But you don’t look your age and you’re every bit as pretty as they were. Even more so, you are just as much in his path as they were, if not more so. You are the woman trying to put him behind bars.” Her hand went to her cell phone again, instinct telling her to call Adian – a stranger – when there was a detective standing in front of her. It made no sense.
“Which is why I called and arranged to have a patrolman placed at the facility until this is over, starting tomorrow.”
Surprise rushed through her. “Oh. Well. Yes. Thank you.” She let go of her cell phone. She felt silly for her paranoia. “This case is making me a little crazy I think. Extra security will be comforting.”
“It’s making us all a little crazy. But we might have a break.” He pushed off the doorframe and sauntered to her visitor’s chair, perching on the arm. “I came by to grab the toxicology reports on the recent victim for the FBI lab. They want to analyze it first thing in the morning.”
“They called me,” she said. “I’m faxing the paperwork tomorrow.”
“I’ll take them myself,” he said. “One of their people is meeting me tonight to discuss a lead. He wants me to bring the results.”
“What kind of lead?”
“A highly sought after drug called “Blood Red” because it apparently looks like blood. It has an aphrodisiac quality that supposedly makes ecstasy feel like Kool-aid.”
“You think it’s the drug the victims have been positive for,” she said, reading the unspoken between the lines.
“We don’t know,” he said, “but we’ve linked all six of the victims to one of three clubs.” He laughed without humor. “And get this. The names are from those teen Vampire movies – Twilight, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn.”
“You’re kidding me,” she said incredulously, her stomach rolling. The lost blood, the vampire connection. There was something very sick going on.
“No I’m not,” he said. “Someone thinks their funny and they’re not. Anyway, we’re on it. We’re working on getting to a dealer and getting a sample.”
“The victims were all found at different locations when they died,” she said, not getting the connection.
“And I would have remembered those club names if I’d seen them.”
“They weren’t at any of these clubs the night they died, but they were there sometime in the months before their deaths.”
She pushed to her feet, her adrenaline pumping. “Then I need a sample of that drug. These victims were all blood deficient in a way that’s well, impossible. If this is the substance the victims were positive for, I need to figure out how it drained them of their blood, before it’s more widely used.”
“Your job stops with the reports,” he said. “The Austin PD and the FBI will take it from there. We just need to get the FBI lab anything and everything that might help speed up the investigation.” He was right, so why did this feel so wrong? “I don’t have the reports. There’s a chain-of-custody and signatures that have to be obtained. They’re in process and out of my reach. You’ll have to wait until morning.”
He studied her a moment. “You have to have copies in your files. Screw the chain-of-command. Lives are on the line. Six women are dead.”
“I know that,” she snapped, seeing their faces flash through her mind’s eye. “I can’t sleep for fear of there being a seventh.”
“Believe me, I know what it’s like to lay in the bed and think of those six women. I remember every single detail of their deaths. We have an undercover female detective working the club we’ve identified as the hot spot. And since we both know the FBI lab is far more equipped to deal with the unknown than you are, we need them to look at the most recent reports and figure out exactly what we’re dealing with. We can’t afford to lose a minute once we get a sample. We don’t want a seventh victim.” She considered him as he had her. She hated losing control, not getting that sample herself, but what was most important was solving this mystery before anyone else got hurt. A few hours could mean another life. She hesitated and then grabbed the file on her desk, pulling out a carbon copy of the master testing she’d done. “You didn’t get this from me.”
He reached for the paperwork over the top of her desk. “Your secret is safe with me, Kelly.” His eyes held hers and a shiver raced up and down her spine, for a reason, she couldn’t explain, before he offered,
“Why don’t I walk you to your car? You need to get out of here.” She shook her head. “No. I have work to do. I’ll have Jed walk me out.” He arched a brow. “Jed isn’t protection.” He grabbed his cell phone and made a call, then hung up.
“There will be an officer on sight in ten minutes. Make sure you call the security post when you leave.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.” She watched him leave, wondering why she felt uncomfortable rather than appreciative. She sat down at her desk and picked up Aiden’s card. He’d wanted her to call him if she had a lead she was following up on. She had a lead, or rather leads, the name of the bars. She was supposed to call him so he could follow up. Her hand went to her phone, to the numbers she’d dialed a few minutes before, the compulsion to call Aiden was powerful. But why? She didn’t know Aiden. She didn’t know if she could trust him. She sat the phone down, her hand shaking with the effort. Good gosh, what was wrong with her? What was it about Aiden that had her so attached to him?
***
An hour later, dressed in a slim black skirt that hit mid thigh, and a siren red silk sleeveless blouse, with a deep V cut tank, Kelly pulled her Ford Fusion to a stop at a parking meter a block from Austin’s downtown party scene that included the 5th street Warehouse District and the 6th street party District.
She’d realized that Derek had been right back at her lab. She did, indeed, fit the killer’s victim profile, outside of her age of course, and Kelly knew she could dress younger, play the part of a college kid. She was going to those clubs and she was going to get a sample of Blood Red before someone else died.
She picked up her phone from the seat beside her and sighed. She didn’t know why she was doing it, but she punched the button she’d programmed with Aiden’s number. It was as if she couldn’t help herself. He wanted her to call, so she was. Still, listening to the rings, her heart pounded in anticipatory dread. She didn’t even know what she was going to say if he answered. He didn’t. His voice mail picked up. This is Aiden. Leave a message.
Her heart jumped to her throat, but somehow she managed to find a voice. “Aiden, ah, ‘hi’. This is Kelly from – well, this is Kelly. I found out about several bars where there’s a drug called Blood Red being sold. Anyway, since you’re not available I’ll follow up on the lead myself. So well, thanks. Bye.” She started to hang up and hesitated, again feeling compelled, or maybe just afraid enough, to say more. “I’m at the bar called ’Twilight’ on 5th street.” She hung up, shoved the phone into her mini purse, then slid it over her neck and shoulder. Not giving herself time to chicken out, she shoved open her car door, got out, and fed coins to the meter. As intimidating as the idea was, Kelly was going to Twilight, and if it didn’t deliver her a drug dealer, she’d try Eclipse and Breaking Dawn.
She started walking.
Chapter Three
“I want a name,” Aiden growled through extended fangs, shoving a lowlife vampire that was a hair away from bloodlust, if not already there,
against the wall of a downtown Austin alley. The vamp was a kid, barely twenty-five years converted, drinking as much blood daily as he needed to survive an entire month.
Hungering for the rush, the added speed and strength of an elder, and too stupid to see what was wrong with what he’d become - no longer human or vampire, but monster. “Who killed those women?”
“Even if I knew,” the kid snarled. “I wouldn’t tell a scumbag Warden.”
“Was it you?” Aiden demanded, pulling a copper blade and pressing it to the vamp’s throat.
“I’m not stupid enough to kill my food.”
Suddenly someone grabbed Aiden from behind, fangs biting down on his shoulder. Aiden cursed and flung the second vamp he’d not been aware of, but in the process he let go of his grip on the one he’d been holding. The punk rocker vamp went for a knife. At the same moment, Aiden flung his blade into the kid’s chest, a direct hit to his heart. The vamp dissolved instantly into dust, a side effect of the bloodlust mixed with the poison of copper.
Aiden whirled around to face his second attacker just in time to watch his younger brother, Troy, deliver the same death by dust to the other vamp.
Troy’s light blue eyes lifted to Aiden’s, glinting with the odd blue crystal they’d reflected for ten years now, since Troy’s long black hair had also turned blonde. Since a werewolf had attacked him, he had not been the same. A wolf created by a virus that turned a human into a killer wolf, that as a vampire, Troy should have been immune to and unexplainably was not.
“So much for conversation,” Aiden said, shoving his knife under a leather coat that worked for hunting, but pretty much sucked on a hot Texas night. “Clearly, our plan to find out what the local bloodsucking population knew about the recent murders isn’t going as planned.”
“I wasn’t in the mood to talk anyway,” Troy said, pushing to his feet and inserting his blade inside a strap under his leather pants at his ankle. “And how about a ‘thank you’ for showing up when I did? I just saved your ass.”
“You were supposed to be here an hour ago,” Aiden reminded him. “What the hell happened?”
“I was hunting,” he said tightly. “That’s what we do. We’re Wardens. We hunt.”
“We aren’t hunting werewolves,” Aiden reminded him. He knew good and damn well that Troy was not only pissed off about being sent here, and being pulled off the hunt for Andres – a wolf with unique abilities, that Troy hoped to also held answers he sought. He was also the wolf that had all but killed their older brother, Evan’s, new wife.
“What if I told you that Andres is here, in Austin?”
“I’d say you’re so eager to find the bastard that you’re seeing him where he isn’t.”
“It’s his blood,” Troy said. “That’s what creates the drug these women are taking, or rather being forced to take. Andres’s blood mixed with a vampire’s. It’s an aphrodisiac, by loosely defined terms. It causes pain in the absence of pleasure. Word is that the vamps are paying big money for this cocktail and then holding orgies. And when the pain and pleasure causes a few of the women to stroke out, the vamps figure – what the hell? – and they drain them dry.”
“Holy shit,” Aiden said, scrubbing his jaw. “How sure are you about this?””
“As sure as the three vamps I was interrogating knew I’d kill them.” Aiden’s cell phone buzzed on his belt and he looked down to see he had a voice mail. The instant he saw the local number, he grabbed it and punched his voice mail button. He listened to the soft, nervous voice of Kelly and then cursed.
“We’re headed a block over to fifth street,” he told Troy. “To a place called “Twilight”.”
***
“Buy you another one?”
The question was a shout, the only way to be heard over the thrumming beat of the Twilight club music.
Kelly looked up from the cocktail on her small corner table, wanting to say no, but knowing she had to say yes.
“Thank you,” she beamed, batting her lashes flirtatiously and not missing the way the men scoped out her cleavage. God, she was too old for this.
One of the men ordered her a drink. The other moved around to her side of the table. She turned to face him. “I’m Alex,” he said.
“Kelly,” she told him.
He slid her drink closer to her. “Drink up. Another is on the way.” She grabbed the glass and sipped it, seeing no way out of it. “Thank you,” she said, smiling over the rim of the glass and then downing it. She had to look like a desperate lonely female if she was going to attract the right people and get her drug sample.
He leaned on the table, somehow closer to her now. So close. Too close. The other man came up behind her, his body pressed to hers, his hand on her waist. She wanted to shove him away, but she didn’t dare.
This wasn’t about her discomfort. It was about saving lives. The man behind her slid her empty glass away and replaced it with a new one, then leaned in near her ear, his breath warm on her neck. “Enjoy.” A shiver of unease, much like what she’d felt inside the lab with Derek, rushed down her spine. The first man – Alex – leaned an elbow on the table, close as well. She was sandwiched between them and wondering why she had thought this was a good idea.
“What brings a pretty girl like you to a bar by herself?”
“Boyfriend fucked my best friend,” she said flatly, not sure where the words came from, because she didn’t speak like that. Yet she had now. The words, the piece of her past, had come to her easily – too easily, helped along, no doubt, by alcohol. “She’s my dorm mate. I don’t want to stay there tonight.” He arched a brow. The man behind her slid his hands to her waist. “Drink that drink. It’ll make you forget.”
She could already feel the buzz of downing the other drink. She studied Alex, cast him a pleading look.
“Sometimes a drink isn’t enough.” She grabbed his hand, desperate to avoid letting herself slip into a deeper haze of the booze she knew she couldn’t handle. “Let’s dance.” He wrapped his arm around her and spun her so that her back was against the wall, pressing up close to her. “Kiss me first,” he said.
“Get the fuck off of her,” came a familiar male voice that Kelly couldn’t quite place.
Alex turned sharply but he didn’t say anything. He stepped to the left, away from her and Kelly was shocked to see Detective Wright standing in front of her. Slowly his lips curved into a sardonic smile, before he grabbed her and pulled her against him, sliding his hand in her hair. “I knew you’d come.” She blinked. “What?”
He lowered his mouth just above hers. “I got you your sample from your two boyfriends. Their dealers, you know? I told them my girlfriend wanted to ride me long and hard tonight so you better convince them I meant it.” He tugged her mouth to his and kissed her. It was all she could do not to push him away, not to bite his tongue when it slid into her mouth. And when his hand slid over her breast, she barely contained a scream of fury. Somehow though, she reminded herself that he had a sample of the drug she sought, he’d gotten what she needed to help save lives. She’d endure, she’d survive. Suddenly he released her mouth and grabbed her hand. “Come with me.”
He all but dragged her until they were alone and in a hallway behind the bathrooms. He shoved her against the wall. “Enough with the role playing!” she objected.
His hand slid roughly into her hair and then he buried his face in her neck. A sudden piercing sensation shocked her breath from her. As quickly as the sensation started, he was gone, jerked away from her. She flattened against the wall, her heart pounding so hard she thought it would explode from her chest. She blinked Aiden into focus at the same moment he shoved Detective Wright at another tall, blond male and growled, “Get him the fuck out of here and make him talk.” Her fingers went to her neck, instantly wet. What had he done to her?
Chapter Four
The sorry bastard had bitten her. Though without the sharing of blood she was in no long term danger, but Aiden was furious that she�
�d been hurt. He stepped closer to her. The scent of her blood, sweet and feminine, called to the vampire in him. The scent of her fear, her panic, called to the man. He positioned his body against hers, his thighs framing hers so that he blocked her from the sight of anyone who might enter the deserted hallway behind them.
His hands caressed her cheeks, bringing her gaze to his. “You’re going to be okay, Sweetheart. You have my word.”
“I’m bleeding. He…I don’t know what he did to me.”
“Let me look,” he urged softly, knowing what he would find, knowing there would be bite marks he should never have allowed to happen. He’d resisted playing with her mind, her memories. In turn, he’d almost gotten her killed. He’d given her a weak, too vague, compulsion to call him before acting on a lead.
She nodded, trust overflowing from those gorgeous hazel eyes. The significance of her trust in him, someone she barely knew, given to him after an attack by someone she had known, didn’t escape him.
Given to him when he didn’t deserve it, when he shouldn’t want it, anymore than he should want the attachment he was forming for her. But he did, damn it to hell, he did in a bad way.
Aiden brushed the silky strands of her hair away from her neck, an image of that hair draped over his bare chest impossible to avoid. He wanted her. He’d wanted her from the instant he’d seen her. He tilted her head slightly to one side, dipped his head to the blood seeping down her neck. There was nothing as erotic to a vampire as blood. Hot fire bled through his veins. His tongue slid over the wound, the small droplets of blood teasing his taste buds and his senses with the sweet ruby wine flavor.
“Oh,” she gasped. “What are you — I…”
His hand settled on her waist, his lips moving from the sealed wound to her ear. “Kissing it to make it better,” he whispered, electricity charging the air around them. His cheek slid across hers, his lips lingering just above hers, every nerve in his body aware of her in ways he didn’t remember ever being aware of a woman. Voices sounded just around the corner, approaching quickly, jerking him back to his senses. He cursed under his breath at the distraction and grabbed her hand. “Let’s get out of here.” He didn’t wait for her answer. He’d almost gotten her killed once tonight, he wasn’t doing it again.
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