A Witch Called Red: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 1)
Page 19
Red turned around to see Lucas step through the automatic doors. Her heart started racing. “That was him.”
Lucas put his hands in his pockets as his gray eyes followed Kristoff’s car. His brow furrowed and his shoulders slumped. Instead of angry jealousy, Lucas radiated worry. “Find what you were looking for?”
“I saw her.” Red walked toward Lucas. “Kristoff has a picture of her in his gallery.”
“I’d like to see that.” A sad earnestness creeped into his voice. Lucas looked down, then turned and started walking to the door. “Quinn wants all eyes on this girl. I left him upstairs.”
“What? No lecture?” Red asked when she caught up, the sterile hospital air already making her skin crawl.
“You said you can handle yourself.” Lucas took her past a nurse’s station to an elevator. “Didn’t expect you to be hopping out of his car, but a man has to assume you have reasons.”
“I hadn’t finished questioning him. I wasn’t satisfied with walking away from the case.”
“Are you satisfied now?” Lucas lifted his eyebrow, glancing at her.
“I’m satisfied that he didn’t kill Olivia Greene, since he was with a tabloid queen at the same time.” Red held out her phone to show the screencap of the timestamped livestream in the club where Kristoff was in full view at Olivia’s time of death. “Now, I know he didn’t attack whoever Quinn found outside his office. Beyond her body being found at his club, there isn’t any evidence that he had anything to do with Julia Crispin either. Those are facts.” Red put her phone away in her back pocket and dipped her head, biting her lip. “I’m not so naïve to think he’s an ally. I can hear the worry, even if you aren’t saying it.”
A twitch pulsed in Lucas’s jaw as he looked down before taking a unneeded deep breath. “You gave me the business, Red—trust you or don’t. I’m going to trust you. Not him.”
“I’m not asking for that. I learned enough to know that ship has sailed.” Red opened her mouth to continue, but the lights went out, and the elevator car shuddered to a stop. “A blackout? Not now.”
The emergency lights flickered on.
“No such thing as coincidence, Red.” Lucas glanced around at the elevator car. “Quinn is alone up there.”
Red hit the emergency call button. “Fuck, no one’s answering.” She looked up at the small door in the ceiling, thanking her lucky stars for outdated elevators. “Boost me up.”
Stepping onto Lucas’s cupped hands, she opened it before jumping back down. “Okay. Do a vampire thing and get help.”
Lucas jumped straight out of the elevator, landing on the top with a thud. His voice echoed in the empty elevator shaft. “We’re between floors. Give me a mo’ to jump and pry open the door.”
The elevator jerked to a start. Lucas jumped back down into the car, landing in a crouch, black bangs covering his face. He looked up at Red as he stood, head cocked to listen. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air. His storm gray eyes narrowed.
“Maybe it was a rolling blackout,” Red said, but the sentence caught in her throat as the elevator door opened to chaos.
Alarms rang as flashing lights strobed on the beige linoleum and a deserted nursing station. A doctor in blue scrubs ran after two cops around the corner.
Red and Lucas ran after them. Lucas shot ahead.
Red followed, leaning on the door threshold as she peeped into the hospital room.
In a pool of blood, a blond woman twitched in a hospital bed surrounded by nurses and doctors.
Red gasped, recognizing the woman. She had been the model that giggled to her about Delilah’s love life before a meeting at DB Models. Her name was Carrie Baldwin, and she’d been so excited about a marketing campaign that she’d just landed that she’d decided to stay with the company. Red shook her head and covered her mouth.
Carrie should have quit.
Red should have told her to.
Quinn appeared behind her. “I lost them.” His brown eyes were haunted with the same failure that Red felt.
The heart monitor beeps went flatline.
“11:48 p.m. She’s gone,” a doctor called out, wiping his arm across his forehead, leaving a smear of blood.
Red turned away and clenched her fists. She had come to LA to stop these murders, not see the bodies pile up around her. Blinking away tears, she watched Quinn speak to the officers without seeing.
“Let’s get out of here,” Lucas said quietly and led her away.
Red stopped processing, numb from the carnage as she followed him. She didn’t speak until she was bundled into the back seat of Quinn’s convertible. “What the hell happened up there, Quinn?”
“I stepped out to speak to an officer then the blackout hit. When I came back, I found the nurse screaming. The woman was going to wake up. Until they cut her throat.”
“Why your place? Why would they dump her there?” Red looked at Quinn’s face in the rearview mirror. “Vic keeps talking conspiracy, but this pattern feels personal. Two of the bodies were left at the lairs of former members of the Order of Alaric. Why would someone want to leave you a drained woman like a cat with a bird?”
“I don’t know. It’s a message, but I don’t know who it’s from.” Quinn’s brown eyes met hers for a moment before focusing back on the road.
“Three girls in a week. That’s a hell of a message.” Lucas cracked his knuckles. “I got one of my own for the sender.”
The short car ride from the hospital ended in the parking lot behind the office strip mall where Quinn Investigations made its home. The breeze carried the scent of curry from the Indian restaurant next door. Red and blue lights from cop cars painted the white building.
Red stepped out onto the asphalt with her eyes on the cops and crime scene techs. Her hope to search the crime scene dissolved. She unzipped her hoodie to let it drape down over her leather kit on her thigh. The outline of her small palm-sized pistol didn’t show through the bulky leather, but habit moved her hand. She followed behind Quinn and Lucas toward the office door.
A dark-skinned detective, badge on the lapel of her navy pantsuit, met them on the sidewalk. Young for her position, she surveyed the crime scene with her arms folded like a commander. The flyaways in her shoulder-length relaxed hair, wrinkled suit, and pressed together lips spoke of a long night without words.
Red pulled back to stand beside Lucas, trying to blend in with the scenery. Her standard operating procedure with cops was to avoid them. Hunters looked a lot like violent drifters if you didn’t know what was behind the Dark Veil.
“Detective Callaway.” Quinn nodded. “You heard?”
“The call came before you did. This is the part where you spill what I need to know about this vampire shit.” Detective Callaway spit out the word vampire with a shudder. She raised her hand. “And if you just say Blood Summit and disappear again like I’m supposed to know what it means, I’m walking away.”
“If I knew who was doing this, they would have been staked by now,” Quinn said.
“Our vic isn’t the only one. I’m finding more drained people than ever.” The detective shook her head. “Brass is keeping it quiet. As usual.”
“It ends after Halloween,” Quinn said softly.
“That’s not good enough.” Callaway raised her palm to stop him from speaking. “I staked a vampire biting a dishwasher on Cienega last week. Souled. Thought you people were the good guys.”
“You shouldn’t have been hun—”
“You know what he told me? He said it was time to choose sides.” Callaway licked her lips. “I don’t care about the bullshit vampire politics. These murders need to end.”
Quinn nodded, broad shoulders seeming small, wrapped in an aura of guilt.
“You’re giving me nothing, Byrnes. You’re not the one who has to lie to this poor murdered girl’s family.” Callaway looked down and hugged herself for a moment before her expression grew remote, and she straightened her arms. “Choose a side.”
Lucas commented drolly, “The Bloodliners are working hard to get the voters out.”
“What?” Red asked.
“It's no democracy, but the management likes to take the pulse of public opinion,” Lucas said.
“Cora is taking the stage at the Blood Summit after the Halloween Ball to promote her catch and release policy,” Quinn said.
“Let me guess, she isn’t gaining friends with it.” Red looked over at the yellow crime scene tape wrapped around the five parking spaces, then to the entrance to the suite of offices where Quinn Investigations rubbed elbows with a massage therapist and an accountant. “Were you able to search a bit before the cops came?”
Quinn shrugged. “I did a look over the parking lot, but I was too focused on stopping her bleeding and calling the ambulance to pick anything up.”
“Did you see anything that looked like an antique?”
“What are you thinking?” Lucas grinned.
Red pulled out her phone to scroll to a picture in her gallery of the broken locket. “Did you see anything like this? Remember, I found it at Julia Crispin’s murder scene.”
Quinn stared down at the small portrait in the locket and furrowed his brow. “No, but that woman… Lucas, does she look familiar to you?”
Lucas shrugged. “Not ringing any bells.”
“You never remember anyone.” Quinn sighed as if they had bickered about this longer than Red had been alive. They probably had.
Red looked around at the officers getting a witness statement from a waitress by the Indian restaurant and forensic technicians taking pictures of the blood splatters marked with yellow cards. “They’ll pick the scene clean.”
“You should leave. You can’t do anything here.” Quinn nodded to Lucas. “I have business.”
Red blinked and Quinn was gone. Only the rev of the convertible engine from the street hinted where he had gone. “The detective is right. That disappearing stuff is annoying.”
“Let me get you back to Sleeping Beauty at the hotel.” Lucas held up his motorcycle keys.
“You weren’t long after Quinn in finding her. Did you see if she had a mark carved into her?” Red asked instead.
“Yeah, a circle. Or an ouroboros.” Lucas gestured to his left arm. “Just like the rest.”
“Consistent.” Red focused on the patterns even if her head spun from the questions. She realized she had gone silent and coughed to cover it. “You’re going to come back here and case the scene, aren’t you?”
Lucas tensed as if preparing for an argument. “From the roof.”
Red nodded, the trains of thought multiplying as she started walking toward the door to Quinn Investigations. “We’ll need to text Vic whatever we learn.”
“Where are you going, Red?” Lucas asked, lips quirked in amusement.
Red paused. “Um, the roof?”
He tensed as if to argue before he nodded toward the other side of the parking lot. “Ladder is this way.”
Ducking her head, Red smiled and shook her head at herself for assuming he’d stop her before following him.
Two days before Halloween, four murdered women, and more vampires than she could shake a stake at—Red felt beyond back at zero. Her gut told her that Kristoff might be a danger to her, but he wasn’t their murderer. The evidence validated it, even as more questions bubbled up. After a week, she had successfully confirmed at least one vampire had not killed at least one of their victims.
That just left the rest of the vampires in Los Angeles as suspects.
Chapter Fifteen
October 30th, Midnight, Quinn Investigations in Culver City, Los Angeles, California, USA
Feeling only stray burnt kernels at the buttery bottom of the bag, Red frowned before wiping her hands on the napkin. The breeze whipped her hair back. Her dinner of a greasy noodle bowl felt so long ago after Delilah’s warning, questioning Kristoff, and then another victim left behind in the parking lot of Quinn Investigations. She had nearly inhaled the popcorn and would do it again. She looked down in the empty bag. “All gone.”
“Call Guinness, it’s a record. I think it took less time for you to eat it than it did to make it.” Lucas tilted his head, an easy smile on his face.
“Reconnaissance is hungry business,” Red said primly before glancing back at the crime scene in the parking lot. Perched on the edge of the roof, she could see the crime scene technicians bent over evidence tags and blood splatters. The crew was packing up the last of the evidence. She smiled at him. “Thanks for making it.”
“I burnt it.” Lucas shook his head, but a small grin lingered on his lips.
“Is it a vampire thing because you’re not a solids man, or is it you?”
“Personal failing.” Lucas smirked. “I’m told I over-spice too.”
“Huh.” She had read about vampires, met her share, even knew one who made a mean plate of chicken and waffles, but she had never gotten close enough to observe the less lethal vampire quirks. “That’s weird. You’d think with your sense of smell your taste would be enhanced.”
“Food doesn’t taste the same. Can’t even eat much of it.” Lucas raised his beer can. “Thank the bloody lord, drinking is another story.” He took a sip before he looked at her and laughed. “I can see the question, and no, I don’t pee. Whatever magic keeps me walking, that takes care of it.”
Red blushed from him being able to read the juvenile question on her face. It didn’t stop her from asking another. “Can you throw up? I’m imagining something cat-like.”
“Everything with a mouth can ralph. That’s science.” Lucas smirked self-deprecatingly. “I paid more attention in literature class than in biology.”
“I noticed your bookshelf. You had some good books in there mixed with the random crap like your boots and a few old joints in a teacup. You need a real ashtray.”
“If I’d known Quinn was turning the place into an Airbnb, I would’ve tidied up.” Lucas smiled. “You left On the Road by the nightstand.”
“I’ve read it before, but sometimes I like to visit my old friends.” Red ducked her head. “You were a writer before the Byrneses found you?”
“I was a glorified clerk at my father’s shipping business, but yes, I did fancy myself a writer. I scribbled more on my overwrought stories than worked.” Lucas shrugged. “Nepotism got me the position. My father’s death kept me in it.”
“Do you still write?”
“I’ve picked up the pen a time or two, but to Delilah’s chagrin, that literary flair died with me. I was too busy drinking deep from the cup of life in the early days to write about it.”
Red smiled. “What about now? At the very least, you have a memoir in you. A long one.”
Lucas dipped his head. “The truth was that I wrote stories about the lives I wanted to live but didn’t have the stones to.” He drank slowly from his beer. “I was a bored romantic. Then Justine swept into my world in a whirlwind of moonlight and mystery. Of course, I said yes to wherever she would take me.”
Red remembered the small picture of Justine Byrnes from the Bard’s database, the mad vampire with the angelic face and raven hair who had sired Lucas and brought him into the harsh glittering supernatural world.
“I didn’t live until I died.” Lucas raised his beer can to her. “That isn’t a problem you have as a hunter. You’ve seen more adventure in the last week than I saw in my entire human life.”
“The people you meet on the road do liven things up.” Red smiled and looked away. She knew this was the part in the conversation where a normal girl would talk about herself, share something about her family, or talk about college. Red didn’t have normal conversations. There wasn’t enough in her memory for one.
She talked about demons, murders, and the occasional sci-fi show. Lucas had shared so much about himself, but she still couldn’t lay down her cards
. Red stood, grabbing the popcorn bag with her. “It looks like they’re leaving. Let’s do a quick sweep.”
Red climbed down first. The ladder was hidden between a fence and the small one-floor strip mall. Putting her hands in her pockets after throwing away the popcorn bag, she walked over to where a strip of yellow police tape draped on the ground.
Lucas circled around the five spaces in the parking lot where the murdered woman, Carrie Baldwin, had been dumped.
Red had taken notes with her phone on the areas where the CSI had marked blood splatters and lingered taking samples and tire prints. She went over the areas, finding only signs of the cops, before crouching down to check under a car.