by Jenn Burke
“Not a myth, but for the most part I’m a normal guy.”
“Normal.” He snorted in disbelief. “You’re a fucking god.”
“Yeah, well...” What did I say to that? “I’m a god who needs a bit of help?”
“What kind of help?”
“I’m looking for Logan Marchand.”
“Who?”
I pulled out my phone and found the picture of Isabel with Logan in the background. “This guy.”
“Oh. Yeah, okay. I know him by Low. That’s his girlfriend.”
“Was.” At his blank look, I clarified, “She died of a drug overdose a few days ago.”
“Holy shit. You’re kidding.”
“Not kidding, no.”
He leaned in closer, shooting a look at the lane with the humans. “But she was a shifter!”
“Yeah. There seems to be a bit of a trend.”
He pushed the first pint of beer at me. “A trend how?”
“Shifters ending up in the morgue due to overdoses. Heard anything about that?”
“Holy—no. Not a thing.” From the shock in his voice, I could only surmise he was telling the truth. “What the hell? Are they bingeing or something?”
“No idea.” I pulled a Caballero Investigations card out of my wallet, along with enough cash to cover the drinks and then some. “Maybe keep your ears open and give me a call if you hear anything useful?”
“You got it.” He finished up the other two pints, pocketed the cash and the card, and held out his hand. “I’m Don, by the way. Don Kusugak. I own the place.”
I shook. “Nice to meet you.”
“So you think Low had something to do with Isa’s death?”
“I don’t know. We only want to talk with him.”
“If he was gonna come in, he’d be here by now. I hear he runs in the Rouge a couple of nights a week. The national park northeast of Scarborough?”
“At night?” He must be a dedicated runner, or—oh. “Running. On four feet. Got it.”
“They’ve got an unofficial clan or something. I think someone said they numbered about a dozen or so.”
Well. That should be fun. I picked up the pints and thanked Don before heading back to Hudson and Priya.
“Took you long enough,” Priya said. “I’m right parched.” She downed one of the pints without taking a breath—and let out a belch to rival anything I’d heard coming from Hudson. “Pardon.”
Wordlessly, I handed over my pint.
She gifted me with a blinding smile. “Cheers!”
We filled the next hour or so with friendly bets and banter, and despite our original motivation for coming here, I had to admit it was the nicest few hours I’d spent out in some time. Even if the shifters kept shooting nasty looks at Hudson now and again. After four more games, we decided to call it a night. Priya headed to the ladies’ room and Hudson and I went to the front desk to settle our tab.
The same shifter who’d been at the bar sauntered over as we waited for Priya, getting up in Hudson’s personal space. Hudson held his ground.
“Can I help you?” he asked blandly.
The shifter looked up at him—because, like most people, he was a few inches shorter than Hudson. “Your kind isn’t welcome here.”
“And what kind is that? Tall, handsome, Spanish?” Hudson smirked.
“Bloodsucker.”
“I prefer ‘toothily endowed.’”
“You think you’re funny?”
“Not really. I do think I’m minding my own business, though, and you’re the one looking for trouble.”
The shifter bristled. “Is that a threat?”
“Down, boy.”
“I’m not your fucking dog, you prick.”
Hudson had nearly forty years’ experience dealing with assholes who wanted to give him a hard time, and it showed in his calm demeanor and unflappable smirk. But this guy was getting on my nerves. I was tempted to go ghost and slip through him to chill him to the bone, but there were still humans in the bar—even if they weren’t paying any attention to us. Well...pretending they weren’t. The shifter’s snarls and barks were getting louder as he failed to get a rise out of Hudson.
Wait. How long had Priya been gone for?
Hudson must have sensed my sudden spike in worry because he turned his attention from the shifter to me. “Go,” he said softly.
I stepped behind his bulky form so he was between me and the humans in the second lane, and slipped into the otherplane. I didn’t waste any time zooming across the bar to the door set in the far wall with Washrooms above it. Now, strategy. I didn’t want to ghost my way into the ladies’ room—because rude and probably unnecessary, given that I couldn’t hear any sounds of distress. I rematerialized and rapped on the door instead.
“Priya?”
The door opened and Priya filled the space, a wide smile stretching her lips. Her eyes glittered with...something. Amusement? Triumph? I wasn’t sure, but it was a little unsettling to see a predatory gaze so much like Hudson’s on a woman who was anything but a predator.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Right as rain. This bloke wanted to dance with me, but I told him the loo was not the place to show a lady a good time.” She stepped out of the doorway so I could see the guy moaning on the floor.
“Holy shit.” I blinked at her. “You did this?”
“I’ve got a red belt in tae kwon do.” She shrugged and flipped her hair over her shoulder, before marching past me.
I watched the guy writhing on the floor for another second, then took a step closer as I caught sight of something on his neck, under his ear. A shifter brand. It didn’t match anything I’d seen before, but that didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Priya—a human—had taken out a shifter with literally her bare hands.
I guess that meant we didn’t need to worry about her wandering the streets of TO alone.
“Asshole,” I muttered, and started out the door.
“Her—she—” The shifter’s words were interrupted by a stream of vomit, and I backed away quickly, swallowing down my own gorge.
I informed Don of the mess as I headed back out to join Hudson and Priya. “I wouldn’t be too sympathetic,” I advised. “Considering he got his ass kicked while trying something with my boyfriend’s niece.”
“That so?” Don scowled again, but this time, it was focused on the shifters in the first lane. “I’ll take care of it. Wes...” He paused. “You can come back anytime, eh? You and whoever.”
I gave him a crooked grin. “Thanks, man.”
That was me. Wes, the god of who knew, winning hearts and minds since 2019.
Chapter Five
When a cop asks you to come downtown for a chat, it generally wasn’t because they liked your company. Hudson got a call from Kat when we were in the car with Priya, so he couldn’t get much information, but I figured it had to be something extra weird for her to ask him to consult on some photos. We dropped Priya off at home, then headed downtown—whether Kat wanted my presence or not, she was going to get it.
Police headquarters was quiet—at least I assumed quieter at this time of night than it was during the day. Kat didn’t say anything about me being there with Hudson. She led us to a conference room and closed the door. We sat down.
“Did you find the drugs in Gordon’s car?” Hudson asked.
Kat put the folder she was carrying on the table in front of her. “We did. The lab is analyzing a few samples, but last I heard, they weren’t sure what to make of the drug. All I know is what it isn’t—not cannabis, not synthetic, seems to contain some fentanyl. But that’s not why I called you down here.”
She opened the folder and spread out a series of photos on the table. Each picture—there were ten in total—showed what looked like meat.
Until my brain put the shapes and lines together, and I realized what I was looking at.
Ten human corpses with their throats torn out.
My gorge rose and I turned my gaze away. “Jesus Christ, Kat, a little warning?”
“That’s what you get when you show up somewhere uninvited,” she shot back, but there was no real heat in it. She turned her attention to Hudson. “Recognize these pics?” She tapped the first three on the table, which looked older than the other seven. They were faded, their hues yellowed with age.
Hudson leaned forward. “Shit.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yeah. That’s Megan Jones,” he said, nudging the first picture to the side. “And Bob Hurst—” he moved the second picture over “—and Tanya Theriault. From the Pike case.”
I jerked my gaze to him. Underneath the cool façade he was showing Kat was fear and anger and uncertainty, which let me know that, yes, the Pike case was that Pike. The asshole who’d turned Hudson into a vampire.
“These murders were one of the reasons I went undercover,” Hudson continued. “We didn’t have enough evidence to charge Pike with their deaths.”
“I thought you went undercover because of drugs,” I said.
“That too.”
Kat tapped the pictures again. “Did they ever determine what the weapon was that killed them?”
Hudson looked at her with a brow raised, then opened his mouth to show his descended fangs.
She deflated. “Oh, fuck. Really? God. Put those away.”
“On paper, it was some unknown dual-pronged thing, maybe a barbecue fork, but in reality...yeah. Pike was the one who, uh...” He cleared his throat.
“Who what?”
I gripped Hudson’s thigh under the table. “Turned him.”
“No shit.” She sat down hard in a chair on the other side of the table and pushed the old photos aside so she could center the newer ones. “These are from the past two weeks.”
The seven photos were very similar to the other three, except their colors were sharper. So, yay, I got to see the gore in all its high-definition grossness. I decided the wall above Kat’s head was much more interesting.
Hudson pulled the pictures closer...because of course he did. “Same MO.”
“That’s why I wanted you to have a look.”
He leaned back. “If you’re wondering if Pike is killing people again, the answer is no.”
“Yeah? How can you be so sure?”
“Because I am.”
She narrowed her eyes. “That’s not going to cut it. If I’ve got a serial killer out there who’s started up again—”
“You don’t.”
“Goddamn it, Rojas, that’s not enough.”
He set his lips into a firm line. “Because I killed him and the rest of the gang. Happy?”
“Fuck no,” she said, followed by an explosive sigh. “Why would you tell me that?”
He gave her a disbelieving look.
“Yeah, yeah, I need to learn to leave well enough alone. Fuck.” She swiped a hand through her short black hair. “So Pike’s dead. Any theories on these, then?” She flicked her hands at the newer photos.
“Vampires.” At her flat stare, Hudson said, “I’m sorry, but that’s all I’ve got. These are vampire kills. The MO is not limited to a single perpetrator but a type.”
“So you’re telling me that in the twenty years since Pike, no vampires have killed anyone in Toronto?”
Hudson snorted. “Hell no. They’re there. Vamps are usually better at covering up, though. Or not killing their donors, period. It’s not like we need a lot of blood—”
Kat held up a hand. “I’m good with not knowing.”
“So a vamp who does this?” Hudson poked at the pics. “Either they don’t give a shit that it looks beyond weird to the cops, or they’re new and they don’t know any better.”
I frowned. “But that would mean they have a sire that doesn’t care to teach them.”
“True.”
“And that’s a problem.”
“If they’re murdering people, hell yes, that’s a problem,” Kat said. “So what do we do?”
“You got a map?” Hudson asked.
Twenty minutes later, we had a smart board map of the Greater Toronto Area marked with each of the victim’s locations. Not all of them happened within Toronto city limits, which is why no one had put the similarities together sooner. One was found in Walter Saunders Memorial Park, in York. Another was found in an alley in Scarborough. Two were found in Brampton, one behind a grocery store on the west side of town, and one in Cassin Park to the northeast. The fifth victim was found on the shore of Lake Ontario in Oakville. And two university students were found outside a nightclub on King Street.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Hudson muttered, standing in front of the board.
“You’re telling me,” Kat said.
“Ready for more Vampire 101?”
She whimpered. “No. But go ahead.”
“Vampires have territories. In a city the size of TO, with the population it’s got, they don’t have to be big.” With one of the erasable markers, he drew a rough circle around a few blocks east of Queen’s Park. “This is where I did most of my hunting, for years.”
“So other vampires knew not to hunt there?”
“Eh, it was more that this was my comfort zone. If another vampire had come in and started killing people, I would have made sure they knew that was not okay, but like I said, we don’t need a lot of blood, or very frequently—a couple of times a week, max. So if another vamp was hunting—courteously—on the nights I wasn’t, I didn’t care.”
“So seven victims spread out all over the GTA means...” She closed her eyes. “Shit.”
“It means more than one vampire,” Hud confirmed.
“How many more?”
“At least five. More likely six.” He tapped the marker against the Brampton locations. “These ones might be by the same person, but maybe not.” Next, he poked the marker at the King Street double. “This had to have been two vamps since they were killed at the same time—no way the second victim would have stood there waiting her turn while the first died.”
“So we have five or more vampires roaming the Toronto area, killing people.”
“Plus side?”
“Please. I am dying for a plus side.”
“These are probably first kills.”
“How do you figure?”
Hudson put the marker back in the holder. “If these vamps were killing every time they found a donor, your body count would be about triple.”
“Fuck. Okay, well...that’s kinda good. I guess.”
“Um...” I lifted a finger from where I sat, watching the detective and former detective do their deduction thing. “Hud, you’ve been a vampire for about twenty years, and you’ve made exactly one new vampire...by accident.”
“Yeah.” His tone let me know he was wondering where I was going with this.
“Pike, on the other hand, turned all of his biker lieutenants, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So on a scale of you to Pike, how frequently do vampires make new vampires?”
“Not at the rate of five in two weeks, that’s for damn sure.”
I grimaced. “That’s what I thought. So the baby vamps are a problem, but I think the bigger problem is...who’s making them?”
* * *
It was a question I pondered the next day as I accompanied Iskander to a meeting with a new client. With the change in temperature from day to day as autumn descended, his throat had been bothering him, so he liked having someone else with him as a backup in case his voice gave out.
I didn’t doubt he was having trouble—the extra raspiness in his voice was a dead giveaway—but I did think
he played up his lack of voice at times just to see me squirm.
“You’re such a faker,” I accused him as we got into his SUV.
He shot me an unapologetic grin, which was as good as admitting I was right.
“I knew it.”
“She thought you were so cute.”
I glared at him. “If she ruffled my hair one more time...”
The client was an elderly woman who wanted to hire us to track down her late husband’s investments. Apparently he had not been very good at keeping paperwork organized, so all she had to go on was his name and the fact he’d told her about the existence of the investments shortly before he died. She kept asking if I wanted a glass of milk and some cookies. I mean, I know I looked young, but I didn’t look that young.
He pulled away from the curb, his shoulders shaking as he laughed soundlessly. “I couldn’t risk her messing up the pompadour.” He brushed a hand over one side of his hair, barely touching it.
“Yeah, yeah.” I pulled the sun visor down so I could check my own hair in the mirror. I kept it a bit longer on top—eminently ruffleable—and short on the sides, and sure enough, the dark blond strands were mussed and poking up. I tried to flatten them back into some semblance of order. “You’re not cute enough to ruffle.”
After making sure my hair was back in order, I pulled out my phone to check messages. I couldn’t help the sigh as I saw the lack of an indicator.
Isk glanced at me. “Nothing from Ren yet?”
“No.”
Ren was our go-to resource for vampire news, since pretty much every other vampire in Toronto hated Hudson for what he’d done to Pike. Vampires had long memories, man. I’d given Ren a call after leaving police headquarters last night, but he hadn’t answered and clearly wasn’t returning voice mails. Without him as a walking vampire wiki, we were kind of stalled for the moment. There were other places we could go to get info—I knew of at least one vampire bar in town, and I’m sure there were more—but they would require strategizing. And darkness.
Iskander was quiet for a moment as he navigated through traffic. “Is there anything you can do?”
