Bound to Shadows

I’d like to thank:
Everyone at Bantam who helped shine
this book—most especially my editor, Anne; her
assistant, David; all the line and copy editors
who make sense of my Aussie English;
and cover designer Juliana Kolesova.
I’d also like to thank my agent, Miriam, as well as
my buddies and crit partners—Robyn, Mel, Chris,
Carolyn, and Freya. You all rock, ladies.

I
’ve come to accept the fact that I’m a guardian. I’ll even
admit that I enjoy hunting down those rogue supernatural elements who prey on humans and
non-humans alike.
But that doesn’t mean there still aren’t times when I absolutely hate my job.
Getting a call-out at three A.M. on a bitterly cold winter night was definitely one of those
times. Especially when the call sent me to an area rapidly gaining a reputation as the “it” spot
for blood whores—which was the common term for humans hooked on the pleasures of a vampire’s
bite.
Normally I didn’t have a problem with people getting their kicks any damn way they pleased, but
for humans—and it only seemed to afflict humans, not the rest of us—becoming addicted to a
vampire’s bite was definitely one of the quicker ways to court death. They simply didn’t have the
strength, the speed, or even the willpower to battle a vampire if things went wrong. Hell, many
supernaturals didn’t, either.
And while most vampires were generally law-abiding and took only enough to give the addicted his
or her hit, there were always some abusers who pushed for longer, stronger rushes, and there were
always vampires willing to oblige.
And sometimes that meant death.
It had become such a problem in recent months that the government had set up a think tank to find
ways of curtailing the growing numbers flocking to the vampire bars. There were even calls to
outlaw the practice—though how the hell anyone was going to police
that
, I had no idea. It wasn’t like ordinary cops had much hope of tracking down
and arresting vamps, and there simply weren’t enough of us guardians. Not if they wanted us to do
our real job.
Personally, I think they had about as much hope of stopping this craze as they did stopping all
the designer drugs that were constantly hitting the streets. If a junkie wanted his fix, then
he’d find it no matter how difficult or how illegal the government made it. And at least all the
whores were of legal age—the vampire “pushers” were careful about that. They had to be, because
otherwise they had to deal with the Directorate. Regular drug dealers just got jail time, at
worst.
Of course, there was no proof that the murder I’d been called to tonight was yet another pleasure
seeker who’d pushed too far. Jack had simply told me to get my butt over there pronto, and the
edge in his voice had me scrambling for clothes and not taking the time for questions. But the
murder had happened in the older section of Fitzroy, in a parking lot behind Dante’s—and that
club was a prime location for blood whores and their vampire johns.
I slowed the car as I passed through the Smith Street intersection, then turned left onto Budd
Street. Several of the streetlights were out, and darkness closed in around the car. The
buildings here were mainly old factories and warehouses, their brick walls grimy and covered with
graffiti. The few houses squeezed in between the larger buildings were dark—and with the graffiti
on their walls and the filth littering their front fences, it was hard to tell whether they were
occupied or not. But I was a dhampire—part werewolf, part vampire—and had inherited many gifts
from both parts of my heritage. The vampire part of my soul could see the blood heat within those
buildings—although unlike my twin brother, I couldn’t hear the siren call of their
heartbeats.
And I was damn glad of that, because it meant I’d also missed out on the vampire’s hunger for
blood. Rhoan hadn’t, but he
had
missed the fangs, and his blood
hunger rose in tandem only with the full moon.
The crime scene came into view and I pulled up behind a Directorate van. The wind’s icy fingers
slapped across the back of my neck as I climbed out, and I hastily zipped up my jacket then
pulled up the collar. It didn’t help much. I might be a werewolf, and therefore supposedly immune
to the winter, but the cold and I had never been on friendly terms.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and walked toward the parking lot. The rotating blue lights of
the squad cars washed the night and the few bystanders in a ghostly glow, but as far as I could
see or feel, there were no actual ghosts in the area. And if this
was
just a feeding taken too far, then there probably wouldn’t be. As far as I knew, the souls that
hung around tended to be the ones who’d met a violent end or who had something they needed to
finish before they moved on. And blood whores didn’t fit either of those categories, because
they’d gone to their deaths knowing the dangers and not caring one bit.
And that’s probably what annoyed me most. These people were knowingly flirting with death, yet
when he answered, everyone got righteously moral and wanted the vamp responsible caught and
killed. And the guardians were obliged to obey, because that was the law. But killing a blood
whore wasn’t a simple act of murder. It was consensual, and that raised a whole different set of
issues. And although I
did
believe the vamp involved needed to be
punished, killing him seemed a step too far. Most of the vampire community agreed.
Meaning that the worst part of the whole situation was the fact that our pursuit of these vamps
was raising a lot of bad feeling in the supernatural community. And having the city’s vampires
angry at us could only ever end badly. There were a whole lot more of them than us, and as well
trained as we guardians were, we didn’t have a hope if the vamps decided we were too much of a
problem.
Of course, the two vampires who dominated my life—Quinn, my lover, and Jack, my boss—thought I
was making too much of the situation. Jack even kept trying to reassure me with the fact that the
vampire council had a handle on it. I didn’t believe it—or them. They weren’t out on the street
dealing with the ill feeling day in and day out. They simply didn’t understand how bad it was
getting.
I did, and I didn’t mind admitting that it scared me.
The parking lot had several cars in it. The mobile light towers weren’t trained on any of them,
but rather on the corner of the lot, where it intersected with Dante’s back wall. There were
several overall-clad men there, and relief slithered through me as I caught the glint of silver
hair. Cole might be our top guy when it came to crime scene forensics, but he also hated these
early-morning call-outs as much as I did. That meant he’d be doing his best to find the clues and
get the hell home as quickly as possible.
As I ducked under the blue and white police tape lining the parking lot, one of the cops keeping
an eye on the small crowd huddled in the middle of the road took a step in my direction. I
grabbed my badge and flashed it his way, shivering a little as the wind hit my fingers and
chilled them in an instant.
The cop gave me a nod and turned back. I stepped over the gnarled roots of a small tree
struggling to survive in a little corner of bare ground then flared my nostrils, drawing in the
flavors of the night.
Blood was the strongest scent, and that surprised me. Most vampires hated wasting their food, so
maybe this murder
wasn’t
as straightforward as I’d been
presuming.
Cole looked up as I approached, his lined face weary and dark shadows under his normally bright
blue eyes. “You took your time.”
“And you look like shit.” I stopped beside him and stared down at the victim.
He was male, probably in his mid to late forties if his worn features and gray-flecked hair were
anything to go by. There were no obvious wounds on his body, and very little in the way of blood
on the front of his clothes. His arms had been crossed over his chest, almost as if he were
asleep rather than dead. But someone had separated his head from his neck, and even a vampire
couldn’t survive that.
The blood that was missing from his clothes formed a lake around the area where his head should
have been.
“Have you bothered looking in the mirror lately?” Cole snapped off his bloody gloves and tossed
them into a nearby contamination bin.
“I’m trying to avoid them. Between working day shifts and getting call-outs at night, the bags
under my eyes feel large enough to pack a lunch in. Who’s our victim?”
“Grant Haven, a local vampire who owned a café up on Smith Street.” Cole handed me a pair of
slip-on shoe protectors. “Apparently he finished locking up at one and was heading to Dante’s for
a little top-up feeding.”
“There were no witnesses?” I slipped on the shoe protectors then stepped forward, avoiding the
thickening pool of blood as I studied the severed flesh. It wasn’t a clean wound. In fact, the
edges were all ragged, as if the killer had used some sort of serrated blade.
“No witnesses have come forward,” Cole said. “But there’s a whole club of people just waiting to
be interviewed.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.” I glanced at him. His blue eyes were filled with amusement and a
smile twitched at the corners of his lips. My long night had just stretched into an interminable
morning. “You’re a bastard.”
“Those were Jack’s orders, not mine.”
Then Jack was a bastard. God, he knew I hated interviewing these idiots. “We’ll never get
anything sensible out of them. They’ll all be high.”
Although, truth be told, the high from a vamp bite didn’t last all that long—just like the
pleasure received from sex, really. And like sex, most humans could stand only several hits
before it weakened them to the point of sleep.
I guess we were lucky nonhumans didn’t get addicted, because I very much doubted there’d be
enough vampires in Melbourne to cater to a werewolf’s hunger.
“If it helps any, there aren’t many customers. Tuesday is apparently their slow night.”
Well, thank God for small mercies. I nodded down at the victim. “Who called it in?”
He motioned toward Dante’s. “The caller was anonymous, but we traced the line and location. The
cellphone belonged to a Mandy Jones, and the call came from inside Dante’s.”
Meaning she was likely still there. “She obviously doesn’t know a lot about Directorate practices
if she thought she could remain anonymous.”
Cole smiled. “I don’t think the Directorate actually advertises the fact they trace every single
call coming in or out.”
That was true. I’d only discovered it because I’d been horribly nosy during my time as Jack’s
assistant, and I’d often gone trawling through the computer system to see what I could find. “Do
we know who owns Dante’s?”
“Unsurprisingly enough, a vamp named Dante Starke.”
“What do we know about him?”
Cole shrugged. “He has a rep for preferring to handle his own problems. Other than that, you’ll
have to check the system.”
“Preferring to handle his own problems” probably meant he hated cops. And guardians. Great. “What
was used on the victim’s neck?”
“Rough-tooth saw. Dusty found it discarded in one of the bins behind the club. But it’s been
wiped clean of anything useful.”
I glanced around and saw the shifter in question hunkering down over what looked like an oil
stain. Cole’s other assistant, Dobbs, was nowhere in sight—but given the three of them usually
traveled together, I knew he’d be around somewhere. “Was it a new or old saw?”
“Brand-new. It still had the Bunnings price tag on it.”
“Any chance of tracking down which store it was purchased at?”
“Maybe. But even if we found the right hardware store, I don’t think they’d be much help. They
probably sell hundreds of the things each week.”
“Still, it’s worth a shot.” I frowned down at the vamp’s unmarked body. “He doesn’t appear to
have put up a fight of any kind.”
“None at all, which leads me to suspect that he’s probably been drugged. We’ll run the full
toxicology when we get him back to the lab.”
“So there’s no indication so far of who our murderer might be?”
“Well, sawing through a person’s neck takes strength, so we’re probably looking for either a
large male or a nonhuman.”
“Gee, that really narrows down the field.”
“Best I’ve got for the moment,” Cole said, snapping on a new set of gloves. “Now, if that’s all
you’ve got, I’ve really got to get back to work. I have a bed and a lover waiting.”
I raised my eyebrows. For as long as I’d known him he’d been relationship free, so the woman
who’d finally caught his interest had to be someone pretty special.
“She has to be new, because anyone familiar with our line of work wouldn’t bother waiting.” Hell,
Quinn hadn’t. He’d mumbled something about bundling up against the cold and had promptly gone
back to sleep. Anyone would think I’d worn the old vampire out. “So, is it anyone I
know?”
“No.” His smile bloomed bright. Man, he had the love bug
bad
. “And
no, I will not share details. Now go do some work.”
“You do realize that I am now officially intrigued?”
He groaned. “Please don’t go investigating. I don’t want to scare her away.”
I grinned as I stripped off the shoe protectors and tossed them in the hazard bin.
“Riley, don’t.” He almost sounded worried.
“Don’t what?” I raised my eyebrows, pretending an innocence that probably wasn’t believable given
the grin I couldn’t quite control.
“Don’t try and play innocent. You’re as far from that as anyone could get.”
He had a point there. “I just want to protect your interests. I’d do the same for any
friend.”
“Then please consider me an enemy.”
I patted his shoulder as I passed. “Sorry, I’ve got suspects to interview. We’ll continue this
discussion later. Over coffee.”
“You are such a bitch,” he muttered, but the twinkle in his eyes took the bite out of his words.
“And you’d do anything to get a free coffee, wouldn’t you?”
“Totally,” I said, and left him to it.
There were two uniforms stationed at the entrance to Dante’s, along with a dark-eyed man who
looked in serious need of a good feed. He was standing to one side of the doorway, under a blue
light, and it gave his sallow features an even sicker glow. His dark gaze was never still,
flickering from the cops to me, then onto the surrounding streets.
I showed the cops my badge and met the other man’s gaze. “Who are you?”
“Valentine Smith. I’m the bouncer here.”
He didn’t look as if he could bounce a kitten out the door let alone anyone larger. But then, if
he was a vampire—and given the rather pungent scent he was emitting, he couldn’t be anything
else—his looks would have been misleading. Even the scrawniest of vampires had more strength than
the average nonhuman. And far more than any human.