Dead But Not Forgotten (3 page)

That got her a weary, cold stare. “I don't care who was in here or what you told him, you tell it again. Hell's bells, you're police, you understand how this works.”

They did. Kevin controlled his own frustration, but while he filled in his own answers, he was busy turning over things in his mind.
I don't care who was in here.
That was a funny thing to say. The crime scene was busy, but not that busy.

When he started to ask a question, he got cut off by the Shreveport detective and told they could go. Again. Then the man was off, muttering under his breath.

Kenya let a few seconds go by before she said, “You get the feeling he and Wallace wanted us to turn around and go home?”

“I did.”

“You want to turn around and go home?”

“I don't,” Kevin said. “I don't even think Detective Wallace was police.”

Kenya looked blank for a second, but he knew her mind was racing. It was a pleasure to watch. “That's why we just had to repeat everything,” she said. “So who was he?”

“I think he was sent here to find out what we knew—and if we knew something they thought we shouldn't. Vampire business.”

She slowly nodded, turned her head, and looked out the window. No sign of Detective Wallace. He'd completely vanished from the scene. “Damn,” Kenya said softly. “I did not see that coming.”

“The Bat's Wing,” Kevin said. “Have you ever heard of it? That was the name on the pencil he was using.”

“No.”

He pulled out his cell phone and Googled, and it was right there, top result. It was a vampire bar in Dallas. Close to Shreveport, by virtually no coincidence at all.

He put his phone back. “How do you feel about a road trip to Dallas?”

Kenya gave him a slow, deliberate smile. “Better get a couple of burgers for the road, and change clothes. I don't expect we're making this official.”

She'd switched their bags of civilian clothes, the ones they usually kept in the other (crashed) cruiser, into the new ride. That was what he liked best about Kenya, he thought.

Forward planning.

Kevin had been to Dallas before—he wasn't some hillbilly—but it was a shock coming out of the relative peace of Bon Temps, or even Shreveport. You could see the glow on the horizon long before the city itself materialized, as if it were permanently on fire. Once the buildings began appearing, it was the neon-clad ones first. There was some new downtown hotel with a moving-screen exterior; it was showing random screensaver patterns of pulses and colors, and it was mesmerizing as he took the downtown exit.

“Turn right up here,” Kenya told him. If she was impressed by the lights and the traffic (which was considerable, though it was nearly midnight) she didn't say so. “Well, this looks like Hipster Central.”

It did. The Bat's Wing was in one of those derelict chic neighborhoods that ten years ago would have been crack houses and gang graffiti and today was devoted to herbal shops, stores that specialized in fancy hats, tea rooms, and—just up ahead—a tattoo parlor that no self-respecting biker would ever walk into. Kevin expected it got a brisk trade from sorority girls and soccer moms. Maybe stockbrokers.

The Bat's Wing was two doors down from the tattoo place, which was probably ideal for them both. It had generous parking that was nevertheless completely full, so Kevin eased the cruiser into an illegal space, because cops never ticketed cruisers even if they were out of their own jurisdiction, and no business ever dared tow them.

The building itself was a windowless black-painted cube with a painting of a bat flight in red silhouettes that started small at one corner and exploded into huge wings at the upper diagonal. The neon sign just had a bat silhouette that flapped its wings. Kevin could hear the pump of music through the walls.

“Expensive crowd in there,” Kenya said, nodding toward the cars; she was right, the lot was full of shine and polish, and every single vehicle cost at least three times their annual salary, probably more. Still, he thought she'd fit right in. Kenya's civilian clothes included a close-fitting pair of jeans that hugged her curves and a tight black shirt under a leather jacket. She looked hot and dangerous.

There were no clothes in the world that could make Kevin look buff and chiseled, but he'd done all right. As usual, all eyes would be on Kenya, and that was good. People tended to underestimate him, and it made it much easier to watch her back. He just blended into the woodwork in a place like this. He'd be lucky if people didn't try to order drinks from him.

“Kevin.” Kenya's tone was calm and level, but it had some weight to it, and he blinked and focused on her. “You sure you want to do this?”

“That asshole back at Hardee's knew something,” he said. “I figure it's something we ought to know if we plan to catch Glick before he does worse than he already did. I know it's not our jurisdiction . . .”

“He rammed you with a truck,” she said calmly. “That makes it my jurisdiction. And you're right. I don't figure the Dallas police would put this at the top of their to-do list; they got plenty of bad stuff going on around here.”

“It's weird. I can get past Glick killing a person. I just can't get past him killing that cat.”

“You saw Marie's house. That cat could have died of embarrassment.” She smiled, and looked ten years younger. He couldn't help but grin back. “If the vampires are trying to cover something up, then we're the only ones who know about it right now. Plus, we drove a long way for nothing if we don't at least get a drink.”

He made a grand after-you gesture, and she straightened her jacket and headed on in.

It was probably wrong to admit, even to himself, that watching her back was purely a pleasure.

Kevin had been to the vampire bar Fangtasia before, but he hadn't liked the place much, and it had made him feel worse about vampires, too. Fangtasia had seemed like a cross between a cheap B-movie set and a butcher shop. He'd had the uncomfortable feeling that everybody in it with a pulse was looked on as cuts of meat. He hadn't stayed long, and he'd lied to his mother about where he'd been.

The Bat's Wing made Fangtasia look both better and worse. It was bigger, louder, glossier, and packed with people, but it seemed . . . soulless, in ways even the smaller vampire bar hadn't. If Fangtasia was a butcher shop, this place was a slaughterhouse, moving cows through with ruthless efficiency from farm to plate. Women dressed in skimpy, tight dresses tottered around on heels that ought to come with warning labels, and the men with them were either aging, balding, and wealthy, or gym-obsessed and cruising for a sugar momma.

And then there were the vampires.

They didn't mingle as much as the Fangtasia regulars did; a few glided through the crowd untouched, icy and perfect, but most were sitting in what was obviously a special section, roped off from the general public and guarded by two linebacker-sized human guards with experience in looking tough. More vampires there than he'd expected, but then Dallas was a big city. It only made sense that their community was just as big.

There was no mistaking who was in charge, although he wasn't at all what Kevin had expected. The man sitting in the concentric circle of vampires looked like a poster of a nerd, from the cheap sports shirt and khaki high-waisted pants to the tape fixing one side of his Buddy Holly glasses. It wasn't that the nerd sat higher than the others, but it just seemed that way; it might have been the way the others aligned themselves, half turned toward him, half away to watch the room. He was the hub at the center of the deadly, glittering wheel.

Kenya stopped at an empty stand-up table and signaled to a thinly dressed cocktail waitress; she ordered a Coke, and Kevin got a beer, because he felt like at least one of them ought to look as if they were here to party.

Then he felt like an idiot when Kenya openly ogled a passing vampire who must've been born of Asian heritage in his human life. The vampire noticed and gave her a bare nod, which was apparently how they expressed approval around here. Kevin heard jealous murmurs from a couple of women near him.

“What?” Kenya asked as their drinks were delivered, and he realized he was staring at her. “Got to fit in, right?”

“Right,” he said, and looked around for a woman to admire. He couldn't find one who intrigued him half as much as the woman sipping her Coke across from him, dark eyes lively and darting from one threat to another around them.

He saw her fix on something behind him, and whatever it was, it got her unwavering attention. Her hand slid away from her drink and under her jacket, and he almost turned before she made a sign, just a little one, to stay where he was. She gave him a sudden, bright smile and leaned in close to whisper in his ear.

“Glick's here. He's right behind you.”

“Shit,” Kevin whispered back. “I should have brought my gun!” They'd discussed it but decided it was too big a risk to come strapped into a vampire club in a strange town. Vampires took their personal security damn seriously.

She nodded and laughed as if he'd said something hilarious, and
dammit
if he couldn't help but notice how warm her cheek was as it brushed against his, and how soft. “I've got my baton,” she said. “Get in front of him and I'll take him down from behind.”

He would have probably agreed to pretty much anything just then, and as he pushed away from the table and walked at an angle to cut across Glick's path, it occurred to him he was about to put himself empty-handed in front of a man who'd ripped the limbs off somebody just a few hours before.

He was also, coincidentally, heading straight for the guards who were blocking the entrance to the velvet-roped vampire section. They might have PhDs in flexing and intimidation, but they weren't stupid; he got their attention instantly. What was worse, though, was what was happening behind the rope . . . because all that vampire focus lasered right in on him. It was like being impaled on an icicle.

The nerd king's pale blue eyes suddenly glowed an even colder arctic green, and Kevin shuddered because however much the costume tried to make the vampire look human and inoffensive, those eyes gave him away. What was underneath was ancient and completely ruthless.

Spotting Glick coming for him was actually kind of a relief.

The greasy, blood-spotted wild man howled, though it was drowned out in the relentless sound of the techno song that started up; the beat hammered through Kevin's bones and made him feel as if he were about to shatter. Kenya was moving, but someone was in her way—a woman in skyscraper heels, made earthquake-unsteady by the drink in her hand.

Glick was almost on him. In the flash of the swirling lights, his eyes looked solid crimson, as if they were bleeding right out of his head.

Kevin swept a full champagne bottle out of a sweating ice bucket on a rich man's table, dumping cold water all over a woman's lap, and slammed it into Glick's temple like a wrecking ball. It should have put him down. Hell, it probably should have killed him.

All it did was set him back on his heels, dazed, and make him stumble.

That was enough time for Kenya to come up behind him, snap out her extendable riot baton, and deliver surgical strikes to the bends of his knees. Strong or not, Glick went down, and Kevin hit him again with the champagne bottle. He only realized once Glick was lying still that Dom Perignon was foaming out in jets all over him, and the rich man was yelling his guts out, and the woman was shrieking about her dress, and somehow over all that chaos the nerd stood up and said one soft, precise sentence.

“Close it.”

There was an instant reaction, all over the bar—not from the patrons, who were still jerk-dancing and drinking their livers away, but from the vampires. They all stood up and
moved
—flowing over the velvet ropes as if gravity were just a suggestion. There were yelps of alarm from patrons, and suddenly the music cut off, leaving an aftermath of yelled, trailed-off conversations and confusion.