She was stil waiting for the chief to question her as to why she was here in the first place. Her typical y overactive imagination was already dredging up al kinds of murderous scenarios, one involving the chief. She real y had to get a hold on reality.
He was mute for so long, she thought her phone had disconnected. “Chief?”
“I know who kil ed your parents.”
Feeling like she’d been kicked in the chest, she could barely breathe. Then for an instant, she thought something moved closer to her.
She readied her sword to swing it in case the vampire changed to solid form and encroached on her space. There were no sounds in the warehouse district—no traffic noises or birds chirping at this time of night, and because of the cold—no bugs, nothing but the rapid beat of her heart sending the blood rushing like Niagara Fal s into her ears.
But there was no warmth like she’d felt before either. She saw nothing but the unrelenting fog, the dead officer, the blood puddled on the pavement, the red contrasting with the gray. She took another deep breath and could smel no odor but the wet, chil y air.
Maybe the vampire had left. She couldn’t sense his anger any longer.
“Who was it?” she asked, her voice rushed, certain before the chief could tel her, the murdering vampire would silence him too.
“Krustalus.”
She let out a breath. She considered hundreds of leads she’d had, but the name didn’t mean anything to her. “How—?”
“I’ve sent the units and want you to take charge.”
She parted her lips to speak, but the phone clicked dead, the name “Krustalus” lingering like an open lesion in her mind.
But that didn’t matter. If Krustalus kil ed her parents, he was hers to terminate.
She pocketed her phone, tightened her hand over the grip of her sword and listened for the arrival of police vehicles bringing more city cops to aid her. She stretched out her ability to sense other beings, searching for any sign of the evil that might stil lurk nearby. Then the distant wailing of police sirens pierced the fog.
She cursed under her breath. She’d warned both Mandy and the chief to maintain this under wraps until she had time to investigate! So much for keeping the murders quiet for a little while.
She had to get tissue samples from the dead policeman before the SCU learned she was working on the case without their permission. She had to confirm that the same vampire who kil ed Stevens had murdered the officers of the week before and ensure he wasn’t Krustalus.
The whining sirens jangled her already raw nerves.
Can you make it any more obvious?
she wanted to scream. Maybe if the police stayed off the radios—now monitored closely by the SCU after the police had botched another case and eliminated an innocent vampire—she’d get away with her investigation one more time.
***
Tezra’s skin prickled while the ten city police officers aiding her investigation studied her every move. At least she no longer sensed the vampire who had most likely murdered Stevens in the area.
Attempting to ignore the uneasiness growing in the pit of her stomach, she turned Officer Stevens’s head and considered the way the vampire’s fangs had dug al the way to the spine, breaking it.
But then something else seized her attention, held her hostage.
“A dark huntress.”
The words hissed in her mind, his threatening telepathic communication forcing a chil into the marrow of her bones. Not Krustalus. Not the angry vampire either. Someone else.
Involved in the crimes also? Or just curious?
Having the rare gift of being able to read anyone’s mind in the vicinity, she knew the policemen’s thoughts, and none triggered her concern like whoever this was. The police already knew she was SCU. Hidden from her sight—watching her like a predator waiting for the right moment to proceed with the kil —he recognized she was not just another city police officer.
And not just a huntress by birth, but a borderline rogue. She frowned. How had he known?
With the skil of an ancient telepath and empath, she sent mental tendrils into the mist, trying to sense his emotions, listening for any further telepathic communication, dangerously drawn to the creature. But what was it that made him different from the rest?
A hint of sexual fascination—he desired her, to a degree. And the notion intrigued her, when it shouldn’t.
She shook loose of the perilous feelings sucking her in and realized six of them—not just the one—silently watched, sitting on warehouse rooftops across the street, al newly arrived.
She sensed curiosity from the unseen beings in the fog. They must have turned up while she was concentrating on her investigation. Which was the problem with being an empath. Like listening to several conversations at once and not hearing any, she couldn’t concentrate on multiple tasks at the same time. She had to focus—and now, that’s just what she was doing.
Trying to sense if any of these newcomers were in complicity with the murdering bloodsuckers.
Unique as a voice, their telepathic messages reached out to one another, communicating freely amongst themselves
—assuming no human could hear them.
“Bad news,”
one said. There was no malice in his tone, only soft regret.
Another grunted.
“Knew it would come to this.”
From farther away in the old warehouse district, one hissed.
“Like hell you did.”
“It’ll get much worse before it gets better
.
”
This one sounded like the seer of doom.
“She won’t be able to deter him any more
than
…
”
The vampire seer of doom quit speaking when the one who’d tagged her as a dark huntress growled his disapproval and again communicated to the others.
“A huntress from the Special Crimes Unit.”
The others instantly grew silent as if he warned them this investigation was now in the hands of a different kind of predator. One who could more readily seek out the rogue vampire and have him terminated.
Another glided in on the fickle breeze in raven’s form, swooping too close to her for a normal bird, too late at night to be anything but a shape-shifting vampire. Checking her out? Taunting her?
He flew to one of the flat warehouse rooftops. Like a flock of birds of prey, they stood on top of the two-story brick buildings observing, their communications silenced. Like an invisible energy field ful of electrical activity, the ancient vampires’ auras radiated more power than the others’. Three had lived many centuries.
Tezra prayed with fervor they knew who murdered the police officers, would spil their secret, and tonight she would have the identity of the beast.
Boots tromped toward her at a hurried pace. Il umination from the police flashlights reflected off the fog, casting an eerie glow over the few visible feet.
Before the body belonging to the heavy footsteps came into view, she knew who it was. Bernard, her hunter watchdog, short, squat, mean and determined, like a wel -trained Rottweiler. His broad nose had been broken in a barroom brawl. A raised welt across one cheek—where a vampire’s extended canine had dragged across it before Bernard kil ed him—had left a permanent white scar on Bernard’s otherwise tanned face, adding to his roguish appearance. His stifling sweet cologne and the heavy odor of onions on his breath reached her when he drew close.
She ignored him, knowing he’d question her reason for being here even if Chief O’Mal ey failed to. If it meant locating her parents’ murderer, she wouldn’t give up the investigation, not even for the head honchos at the SCU.
Bernard crouched beside her. His black hair, normal y neatly bound, dangled loose about his shoulders, which meant someone had roused him from his bed, most likely yanked him from the arms of a sleeping woman. He leaned even closer and spoke in a hushed, harsh voice. “The SCU didn’t approve your taking this job.”
She offered him as straight a face as she could muster. “The City asked me to check into it and the SCU agreed to the arrangement.”
Bernard stared at her, his blue eyes widening. The bushy black brows that bridged his nose elevated. “Your name isn’t on the active investigators list,” he said, his voice wary.
Nope, the SCU had removed her name from the list of officers credentialed to investigate high-profile renegade vampires. And definitely wouldn’t have approved it. But if she could bamboozle Bernard…
“Special assignment,” she prevaricated.
He gave her a look like he didn’t believe her, then considered the dead officer. “So what do you think is going on?”
He gave her a look like he didn’t believe her, then considered the dead officer. “So what do you think is going on?”
Thank heavens he was going to let her get away with it. He was probably as concerned as she was about the kil ings—the SCU
be damned for not al owing her to search for the truth. “I’m wondering what madness propel ed him to murder these officers.”
She couldn’t shake loose the images of the ones she’d examined years earlier. “Remember those cop murders from ten years ago? The three officers slain by a hunter’s sword?”
“Yeah, so what has that got to do with this case?”
“I think the recent kil ings are connected to the earlier ones somehow, but that two different vampires committed the atrocities.
Although a more farfetched theory is that only one bloodsucker is involved and after al these years he changed his MO. In that case, he could be trying to cloak the older kil ings. Or is his mind teetering on the brink of madness, like a human serial kil er who has to murder for the compulsion and thril ?”
Thankful y, Bernard voiced no opinion while she tried to work out the scenario aloud.
“No, too implausible. Two vampires were here tonight. Krustalus—the vampire who murdered my parents—taunted me, but I’m sure he didn’t kil Officer Stevens. Speaking with me, then eliminating the officer isn’t his way. Too easy to assume he did the kil ing. Besides, the sandalwood cologne I smel ed was someone else’s. Or was that his ploy? Confuse the issue? But no, another was there who seemed angry with the world and continued to loiter a while longer. Gloating over the kil ing, probably.
Maybe wanting to see what I’d do next.”
She paused, afraid she’d let her empathic secret slip. Bernard’s expression darkened, but thankful y he didn’t ask how she knew another vampire was there.
“Krustalus? You have a name now for the one you claim kil ed your parents?”
“Chief O’Mal ey gave it to me.”
His frown deepening, Bernard considered the dead officer again. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
Grinding her teeth, she vowed to catch them both.
She motioned to a policeman. “Measure how deeply the teeth sank into the officer’s throat, and have the medical examiner send the tissue samples to me. Oh, and find out what cologne he wore.”
The officer raised a brow quizzical y. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You come from a long line of investigators and hunters with the SCU,” Bernard said to Tezra. “Hel , I think you’re the only current member who has ties to some of the first who settled in America prior to the Revolutionary War. You don’t want to be the first one in your family to be kicked out.”
“Second, but who’s counting?” She was proud of her heritage, but the SCU would
not
dictate to her when it came to proving the vampire—Krustalus—murdered her parents!
“The situation with your Grandmother Irving isn’t the same. Becoming the rogue vampire’s lover when she was supposed to eliminate him—”
“I stil can’t fathom why she did it.” The thought any huntress would set aside her convictions to fool around with a renegade vampire curdled Tezra’s blood.
She rose to her feet and studied the surrounding warehouse district. Except for the brick building poking out of the mist six feet from where she stood, she couldn’t see a blamed thing.
“You’re setting yourself up on this one,” Bernard growled. “Why?”
“The SCU doesn’t feel this job warrants one of their more prominent Special Crime investigators, so they gave it to me as a special assignment. Just to get me off their backs for a while.” She hoped she wouldn’t be struck dead for lying, but it was the only way to continue her work to determine the truth behind al the kil ings. Under her breath she added, “The targeted victims are eerily similar to the ones murdered ten years ago—same occupation, precinct, approximate age, and al male.” And the fact that Krustalus was here when Stevens was murdered? He had to be connected somehow to the recent ones too.
She faced the police officer in charge of the site. “I’l give a report to your chief by midday tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That police dispatcher, Mandy Salazar, hooked you into this job, didn’t she?” Bernard asked.
Heading for her car, Tezra didn’t answer him.
“She’s bound to be the death of you.”
“True,”
the seer-of-doom vampire said.
Tezra fought looking in the direction where he stood and said to Bernard instead, “Listen, despite the SCU frowning on my relationship with Mandy, she’s been my friend for the past four years.” She gave Bernard a scathing look. “When I needed someone, you were there for me, and so was she. I don’t care that members of the elite vampire investigative and elimination unit don’t normal y socialize with regular police. Since when have you known me to live strictly by SCU rules?”
She shoved her ice-cold fingers into her pockets. “But no, Mandy didn’t solicit my help in solving the crimes this time.”
And neither had the police chief. Just Officer Stevens’s urgent communication sent privately to her:
Come alone and I’ll tell you
the name of the vampire who murdered your parents. Warehouse district. An hour from now.
Had the bloodsucker forced Stevens to lure Tezra here, using his vampiric abilities to persuade his victim? So that she would witness Stevens’s death firsthand? Yet, the vampire didn’t show himself, wouldn’t give her the chance to fight or identify him.
Bastard
.
Bernard growled. “Hel , you know Mandy likes women better than men, and a lot of guys are beginning to infer things about your relationship with her.”