Authors: Jocelynn Drake
“A nightwalker can heal a wound caused by a bite,” she began, closing the drawer. “But if you’re keeping a pet, you leave the wound so everyone knows that she is already taken. Unfortunately, the human is left to conceal the bite during the daylight hours. Scarves are a popular remedy.”
“She could just find them fashionable,” James offered, drawing her dark gaze back to me.
“Do you believe that?”
“No,” I replied, tossing her the bottle. She briefly looked at it, her fingers tightening around the plastic until it cracked and snapped.
“Somebody is going to fry,” she snarled, stalking out of the bedroom. She slapped the switch, turning out the light as she walked past.
“Five minutes ago you were sure a vampire didn’t kill her,” I called, following her down the hall.
“I still don’t think a vampire killed her,” she snapped. In the living room, we began flicking off all of the lamps. “But if she was a pet, it means little Miss Abigail could have been involved in all kinds of nastiness.”
Passing by the end table next to the sofa, I snatched up a four-by-five picture in a plain wooden black frame. It was of a pair of women with their arms around each other’s shoulders. The large white fountain that dominated Forsyth Park rose up in the background. Both women looked to be in their early to mid-twenties, with bright smiles and a look of innocence. Well, at least ignorant of the dark world that surrounded them.
“That her?” Mira asked, peering around my arm.
“One of them probably is,” I said, taking the back of the frame off. I removed the picture and shoved it into my pocket before replacing the empty frame.
Mira looked up at me, a slight frown pulling at the corner of her lips. “We’ll find out when we get to the morgue.”
TWELVE
B
ack on the street, I paused beneath the streetlamp next to Mira, letting my gaze sweep up and down Factors Walk. The whole area was thick with shadows and intermittently broken by dim lamplight. To my left, I saw a small figure scurry down the alley before cutting down between a pair of buildings. It was only a brief glimpse, but my vision was keen enough to pick out what appeared to have been a young girl with a ragged backpack. Could it have been the same girl from earlier? I needed to find her again, ask her what she saw. But it was too late to go chasing her now. I would have to do my searching by daylight with James at my side.
“What if there was a witness?” I asked, staring at the empty spot where I had seen the girl.
“Who?” Mira inquired. She moved out of the lamplight and back into the shadows. I looked over in time to see her putting her glasses back into her pocket, staring in the same spot I had been just moments ago. Possibly she had seen the girl too.
“What about a homeless person? This has got to be an area where they occasionally gather,” I suggested.
Mira frowned, crossing her arms over her stomach as she looked up and down the alley. “It’s definitely possible,” she slowly conceded but then shook her head. “But the odds of finding that person are pretty slim. They’re not likely to go to the police. I would need to meet the witness so I could pick the image of the killer out of his or her mind. The chances are pretty slim.”
“True, but we don’t have much to go on at the moment,” I reminded her. “We haven’t even narrowed it down to a particular race.”
“I’ll call Daniel later,” Mira sighed. “See if I can get him to question some of the locals.”
We silently walked to Mira’s car, bogged down by our own thoughts. James lagged behind. In the silence of the night, I could hear his heart pounding in his chest. He was nervous about something.
“W—where do we go now?” he stammered.
“The morgue,” I replied, turning to look at him. “We need to look at the body and talk to the coroner. The way she died may tell us more about our killer.”
“Oh,” he whispered.
“I want you to stay behind. Start doing some more digging into the girl’s past. See what you can uncover,” I said.
“Are you sure?” he asked, though the relief was already evident in his tone.
“Yeah, get out of here. I’ll need you with me in the morning.”
With a quick nod, he wished Mira good night and briskly walked down the street, back to the hotel.
I turned to find Mira watching me with a strange look on her face. “Should I ask what that was about?”
“After the attack on Themis last summer, I think he’s seen enough of mangled dead bodies. He’s more useful to me researching Abigail Bradford, not passing out at the sight of her dead body,” I said.
To my surprise, Mira simply nodded and starting walking back toward her car, passing up the opportunity to mock me and my decision to set the eager researcher free.
But in truth, I shouldn’t have been surprised. We both had bigger issues on our minds. Was a new war brewing, and the catalyst the death of a human that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Had Abigail Bradford gotten in over her head? Or just ended up on the wrong side of a fight within the local pack? Lycans and nightwalkers were killed all the time. Heaven knows that I was more frequently than not the cause. Yet, no one digs into their deaths. The situation is quickly swept under the rug and the body disappears. Sometimes humans are caught in the middle regardless of whether they fully understand the situation or not.
Was this the case with the Bradford girl? Maybe, but there were other players lingering in the shadows. Creatures that would like nothing more than to see Mira’s head roll because humans were enlightened in her city ahead of schedule. There were factors I was afraid Mira wasn’t considering that could get us both killed.
“It seems doubtful a nightwalker killed her,” I hedged when we reached the car.
Mira looked over the roof of the black BMW, her eyes narrowed. Her whole body seemed to have tensed in the pregnant silence that hung between us. “But…” she prompted.
“What if the order had come directly from the coven? Just kill the girl. No feeding,” I suggested.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. Her answer had come so quickly that I thought it was more from fear of it being a distinct possibility than actual knowledge.
“Even an Ancient?”
Mira didn’t reply, her eyes darting away from me to look at the side of the car. My heart did an odd little skip as I watched her expressive face turn over the implications. It was an angle she hadn’t considered. Until now, I think we had both considered the woman’s death to be accidental or an act of local revenge.
“I would have known if an Ancient had come into my territory,” she stubbornly said at last, pulling open her car door.
I opened my door and slid into the leather interior at the same time. “Not if you were in London,” I countered.
“If you’re implying that Ryan—” she began, but I quickly cut her off. Was Ryan working with the coven? Maybe, but doubtful. From what I had seen, the warlock didn’t play well with others. He liked being in control of a situation, and a herd of nightwalkers with their own agenda would not allow him to remain in control. Right now, I think he saw Mira as more malleable than trying to work with the whole coven.
“No. I think someone might have taken advantage of your brief absence,” I ventured, trying to ignore the fact that if I was even slightly right, we were in serious trouble. “The Ancient could be in the city now. Jabari cloaked himself from you. I’m assuming this isn’t a skill unique to him.”
“Jabari was never in that room. I know his scent as well as my own,” she argued. Mira shoved the key into the ignition, but didn’t turn on the car, seeming content to sit in the darkness.
“It doesn’t have to be Jabari. Any Ancient. Anyone with a grudge. What about the vampire from Machu Picchu?”
“Stefan.” Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel.
Months ago, Stefan had been sent by the coven to aid us in our ascent to the ruins on the mountain where the naturi were attempting to open the door between our worlds. I didn’t know how old he was, but judging by the power that rolled off him, he was fairly close to the thousand-year mark, if not already past it. He also didn’t seem to be a very big fan of Mira’s. Of course, neither were most of the vampires I had run across.
“My point is,” I stressed, trying to bring Mira’s dark thoughts away from whatever torture she was devising for Stefan. “Speeding along the Great Awakening meets with the desires of your liege and starting it in your city would give the coven yet another excuse to cut your heart out.”
Mira growled in the back of her throat, balling her right hand into a fist. She raised her hand to pound on the steering wheel, but I caught her wrist in my hand. The nightwalker’s glowing lavender eyes snapped to my face.
“You’ll hurt your ‘baby,’” I reminded her in a soft voice as I slowly released her wrist. The glow in her narrowed eyes instantly faded as a crooked smile lifted one corner of her mouth. Her skin was surprisingly cool to the touch with a somewhat waxy feel. I couldn’t begin to guess how long it had been since she had last fed. A grudging respect for the vampire began to take hold when I realized she hadn’t even made a move to bite me at the feeding earlier.
A new thought twisted in my gut, sending a wave of chills running up my flesh. Would I have stopped her if she had tried to bite me? Lost in one wave after another of mind-numbing pleasure, I couldn’t imagine pushing her away if she had come offering to send me along that next wave. Hell, my own face had been buried in her neck and I could clearly remember the feel of my own teeth running along her skin. Even now, something dark and primal demanded I taste her flesh, to drink her in so that she would become a part of me.
“The coven doesn’t need a fresh reason to confiscate my heart,” she said, her grim voice bleeding into the darkness.
“They already have ample reason to cause problems here,” I replied, forcibly pulling my thoughts back to the current quandary at hand.
“I know,” she whispered, turning the key. The engine turned over with a feral growl then settled into a steady purr that would have been the envy of any large cat. “This is all great speculation, but that’s still all it is. We need answers and I think we’ll have a few more after we have a look at the body and autopsy report.”
First, a rather posh apartment in the heart of the River Street club district, complete with body outline, and now the morgue. Traveling with Mira, I always got to see some of the more interesting sights within a city.
THIRTEEN
T
he Savannah morgue was a large, one-story building squatting like a fat toad just on the outskirts of town. Made of faded yellow brick, the building sagged and slumbered in a dreary neighborhood that seemed to be weighed down by the nearby hospital.
Mira deftly pulled into the small parking lot in the rear and settled her car next to a white Lexus with gold trim shining in the overhead parking light. There was only one other car in the lot; a beat-up Chevy Nova with fading gray paint and a sign announcing that it was for sale. At a guess, one car belonged to the coroner and the other to the night watchman.
As we slipped out of the car, the back door swung soundlessly open, revealing a short, balding man in a dark suit. His black-frame glasses were balanced on his large, bulbous nose, making his eyes enormous and almost owlish in appearance. He held the door open as we approached, the stubby fingers of his left hand fiddling nervously with the buttons on his blazer.
“We’re in trouble,” he announced in a low voice as Mira stepped into the brightly lit interior. Her pale skin took on a strange iridescent glow under the harsh fluorescent light. It explained why I had never run across a vampire in the aisles of an all-night mega-store.
Mira’s shoes scraped along the battered white linoleum as she turned to look at the man. “What do you mean? Lose the body?” She looked over the rim of her pale blue sunglasses at him.
“Of course not!” he huffed, puffing up his chest a bit at the affront. He lifted his chin and hurried around me, the top of his head not quite reaching my shoulders.
Mira shrugged, throwing me a mischievous smile over her shoulder. “So much for hoping.”
“Who is he?” the man asked with a jerk of his head before continuing down the hall.
“Forgive my lack of manners,” Mira said. “Archie, this is an associate of mine, Danaus. Danaus, this is the Chatham County coroner, Dr. Archibald Deacon.” Her introduction oozed with irritation.
An associate.
I didn’t like the sound of it. It made me sound like a business partner, or in the mind of a human, one of her kind. But I wasn’t a nightwalker. Of course, I wasn’t quite human either. Even though I might not like the phrase, it’s not like she had a lot of options.
This is Danaus, the vampire hunter.
Just trying to wrap his mind around all the ramifications would probably cause his brains to slide out of his ears.
However, the coroner said nothing. He briefly paused as he pushed open a door leading to a stairwell and nodded to me before leading us down the stairs.
“So what’s the problem?” Mira asked, her voice echoing slightly off the concrete walls.
“This body is the problem,” he said sharply. “I didn’t know it was one of yours.”
“Mira—” I began, a fresh knot of anger twisting in my gut. What kind of an arrangement did she have with the city coroner? Did I not know about all of her kills because she had a deal with the coroner to keep everything nicely hidden?
“He means death by an
outsider
or death of an
outsider
,” she grumbled over her shoulder at me then turned her attention back to Archie. “What’s been done?”
“Everything,” he said, throwing up his hands in a helpless gesture. “I wasn’t called to the scene of the crime because it was drawing too much attention. You can’t have a senator’s daughter killed in her River Street apartment and not expect a press circus to set up camp outside. I didn’t see the body until it was brought in.” Yanking open the door with a soft grunt, he led us down a narrow hall to a pair of steel double doors. “I had been told that it looked like she died from an animal attack. I ordered the usual autopsy and thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until later that afternoon that I saw the digital pictures the police took of the crime scene. By then, both my toxicologist and serologist had been all over the body. A pair of zoologists had even been through, trying to make a guess at what made the teeth marks.”