Bad Blood (5 page)

Happily distracted, he pulled her beneath him and sank into her warmth, nipping her throat lightly. “And now, so do you.”

“You the one who found her?” The officer handed Creek his license back and gave him a hard once-over. “You’re a ways off the reservation, aren’t you?”

He really needed to get his mother’s address off his license. “Yes, I found her.” Creek ignored the officer’s second question as he blew out a slow breath and tried to erase the mental image of the girl dying in his arms and how at first glance, he’d thought she was Chrysabelle. How that had sucked the breath out of him. Charged him with a rage he hadn’t felt since he’d pulled his father off his sister.

But the girl he’d found wasn’t Chrysabelle. She wasn’t even a real comarré. And the puncture wounds on her neck were meant to look like the work of a vampire, but he had his doubts. A vampire wouldn’t have had any reason to carve the girl up like that. Or leave that much blood behind.

“I understand they already have your DNA and prints.”

It was no secret he had a record. “Yes.” He wiped his hands down his jeans again, but they were stained with blood. Her blood.

The officer pulled out an e-tablet and stylus. “Tell me what happened—start from the beginning.”

“I was on my way home, and when I passed this alley, I heard her moaning.” Actually, he’d been tracking a fringe vamp that had been going after street people. The smell of blood had drawn the fringe into the alley.

“On your way home? Your license says you live on tribe land.” The officer’s eyes narrowed.

“I used to. That’s my mother’s place. I live down near Pineda.”

“We’ll need to verify that. And you need to get your license updated.”

“Will do.” Better tell Argent, his Kubai Mata sector chief, the cops were going to be calling. Good thing the
KM had a system in place for that kind of stuff, but then what didn’t the KM have covered? They hadn’t stayed a secret society for so many years by being unprepared.

“What happened after you heard her moaning?”

He’d staked the fringe and cleaned up the ashes as quickly as he could. “I saw her lying there. Looked like she’d been run through a shredder. I was surprised she was still alive.” He shifted, blew out a breath. “I yelled for help, but no one came.” He hadn’t yelled for help because he knew there was none. Plus the smell of blood had already drawn new fringe. “I held her. She died in my arms.” At that point, the fringe had been curious, but not a threat since the girl was no longer a viable meal.

“And that’s how you got her blood all over you?”

“Yes.” They’d searched him for weapons. Since Argent had yet to show with his replacement crossbow, all they’d found on him was a titanium stake and his halm, which they’d thought was just a length of pipe. Most people in Little Havana carried a lot more than that.

“Then what?”

“I went into that bodega and they called nine-one-one. The rest you know.”

“You touch or move anything else around the scene? We gonna find your prints on anything you want to tell us about now?”

“No, I know better than that.” Maybe a street person had seen the gold and stripped her flesh trying to harvest it.

“What were you doing in this part of town?”

There was no
good
reason to be in Little Havana unless you lived here. Clearly the cop was trying to trip him up. “I told you, passing through on my way home.”
Half a dozen new fringe lingered in the gathering crowd like circling sharks. They came and went, sniffing around, figuring out the blood wasn’t from a live source and disappearing again.

“Do you know the victim? Ever seen her around here before?” Red and blue LED police lights illuminated the sheet now covering her.

“Never seen her before.” But he knew what she was. The brunette roots of the platinum hair and simple signum, what was left of them, anyway, pegged her as one of Dominic’s fake comarré. One of many things the officer probably had no clue about. Another was that the vampires in the crowd had now doubled in number. Things were getting ugly in this city. He’d seen more othernaturals openly mingling with humans than ever before. Any day now, humans were going to stop pretending they weren’t seeing things and figure out the world around them had become a very different place. The night of Halloween would be the end of the innocence if it didn’t happen before that.

Another officer ushered a vaguely familiar woman under the crime scene tape and through the milling forensics team. A man, clearly her bodyguard, judging by the loosely concealed piece, dark suit with matching shades, and general protection vibe, accompanied her. Wolf-shifter by the looks of him. Creek inhaled. Too many othernaturals in the crowd to make a positive ID.

The officer escorted her to the body and pulled the sheet back enough to uncover the dead girl’s face. The woman went pale beneath her sleek, brunette bob and heavily lined eyes. Her mouth opened in shock, then she snapped it closed, swallowed as she regained her
composure, and nodded. Pain bracketed her eyes. She said something normal human ears wouldn’t have heard from this distance. “That’s her.”

Creek tipped his head toward the woman. “Who is that?”

The officer looked up from moving his stylus across his e-tablet screen. “The mayor. Delores Diaz-White. Don’t you watch TV?”

“Don’t own one.” Ugly didn’t begin to describe what was about to go down in this city. Creek cursed softly.

“You can say that again.” The officer’s head went back down to focus on his notes. “Don’t leave town. Chances are a hundred percent we’re going to need you again for questioning.”

Creek jerked his head in response, but his eyes were on the mayor. She spoke to the officer who’d led her to the body, her gun-toting muscle scanning the crowd like he expected trouble. Creek had planned to head out again on patrol, but stopping by Seven to let Dominic know about his comarré might not be a bad idea. Maybe the anathema could give him a heads-up on who might have had a beef with the girl. An angry customer, maybe, or a heavy-handed boyfriend.

The mayor’s bodyguard stopped his constant scanning and faced Creek. Because of the man’s dark shades, Creek couldn’t tell if the shifter was looking at him, the cop, or someone in the crowd behind them.

The shifter turned, leaned toward the mayor, and whispered something too soft for Creek to catch. She nodded. Her next words to the cop at her side were easy enough to make out. “I’d like to speak to the man who found her.”

Creek followed the officer over. Sorrow filled the mayor’s large brown eyes, but he could imagine that when she smiled, she was beautiful. “Madam Mayor, I’m Thomas Creek.”

She reached to shake his hand, then stopped when he showed her the bloodstains covering them. Her gaze skipped back to the covered form of her daughter about ten feet away. “I understand you found her. Did she say anything before she…?”

“No, ma’am. She was too far gone.” The pain on her face made him ache for her. He could imagine what it would have felt like to lose his sister, Una, if he hadn’t stopped his father in time. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

Her mouth twitched, too heavy to smile. “I’m sure you know Julia and I were estranged.”

The papers had made certain everyone knew during the last election, but the mayor had survived for another term. “I’m sure the PCPD will do everything they can to find out who did this.”

Fresh tears filled the mayor’s eyes. She looked at the officers swirling around them, blinked, and nodded. “I’m sure they’ll do their best. They keep asking me about the gold marks on her. I don’t know why she would tattoo herself that way.”

Creek hesitated. The covenant had been broken for over a month. The mayor must have some idea of the chaos erupting in the city, the strange creatures walking among the human citizens. There was no ignoring the news reports. Or the fact that the gargoyles on city hall had taken to evening flights. She
had
to know.

“What do you know?” The bodyguard’s stern voice snapped him back to the moment.

Creek looked around. “I would be willing to talk to you, but not here.”

The mayor’s brow unfurrowed. “Tomorrow, then, first thing. My office. Eight a.m.”

Creek nodded. “I’ll be there.”

He started to slip away, but the bodyguard blocked his path. “You don’t show and I’ll hunt you down, understand?” He smiled, showing larger-than-human teeth. “I’m very good at hunting.”

Creek squared his shoulders and wished he could see through the guy’s shades. “Most wolves are.”

The bodyguard’s jaw went slack. Without a backward glance, Creek disappeared into the crowd and away from the scene. Normally, his ratty jeans and hoodie made a great disguise for blending in, but not with bloodstains covering them. Maybe he’d grab a shower, then take another crack at seeing Chrysabelle. She had to let him in sometime, right?

A block away and the little hairs on the back of his neck went up. A heavy sense of foreboding pressed down on him, along with the stench of brimstone and putrid flesh. His first thought was Nothos. Since bringing Chrysabelle back from Corvinestri he’d run into two, probably left behind by Tatiana’s hasty departure. With the blood scent he was leaving, they could probably track him with their eyes closed.

He kept his senses open as he maintained his pace. No sound of footsteps. The weight increased and the KM brands on his back began to itch. If this was Nothos, it was a new breed.

Water pooled in his mouth as nausea threatened to bring his dinner up. He took the next right, ducked into an
alley, and crouched behind a Dumpster. A second later, his halm was out and fully extended, ready to take down whatever stalked him.

Seconds flowed into minutes and nothing happened. The pressure and smell stayed constant. His stalker must be at the mouth of the alley, waiting for him to make the first move.

Quietly, he grabbed a discarded beer bottle and pitched it toward the back of the alley. Something shot past, a ripple of heat over asphalt on a summer day.

He lunged, plunging the halm through the center of the thing, only to be thrown back against the wall. A rib cracked, but he held onto his weapon. The shimmer of movement turned toward him and solidified into a creature that Creek had only ever seen before in drawings. Castus Sanguis. The ancient ones.

Callous red eyes, hands with scythe claws, and skin that oozed foul fluid. The Castus was everything he’d been described as, but seeing him in person was infinitely worse.

Fear, something that not even the Nothos made him feel, stuck its cold hand into Creek’s chest and squeezed. The brightest KM minds had yet to come up with a way to destroy the Castus. They were reportedly undefeatable.

The demon’s hooves scraped the ground as he charged. Creek feinted, rolling beneath the outstretched arms and stabbing his halm through the demon’s side as he came up. The creature howled, seemingly more out of anger than pain.

“You dare strike me, mortal?” The demon struck out again, and again Creek escaped the blow within a hairsbreadth.

He didn’t bother answering. Instead he took aim and let the halm fly straight toward the heart of the beast.

The demon swatted the titanium quarterstaff away. It clattered to the ground far beyond Creek’s reach. Behind him, the alley went a few more feet, then ended in a tall building without windows or fire escapes. He was trapped in a concrete canyon.

With a blood-freezing laugh, the demon stalked forward. “Too bad the witchling wants you alive. Maybe just a taste…”

A blur of red filled Creek’s vision, knocking him to the ground. Acid pain tore through his shoulder. Fangs hit bone, tore flesh, snapped sinew. Blood gushed over his body, soaking his clothes. Then heat. And light. And the keening wail of a creature in pain.

Creek opened his eyes, forcing himself to his feet. His arm hung limp. The Castus staggered backward, his body a flickering wick of fire. He clawed at his maw and belly where the flames concentrated. His arm shot out, his hooked finger pointing. “Kubai Mata,” he snarled.

“Damn straight,” Creek answered. He took a step toward his halm. Maybe he could finish this demon off after all. His hand stretched toward his weapon. The earth tilted, throwing him to the ground again. His vision tunneled down to nothing, and the press of asphalt faded as his body went numb.

T
he wait to get into Seven was ridiculous. Despite Mal’s presence, every vampire in the crowd around Chrysabelle had scoped her out at least twice. Even if she hadn’t seen the shifting eyes and flaring nostrils, she would have known something was up by the silver glazing Mal’s gaze. The attention was no surprise. The perfume of her blood was unmatched by Dominic’s fakes. Most fringe had probably never smelled anything like her before.