Bound to Shadows (15 page)

Bastiel’s house was actually several streets back from the beach, but it was a beautiful old
California bungalow located in what was known as the “period precinct,” so the price tag was
right up there with houses that possessed a beach view.
I parked behind Cole’s van and climbed out. The sea air spun around me, crisp and salty, and I
breathed deep. It didn’t do much to wash the tiredness from my system, but then, getting a good
night’s sleep was probably the only cure for that.
I swung open the picket gate and walked up a path lined with cream jonquils. Their sweet scent
spun around me, but it was laced with the aroma of fresh blood and death emanations from the open
front door. There were dusted fingerprints on both the door and the frame, and Dobbs knelt
several feet inside, carefully removing what looked like bits of flesh from the shiny wooden
floor. He looked up as I entered and gave me a tight smile.
“The housekeeper was shot, but Bastiel was killed the same way as the others.”
“Any sign of forced entry?”
He shook his head. “It looks like the housekeeper came into the house, saw what was happening,
and made a run for it. She was shot in the living room.”
“Why run into the living room? Why not run straight for the door?”
He shrugged. “People don’t always think straight when someone is trying to kill them.”
I guess that was true. And being confronted with a gunman in your workplace wasn’t the same
everyday occurrence for most folk that it was for us. “What time was she killed?”
“We’re estimating somewhere between five and seven this morning, but we won’t know for sure until
we get back to the lab.”
Five was awfully early for a housekeeper to arrive, I would have thought. “And Bastiel? Where was
he killed?”
“In his bed.” He indicated the hallway with his chin. “Cole’s down there now.”
I carefully stepped around the little globules, then headed down the hallway, my footsteps
echoing sharply on the floorboards. The master bedroom was the third doorway along.
Cole glanced up as I stepped into the room. His craggy face showed signs of exhaustion. “I’m
getting a weird sense of déjà vu.”
“Why?” My gaze went past him to the body in the bed. If it wasn’t for the fact that the white
sheets were stained crimson, it would almost be easy to believe that Bastiel was asleep rather
than dead.
“Because of this.” Cole waved a hand at the body on the bed. “Vampires lying still while someone
hacks away at their necks. We had another case like this a few months back, remember?”
How could I forget? That case had brought me Kye, and all the inherent heartache that came with
him. “But I thought you said there was nothing in the toxicology reports or the tissue samples of
the other victims that suggests drugs of any kind. Wouldn’t the witch dust show up in the
lab?”
“That
stuff would, because we’ve analyzed it and know its contents.
But what if it’s something similar, consisting of ingredients we haven’t come across? If they
were natural, they wouldn’t necessarily be flagged.”
“I guess that’s possible.” And it suggested that
these
murders had
been planned well ahead of time. It wasn’t easy to find a witch in this city—not one who dealt
with the dark arts, anyway.
I flared my nostrils and cast aside both the rich metallic tang of blood and Cole’s deeper,
spicier aroma. The undernotes swirling though the air ran rich with the scent of vampire, human,
furniture polish, and wood smoke. And there was something else—something that was little more
than a nebulous foulness that tickled the back of my throat and made me want to cough.
“There
is
something odd here.” I took a deeper breath, but the scent
remained annoyingly elusive and undefined. The room itself held no hints as to what it might be.
My gaze fell on the light layer of dust sitting behind the bedside lamp. “You might want to get
some dust samples from the room, just in case.”
“I already have.” He paused, picking up what looked like a piece of lint and putting it into a
plastic bag. “This odd scent you mentioned—did you smell it at either of the other
murders?”
I frowned, thinking back. I
had
smelled something odd at
Gateway’s—something just as nebulous and out of place. But Kye had arrived not long after I’d
scented it and had basically blown any memory of it out of the water.
Until now.
“There was a similar scent at Gateway’s.”
“Why didn’t you mention it in your report?”
“Because I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just due to the mold in the bathroom.”
And if I
had
gone back into the bathroom, it probably wouldn’t have
sparked any memories anyway, because it just didn’t smell the same as the other witch
dust.
I glanced around the room again. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. There was a huge gold
watch and a wallet filled with cash on the dresser, and several expensively framed paintings on
the walls. The only link between the three—now four—beheaded men seemed to be the fact that they
were all on the Melbourne council.
So what I needed to find out was who, exactly, the council had pissed off lately. And I very much
doubted that it was going to be an easy task. I had no idea who the members were—besides Dante,
that is, and I really
didn’t
want to go talk to that man again—and
Jack had showed no inclination to share information about the rest of them. Maybe he figured I
didn’t need to know any more than I already did, or maybe it was just the simple fact that he
wasn’t allowed to tell me. He was an advisor, after all. Maybe he had to get permission from the
greater council before he could reveal that sort of information. And ruling bodies the world over
never made it easy for anyone to get to them.
Although killers never seemed to have a problem.
My only real option was talking to Quinn. He might not have told me much about the councils, but
he’d said a whole lot more than Jack, so he just might be persuaded to give me another name. If I
could talk to someone—someone who wasn’t sex on legs—I might just have a real chance of cracking
this damn case.
I returned my attention to Cole. “Any indication on how our killer got into the house?”
“Back door was jimmied. The killer must have moved extraordinarily fast, because it appeared
Bastiel had gotten no further than flipping the sheet off his face.”
I frowned. “The only race who can move that fast is another vampire.”
“There are several shifters who can move almost as quickly as a vampire, and almost would be fast
enough in this case. A vampire’s reactions tend to be slightly slower when they’re waking from
daytime slumber.”
Which was why, throughout human history, those suspected of being vampires were staked during the
daylight hours. If the staker was human, it gave them a fighting chance. Of course, opening any
younger vamp’s den to sunlight would have done just as good a job, but humans seemed to prefer
the one-two punch, just to be sure.
“It doesn’t explain how the others were caught, though. They were both awake and
aware.”
Cole grimaced. “You’ve seen the witch dust in action, so you tell me—does it act fast enough to
stop a vampire reacting against an attack?”
I wrinkled my nose, remembering the zombie throwing the dust in my face and just how quickly it
sucked away resistance. I’d been lucky—that lot of dust had been targeted toward vamps, not
dhampires, and my werewolf blood had saved me. “Yeah, it does.”
“Then that’s your answer. We just have to pin down the ingredients for future reference.” He gave
me a weary smile. “If you could remember to grab a sample when you catch the killer, that would
be of great help.”
I snorted softly and waved a hand at the body. “I guess the murderer has to be nonhuman. It can’t
be easy to hack someone’s head off like that.”
“A nonhuman would definitely manage it more easily than a human, no matter how strong that human
was.”
“So, basically, I’m looking for a nonhuman with a grudge against the vampire council. That should
be easy to pin down.”
Cole raised his eyebrows. “All the victims are Melbourne council members?”
“Yes. And Jack thinks the vampire who was incinerated
before
the
first beheading was also a council member.” I paused. “Why wouldn’t he tell you that?”
Cole snorted. “The councils are a secretive bunch of bastards, that’s why. I doubt Jack would be
able even to hint he knows who’s who without seeking their permission first.”
Which was basically what I’d figured. “It doesn’t make our job any easier, though.”
“I would hazard a guess that it wouldn’t be a major concern for them.” He sniffed—a disdainful
sound. “They might pay lip service to the Directorate and human rules in general, but I daresay
they have their own methods of dealing with situations like this.”
Yeah, and they used to be called cazadors. What they were called now was anyone’s
guess.
“But as it’s us dealing with the bodies and the press and the public, you’d think they’d be a
little more helpful—especially given that they want this killer caught as much as we
do.”
“When have vampires ever been overly helpful if it doesn’t suit them?” Cole snorted softly.
“Director Hunter, Jack, and Quinn are the exceptions, not the rule.”
I studied him keenly for a moment, then said, “That’s a pretty fierce attitude, considering who
we work for and with.”
He shrugged. “Just because I think the majority are arrogant sods doesn’t belittle what we do at
the Directorate. We make a difference, and we stand between what are basically predators and
their prey. That more than makes up for any quibbles I might have about who I have to work with
at times.”
“So the attitude you gave me when I first started working as a guardian was because I’m just as
much a vampire as a werewolf?”
He grinned. It wiped the weariness from his face and sparkled in his bright eyes. “It certainly
was. But you’re actually not half bad, considering you’ve got two lots of bad blood.”
I clapped a hand to my chest. “Be still my heart—that almost sounded like a
compliment.”
“As if.” His smile faded a little, but the remnants still warmed the corners of his eyes, and
some of the tension in him seemed to have faded. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do, so
move those distractingly long legs of yours into another room.”
“Now, that sounds more like the Cole I know and love.” I gave him a sketchy salute good-bye and
obeyed.
The rest of the house didn’t reveal much. Bastiel might have been on the council, but his study
didn’t hold any clues as to when or where they met. Maybe all such information was sent via a
general telepathic broadcast to the appropriate members. I broke open a locked drawer in his
desk, but it didn’t hold much more than several checkbooks and a netbook. The latter had
fingerprint locks installed, so while it might have held the information I was looking for, it
was more Cole’s field than mine. The kitchen and dining area at the back of the house didn’t hold
anything in the way of revelations, either—other than the fact Bastiel was something of a neat
freak. Everything gleamed, and there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere.
I was walking back up the hall to the study when the air suddenly became chilled.
It was a sensation I was all too familiar with. There was a soul here, and it wanted to
speak.
Goose bumps crawled across my skin as I walked forward slowly. Dusty knelt near the body of the
woman, carefully plucking a hair from her blue woolen cardigan. He glanced up as I walked into
the living room, then his gaze intensified and he straightened abruptly. “You sense
something?”
“Her soul is here.”
“You want me to leave?”
“No.” I paused, trying to pinpoint where the chill seemed to be coming from. Surprisingly, it
wasn’t near her body but rather over near the big bay window. “What was the housekeeper’s
name?”
“Helen Hills.”
“Helen,” I said softly, “why do you linger here? What do you need to say or do?”
My ability to communicate with the dead had gotten a lot stronger in recent months, and their
ability to gain shape and materialize long enough actually to speak in my presence had grown. So
it seemed Cole’s theory that they were likewise using my strength to take shape was true—and
these days the mere act of talking to the spirit world left me a whole lot weaker than I liked to
admit.
The chill in the air got fiercer, until it felt like fingers of ice were creeping into my bones.
No one could really explain why it felt like these souls brought the chill of the underworld with
them, but the general consensus was that it had something to do with them being in
between—neither here nor in heaven nor hell, or wherever else it was that souls went
to.
Something stirred against the sunlight streaming in through the window. A wisp of thicker air
that held no shape and couldn’t even be defined as smoke.
“Helen?” I repeated. “Do you need to speak to me? Have you got anything you want to
say?”
Her soul was little more than a barely visible wisp of white vapor, with no features and no body.
But her thoughts reached out all the same.
Why?
she said.
Why did we need to
die?
“I can’t tell you that, Helen. Not until I catch whoever did this to you and your
boss.”
For a moment there was no answer, but the chill got stronger, until my fingers and nose ached
with the fierceness of it. Energy flowed around me, out of me, building in the air, giving the
soul the strength to speak.
But it makes no sense. Mr. Bastiel was a nice man, even if he was a
vampire
.
“Nice people die all the time, Helen. It often doesn’t make sense or seem right.” I paused as a
sliver of weakness pulled at my muscles. She seemed to be sucking more energy than the souls of
the past, and that meant I’d better hurry before she drained me too greatly. That was the one
fear I had about doing this—that these souls would drag me into the shadow depths with them if I
wasn’t careful. “What can you tell me about the man who broke into the house and killed you
both?”
It wasn’t one man. It was two
.
Surprise rippled through me. Up until now, there’d been no hint that two men had been involved in
these murders. But then, we had very little in the way of hard clues. “Are you sure?”