Crimson Vengeance (16 page)

Until the child, his attitude worked for him. Despite his unwavering belief in his own superiority, even Rodolphe could go too far. Though he possessed no boundaries, others did. The one thing he didn’t count on was Riah and her own lingering morality.

The vampire so wanton in her killing now was bound to have a weak point. Could she be lured in close enough to find it? It was a long shot. Then again, her path did seem to be taking her right into the heart of Riah’s city. If that was the case, maybe she, like Rodolphe, would make a fatal misstep. Riah would be ready for her.

“Hey, Doc,” A.J. said as he stuck his head in the door of her office. “Everything all right?”

She nodded. “Just fine, A.J. Thanks for checking.” Hopefully, he wouldn’t stick around.

“Just doing my job, Doc.” He rested his hand on the holster at his waist as his fingers stroked the butt of his gun.

“Thank you anyway.” She picked up a file. Would he get the hint? She had the distinct feeling he sensed the unease in the air, so heavy it was almost tangible.

The gods were with her. A.J. nodded and turned away. A nice, dedicated young man, and one very much in the way tonight.

A moment later, another soft tap on the door. Jesus, what did he want now? She was about to snap when Adriana breezed in, smiling big. Riah bit back the cranky comment she was about to spit out.

“I hope you have good news because I could use it,” Riah said. She put the unopened file back down on her desk. She’d never intended to work on it anyway.

Adriana walked up to Riah, threw her arms around her, and hugged her tight. “I think I’ve got it.”

“It?”

“Yeah.” Adriana grinned, taking both of Riah’s hands in hers.

“It—as in the cure.”

Riah quickly shifted away from thinking about the rogue vampire to considering the possibilities she’d imagined for so long. She didn’t want to let her hopes soar, too afraid of the fall if Adriana’s prediction turned out to be premature or outright wrong. Still, if the possibility existed after all these centuries to walk as a human again…

“You’re certain?” She was surprised at how her voice cracked.

Adriana nodded. “Remember the other night when I told you I thought I was only a generation or two away from the answer?”

Riah nodded.

“I got enough of Jorge’s blood to do three trials and all three were successful.”

It seemed too good to be true. Hearing the words now made Riah’s heart race and all the craziness of the last few weeks unimportant. She tingled from head to foot.

“I can’t believe it,” she whispered.

“Oh, you can believe it, sister. Adriana the great has done it! All I need now is another sample.”

The tingle shifted from excitement to dread. “Why? If you’ve found it, why not use it on me?”

Adriana shook her head. “No way. Not yet. Not until I’m sure.

I don’t want Jorge’s blood to have some anomaly that made the magic happen. I have to be one hundred and ten percent sure it’s the real deal. If I can get another sample I can run it again. If the results remain constant, it’s gold.”

Riah didn’t wish death at a vampire’s hand on anyone, yet for the first time in several hundred years, she was almost glad a vampire had made a kill. The state trooper lying in her cooler would give Adriana the samples she needed to duplicate her experiment. Riah could hardly process what Adriana might soon be able to do for her. She’d be human again for the first time in half a millennia.

“Ned Stratton, the Adams County Prosecuting Attorney/

Coroner, called in the murder of a
WSP
Trooper last night. He’s in my cooler,” Riah told Adriana.

“The vamp got him?”

“Yes.”

“Crap, sucks for the trooper.”

Her lover did have a way with words. “Yes, it does.”

Adriana’s eyes were bright. “It sucks that one of our state’s finest was taken down just because he was doing his job, but his death will make a difference.”

Leave it to Adriana to put a positive spin on a tragedy. “I suppose so.”

Adriana started toward the door. “Let me get my bag out of my car, then let’s bleed him and I’ll get to work.”

Ivy awoke alone. In a way, she was glad. The night had been glorious and Colin was a great lover. No, scratch that. Fantastic lover. Just thinking about him made her tingle all over. Where did a vampire hunter learn to use his tongue like that?

Being with him was also surreal. She barely knew him, yet she’d jumped in bed with him like she’d never been with another man. She should feel embarrassed, but she didn’t. Quite the contrary.

She could hardly wait to see him again.

Ivy hugged his pillow to her face and inhaled his scent. A sigh escaped her lips, then suddenly she laughed. What a girl she was.

In real life, she was a very serious and ultra-professional coroner.

Behind the blinds of her own home, she turned into a complete cream puff that melted when a sexy man ran his tongue down her body. Today, cream puff worked for her. She smiled, kissed the pillow, and tossed it aside. As appealing as it might be, she couldn’t spend the entire day in bed.

After a shower, Ivy went to the kitchen where Colin had left a note on the counter. She smiled as she read his tidy script. He’d gone back to Spokane to try to figure out where Destiny was headed. He also left his cell-phone number. No endearments. No apologies—

thank God. She liked him better by the minute.

Her cell phone lay on the counter, with the image of an envelope on the display. Maybe Colin had changed his mind and decided he needed to talk to her after all? She quickly punched in her code and listened to the message. It wasn’t Colin.

Riah’s voice sounded strained and her message was troubling for more than one reason. The bodies continued to pile up, except now they seemed to be moving east. If Ivy were to guess, this Destiny was likely in Spokane already. According to Riah’s message, a dead Washington State Trooper was found on the outskirts of Sprague, about forty miles west of Spokane. The elusive vampire was on the move, so Moses Lake was probably safe for a while.

Today was Saturday and no one expected Ivy in the office, despite her habit of showing up anyway. Murders always guaranteed her appearance, although fortunately in Moses Lake those were few. Accidents were more common. Sometimes she came in on the weekends for those, and sometimes she let one of the deputy coroners handle them.

Today was as good as any to delegate. It was one of the reasons she’d been able to sleep so late. After a couple of days with little to no sleep and a late night playing footsy with Colin, she’d been exhausted. Now, she was wide-awake, fully refreshed, and needing a good cup of coffee even if it was late afternoon.

Ten minutes later she pulled into the Starbucks just off I-90 and ordered their biggest latte. Now she could face the rest of the day.

She was headed for Spokane a few minutes later.

Her cell phone rang just about the time she passed the starch plant, and she groaned at the sound of Phil’s voice. Between him and the stench of the plant, Ivy almost retched. With effort, she pushed down the urge and tried to sound civil.

She bypassed a greeting. “You know I can’t say anything.”

“Ivy, buddy, old pal, you know I gotta ask.” His voice was too sweet to take seriously.

“Look, Phil, I understand you’re only doing your job—”

“And this is a big story.” The artificial sweetness disappeared.

“I don’t know if there is a story.” She didn’t have time for this, and she sure didn’t intend to tell Phil what she did know.

His voice grew serious. “Ivy, don’t bullshit me, we’ve known each other too long. Jorge was my friend too, and I know about the dead Stater so don’t play dumb. Way too many bodies to call it coincidence. I smell serial killer, and no matter what you say, or don’t say, I’m running with the story. The people have the right to know.”

Ivy sighed. On one level, she understood, yet the law-enforcement side of her wanted to duct-tape Phil’s mouth. After serial killers Gary Ridgeway in Seattle and Robert Yates in Spokane terrorized the east and the west sides of the state, the last thing Moses Lake needed was to panic over the possibility that another one had made a home in their town.

“I honestly can’t confirm, Phil, and that’s not bullshit.”

“Ivy, come on, we’re old friends.” He tried the pleading voice now.”Yes, we are, and I’m telling you straight up, I can’t confirm it’s the work of a serial killer. Look, I’m on my way to Spokane right now. Let me see what I find out. Keep the serial-killer theory to yourself for twenty-four hours as a favor to your old pal, and I promise to make you my first call when I have more concrete information.”

“You swear?” He didn’t sound convinced, not that she blamed him. Despite all the years they’d known each other, they were on vastly different sides of the story. Law and media didn’t mix well most of the time.

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
Please let it go.

“Okay, Hernandez, I’ll hold you to that.”

“Thanks.”

She breathed in relief as she snapped the phone shut. Wheedling a twenty-four-hour reprieve from Phil was big, but she and Riah had better come up with a good story for him or they’d have even more problems. Phil knew lots of people with really powerful pens, and he could stir things up fast. Also, she didn’t want people in her hometown to be afraid. Moses Lake might not be the prettiest town in the state, but it was home. It deserved to be left in peace.

Ivy took a sip of her latte and let it warm her. As she drove, she managed to put Phil out of her mind and instead tried to talk herself into being not pissed off about the state trooper. The coroner for Adams County was a lawyer. The prosecuting attorney, no less.

Though he filled the shoes of the coroner, unlike Ivy, he wasn’t a doctor and didn’t do autopsies. Victims came to either Moses Lake or Spokane under a mutual-cooperation agreement between the counties. In this instance, he requested Riah’s assistance rather than Ivy’s.

Until recently, they came to her in Moses Lake. Adams County didn’t have many suspicious deaths, and because of the light workload in Moses Lake she was better able to handle them.

Spokane was much busier and typically only took them from Adams County when something unusual occurred or Ivy’s department was unable to assist. That scenario had happened only once since Ivy became coroner.

Ivy would be insulted as well as pissed off that Ned hadn’t called except she knew why. After her divorce from Jorge, Ned hit on her hard. When she turned him down, he’d been pissed off. If Ned could have reined it in and waited a little longer to make his interest known, she might have taken him up on the offer. He was a good-looking guy, as well as smart and successful. But his timing sucked, and when she told him no, he acted like a spoiled little boy.

His unflattering antics pretty much screwed up any chance he might have had, and these days he treated her as if she didn’t exist. He’d call her for help if, and only if, he had no other option.

So Riah now had the body of the murdered trooper in her cooler, and Ivy knew about this death only because Riah kept her in the loop. It’d be fun to see the look on Ned’s face if he found out she was on her way to assist with the autopsy he’d tried to exclude her from.

In the big picture, Ned didn’t rate much consideration. His petty behavior was precisely that…petty. If Destiny held true to the pattern she’d established so far, the trooper would make his transition from death to undeath in about two hours.

What kind of game was Destiny playing? Vampires didn’t always leave their victims in a state where they were guaranteed to turn. They could kill them for food and leave them good old-fashioned dead. Just because they died at the hands of a vampire, they wouldn’t automatically turn. The vampire made the choice.

For a long time, Riah didn’t share with Ivy what made the difference between food or follower. It all centered on trust. It took a while, but when Riah finally realized she could trust Ivy unconditionally, she opened up about her long existence in the shadows.

The secret between death and undeath had to do with blood, Riah had explained. Ivy remembered thinking
duh
. Every person who ever watched a movie, read a book, or researched folk legends understood vampires were all about the blood of their victims. But it wasn’t as simple as Ivy thought.

Blood had to be shared for undeath to come knocking. Riah had been turned when the vampire’s blood mixed with her own.

Just a bite alone wasn’t enough to turn a human into a creature of the night. One drop of the vampire’s blood ingested by a victim, however, was. Whether by mouth or through the bloodstream, a drop made the difference.

It wasn’t just turning a victim though. Vampires were supposed to follow unwritten rules. If a vampire turned a victim, they became that victim’s master. They taught them how to survive, they cared for them, they never abandoned them. They were their maker, their teacher, their protector.

Destiny wasn’t just taking victims for food. She was playing a very dangerous game and only she knew the rules. Each victim so far had turned, which meant she fed them her own blood, then turned around and discarded them like trash. What she was doing went against everything Riah had explained.

All the way to Spokane, Ivy kept thinking one thing—why?

Night fell quiet and dark. Destiny rose and stretched like a cat. Tonight promised all manner of fun except, first, she needed to feed. She took a shower, dried her long blond hair, and dressed. Black jeans, a bloodred blouse topped by a black jacket, and a nice pair of leather boots, handmade in Italy. Casual yet elegant. Striking enough to catch the attention of a willing victim while subdued enough not to stand out. Nobody had to tell her how good she looked.

The lights from Riverpark Square shone bright and cheerful.

Saturday night was in full swing and she was just one of the crowd.

Couples walked arm-in-arm while hordes of teenagers rode the escalators in the Square up to the third-floor multiplex.