Seduced by the Night (2 page)

Dirk gritted his teeth and searched the pockets of the latest victim, looking for some form of ID.

His hand closed around the vampire's wallet and pulled it out. In among the credit cards and driver's license was a photo of the man beside an attractive young woman and a little girl. Dirk shoved the wallet into the pocket of his duster and glanced toward the back of the mansion he called home. The admiral would be making another anonymous donation to a grieving family.

With one final task remaining, Dirk returned to the SUV and retrieved the rolled blanket in the backseat. Holding it carefully, he placed his hand against one end. There was a brief hum of energy and then a pommel hit his palm. He wrapped his fingers around it and pulled the long, gleaming sword from the scabbard inside the blanket, then placed the blanket and scabbard back in the car as he held up the sword, admiring how the blade glinted in the moonlight. It was the Death Rider sword, used to slay vampires, and only a changeling—half vampire, half human—could wield it and command its full power. There were only two changelings in the entire D.C. area, hell, in the entire
United States
. Dirk was one of them. As he held the sword, the pommel grew warm in his hand and the ruby eyes of the vampire's head etched in the side gleamed a bright red.

He went to stand before the pile of bodies and not for the first time wondered what would happen if he pulled the dagger out of a vampire's heart. Would the body rise again? His cell phone picked that moment to start buzzing and he glanced at the caller ID before answering it. "Yes, Admiral?"

"
John
Boehler
called. There's been another killing. He thought we'd want to take a look. I saw you drive by the house—are you almost done?"

"Yeah. I'll be right there." Dirk put away the phone and stared at the sight before him. Tomorrow, the sun would turn the pile of corpses into a stone mass that the first stiff wind would then reduce to dust. There was only one final task to perform.

Raising the sword high, he brought it down in one swift, smooth stroke. There was no blood as the head hit the ground with the muted thud that Dirk had grown accustomed to. With a grim countenance, he tossed the head back on the pile and cleaned the blade of his sword on the dead man's clothes.

There were moments when he liked being a Night Slayer—this was not one of them.

Elsewhere in the city, Kent Patterson wiped the blood from his mouth as his meal slumped to the ground, already forgotten. Patterson had fed until he could consume no more, yet the hunger would not abate. It clawed at him  until anger and irritation rode him relentlessly. He silently berated himself for not going out with Harris tonight. He would have enjoyed a good hunt.

The silent admission caused him to sigh. It was probably just as well that he remained at the lair. Lately, he and Harris hadn't been seeing eye to eye on things, and that troubled him. He considered tasting one of the other humans chained to the wall, their fear a cloying scent in the otherwise rancid atmosphere of his lair, but a sound from the outer chamber distracted him.

His converts had returned and Patterson was eager for the prize they'd brought him. Patterson, ever resourceful, had a plan—one that included personal wealth and power. The success of this plan, however, depended on having a biochemist; one who would do work for him, either willingly or coerced, it made no difference to Patterson.

Stepping through the door, he gazed upon the frightened young man in a white lab coat, held suspended by his arms between the two underlings. Patterson suspected they retained their grip on the young man more to support him than to keep him from bolting. The irony here was that it was not the young man who should be the most frightened.

"What the hell is this?" Patterson bellowed, causing the two lesser vampires to stumble back.

"It… it's the biochemist you wanted," the braver of the two responded.

"No," Patterson said, his voice sounding deceptively calm. "This is not the biochemist
I
wanted. This biochemist is a
man.
He
raised an eyebrow as he looked first at one underling and then the other as if daring them to refute the obvious truth. "Where is the
woman?"
If it was possible for the two vampires to grow paler, they did.

"We went to the lab as instructed, but he was the only one there."

"Then. You. Failed." Patterson spit out the words, making sure the converts fully appreciated the extent of his displeasure. Their hold on the prisoner grew tentative as if they would leave him there and return immediately to the lab.
Imbeciles
. "You can't go back now. Your incompetence has put me in a difficult situation. I'll have to find another way to get what I want." He turned to go back into his chamber.

"What do we do with this one?"

Without turning, Patterson waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "I don't care. Drain him if you like."

"Wait!"

Patterson stopped and looked back at the young man who was either braver or more foolish than Patterson had expected. "You wish to say something?"

The young man swallowed visibly and took a deep breath. "You want Bethany
Stavinoski
, right? I can help you get her."

Dirk nodded to the uniformed officer guarding the entrance to Van Home Technologies as he walked past the man. He took in the expensive tiled floors, the opulent reception station, the high-tech security desk, the vaulted ceiling, and the expensive artwork hanging on the walls. Everything reeked of money and nearly untouchable sophistication, with no thought to real functionality or security.

A place like this would be child's play to breach and nearly impossible to defend. That's how Dirk viewed everything—in military terms. Ten years as a Navy SEAL followed by six months of hunting vampires did that to a man.

"There's
John
," Admiral Charles Winslow said, leading his small group across the foyer to the security desk where the detective stood waiting for them.

Besides the admiral and Dirk, there was Mac and
Lanie
Knight. Dirk had known Mac for years, having first met him in boot camp and then later serving in the
SEALs
with him. Their paths had split a year and a half ago, following an ambush that took the lives of half their unit and left Mac's femur shattered when a sniper's bullet hit his leg. That was when Mac left the Navy and, after months of rehab, started flying private charters, which is how he'd met his wife.

A librarian by day and EMT/
firefighter
by night,
Lanie
had hired Mac to fly her to
South America
as soon as she learned of her father's death. Dr. Weber had been working at one of the government's research facilities and had supposedly died after being attacked by a wild animal.

"Charles, glad you could come." Detective
John
Boehler's
words broke Dirk from his thoughts and he watched the detective shake hands with the admiral. "The body's back here."

He led them down a corridor to the right and stopped at the first doorway, taking them into what appeared to be a conference room.

With his overdeveloped senses, Dirk picked up the smell of blood immediately and looked past the long dark conference table and chairs to the body lying at the far end of the room. The crime scene investigators had already taped the outline and presumably collected all the evidence they could, in hopes of finding the murderer, but Dirk knew they never would. That was no reflection on the Metropolitan police department. They simply didn't understand what they were looking for.

The deceased appeared to be in his mid-fifties, with dark hair heavily streaked with gray. Dirk thought the man would have been about five feet ten in height and had the wider girth that comes from years of bodybuilding. In  other words, a hard man to bring down, had he been fighting humans.

Lanie
removed a glove from her pocket and pulled it on. Then, kneeling beside the body, she stretched out a hand to touch it, stopping short to glance up at
John
. "Is it okay?"

John
nodded. "Yeah, we're done."

Lanie
gripped the guard's head and twisted it to the side, exposing the neck. "There." She pointed to the puncture wounds. Against the unnaturally pale color of the skin, the two dark holes stood out in stark contrast, each approximately the size of a cotton swab and filled with partially congealed blood.

"Is this the only victim?" Dirk asked the detective. It didn't make sense to him that a vampire would go to the trouble of breaking into a corporate building to feed off one guard when there were other food sources more easily available out on the streets.

"It's the only body we found,"
John
replied. Dirk wasn't the only one to notice his choice of words, because Mac pinned the detective with a questioning look. "Meaning?"

John
shrugged. "Meaning we have a missing research assistant. According to the security log, he signed in a couple of hours ago, but he's not in the building. What's more, the lab he works in looks like it's been torn apart and we found a small amount of blood on the floor. Everything points to an abduction, but what I don't have is a motive or suspects."

"What kind of research was he doing?" Dirk asked.

"I don't know,"
John
admitted, leading them out of the conference room. "This is a small-scale biochemical research facility. Let's go upstairs," he suggested. "You can take a look at the lab and meet the CEO and department manager. I'll introduce you."

The police were not obligated to show them anything and it was only because of
John
that they were allowed into what would otherwise be a restricted site.

"Miles Van Home, of
the
Van Homes, owns this place,"
John
explained, leading them to the elevators. They stepped into the waiting car and he pressed the button for the fourth floor. "The department manager, Bethany
Stavinoski
, is his
fiancee
." He sighed. "She's involved in this somehow. Not only did she find the guard, but it's her lab and research that were destroyed and the guy missing is
her
assistant."