The Nightlife: London (Urban Fantasy Romance) (The Nightlife Series) (9 page)

Michelle straightened her skirt down over her hips as she
walked down the hall, away from the office where she left Detective Sergeant
Billings slumped his chair, half-conscious.  She had fucked and bit him into a
complete stupor.  Though men like him could be entertaining at times, this one was
nothing more than a means to an end.

Since Aaron had come into her life, he had ruined her in the
bedroom.  Sex with humans was a poor substitute to Aaron’s virile, punishing
love.  She did the dirty deed and now had the autopsy file zipped up tight
inside her jacket.

In the taxi, headed towards Katya and Ivan’s apartment, she
wanted nothing more than to go back to the hotel and shower – wash away the evidence
of the nasty man.  His acrid scent plastered all over her body made her skin
crawl and turned her stomach sour.

But business came first.  She instructed the cab driver to
let her off at the abandoned storefront below Ivan and Katya’s apartment, then
noticed the busted front door.  Alarmed, she burst in to find Katya sitting in
the living room glaring at Aaron, and Ivan cracking open the seal on a new
bottle of vodka.  The Russian had a smirk on his face.  He was always laughing
at something, or someone.  Aaron had the same smirk, as though sharing an
inside joke.

Katya’s aura swirled with a crazy blend of irritation,
arousal and even a measure of fear.  She feared Aaron?  Or perhaps Aaron
triggered all these conflicting emotions in Katya.

Michelle didn’t care about Katya, but the situation piqued
her curiosity.  “Did I miss anything?”  She directed her question to Aaron. 
She hadn’t established much of a relationship with the wolves.  They tended to
look at her with disdain whenever Aaron’s back was turned.

“This cockup tried to roger me.”  Katya thumbed towards
Aaron.

Aaron shrugged.  “She flipped out.  All I wanted was a
little bite.”

Michelle smirked and sat down beside him.  “I will make up
for it.”  She kissed him on the mouth and pulled at his lip with her teeth,
looking sideways at Katya and Ivan.

“Better watch it.  Don’t know where that’s been.”  Katya
glared at Michelle in open hostility.  Cunt.

Michelle glared at Katya and unzipped her jacket to toss the
autopsy file on the scratched surface of the second-hand coffee table.  “I got
what I wanted.”

“Bet he did too, eh?  Bit of fair trade?”  Katya was in a
real mood, pushing every button Michelle had.

Aaron snapped, “Enough.  She did what you couldn’t do, and
you should be thankful.”

“Oh I could do it, I just wouldn’t.”

Michelle held her tongue and fought back an urge to tear off
the bitch’s head.  She opened the folder to the first page and sent Katya a
knowing look. “I doubt that.  But it is done.  Let’s have a look.”

She caught the truth in Katya’s eyes as the wolf scowled at the
short hemline of Michelle’s designer dress,
envy
.  A common problem she
encountered with other women.  Michelle had honed her sexuality into a sharp
weapon.  She had carved her way through the nightlife for over seventy years,
alone, with nothing more than her wits and sex appeal.

Wonderful
.  A new reason to be hated.  As if Katya
needed another reason.

Michelle prized Aaron for his easy assurance with her.  No
jealousy, no envy, no twisted little
issues
.  He was just Aaron, simple
and loving, no insecurities.  After seventy years, human frailty got old.

Katya leaned forward and snagged a few pages from the report
to scan through it, and Ivan snatched several pages away from her.  He grunted,
“Let me see.”

Michelle and Aaron leafed through the remaining pages on the
table.

The grainy black and white copies of the crime scene photos brought
a shivering chill to Michelle.  Dark memories of old times tried to resurface. 
The woman lay in the street in her nightgown and overcoat.  She had black
circles around her eyes, far too thin.  She looked a lot like one of the
bloodslaves Michelle’s master Julian had drained.  One of many bloodslaves who had
suffered this fate.  Thank God Julian was long dead.

Michelle refused to deal in bloodslaves anymore.  It was
unnecessary and cruel.  They never survived more than a few weeks, and their
deaths weighed heavily on her conscience.

She hoped Aaron had learned his lesson well with the loss of
his wife Anastasia.

Aaron stabbed at a page.  “That’s odd.  This says her
coworkers at the bank noticed she’d been calling in sick a lot.  The
investigator requested her medical records.”  Aaron had a puzzled sound to his
voice.

Michelle knew exactly what that meant.  “She could have been
anemic, a bloodslave.”

Katya glared at Michelle hard.

Interesting.
  She knows of the bloodslaves.

Ivan tapped his sheet of paper.  “There is a cell number she
called twice.  The notes say it’s a prepaid phone.  A throwaway?”  He looked to
Katya.  “Can you track it?”

“If it’s a smart phone with GPS, and only if you apologize
for leaving me with him.”  She tilted her head at Aaron, and both men smiled.

“Yes, Katya, I am sorry I left you with the big bad vampire
and he tried to bite you.  Now get your fucking laptop.”

“Fine!”

She got up, angry, and Ivan smacked her ass, “Hurry.”

Aaron couldn’t help but grin as she glared over her shoulder
on her way out of the room.  “So … what … she’s a hacker?”

“Something like that.”

Katya sat down and placed her laptop on the coffee table in
front of her.  “This is England.  You left your privacy behind when you entered
the country.  Haven’t you heard about the voicemail hacking trials?  It’s all
over the BBC.  That was years ago.  Now, there are all kinds of tools available
to track phones and phone calls.  A few mouse clicks and I can pull GPS logs,
messages, call records.  Fuckall.”

* * * *

Mike Jamison shivered atop the building opposite the
abandoned storefront as he sighted his binoculars on Aaron, Michelle and the
two others, watching them through the half-open blinds in their window.  He had
a nasty gut feeling he knew exactly what they were looking at in that file
folder.  When the dark-haired woman sat down with her laptop and started typing
in data from one of the pages, he sensed the situation was turning against him.

Hands shaking from the freezing wind, damn near numb, he
fumbled with his cell phone to dial Bresnik.

“Hallo.”

“Is this Bresnik?”

“The one and only.  Who wants to know?”

“This is Mike.  I followed them from Nicky’s tip.  They’re
right where you said they’d be, in Soho.  When do you want to do this?”

“Yesterday, mate.  We’ll be there in ten.”

Looked like he wasn’t getting out of the cold anytime soon.

* * * *

Aaron scooted up close to Katya to better see the screen of
her laptop.  “So, this is where the woman was found, right?”

Katya looked at him, at how close he was sitting.  “Yeah. 
It’s also the last reading on the GPS.”

To her other side, Ivan sat back and scratched the blond-grey
stubble of his buzzcut.  “He dumped the body and the phone at the same time,
same street.  A dead end!  
Svoloch’!
”

“That’s it?  What about before?”  Aaron’s finger tracked the
GPS lines leading up to the end point.

Ivan and Katya both shook their heads.  She pointed at the
screen.  “Jamison went to a nearby hotel, to the hospital, to the bar, back to
the same hotel, and dumped her here.  He never traveled more than a few blocks
from the hotel bar and hospital.  But it looks like he went to the hospital
several times over the course of two weeks.  Do you think he’s stupid enough to
be in the same hotel, on the same street where he left her dead body?”

“If I was Jamison, I’d leave the country.”  Ivan rubbed his
hands over his face, grabbed the vodka bottle and poured another shot.  “Why
stay?”

“He is here.  He was at The Rocking Horse recently.  Reza
sold him that gun barely a week ago.  Jamison’s here, somewhere.”  Aaron eyed
Katya, the soft supple skin at the nape of her neck.  Yet again, he wondered
what she would taste like.

When she looked up at him, nose to nose, she stared into his
eyes.  He could feel his vampiric web of enticement sliding over her, drawing
her in.  She broke eye-contact with a shake of her head and stood up abruptly,
wiping nervous hands on her jeans.  He loved to see her fidget as he slid past
her defenses.

She paced the room, stealing glances at Aaron, but
maintaining her distance.  “Okay, if we assume Jamison is still here, now what?”

Michelle watched Katya, a hint of annoyance in her eyes. 
“We wait and watch the news.  When he kills again, we hunt him down.”

“You’re so bloody content to let that happen!  We want to
stop
him from killing, don’t you get it?”  Katya scowled at Michelle who glowered
right back.

“Michelle has a point.  There might be something in the
news.”  Aaron reached for the laptop, pulled up Google, and searched for the
BBC news website.

Katya stared at him like he was insane, for agreeing with
Michelle, or messing with her laptop, or maybe both.  “Fucking wanker!”

With that she marched over to the dresser and shoved her
pistol in the top drawer and headed for the door.  “I need to breathe.  I can’t
deal with these leeches.”  The wicked look she shot at Aaron left no room for
misunderstanding.  He had triggered something animalistic in her, and she was
fighting it off.

She slammed the door on her way out and left Aaron sitting
there feeling like an ass.

Ivan stood up shaking his head.  “I will talk to her.”  He
tossed his pages of the autopsy on the table in front of Aaron.  “See what you
can learn.”

Ivan walked out the door after Katya.

Michelle stared at Aaron with an accusation waiting on her
lips.

Aaron shrugged.  “What?  Don’t look at me like that.”

“Is not wise to play with wolves.”

He nodded, knowing she was right.  Katya was a pile of
contradictions.  An obnoxious tomboy, anti-social bitch, and yet strangely,
still fun to be around.  He had this ridiculous urge to claim her, to have a
wolf of his own.  Seeing how she had almost shot his face off at the prospect
of being bitten, it was probably a bad idea.

“Yeah, the wolf pack might not like me mucking around with
one of theirs.”  But if Urvashi could get away with having her manservant pet,
Renault …

* * * *

Katya heard Ivan jogging to catch up to her before she
sensed him.  She had been walking at a fast clip down the pavement.

As soon as he reached her she turned on him.  “What the hell
did you think you were doing leaving me alone with Aaron?”  She jabbed her
thumb back towards the apartment.

He laughed in her face.  “I thought you would have a few
minutes of fun, nothing more.”

“Damn you, Ivan!”  Katya nailed him in the arm with a solid
punch, knocking him back a couple of steps.

“Admit it, you like him.”  Ivan was still smirking, the
bastard.

As usual, Ivan had struck at the heart of the matter.  “I
don’t want to like him.  Can’t you see?  I can’t like him.  He’s a fucking
vampire, Ivan!  They are nothing but users and consumers, sucking the life out
of everyone around them.”

Ivan’s amused gaze searched hers.  “Yes, he sucks.  But you
still like him.”

Katya snorted.  “It’s not right, Ivan.  I won’t be in his
fucking harem.  I won’t be his bloody pet.  It’s not going to happen!”

“I know what you fear.  You don’t want to live like
Kristina.  I understand Katya.  I’m sorry I left you with him.  Forgive me.” 
He seemed about as sincere as an insurance salesman.

“I mean it.  I don’t want him near me.  I’m serious, Ivan. 
I can’t trust myself around the bastard.”  Ivan’s candor had stolen her steam. 
But at least she felt in control now, her wolf suppressed.  She had barely
restrained the savage animal inside her from making a meal of the fool leech
rubbing his damned prick all over her.

Ivan looked over his shoulder and then slid his arm through
Katya’s, ushering her down the street.  That was strange.  Ivan wasn’t the type
to prance around with a girl on his arm.  When she glanced back once more, she
knew something was wrong.

“How many.”

“Three.  Latinos.”

What they hell did they have going with the bloody Latinos? 
Katya tried to recall anything recent with the pack that might have involved
Spaniards.  Nothing came to mind.

Ivan leaned in and whispered, “You have your gun?”

She shook her head.  She never carried her gun unless she
thought she absolutely needed it, like when they were hunting, or when they met
with Aaron and Michelle.  It was just too risky to carry a weapon without
reason.  A good way to end up in an English prison.

His grip on her arm tightened.  “In the alley up here,
follow my lead.”

Bloody hell
.  She hated when Ivan pulled his Russian
Superman routine, trying to take on the world alone.  Before she had a chance
to balk, he steered her into the uneven brick surface of the alleyway.

His knife out, Ivan pushed Katya back against the wall and
crouched low, waiting.  The first of the three men came around the corner with
his pistol drawn.  Ivan slashed up across his wrist, and the pistol fell.

The man’s surprised yelp was cut short by Katya’s right
cross punch, snapping his head sideways.  He dropped.  “Stay down.”

Ivan scooped the gun off the ground, and then snagged
Katya’s sleeve to shove her back out of the way, but he was too late.  Cold
gunmetal touched the back of her neck.  One man, behind her, held his pistol on
her steadily, and another man had a pistol pointed at Ivan.  “Damn it, Ivan. 
You knew this would happen.”