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The guard at the gate stopped me. I smiled sweetly as I let down the window to speak to him. “Why hello there, Eugene!”
Eugene and I always liked to have a little chat. Becca swore up and down he had a crush on me, but I couldn’t see it. He was just being nice. Plus, I had a rule I followed to a tee: Never date a co-worker.
“Agent Delacroix, we weren’t expecting you today. Who do you have in the back?”
“Some guy called Redmond.” I pretended to check my papers as if his name eluded me. “I was sent to eliminate him, but he turned out stronger than expected. I believe he will be more use to Dr. Stryker’s research than dead.”
My smile didn’t waver as the guard leaned forward to inspect the passenger in the backseat. Evidently bound by silver cuffs – impossible for vampires to break through as silver saps their strength and burns if it comes in contact with their blood – sat Redmond. As the vampire snarled Eugene jerked back.
“Nasty one you got there,” Eugene remarked.
“You have no idea,” I muttered.
It wasn’t uncommon for a hunter to bring back a vampire for our researchers, especially powerful ones, so Eugene shrugged and let us through. “Stryker is in lab three today.”
“Thanks!” I rolled up my window and waited for the gate to open.
“So, what’s your interest in all of this?” I asked Redmond conversationally as I drove into the subterranean garage closest to the lab Eugene mentioned, even as I wiped my clammy hand on my jeans. I’d tried to call my sister on the way over. She hadn’t picked up. She always picked up. “Did you just get up one morning and decide to investigate some suspicious deaths?”
Gray eyes met me in the rear-view mirror. “Why do you do what you do?”
“Some things just need killing. Especially vampires.”
I felt dirty after what I’d seen at the morgue. I resisted the urge to scratch my skin as if I could somehow rid myself of the taint. What I really wanted was a hot shower. But not before I saw with my own two eyes that my sister was okay.
“Because we drink blood?” he asked in a mocking tone.
I slammed on the brakes, and he flew forward. Arrogant vampire neglected to put on his seatbelt. I suppressed a smile.
“Because you’re killers.”
He laughed as he pushed himself back upright. “Is that so? Then why haven’t we taken over the world yet? Enslaved humans the same way you enslave cows and chickens? Pot, meet kettle. You killed someone in my club tonight. I let all three assassins that were sent after me walk out unscathed.” He reconsidered. “Well, with a bruised ego, but fine otherwise.”
I’d asked myself the same question over and over. I would have liked to ascribe it to Hawthorn’s diligence at keeping the undead pest in check.
I put the car into park and rubbed my temple. Making my decision, I turned to the vampire. “My sister’s working tonight. And it’s the Winter Solstice. You know what that means.”
“Witches are stronger tonight.”
“All magic actually, but yes. If what you say is true, that Hawthorn is involved, then whoever’s doing these experiments, whatever they planned will go down tonight. No matter what happens, I’m getting my sister out.”
Redmond looked me in the eye. He too seemed to make a decision. “My fiancée disappeared. She was a witch.”
I sucked in a breath. With witch’s blood being a delicacy for vampires, romances between our species were rare. “I’m guessing she didn’t run out on you.”
“No. It was as if she’d vanished from the face of the earth,” he carried on, his voice rough. “Weeks later I found her. She’d escaped. She was alive, barely, but what they’d done to her.” He got a haunted look on his face that I’d never seen on a vampire’s face before. To be fair, most of the time I spent in close quarters with a bloodsucker were spent hurling insults back and forth and kicking their asses. Or getting my ass kicked.
Swallowing hard, I reached out as if to comfort him, but thought better of it. “What did they do to her?”
I had to know.
His eyes were no longer gray, instead they were black. Vampire eyes got that way when they were angry, hungry, or, well, horny. It sent a shiver down my spine, and it was all I could do to not reach for my stakes and finish him off.
“She was like nothing I had ever seen before. Hands replaced with claws. Scales on her arms and face. And her eyes. Oh, God, her eyes.”
“What about them?” I whispered.
“Crimson. Like a demon’s.”
