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Both Evelyn and Kade shook their heads.
“That’s a relief,” he said. “But I’m not convinced a vampyr did this.”
Evelyn shook her head again, pulling the sheet back over the young woman’s chest. “Her skin is blue from the poison of a vampyr.”
“Aye, we may know little of vampyrs here in Callum, but there are no bite marks.” The commissioner gestured at McKenna’s bare neck.
“We have more arteries than that, Commissioner. May I?” Evelyn asked.
The commissioner nodded, and she pulled the sheet up, revealing the young woman’s naked legs, hued blue but unscathed. Not even a bruise. As Evelyn assessed, Kade took the moment to reach out his wolf and sense Evelyn’s magic. He met a blanket of heat, like the comforting rays of the summer sun, but nothing else. In fact, his wolf didn’t even detect magic, just a sense of power. If he didn’t know better, he’d guess her to be human.
Then he smelled it. The musty herb wolfsbane. Evelyn’s slim fingers hovered over the victim’s thigh, a bracelet of leather and vegetation woven together around her wrist. She, too, masked her magic and true self. Kade wasn’t surprised. She’d evaded discovery for two years, and this explained her success.
Again, Kade’s wolf wrestled within. The sight of the bracelet, the use of wolfsbane—an outlawed plant amongst the werewolves—angered him. He hated her actions. Masking her identity. Constantly on the move. She didn’t give a damn about her duty as Daughter of the Goddess. Evelyn never wanted to be found. But then . . . why had she cared about McKenna enough to seek out Commissioner Doyle?
Evelyn pointed to the puncture wound on McKenna’s inner thigh. “She was bitten here.”
Kade inspected the wound smudged with black dirt, close to the dead girl’s covered sex—an intimate area, not typical of a bloodthirsty vampyr who went for the neck or wrist.
Back home, bit marks were routinely inspected after a vampyr attack. How many bite marks scarred a victim’s body determined how many vampyrs had attacked. Vampyrs bit once, drinking blood from a single source. More than one bite meant more than one vampyr. But the type of vampyr could also be determined. The deeper the blue, the more venom, and scáths, newly turned vampyrs, didn’t have control over how much venom they used. Mature vampyrs left their victims a lighter shade, but Kade had never encountered a “mature” vampyr.
They hadn’t crossed the Void in over two decades.
Kade pinched the bridge of his nose. McKenna had been drained by one vampyr—odd enough an ocean away from Drystan—but she was also a lighter shade of blue, not the evidence of scáths, the vampyr he, or Evelyn for that matter, were accustomed to. The details of the vampyr murder became more and more confusing.
Evelyn pulled back the sheet to cover McKenna again. She blinked and gave nothing away, appearing almost bored, but then she swallowed, eyes darting back to where the bite was.
Evelyn Carson wore a mask.
She tried to come across as aloof and indifferent, when in fact she felt far more than she let on.
Miss Patricia said ya moved on from Callum.
Evelyn had left Callum, or at least had tried to. Leaving, running, moving place to place, constantly avoiding her duty. Anger seared through Kade. Again, he fought the urge to demand answers.
Yet, why had she come back? Was his betrothed as concerned about the murder as he was?
Before Kade could ask anything more, Commissioner Doyle cleared his throat. “I’ll hire both of ya to find the vampyr and kill it.”
Kade balked, remembering he posed as a huntsman. Staying and finding this vampyr had not been his plan. It was not his duty to protect those in Callum. But he’d been fighting the vampyr most of his life, and leaving, putting his own wants before the threat, felt wrong.
He’d wanted to find Evelyn and bring her back. Convince her to unify their souls and fulfill the prophecy, yet that prophecy connected Kade to his duty. Defeat the vampyr, regardless of what he wanted. His mother had sacrificed herself for that duty, and now he’d seen something he’d never thought to see. A vampyr in Callum. A victim with missing eyes. An intimate bite. These weren’t like the killings back home. Kade’s wolf sensed the difference, and the way Evelyn appeared lost in her own thoughts, he wondered if she sensed the same.
Commissioner Doyle continued. “I have a feeling it won’t be the last killing. But we aren’t equipped here in Callum for vampyrs. We have our own demons, our own monsters, but this is new for us.”
“I...” Evelyn shook her head, setting her shoulders back. “I’m sorry, Commissioner Doyle, but I can’t help.”
As she turned to leave, a flash of defeat and even guilt mixed with the sadness in her silver eyes, the first light of emotion Kade had witnessed.
Kade needed to stay and find this vampyr, despite the complications it caused. He couldn’t lose Evelyn, but revealing who he was may drive her away. He needed her to stay and work on this murder with him. That way, he could prove they could be a team and possibly discover why she’d left in the first place.
“Frightened?” Kade called.
He baited her, knowing damn well fear wasn’t an emotion he’d scented on her. Accounts of Evelyn had never depicted a frightened young woman but instead a witch who faced demons, darkness, and vampyrs head-on.
She halted, spinning around so her tattered cloak billowed about her. “No.”
Kade raised a brow, scratching his beard. “Fooled me. Usually, those who are scared run.”
