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“Thank you, Quinn.” Claire hugs me.
“Don’t mention it.”
The rest of the night isn’t much quieter. Rowdy humans and shifters alike continue making my life more difficult. I kick a butt here, toss someone out the door there. It’s all just annoying more than anything else.
I’m not the bar manager or even bouncer of this place. Just a bartender. It shouldn’t even be my job to do any of this. But I learned at a young age that if I need something done, I have to do it myself.
I remember one time in high school, my mother, who at best tolerated my existence, was off on a week-long bender. So, naturally, I threw a huge party at my house and invited the whole school. Two football players were being creeps to some girls. No one else was stepping in, so I broke their noses myself.
Turns out I’m really good at fighting. Standing at 5 foot 7 inches with a small frame, people quickly underestimate me. Makes it a lot easier to kick their ass.
Sure, this place is a disaster most of the time. But no one has been seriously injured in a fight since I started working here. That’s because of me.
The whole world sucks. It’s full of terrible people. But I can enact a little bit of control over it when I’m on shift here. What else would I be doing with my time?
Even though I have to break up so many fights, a lot of our regular patrons know by now not to mess around when I’m working. They just come in, drink their drinks, socialize, and take their fights outside.
I force a smile for those folks and for anyone else here until they need to be kicked out. That’s honestly the worst part of the job. But God damn it, I need this money. So, I got to force that smile.
Though it gets harder each day. I can feel everything weighing me down. My past. My lack of a future. Pretty soon, I think it might all get to be too much.
2
CASPIAN
“Fuck. It’s just like the others.” I look up at my partner, Ren. “It’s going to be another long night.”
“When is it not?” he growls back.
Crouching, I look closer at the poor dead bastard in front of me. I hesitate to ask Ren what this brings the total number of victims up to, but I already know. Too many.
Every victim is the same. Completely drained of blood. Left lying in an alley like this guy. Or on a park bench like that jogger on Tuesday.
The layperson would look at all this and immediately assume vampire. But the layperson is stupid. I think I know my own kind more than them.
We vampires live by a code. We aren’t the scary creatures from those black-and-white horror movies. We don’t just kill indiscriminately like this when we feed. Even if we did accidentally kill someone we’re feeding from, even the dumbest vampires know how to hide a body.
This is someone looking to frame vampires for the killings. It has to be. Nothing else makes any sense. As PEACE’s lead investigator on this case, I’ll find the real killer and put a stop to them.
“So.” Ren breaks the silence. “Are you still ruling out that it was another vampire?”
I stand up to glare at my friend. “If we found a chew toy next to a dead body, I wouldn’t assume a werewolf did it.” I crack a twisted smile at him.
“Fuck off.” I can tell he’s holding in a laugh. “It was one time. When I was like six.”
“Your mom showed me pictures.” I wave over the CSI team to get to work. “It was more than one time, and you were older than six.”
If you believe all the rumors online, you’d probably assume vampires and werewolves are natural enemies. Maybe that’s true elsewhere but to me, Ren is like family. Actually, he’s better than family. My actual family hasn’t talked to me much since I joined PEACE.
I lead Ren out of the alleyway as the CSI team walks in. You’d think being stationed at the PEACE office in Middlebury, Vermont of all places would lead to a boring career. But damn, this city still manages to keep us busy.
“I assume you could smell what I could.” Ren is quick to change the subject, but he’s right. We have an investigation to continue.
“Yeah.” Nothing beats the heightened senses of a werewolf but don’t count out a vampire’s when the chips are down. “Beer. Lots of it. He’d been drinking tonight. Probably spilled some of it on himself.”
“That’s what I got, too. We just have to find what bar.”
Ren and I both look up and down the street. I can see about five different bars in each direction. Not as helpful as I hoped.
