“Neither.” Walter moved around the property.
He said, “There is a fresh puddle of oil on the drive, indicating a combustion-engine vehicle was parked here and is now gone.”
EJ didn’t see that on the headpiece, but vampires had better low-light vision than tech offered.
“Two guard dogs are lying unmoving in the grass beneath a layer of sleet. They have been there long enough to cool, for sleet to cover them. A male vampire’s body lies at the back door.” Walter approached and EJ saw the vamp’s now-frozen blood had run over the back steps and down to the ground.
“There is no scent of ballistic weapons. The musical key in my hand has made no tones.”
“No police were called,” EJ said, checking police reports on his unicom. “No alarms were triggered, or if they were, the company was called off.”
Walter worked his way to the garage and driveway. His feet should have crunched the snow, but vamp stealth made no sound over the falling sleet.
One garage door was open, showing utter darkness, no sign of warmth on the infrared lenses. The door had been open a long time. Walter approached, stepped inside, out of the sleet. He shook his head and ice floated away from his hair and shoulders, picked up by the cam.
A body lay on the concrete, almost beneath a car, her blood in a frozen puddle. Walter’s cam focused on it. The body of their client, Cennet A. Campbell-Baines, was cold, her glamour gone. She appeared a decade or two older now.
Avoiding the blood, Walter bent close and studied the body. So did EJ. There was no sound of demon possession on the night air. Walter sniffed. “Myriad scents: blood, voided bowels and bladder, the products of a dying body. Also perfume, soap, milk, oranges. And oddly, the scent of salt. Perhaps someone brined the walkway before the storm.”
EJ focused on her wounds. From the soft intake of breath, so did Angie. Their client’s throat had been torn open, appearing to have been ripped through by claws or fangs. Except—“Do you smell vampire saliva in the wound?” he asked.
The cam was motionless for a moment, the quiet sound of an indrawn breath. “Oddly, no. There is a hint of something toxic on the wounds—gun oil, perhaps Rem Oil or Ballistol used to clean guns, swords, and blades.” He bent lower, breathing several times, giving them a close-up of the wound. “No vampire saliva clings to the edges of the tissue. From the blood spatter, no blood was consumed. And…” His head turned, giving EJ a good look at the spatter. “The blood-free area indicates where the killer was standing, and it wasn’t close enough to have bitten your client. I don’t understand.”
“I do,” EJ said. He felt Angie lean closer, felt her eyes on his face. “The killer used a very specific weapon, aRazryvayushchiy Kogot, devised by the Rus witches in the war to make it look as though fangs had killed. Most Kogots look like a double-bladed sickle, two eight-inch-long blades with slightly serrated, wickedly sharp, hooked ends. The hooked part can be three to six inches long, and the wounds they cause are devastating. When applied with force, they mimic a killing vampire bite, like you see here. But the wounds from aRazryvayushchiy Kogotdon’t smell like a vampire bite.”
“I see.” Walter’s eyes followed droplets out of the garage into the icy dark.
EJ said, “We need to see where the droplets lead before the sleet covers it all. Before we have to call in Villetti.”
Angie muttered something under her breath.
Walter turned to move outside, but stopped, as if listening. “Did you hear that?”
EJ looked at Angie, who shook her head. “No,” he said.
Walter’s head cocked and the view tilted. He walked deeper into the garage, toward the entrance to the house. “I hear it again. Indistinct weeping. Terror.My God.Children.”
Before they could react, Walter sped into the open door, into a mudroom. Stopped. He clutched the musical key in his fingers, held out in front of him, like a talisman, and walked on.
EJ got out of the car. Angie stayed in, moving to his seat, listening, watching on the big screen.
Walter’s steps were silent. All the lights were off inside. He said, “The scents of the two vampires, one familiar to me, ride the air, much more recent than the other scents. Dogs, the odors of family, food, traces of laundry. The house smells empty of the living or the undead. But I hear weeping.”
The short hallway led to a kitchen. EJ caught a glimpse of dishes in the sink. A half-full coffeepot.
EJ heard nothing over comms, but Walter whispered, “Children crying.”
The camera moved up and down, side to side, as he stepped slowly toward the center of the house, to the bottom of a staircase. Six feet from the bottom of the stairwell a green light blinked. He paused. “The weeping stopped.”
“Trap?” EJ asked. “Is this what the killers want? You inside?”
“The sounds come and go, intermittent, barely heard. I cannot pinpoint their location.”
Walter tapped his unicom and whispered, “Alex Younger. Urgent.”
Alex answered. “You’re not letting me get my beauty sleep.”
“The home of Cennet A. Campbell-Baines. Two dead. According to EJ, they used aRazryvayushchiy Kogoton the woman.”
