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I knew ful wel that Sharah was in love with the detective, but that was her place to answer, not mine. I gave Chase a soft smile. “Listen, you’re a catch. You’ve had your share of screwups, but, Johnson, you’re okay, and I think you’re going to make somebody happy someday. Could someone like Sharah be interested in you? I don’t see why not.”
He thought for a moment, then led the way to the morgue. “We’ve kept the bodies. We stil don’t have IDs on three of them. The other one, we know who she is but can’t find any family to notify.
But word is getting around on the streets. I’ve got to warn the streetwalkers soon. They deserve to know if there’s some nutcase out there targeting them.”
I stared at the bril iant white wal s of the morgue, the shimmering stainless steel of the sinks and tables. This was my domain—the domain of the dead. Had Dredge not brought me back to life, I’d have walked the hal owed hal s, crossing over to the Land of the Silver Fal s.
Every time I came face-to-face with mortality, I remembered my own immortality and once again had to face the fact that I was a predator. A creature who belonged in the shadows. Never again would I walk under the sun, not until the day I was ready to give it al up and go home to my ancestors. Until then, there was only the moon for me.
Four bodies were laid out on tables, covered with white sheets. Spotless sheets, like freshly fal en snow against a barren background.
“I take it you’ve watched them for any signs of rising?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Nothing. I think they’re truly dead.”
I approached the first one and pul ed back the sheet. She was unearthly in her silence, in her stil ness. Like a statue, or a figure frozen in ice, she lay there, pale from the lack of blood. I leaned down and examined the puncture wounds on her neck. Vampire. I could feel him. Smell him. The vamp who’d kil ed this woman was male and fairly young—at least as a vampire. That much I could tel . Quickly, I checked the other bodies, startled by the similarity of their looks. They could have been sisters.
In a way they are, I thought. Sisters in death. They were kil ed by the same vampire. I could smel him on them, his breath, his scent, his . . .
Oh crap. I jumped back, trembling. Very little set me off, but this—this was too familiar, stil too stark in a memory that I’d never, ever shake.
“Did you check to see if they were raped?” My voice was sharper than I meant it to be, but I couldn’t help it.
Chase looked at me, his expression slipping from neutral to pained. “Yeah, we did. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to tel you. I know what that does to you.”
“They were, right? You wouldn’t find semen, but they were torn and bruised. I can smel it. I can smel the blood-lust . . . not just around the puncture marks.” As I felt the room spin, my fangs came down and I began to panic. I had to get out of there. “Chase, I have to get up to the surface. Now.”
“Come on.” He guided me out but wisely didn’t touch me.
When we came to the elevator, I held out my hand. “You’d better not ride up with me. It’s too dangerous right now. I’l meet you out front.”
He didn’t question, just stood back, letting me board the car without him. I punched M for the main floor and counted the seconds as they ticked by. The elevator wasn’t slow, but by the time it reached the main floor and I managed to haul ass outside, it felt like I’d spent a thousand years locked in the car.
A thousand years of memories, a thousand years of wanting freedom, a thousand years of wondering if we had another Dredge on our hands.
CHAPTER 2
Chase fol owed me outside. “You okay?”
I slowly looked up at him, letting my fangs show. “No, not total y, but I wil be. Just . . . some memories you never shake. Some deeds are never undone. Dredge was a horror beyond anything you can imagine. Karvanak might have come close, but Dredge—he thrived on the pain of others. On humiliation and degradation. He laughed as I screamed, Chase. He laughed like he was watching some stupid sitcom. And then he . . . when he . . .”
I was awash in the sudden memory of his laughing face as he mounted me, raped my bleeding body, tore at the lacerations that he’d spent hours carving into my skin, and for a moment everything shifted beneath my feet. I wanted to hunt, to chase, to kil —but he was dust. I’d already toasted him and there was nothing left I could do to him.
“Menol y, Menol y—snap out of it. Listen to me!” Chase’s voice cut through my bloodlust fog like a razor, slicing the veil of hunger so quickly it felt like I’d been ejected from a womb.
Blinking, I shook my head and stared up at him. “How did you do that?”
“Do what?” He looked puzzled. “What did I do?”
“You yanked me out of bloodlust. When I’m in bloodlust, very little can penetrate the hunger, let alone shake the crazies off me. Camil e can do it, but she has the force of the Moon Mother behind her. An older vampire can do it—and once in a great while, someone comes along with that ability, but seldom an FBH.” I regarded him quietly, wondering just what powers had woken within our detective when he’d been given the Nectar of Life.
“I have no idea how it happened, but I’m glad it worked. I don’t carry a straw and I’m not up for being a long cool drink.” He frowned. “What happened?”
“Flashback. I stil get them once in a while, but it’s been far less since we dusted Dredge.
Before then, almost every day I relived Dredge’s torture in my dreams. And I couldn’t stop them—
couldn’t wake up. But when it happens during the nights, I go into a bloodlust and my predator surfaces, seeking an outlet for the pain of the memories. The past few months, it’s only happened a few times.”
