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“Ah, this. Now this is interesting stuff. We got you covered for magical entrance—that’s Chiarra,” he added, waving in the direction of a woman with glowing purple hands. “No creature’s gonna be porting right into your apartment after we’re done.”
“Porting?”
He grinned. “Beam me up, Scotty,” he said, then waggled his overgrown eyebrows.
“Oh. Right.”
“Not a common trait, but gotta cross the T’s.” He pointed to the far wall. “Got the seams around your windows and under your doors sealed up nice and tight against mist, too. Don’t want any two-cent vamps or their passengers getting in, do we? Especially not when you’ve got such a high-profile vampire case on your first go out the gate.”
“I’m sorry? Two cents?”
“Huh? Oh, no. Two centuries. That’s about the earliest age when a vamp develops the ability to mist. Gotta grow into it, you know. You hear about a vamp getting prosecuted by the humans, you know he was a youngster. No older vamp’s gonna sit still for steel handcuffs and cages, that’s for damn sure.”
“And what were you saying about passengers?”
“An older vamp can transform into mist—that’s a fact that’s crossed over into your human lore. But most humans don’t know that they can clutch another person—vamp or human or whatever—and transform them into mist as well.”
“Oh.” Sara trembled, an image of Luke, his arms tight around her as they both dissolved into mist, suddenly filling her mind. There was something erotic about the thought of being so entwined with him, and she cursed her own inability to move Luke firmly and finally to the “defendant” slot in her brain.
“We’ll be leaving an ax and some stakes for you, too. Not high tech, but both do the job.”
“An ax?”
Roland’s brows lifted. “Well, sure. You chop off a vamp’s head, you got a dead vamp. Stake ‘em, you got dust.”
“Right. Thank you,”
“Glad you’re asking questions. Some humans, they’re too overwhelmed their first day to do anything but sit back and let the day wash over them,” Roland continued. “Don’t even ask what anybody is. Think it’s impolite or something.”
“Is it?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, probably so. But I never was a big fan of Emily Post, you know? Figure if you don’t ask, you don’t learn.”
“So what are you?” she asked, taking him at his word.
“Hellhound,” he said. “On my mother’s side. Never was too clear on what my dad was. Left when I was a pup. But don’t you worry. I ain’t one of them wild ones.”
“Oh.” She considered it, not at all sure what to say next.
Roland didn’t notice the conversational lag. “So let me go do a round, and as soon as it’s set to go hot, I’ll give you a better overview and a run-through of how it works. Okay?”
“Sure,” she said brightly, still a little hung up on the hellhound announcement. “No problem.”
She watched the team work for another few minutes, then realized the rhythm of their movements was rocking her to sleep. She considered making a cup of coffee, but as soon as she did, they’d leave and she’d be up all night, exhausted but jittery.
With no better option and no way to rush the team along, she dove back into work. She studied the crime scene photos, trying to picture how it went down. A dark night, and a man in a dark suit crossing a muddy park.
She closed her eyes, imagining a mist forming into a vampire, and the vampire bending over Braddock. Knocking him down, kicking him hard in the gut, and then swooping over him. While she watched, the creature bit down, then lifted his face to look directly into her eyes.
Luke.
Her heart pounded, but her body had turned to lead and she couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out, not even when the image shifted, and it wasn’t Braddock that Luke was leaning over, but her.
His amber eyes never left hers as he slid inside her, her hips rising to meet him, wanting to take more of him, all of him. Needing him. Craving him.
His mouth curved with male satisfaction.
You’re beautiful.
