Page 29 of Half-Blood


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I knew May Anderson could handle Tyler, but Bingo? “You think Tyler will like that?” I must have sounded dubious because she laughed.

“He’ll love playing with the markers. I told you all about it this morning, dear. Don’t you remember?”

I didn’t, as a matter of fact, being accustomed to zoning out a little while I drank my first cup of coffee as she bustled around the kitchen making me breakfast and chatting non-stop about this and that. I had given up recently on skipping breakfast altogether as I preferred, since she ignored all my pleas to stay in bed and my assurances that I really didn’t want a big, heavy breakfast first thing in the morning. I got one anyway, complete with eggs, sausage, gravy and biscuit, just like she used to make for my dad.

“Uh, sure, that’s right. I remember now.”

“You don’t really, do you? You’ve been so down in the dumps all week. You need to get out and have a little fun too.”

I rolled my eyes a little, since she had her back turned. Okay, yeah, I’d been a bit depressed. I was increasingly nervous over Dylan’s mysterious disappearance, and I kept thinking that he would show up at my door in a day or two, laughing about all the fuss. I was wondering about who the hell those detectives had been who’d come to my door, apparently lying about who they really were.

For an entire week, they had come around, and Logan in particular had insinuated his way under my defenses, ordering me around, talking to my little brother and my mother, drinking my Cokes and even almost kissing me in the kitchen. Then just as suddenly as they’d appeared, they’d vanished again. And the police claimed not to know who they were. It was a mystery when all I wanted in my life was to find a little peace.

I made my way across the street that evening to the bar, and right away, I saw about six of my coworkers at a big table and they waved me over. I ordered a beer and just sat for a while, listening to the general conversation and nibbling on chips and salsa. After a while, when our group was on maybe its fourth appetizer, I realized that my one or two beers had turned into six or seven. I was feeling no pain for maybe the first time that week and even things at work didn’t seem so bad.

One or two of our group left for home—Suzanne had been the first to leave, tapping me on the shoulder as she went. “Sure you don’t want to come with me to get some dinner to soak up some of that alcohol?” I assured her I was just fine, and she left, looking back over her shoulder at me. By this time, we’d been joined by some others, a few of whom I didn’t even know, and when one of my new friends suggested moving on down the road a block or so to a karaoke bar, which seemed to me to be a fine idea.

I should have known better. I figured maybe a brisk walk in the cool, wet air might help, and this karaoke bar supposedly had “awesome” hamburgers and onion rings, according to my coworkers. Maybe Suzanne was right, and a little food and a little more time might soak up some of the beer. The plan might have actually worked if not for the two-for-one Margarita special the new place had going on. I did order a burger, but I also switched to Margaritas and proceeded to get even drunker.

When the karaoke started and I was passed the microphone, I had no issue with belting out Mariah’sDreamlover. I thought I was particularly good on that one, actually, because it was one of my favorites and always cheered me up when I heard it. Singing it was even more fun. I was right at the end of the last chorus when I noticed Detective Logan—or the man who had called himself that—sitting at a nearby table, watching my performance with a disapproving frown on his face. Right away I noticed that he looked goddamn gorgeous. It was hard not to.

He was wearing jeans, for one thing—the first time I’d seen him out of a suit and tie, or at least a sport jacket. His long legs were stretched out in front of him as he leaned back in his chair and stared at me broodingly. But he was the last person in the world I wanted to see, because the sight of him instantly brought back memories of what I was here to forget, along with some other feelings I didn’t want to look at too closely.

A woman was sitting with him. She had gorgeous, long red hair and she leaned casually against him. She wasn’t the soft, delicate type either. She had the same attitude as he and Conway did, and while her muscles weren’t as bulky as theirs, she was definitely no delicate flower either. Female cop, maybe. If that was even what Logan and Conway were.

My gaze traveled back to Detective Logan, who was no doubt as straight as a schoolboy on the day before Christmas. A straight man was the last thing I needed tonight, as another by- product of my drinking was that I got decidedly horny. Some drunks get loud. Some get belligerent and want to fight everybody. Me? I was a lover. I read somewhere that the drunk who gets amorous has complex feelings about sex.

No shit.

I had always been attracted to men for as long as I can remember, but it had never been a problem for me and that didn’t seem to me to be particularly complex. I liked girls, but only a male body really did it for me. My conservative dad had known about my sexuality only a short time before his death. Sometimes I tortured myself with the idea that my news might have hastened his heart attack, but I guess I’ll never know. My mom had always been fine about it, but then she was the liberal in the family—a staunch Democrat. She and my dad used to argue politics all the time.

I do think I might have used alcohol to help me forget my life sometimes lately. Alcohol, which was anesthetizing and socially approved, was also convenient and always ready and able to console me and tell me what a great singer and dancer I was, and how I had really missed my calling by going into advertising instead of musical theater.

I decided it was time to hang up my microphone for the evening, however, and find somebody who might want to take me home with them. It was time to move on from unavailable detectives and crazy actors.

****

Logan

I saw Jace O’Neal the moment we walked inside the club. It was hard not to, as he was on stage shaking his ass and making a general spectacle of himself.

My associate and fellow Hunter, Vanessa Green, had come out scouting for vampires with me and Conway. He was with us, but at a different table, watching the room closely. The blood on Malone’s bed had been bothering me and with a little digging we’d discovered that one of the men who frequented a homeless camp in downtown Atlanta had recently gone missing. Nobody could say exactly when or give us much information, but they’d told us his name—Jeremiah—and that he was from near the area where Jace lived. The others said he used to work at a large hospital downtown.

Using that and the blood sample information we’d obtained from our sources inside the police department, we’d found him, or we were pretty sure we had. He was an older guy and his last name had been Turner. He had indeed been a transporter at a local hospital, though he’d fallen on hard times. We strongly suspected it was his blood that had been found on Malone’s bed, though we couldn’t be positive. The type matched, but police could identify an individual only if they could match a sample or if it matched DNA in a database. Since Jeremiah Turner wasn’t in one, then there was no way to match the blood, but we knew his death had been caused by a vampire. Considering the body was found near Jace’s neighborhood, as well, the likelihood Turner was murdered by Malone was damn good.

There had been a little bit of increased vampire activity in Atlanta lately overall, especially in the neighborhood of this bar, so Vanessa and I were visiting it as well as other bars in the area to see if either of us could attract some attention. Vanessa was dressed as a hooker and I was posing as her mark, because police had found two dead hookers around here very recently. If this was the work of Malone, then he was definitely devolving rapidly. The photos we’d seen of the women with their throats torn out were not exactly conducive to a restful night’s sleep. Add that to the fact that we had no access to Jace O’Neal now because the real police had become involved. All in all, it had been a bitch of a week.

We’d had no further leads on Malone’s disappearance other than those bodies, and the trail was growing colder by the day. I had a tension headache I hadn’t been able to shake and to make things worse, I also hadn’t been able to shake the memory of how Jace O’Neal’s skin had felt under my fingertips that day in his kitchen. One night I even dreamed about him. Fucking dreamed about him like I was some dumbass kid.

I needed to get him and his sad-sack, fucking stories out of my head and reconnect with this case. Maybe find somebody to fuck. And not spend one more minute thinking about Jace Fucking O’Neal. So, who was the first person I saw when we walk into the karaoke bar on West Peachtree?

Jace O’Neal singing karaoke, standing up there in front of a crowd, shouting out some song I’ve heard them play on the radio when I’m changing channels trying to find some country. Seriously, who needs Mariah or Beyonce when you can listen to Shania? Or some old-school Reba or Emmylou?

But there he was, flipping his hair out of his eyes, with his shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest. It seemed so out of character for the man I’d been interviewing, and I wondered if that was how he’d been before Dylan Malone had come into his life and turned it upside down.

In point of fact, he looked a little manic, and I wondered if that was because he was drunk or if it was something else. The euphoria that accompanied the attentions of a vampire, for example. He seemed to be with work friends, though, so I decided he must simply be drunk on his ass.

Everything about O’Neal was trouble. He finally noticed me in the crowd, and he stiffened and forgot to look at the words on the screen. He was up there making a spectacle of himself, and I wanted to go up and yank him off the stage. Thankfully, he passed the mike to one of his buddies before I could be tempted any further to do that and acknowledged the smattering of catcalls and applause with a wave and a big, elaborate bow that almost made him fall flat on his face.

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