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I need to be down there with Annie, helping her look for her sister and finding Blaire before it’s too late.
I down the lukewarm blood before it’s reached an ideal temperature, more for something to do than because of any driving hunger, and stare at my phone, wondering why Colin hasn’t replied. Seconds later, my question is answered by a knock on the door.
I open it to reveal my brother, looking paler than usual under the wide umbrella Vivian holds over his head. “I’m going to meet Annie downtown,” he says by way of greeting, doing nothing to ease the foreboding wrapped around my shoulders like a cloak made of granite. “Bethshapet just made contact with Sophie from the catacombs.”
I frown. “The mummy? But she hasn’t been out of her coffin in years.”
“Yes, well, apparently, Blaire was in the catacombs this morning and woke her up,” he says, the skin around his eyes tight with worry. “And she wasn’t alone. Janet was there and threatened her.”
I curse beneath my breath and drag a clawed hand through my hair.
“Bethshapet didn’t hear exactly what they were saying,” Colin continues, “but Janet was clearly angry and then she chased Blaire away from the boxed storage area. It’s been so long since she’s fed that Bethshapet wasn’t strong enough to follow them or offer Blaire protection, but she was able to reach Sophie on one of the patron assistance phones near her coffin. Sophie sent her bookworms down to search, but they didn’t find any sign of Janet or Blaire except a few drops of human blood near Bethshapet’s coffin.”
“Janet won’t be able to drain her,” I say, assuring myself as much as Colin, “I bound her fangs. She can only feed from bottled or canned blood, no live donors.”
“Which is good,” Colin says, “but she’s still a hundred times stronger and faster than Blaire. And I don’t need to tell you that there are other ways to hurt a human aside from draining them.”
Panic locking around my throat, I force out, “I’m coming with you. And if she’s hurt Blaire, I’m going to end her.”
“You can’t kill another vampire without a trial,” Colin reminds me, before adding in a softer voice, “But if something happens in self-defense…you know I’ll back you up. Say you didn’t have a choice.”
I nod. “Thank you. And thank you for not saying I told you so.”
My brother warned me Janet was unstable several times before we started sleeping together, but I blew him off, insisting she understood how to have a casual relationship. Once I realized Colin was right, and Janet was fixated on me in a far more intense way than any fuck buddy should be, I ended it right away, but it was too late. I had already become the focus of her obsessive feelings and the Wonderfully sisters moving to town only made things worse.
She was jealous of the sisters and all the attention they were getting even before Blaire and I formed a connection.
Colin’s brows lift. “Yes, well…I assumed you were doing enough of that yourself. I’ll send Vivian back over with a sun suit for you in a bit. I’m coordinating with Lyle. He’ll give us each a segment of town to search. If we haven’t found Blaire within the fifty or sixty minutes of protection provided by the suit, we’ll meet up in the station basement to talk next steps.”
I agree that the plan sounds solid, but as soon as Vivian delivers my solar armor—a suit made of inch thick black rubber that will keep me from burning in the daylight for a limited period of time—I dress and head down the hill without waiting for my assignment.
I’m not sure Colin would believe me if I said that I have a connection to Blaire and am positive I’ll be more likely to find her following my gut than searching an assigned section of town. I almost don’t believe it myself. I know vampires who are so connected to their mates that they finish each other’s sentences and seem to sense when their partner is in distress, but Blaire isn’t my mate.
She isn’t even my lover.
We’re just friends.
She really is my friend, I realize as I move swiftly through the woods behind Main Street, searching my surroundings as best I can through the narrow eye slit in the suit. I’m genuinely frightened for her…and for myself.
I don’t want to live in a Nightfall without Blaire Wonderfully in it. In just a few short weeks, she’s become a fixture here. She belongs in this town and not simply because her ancestors helped secure our shield for centuries. She fits in well with our mix of freaks, monsters, and supernatural outcasts.
Even when she hated me and I wasn’t too fond of her, deep down I knew her arrival was for the best. Something in my bones assured me that Blaire was going to be good for Nightfall, that she would make the home I cherish an even better place to be.
But now…
Now, I’m not even sure she’s alive. I can’t sense her at all. Not her usual vibrant, humming energy that draws me to her no matter how I fight it and not the desperate, sucking doom that woke me from a dead slumber an hour ago.
An hour.
It’s more than enough time to kill a fragile mortal woman. Janet could have torn her limb from limb and hidden the pieces so deep in the catacombs they won’t be found for years.
She must still be down there, I realize suddenly. Despite what Sophie’s bookworms reported, Janet, at least, must still be in the catacombs. She doesn’t have a day-walker suit and she’s exceptionally sensitive to sunlight, even for a vampire. She went blind for days last year simply from gazing out my back window a little too long. She won’t be able to leave the tunnels beneath the library until nightfall.
Cursing myself for not working through the logic sooner, I start for the library but just as quickly adjust course.
Lyle and the other deputies will no doubt be searching the building and the main entrance to the catacombs for clues. But there are other entrances into the labyrinth. Not everyone knows about the back passages, but as a town elder, I was here when we were forced to take refuge in the catacombs for weeks during the battle between the Shadowbane and Blackmore clans.
The head of the Shadowbane clan, a power-hungry narcissist named Olyphant, became convinced Nightfall should be for vampires only. He and the men and women loyal to him began slaughtering innocents in an attempt to “cleanse” the town of other supernatural blood. Nearly a hundred people were killed before the Blackmores established a refuge in the catacombs.
