Bitten 2 Page 19

  “I’d better go,” Matt muttered, refusing to look either of us in the eye. “Thanks for the cocoa,” he added, saluting me with the paper cup before he rose from the table to toss it in the trash.

  “No problem. Thanks for your help. I’ll let you know what I figure out.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” he said, raising his gaze just long enough to flash me a weak smile before he hurried inside.

  I dropped all pretense of cheeriness as soon as Matt was out of earshot and turned back to the smug man looming over me. “That was very rude...” I trailed off as I leaned it to inspect the small nametag pinned to his tie. “...Jim. I don’t like rude people,” I finished, my voice more growl than human.

  “You’re not a customer; I don’t have to give a shit what you like,” he said, affecting a cocky stance with his hands on his hips.

  Like many men of a certain age, Jim possessed a gut the size of a watermelon precariously balanced atop a pair of stick thin legs. The front of his dress shirt strained against the swell of his belly while the tensile strength of his belt was put to the ultimate test as it fought to hold up his pants. The crowning glory of his quintessential middle-aged appearance was the abysmal comb over that wouldn’t have fooled a blind man at fifty paces.

  “And I’m guessing you’re not a cop either,” he said in a nasal sneer, making a point of passing his eyes over me as if he was looking through my clothes. “My employees have told the police all they can about the incident, and I would appreciate you not traumatizing them further.” From anyone else the sentiment might have seemed genuine, but the condescension that narrowed his already beady eyes, set off a dozen alarm bells in the back of my mind. His indignant anger was clearly a cover up, and I was determined to get to the bottom of it.

  “You’re right, I’m not a cop. But even I know you’re hiding something,” I stated boldly, seeing no point in beating around the bush. Either he’d admit it, or he wouldn’t.

  “Screw you,” he blustered, cheeks flaming red and sweat beading on his brow. There may as well have been a neon sign flashing above his head, declaring him GUILTY.

  Fueled by my instant dislike of the portly man, I let a hint of the wolf bleed through, shifting my eyes from stormy grey to molten gold. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to laugh in his face when his eyes grew large as saucers and his mouth dropped open, making him look eerily similar to the fresh fish packed in ice at the meat counter.

  And now for the real gamble...

  “You told the police that your surveillance system was down, but I’m gonna go out a limb here and guess that you’re full of shit,” I said, hoping that my nervousness didn’t show. I was taking a huge risk, stabbing blindly in the dark, but something in my gut told me I was on the right track. The color draining from Jim’s pudgy cheeks confirmed my suspicions. “I’m also going assume that there’s something on that footage you didn’t want the cops to see, something that would show the world what a gigantic slime ball you are.”

  “Hey! You can’t talk to me like that,” he declared, though the tremor in his lower lip just made him look petulant.

  “And who’s gonna stop me?” I asked, the growl making each syllable sound like a rockslide. “You?”

  Leaning towards him until there was barely a hand span between us, I let him feel the weight of the predator lurking behind my eyes. Both the wolf and I delighted in the sour smell of fear rolling off of him as he shrank back, almost tripping over his own feet.

  “N-no,” he stammered after several seconds of struggling to make his mouth work, the terrified squeak of his voice making my lips spread in a wide grin.

  “Good,” I purred as I savored the smell of his fear before easing back to my original position. “Now, show me how your system works, and then get the hell out of my way.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE MANAGER’S OFFICE was a cramped room at the back of the store that would have barely passed for a broom closet and smelled of spilled coffee and sweaty gym socks. Somewhere under the pile of invoices and rejected job applications there was sure to be a desk, but it was impossible to tell through the mountain of paper. Tucked into the far corner of the desk, behind a crumpled fast food sack, was a grainy black and white display for the store’s security system.

  Somewhere between the parking lot and his cluttered office, Jim had rediscovered his balls and was trying to show me that he was still in charge when he plopped down into the only chair in the room, making its wheels squeak when they slid on the linoleum. It only took a faint trickle of the wolf’s energy to fill the room with my spicy scent and raise the hairs along the backs of his arms, letting him know just how pathetic and insignificant he was. Almost immediately, his cocky self-assurance faded back beneath the fear that was staining the underarms of his shirt with sweat.

  “Where do you keep back-ups of your security footage?”

  “I-I told you... the system’s been broken for months,” he stammered in a final attempt to prevent me from discovering whatever he was trying to hide.

  My patience for the sleaze-ball was dwindling in the face of his bullshit and all around douchebag creepiness. In an unexpected surge, the wolf rose up from the depths in response to my growing irritation. My eyes, which had shifted back to human grey during our silent walk to the back of the store, once again dissolved into liquid gold. While I normally would have tried to wrestle the wolf back under control, I decided instead to let her have a little fun, too irritated to care.

  In two quick steps, I crossed the room and leaned into his personal space, my nose twitching at the stink of his fear and cologne. Grasping the arms of the chair with claw-tipped hands, I leaned further into his face, letting him get the full effect of my gaze.

  “Listen, you disgusting shithead, three vamps are dead, and as far as I can tell this is the only place they all had in common. Now, I’m not usually a fan of walking corpses, but I’d rather spend a night locked in a coffin with one of them than another five minutes smelling your fucking stink. As much as I’d love to expose whatever it is that you’re trying to hide, right now, I don’t care what it is. So, unless you want me to take a very enthusiastic interest in discovering what it is you’re hiding, I suggest you do what I say.”

  * * *

  A few minutes later Jim was inching past me in an awkward shuffle. “I-I’ll be at the f-front if y-you have any q-questions,” he stuttered, his wide eyes and pale face making it clear that he’d be happy to never see me again. The feeling was mutual, and I enjoyed watching him skirt towards the door.

  “I think that’s the smartest thing you’ve said yet,” I said with a predatory smile that added a boost of speed to his steps as he ducked out into the hallway.

  As Jim’s footsteps faded away, along with his lingering stench, I collapsed into the chair and closed my eyes, focusing on drawing shallow breaths as I urged the wolf to slide back down into the darkness. She resisted for a moment, clinging to consciousness with a ferocity that left a sheen of sweat on my brow, and then she was gone, slipping away until she was just a faint whisper in the dark. Rubbing the clammy skin on the back of my neck, I settled in to try to find some clue as to who was offing the vamps in the few hours of security footage around the time Kensington was attacked.

  Scanning through the footage, hoping to catch a glimpse of the hoodie-wearing perp Matt had described, was about as exciting as watching paint dry. The most interesting thing I saw was Manager Jim skimming money from the registers. When I did spot a familiar face it wasn’t Kensington or his possible assailant. The time stamp in the lower right corner marked it as an hour before the attack. I was surprised to see Chuckles’ bald head moving through the store until I reminded myself that it was probably the closest market to Asylum that carried vamp products.

  Sure enough, he angled through the store to the coolers near the back that housed the bottles of screened and pasteurized blood. After filling a shopping basket with a couple twelve packs, he made his w
ay towards the registers, but not before pausing in the bath and body aisle to sniff several bottles of locally-crafted lotions and soaps. Snickering at the sight of the muscle bound vamp testing scented lotion on the back of his hand, I continued to scan through the footage until I spotted the man I was looking for.

  It was just as Matt had described—at 4:46 AM the perp came into the store, his face shrouded by the hood of his sweatshirt. He made a slow, ambling circuit of the store, pausing at regular intervals to inspect various displays, but never picked anything up.

  He’s casing the joint, I thought with a sudden jolt of realization.

  After fifteen minutes of wandering through the store he left, not once showing his face to any of the cameras. Less than ten minutes later Kensington arrived, still wearing the ID badge from his job around his neck. Making a bee-line for the condiments aisle, he selected a bottle of maple syrup and went up to the cashier to pay. I recognized Matt’s dark hair and thick glasses and struggled to control my emotions as the two exchanged what appeared to be friendly chatter.

  Kensington lingered for a few minutes after paying, talking with Matt and greeting one of the other employees, and then walked out of the store to unwittingly meet his death. A knot of emotion formed in my chest as I watched him step through the automatic doors, that damn bottle of syrup tucked under his arm.

  Scouring the log of video files I could find no trace of the footage for the parking lot; that camera, it seemed, really was in need of repair. The frustrated sound that rose in the back of my throat was somewhere between a growl and a banshee’s wail, and several stacks of paper slid to the floor when I pounded my fist on the desk. From what I could gather, all the victims were as normal as could be. None of them had possessed any deep, dark secrets that I’d been able to uncover, or appeared to have had any enemies.

  So what the hell links them together? I wondered. They were all so normal. I mean, how much more normal does it get than marriage and a Pomeranian?

  My hands faltered in their motions to retrieve the spilled papers from the floor as a dark thought occurred to me. Like the majority of mundanes, I’d always envisioned the relationship between a vamp and Day Servant was focused around blood, sex, and power. The fleeting interactions I’d witnessed between Cordova and Chrismer had certainly indicated no deep emotional connection between them. While I had to admit that there was the possibility, however slim, that they did in fact share a bond deeper than the exchange of power, I found it hard to believe that either of them could love someone more than themselves. Yet, all the victims and their Day Servants had been deeply connected.

  Digging my phone out of my pocket, I pulled up Chrismer’s number.

  “Do you love Cordova?” I blurted as soon as she picked up, cutting off any chance she may have had to open with one of her usual sarcastic jibes. Satisfaction was a comforting warmth in my belly when there was a long pause on the other end of the line. A dumbfounded Chrismer was a rare occurrence, and I cherished every delightful second.

  “I don’t see how that is any of your business,” she answered after a while, her voice as flat and emotionless as if she had been discussing the weather.

  “I’m gonna take that as a no.”

  “You may take it any way you like,” she replied, a thread of anger weaving into her voice.

  Sounds like somebody isn’t happy with the terms of their arrangement.

  “Is that normal?”

  “Is what normal?” she asked, her patience wearing thin.

  “For your... arrangement... to be so businesslike?”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with—”

  “Just humor me,” I interrupted. “Are most vamp and Day Servant relationships more like a business agreement, or are they based around love?”

  The snort of amusement at my mention of the word “love” was a fairly clear answer, and my suspicion was confirmed when Chrismer replied, “There has been a recent surge in popularity for vampires to select their Day Servants based on feelings of affection, but traditionally it has been a transaction of a more logical and economical nature. Why do you ask?”

  “I think that’s the link, the reason for the attacks.”

  There was a ponderous silence on the other end, and I’d started to think we’d been disconnected when Chrismer said, “Meet me at Asylum in half an hour. Wait for me outside, and whatever you do, don’t go wandering around. It’s not safe.”

  “What do you mean? How dangerous can a strip club be during the day?”

  “The club is on top of a vampire nest, genius. There’s at least two dozen vampires asleep beneath those stones right now.”

  “Oh. Right.” I was suddenly leery of going to the club at all. “Maybe we should just meet at a coffee shop or something.”

  “Don’t be a wimp, Cray. Stay outside and you’ll be fine.”

  Before I could anything else, Chrismer hung up and left me staring at my phone while envisioning several creative ways of putting her out of my misery.

  God, I hate it when she does that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ASYLUM LOOKED DESERTED, the bright sunshine driving the vamps to seek their daytime slumber beneath the earth and their human lackeys to sleep off the previous night’s bender. But that didn’t mean the entire street came to a grinding halt as soon as the sun came up. On the fringes of Blood Alley, not all the local stores and businesses closed for the day, and as I pulled up to a spot right in front of the ancient church I caught a whiff of sizzling cheeseburgers that made my stomach growl.

  Mmm... lunch.

  I hopped down out of the SUV and surveyed the silent building. The sign above the door was dark and lifeless, and there were no muscle-bound guardians watching the street with their creepy, undead eyes. For a moment, it was almost possible to believe that it was a regular church, on a regular street, but that image of normalcy shattered when the wind sent a neon yellow flyer skittering down the sidewalk towards me. Glancing down at the paper caught on the toe of my boot, I read “Supernaturals Only ’80s Dance Night!” with a grimace. The thought of vamps, weres, and all the other things that go bump in the night gyrating to bad ’80s music in a proliferation of spandex and hairspray was enough to kill my appetite.

  Shaking the flyer lose, I approached the massive wooden doors and settled in to wait. Chrismer had said she’d be there in half an hour, but I wasn’t at all surprised when the minutes continued to slip by, my patience dwindling ever further as the wind rose, turning my nose into a red, dripping mess.

  Damn vamps and their cronies, always playing some stupid power game, I thought as I swiped at the moisture leaking from my nose and strode back to the SUV. There was no point standing around in the cold if I didn’t have to.

  Almost an hour had passed by the time my patience had reached its limits. I was tired, hungry, and more than ready to say “fuck it” and take my ass back home. Giving the church one last mental “fuck you,” I was half way to starting the car when the low, rumbling purr of a high performance engine approaching made me pause. Looking up, I watched a midnight blue convertible Jaguar glide down the street and pull up in front of my loaner SUV. I don’t know a lot about cars, but the two-door coupe made quite an impression, even if its owner was a total bitch. Appearing as sleek and powerful as the car, Chrismer eased out of the driver’s seat with boneless grace, not looking at all guilty for her tardiness.

  Reemerging from the warmth of the SUV, I wasn’t surprised to see Chrismer wearing her usual expression of irritated arrogance, as if her lateness was my fault. Passing her eyes over me in an assessing gaze, her pert nose wrinkled in distaste.

  And here I thought I’d made an effort, I thought, glancing down at my clean jeans and black jacket. Hell, I even took the time to attack my coat with the lint roller.

  “You’re late,” I said, biting off the words into sharp, little chunks.

  I didn’t expect my reprimand to garner any response and therefore wasn’t disappointed when Ch
rismer swept past me in a cloud of expensive perfume. Turning her back on me as if I hadn’t said a word, she entered a code into the little keypad affixed to the stonework beside the door. A small LED on the keypad flashed red and a low buzz echoed on the other side of the door at the same time I heard the lock disengage. Grasping the wrought iron handle, she pulled the door open with a flourish, and said with a bucketful of false cheer, “After you.”

  Swallowing the string of curses that hung on the tip of my tongue, I preceded her into the club. The velvet draped foyer looked like the tacky boudoir set of a sleazy, amateur porn movie in the bright sunlight streaming in around me, and I had to fight against the urge to wipe my fingers against my thighs.

  Funny how so many things lose their luster in the light of day.

  Behind me, Chrismer let the heavy door swing shut with a resounding thud that reverberated through my feet and added new life to her earlier words, making them run circles in my mind.

  Nope, totally not creepy to have a bunch of walking corpses hanging out downstairs. Not at all, I tried to reassure myself as she brushed past me, bumping my shoulder on the way, and pushed aside the curtain separating the foyer from the rest of the club. Straightening my shoulders, I clenched my teeth to keep the frown from my face, and followed the sharp clack of her heels into the cavernous room.

  I was sure that the church had once appeared majestic with the sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows, but now it just looked sad and depressing. The cleaning crew hadn’t been through to clear away the detritus from the previous night, leaving the ancient flagstones littered with paper confetti, crumpled napkins, and sticky puddles from spilled drinks and god only knew what else. Somehow the empty stages and poles, devoid of writhing, scantily-clad pale bodies, seemed even more lewd than they did when the club was in full swing.

  Stepping over a dark red puddle that I was relieved to notice smelled of strawberries rather than the coppery scent of blood, I trailed along behind Chrismer. Happy to put as much space as possible between me and the sleeping vamps below, I followed her up the stairs to Cordova’s office. All the while, I was filled with the same mixture of excitement and fear in the pit of my stomach that had caused me to take running jumps into bed as a kid so that the monsters under the bed couldn’t get me.