Blood Lily (Lilith Adams Vampire Series Book 1) (34 page)

All the confusion vanished, replaced by…humor
, awe? She sure as hell didn’t think it was funny. “Huh…it’s a fairly rare side effect. I never thought to mention it.”

“What the hell is it?”

“Well, you see, my kind feeds on energies, it’s what affords us our long lives. We have our different tastes, of course, but any strong emotion works best. When have you felt it?”

“Anytime Chance touches me, and jus
t now when my Dad held my hand…” She shook her head and then stared at Cohen like she’d never seen him before. “How is that even possible? That’s superstitious crap, it doesn’t actually happen.”

“I beg to differ. It’s extremely possible. People’s energy
affects others all the time. Like laughing because someone else is laughing, being sad because someone else is sad. It just affects us more and we use it to our advantage. Energy is energy; it’s never destroyed, just transformed.”

Lilith waved her hand and rubbed at the bridge of her nose with the other.
“Stop. I don’t want a lesson on metaphysics right now. Is it…is it permanent?”

“Probably not.”
Cohen shrugged and actually leaned back against the mirror. “Then again, it could be. I’ve never fed a vampire before.”

“Great.
Yay for the test bunny.” Lilith leaned her forehead against her knees for a moment, thinking. She glanced up with another thought. “Is it dangerous?”

“For you?
No, quite the opposite. If you have the ability to draw on others, it would be quite helpful for everything from healing to focusing. For the people you draw from, it can be. It’s just like a vampire feeding, if you take too much the victim dies.”

“Well how much is too much? Dammit…this is the last thing I need right now.”

“Oh I’m sorry. You’d rather I had let you die?” Cohen pushed himself off the countertop, anger pulling at every muscle. “I’ll keep that in mind next time. It’s not a figure of speech. You were seconds from dying. Chance was holding you, struggling to keep you from falling into a coma. There was rampant internal bleeding. Your brain was swelling at an insane rate. It was a matter of seconds until you were just as dead as Gregor’s family. I did what I had to do. It was the only way to keep you alive. I doubt Chance would give me such a hard time about your inconvenient side effects.”

“Cohen, I’m sorry, but hell. You could have warned me or something.”

“I didn’t exactly have time to read you the disclaimer. Besides, like I said before, it’s an extremely rare side effect. I have never actually seen it happen before. And for the record, warning you about it ahead of time wouldn’t have changed anything. You’d still be dealing with the side-effects or you’d be dead. Just be careful and you’ll be fine.” He stalked out of the bathroom without another word.

Great.
She was three for three as far as hurting people’s feelings tonight. Maybe she should bitch at Alvarez to make it a perfect score. She was so damn upset that she hadn’t even thought to ask Cohen what the hell he was exactly. Some kind of advanced empath? Long lives. She wondered just how long they lived. Damn. A million questions for a whole other conversation.

She turned on the shower, running the water steaming hot, stripped out of her torn up bloody clothes and dived in. Everyone would just have to wait
till she was done. She couldn’t take another minute with blood caked in her hair or her clothes sticking to her skin.

After the divine quiet of the shower she finally felt like a person again. The water washed away more than dirt and blood, it washed away all the crap in her head, leaving her thinking clearly for the first time since she’d left the lab. She wrapped herself in a fluffy hotel robe and took a deep breath, staring in the mirror. There were light bruises, but they were mere shadows. It would have
taken her weeks to heal from the abuse she’d taken earlier, if she’d lived at all, which, from the sounds of it, was impossible. The bruise across her torso was the worst of them, still purples and yellows. Seatbelts may save your life but they sure hurt like hell. No more delays. She had to get out there and make sense out of things.

When she swung the bathroom door open, all the voices went completely silent.
So much for just slipping into the conversation. Once she turned the corner, she saw Gregor half turned by the balcony doors and Chance sitting on the far bed, and they were both staring at her. There was no sign of Alvarez or Cohen.

“
Where are the others?”

Chance was the
one to speak up, his eyes falling to the bed. “They left to pick up our rental car and suitcases from Miriah’s apartment.”

“But Spencer is probably watching the place! He knows our stuff is there.”

“Exactly. Which is why we couldn’t go. He’s never met Alvarez and I’m sure he knows by now that Cohen is investigating his sister’s murder. It makes perfect sense and he has no reason to go after them. So, just relax.”

Lilith reluctantly nodded and slid onto a vacant bed, rubbing a towel through her hair. Neither of them seemed to be very talkative, so she decided to take this time to get down to business.

“Dad, the blood sample I found in Duncan’s little treasure trove of secrets; it was unlike anything anyone has ever seen before. I’m pretty sure it’s Ashcroft’s blood, the only known turned vampire. So how long have you known?”

Gregor regained his composure in her absence and he had that casual business attitude she was familiar with
. “I thought he was dead. No one ever survived the change, so I rightfully thought that I’d killed him. Even Duncan thought that. Hell, we buried him. We didn’t even suspect anything until your mother’s death.”

“My mother’s death?”
Lilith frowned, pausing with a towel wrapped around her hair, her hands clutching the terry cloth fabric. “But that was thugs in the park, why would you think…?”

“Distant family members dropped off over the years. Most of them seemed natural, unremarkable, and it never raised any suspicions. When your mother died…it was too similar. Not only were the cuts the same, but she was posed the same as Margareet the last time I saw her. I still didn’t dream it was even possible, but the thought nagged at the back of my head…and Duncan’s. That is when Duncan started researching the family tree. Spencer went off to Amsterdam the next year to study, Miriah was a newlywed, Duncan had reasons to be afraid, and so did I.”

His cool grey eyes rested heavily on her. It made sense. Similarities would definitely awaken old fears. “But if it was Ashcroft, why not just go after you or Duncan?”

“Because that’s not what he does. When we killed his son centuries ago, he didn’t try to kill us. He tried to make us suffer the way he suffered.”

“But they locked you in the tavern. They tried to burn you alive. How is that not going after you?”

“That wasn’t Ashcroft, it was his wife. When Duncan and I finally got to her…” He paused, wringing his hands. He wasn’t anxious to dive back into the role of monster. “She made it quite clear that she was solely responsible for burning down the tavern.
Ashcroft wanted us to suffer. She just wanted us to die. Once Ashcroft and his men left for the moors, she took the remaining guards and rendezvoused with her spies in the city.”

Lilith shook off the semantics and tried to get back to the heart of the matter.
“So after mom’s death, what did Duncan find?”

“Nothing at first.
He found a litany of relatives that died over the years. Most of them were car accidents or muggings, nothing that really stood out except the fact that they were family.”

“So you thought that maybe he’d been picking people off, staying under the radar until he was ready to be seen?”

Gregor nodded. “That was his theory. I didn’t see the connection, or maybe I just didn’t want to. All the other deaths just seemed so…normal. Duncan kept digging, but he didn’t find anything until a couple years ago, when a young reporter on his payroll showed up with a weird blood sample. He claimed that he got it from a small town doctor who treated a patient involved in a car accident. He’d found the man unconscious and everywhere the sun touched his skin; he’d break out in horrible sores. The doctor thought it was some extreme case of Actinic Prurigo and he wanted to have the blood tested. He took it to the reporter who’d worked with him before on some strange cases, so he could send it to his special lab. Duncan sent Miriah to me, delivering the news that he thought Ashcroft might be alive. The blood sample was bizarre and he couldn’t study it for long in the lab without someone finding out, so he hid it.”

“So if Ashcroft knew someone took his blood, why wait until now to act?”

“I don’t think he knew. It must have been taken when he was unconscious.”

“Wait…Spencer said something about Duncan going into extreme research mode a couple years ago, when a reporter was killed.”

“Yes that sounds about right.”

“Well if Orrick didn’t know about the blood sample, why kill the reporter?”

Gregor frowned and paced in front of the balcony. “You’re right, he had to know then. So why wait?” He rubbed at his chin, deep in thought. “Unless he didn’t know at first. Perhaps he was tipped off. Still, why wait until years after killing the reporter to go after the sample?”

“Or why now?
Wait… You and Duncan have discussed going public a lot right, for the past year or so?” Gregor nodded. Chance looked like he’d swallowed a lemon. “Besides the other elders, who else knew about it?”

Gregor frowned for a moment
, his eyes glanced to Chance and he hesitated. It was like he’d just then remembered that he was even in the room. Gregor trusted Chance, but this was big. It was too late now. Lilith had already blurted it out. “Well you, Miriah, Malachi and Spencer.”

“That’s why.” She felt the absolute certainty of it. “Even with the blood sample, you and Duncan may know who you’re up against, but you still have rules, you still have to keep things secret. If you went public in a positive way, you’d have too much power, you’d be untouchable. If his end game is to destroy the family and you were in the limelight, there would be no way he could touch you.
He’d only succeed in making you martyrs. Christ, that’s why he put Miriah’s body where he did. He figures if you are planning to go public, either push you to stay to the shadows or make you public in a way that no one would ever care if you were butchered to pieces. Hell they’d probably consider him a hero.”

“Oh god.”
Gregor looked as white as a sheet and he slumped back against the glass door.

Lilith remembered Spencer’s vicious words from earlier. Putting Miriah’s body in her office wasn’t part of the plan. “I don’t think Spencer knows all of Ashcroft’
s motivations. He actually told me that Miriah wasn’t supposed to be found in her office like that. He reasoned it away by saying that he was sure
He
had his reasons. If Ashcroft is keeping him in the dark, then Spencer is just a pawn.”

“That makes sense. This may be the twenty-first century, but
Ashcroft hasn’t changed. Our families were mere peasants to him. There’s no way he’d consider Spencer as anything but a useful dog. He isn’t going to share any secrets, any real power, with him.”

The hotel door shoved open, making everyone in the room jump. The joking conversation between Alvarez and Cohen died the second they saw their dismal faces. The two dropped
all the luggage by the door and frowned around the room.

“What did we miss?” Alvarez looked pointedly at Gregor as he walked toward the chairs, Cohen trailing behind him.

“Oh just Ashcroft’s possible motive for leaving Miriah like he did. He’s launching an anti-publicity campaign against us.” Chance summed it all pretty well actually.

Something else occurred to her. “
Dad, when I called you, about Miriah, you asked about her hair. What’s the significance of her hair being washed?” That earned her a pointed look from Cohen. Yeah, they’d be having that conversation later. She was stepping on all kinds of toes, but right now she didn’t give a damn. There was too much at stake to tip toe anymore.

Gregor blinked a few times, trying to focus on what she’d asked. “It’s an ancient burial tradition in the highlands for women that have passed. It’s believed that hair is the source of their womanly powers, so the hair is washed to give the soul the strength to carry on to the next life. Every female victim we killed in the Orrick
family received that right. We didn’t want to punish them in their future lives because of what some monster related to them did in this one. It’s a message, a clear message that he is the one responsible. That’s why you saw it with Miriah and not with Malachi.”

“Ashcroft didn’t kill
Malachi.” Okay, totally shocked looks from Gregor and Cohen this time.

Cohen spoke up first. “Wait. So you saw Miriah’s body? And her husband was killed too? Where the hell is his body?
And when the hell did you see Miriah’s body?”

“Yes, I found Miriah. I couldn’t exactly call it in. We were the obvious suspects even without being found standing over her corpse. I examined the body, very carefully to leave no traces. And yes, her husband is also dead. He was killed in New York.” She turned to Gregor before he could say anything. “There are two reasons I say
Malachi wasn’t killed by him. First off, Ashcroft attacked me the first night at Duncan’s. With the time of death and flight patterns, there is no way he could have done both. Secondly, the wounds were nowhere near the same. Similar style, similar positions, but even the cuts themselves were crude, hesitant. I think Ashcroft has taken Spencer under his wing and is teaching him the trade.”