Blood Lily (Lilith Adams Vampire Series Book 1) (40 page)

“Feeding on rats wouldn’t work.
That’s the same Hollywood bullshit that makes us sparkle in the sun like a fairy princess.”

“Completely not the point.
”

“Let’s just drop the philosophy. You don’t like me poking at your race and I don’t like you poking at mine. So let’s get past the grade school crap and just get back to the facts.”

“Point taken.” He actually looked contrite. Lilith wondered how much of that was her words and how much was Chance shifting in his chair. Cohen was definitely intimidated by him, but not enough to stop pushing the envelope.

“What about slowly and meticulously torturing a victim, keeping them alive for hours and hours of traumatizing pain? Would that over-charge the batteries?”

Cohen frowned at her but took a moment to truly think about it. “Possibly. They would be able to feed as long as there were emotions to fuel them. Pain is an energy generator. Typically a person can only handle so much pain before they die, but in theory, if the victim wasn’t allowed to die, the feeding supply would be…endless. It is also a pretty powerful source. Some of the moral followers consider it the most powerful. It’s very strongly discouraged among the families because it’s a hell of a lot harder to hide than seduction. America is littered with sex addicts. There aren’t that many lining up for torture.”

“What about the death itself? Does taking a life do anything special?”

Cohen looked deeply offended. There was the slightest micro-expression of disgust before he continued. “Beside the intense sensations involved just before the death, no. What about with your kind?”

“It has absolutely no effect, negative or positive. We aren’t supernatural. Blood is just blood.”

“Interesting.” Cohen seem to get lost in his thoughts and she needed to reign him back in again.

“
Are the death emotions more intense than others?”

Cohen bristled and shifted uncomfortably on the desk. He rubbed at his too small chin and finally snapped an answer. “Yes, but it’s not like any of us would survive on just that. You know better than anyone how a trail of bodies can compromise everything.”

“Would it increase the other abilities? You said you were faster than us. Would that possibly allow you to…let’s say, dodge a bullet?”

Cohen’s eyebrows skyrocketed. 
“Well… in theory, maybe.”

“What about these side effects. You said they are rare, but I assume you’ve seen them before?” When he nodded, she continued. “What about multiple feedings? Do you think they could build over time?
Maybe make someone as strong and skilled as one of your own?”

Cohen rubbed at his
too small chin again and thought about that. “Possibly to some extent, but still… I don’t think that could produce those results. Even if you factored in the extreme methods of feeding, draining a hundred of my kind wouldn’t allow him to do any of that. We may be more secretive than your kind to the general public, but we are close knit. We keep ties on each other. One breach of our defenses could mean the extermination of our entire race. Believe me. We would notice if someone was draining entire families.” The sense of dread was settling over Cohen’s shoulders now. There was some sort of recognition that passed behind his cool eyes.

Lilith sighed and shrugged into her chair. “There’s still the matter of how he survived the change in the first place. The fever alone would kill him before he finished changing. How could he have survived?”

“Do you know for a fact that he was human to start?”

It was a very simple question, but one that she’d never even considered
. “No actually. I was just working under the assumption…. Dr. Nichols said the original strand looked odd. It was like the original strand was feeding on the new strand, absorbing it. The Vampire markers were reflected on the original strand…”

“
I don’t know much about DNA, but it seems to me that in order for the evolutionary change that your species undergoes, he would have to be a fast healing race before the attack. Not all the old families are recorded. However, when I was listening to Gregor’s story, a thought occurred to me. Ashcroft’s son sounded like some of the severe rogues among our kind. So what if Ashcroft and his family were like me?”

Lilith gaped at him as if her mind was incapable of grasping just what he was asking.

“Look, Ashcroft’s son regularly tortured and killed young women. It was almost like a schedule. One thing I’ve learned in law enforcement is that typically, these aggressive crimes are compulsive. They are crimes of opportunity. Ashcroft’s son wasn’t compulsive, he was methodical.
He got what he needed and then he tossed them away like an empty wrapper. Sick as it is, what if those crimes were his way of feeding?”

“Oh my god…” Lilith ran her hands through her hair in a blazing moment of clarity. “Spencer said that Ashcroft shared his secret. If Ashcroft fed him a bit of his blood, showed him his methods for “feeding”… That’s why Malachi’s
wounds resembled Miriah’s so much, why Spencer said he could feel my fear, how he was stronger and faster than he should have been. Ashcroft was never human. Gregor just never knew.”

Cohen closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. “If we don’t kill Ashcroft, my family will get involved. They will kill anyone that could possibly know about this.” His eyes open
ed and rested on Lilith with all the weight and importance he could muster. “We aren’t heartless, Lilith, but we can’t survive exposure. If even one human found out about the healing properties of our blood… We have to finish this fast and quiet, or we will all be dead anyway.”

“Well then we’ll just have to make sure Ashcroft dies.”

Chance finally decided to join the conversation on that note. “I blew half his head off and filled him with three clips of bullets and the bastard didn’t die. How exactly are we supposed to kill him? We have to have a plan of action.”

“We’ll have to isolate him from any possible…
’food sources’ and burn him to ash. But we have to do it fast. We are running out of time.”

Lilith distractedly waved a hand. “He won’t kill Duncan until he finds whatever it is he’s looking for
and for now things are still under wraps...”

“That’s not what I mean.” That caught her attention. “
We are about to get hit on all sides. Whitmore, he dug up a bunch of info on the Phipps Bend Property. Apparently, Spencer bought it through a dozen or more dummy corporations.  The really unusual point, though, is the fact that someone put some serious muscle on the county to sell it in the first place. Several “someones” to be exact. I can only coerce Whitmore so much…

“Wait. Coerce?”

Cohen sighed and nodded solemnly. “We can have an effect on some people, motivate them to respond a certain way. It’s not quite mind control, but it definitely helps. Still…Whitmore thinks it’s bigger than us, and, well, he is right about that. I’ve managed to suppress any calls about Goditha, but it’s only a matter of time. Whitmore is only willing to wait twenty-four hours before he has the department call in the Feds. He’s completely serious, Lilith. We have about twenty-three hours to wrap this all up in a silent, cohesive manner or all hell will break loose. Once he finds out about Goditha, it might be even less than that. And there’s a good chance he’ll be finding out about that soon. A call just came in before I stepped in here, a patrol officer reported suspicious activity around the industrial park where Goditha is.”

As if right on some universal cue, Cohen’s phone lit up like a Christmas tree. He held up a finger to Lilith and grabbed the phone. As the mystery person on the other end of the line spoke, Cohen’s face slowly drained of color. When he hung up, he barely glanced at Lilith. “We
have a bigger problem.”

Her skin threatened to crawl right off her body. Whatever it was she knew she wasn’
t going to like it and there was already a hell of a lot to choose from in the ‘not liking it’ department.

“There’s been a fire called in.
Whitmore and Humphries are already at the scene.” Cohen finally met her eyes and they were full of apologies. “It’s the Riverfront Ramada. I think Ashcroft is making his move.”

Chapter 20

T
he parking lot was a cacophony of sirens, screams, and alarms that blared even through the car windows. It was complete pandemonium outside the modern concrete hotel with a sea of people running toward the flashing lights of the ambulances. The air was thick with smoke, reflecting the red and blue lights like they were in an eerie fog. Fire engines lined the front of the building with their ladders extended, dumping gallons of water onto the roaring fires breaking out the windows.

Lilith stared out of the car in utter shock as an explosion of fire and glass erupted from one of the windows
, raining down on the screaming crowd below. What if Gregor and Alvarez hadn’t made it out? What if they were still in there and they were hurt, or worse? Lilith couldn’t help but see her nightmare coming true. Her father in flames, screaming and writhing. No they had to be alive. They had to be. She didn’t even realize that she had a death-grip on the door handle until her fingers started to ache.

Cohen was
slowly pulling the car towards the scene as close as he could get. Lilith just watched in horror as a whole line of ambulances struggled to handle the overflow of crying, screaming, injured people. Firefighters were still pulling people out of the building. As soon as they got someone clear of the debris, they would rush back into the hellish flames. They had to know there were more people trapped inside for them to sprint towards the deadly building so fast.

“I’m sure they got out, Lily.” Chance’s voice sounded odd. It was so quiet, like he was
trying to be reassuring but also trying to convince himself. Her first instinct was to scream at him that everything was not all right, that they had no idea if Gregor and Alvarez were screaming in the fire or in the hands of a mad man. But something in his voice stopped her. She wasn’t the only one that cared about Gregor and Alvarez. Gregor was almost a father to him and Alvarez was one of us. Chance had a kinship for those of our kind that worked in law enforcement, not to mention that he saw Alvarez on a regular basis when Gregor took his weekly reports on relevant cases.

She turned around with tears stinging her eyes and saw the same horrified, heartbroken look on Chance’s face. His eyes finally left the window, catching hers and she saw all the soul-crushing guilt weighing on him. Why did he have to feel so responsible for everything?
Every time someone was in danger, it wounded him to the core. I suppose she would feel the same way if she’d made her entire life about protecting people. She wanted to comfort him, tell him it wasn’t his fault, but the car rocked to a stop and all she could think about was finding her father and her partner.

“Okay. We need to play this right. First thing we need to do is find Whitmore…”
Cohen was in mid-sentence when Lilith tore the door open and just ran. The sounds of Chance and Cohen screaming after her died in the chaotic clamoring of the crowd. It was absolutely overwhelming. It was like plunging head first in a tank of ice water. The sensations of despair, pain, loss, fear, anger, they were just as suffocating as the thick cloud of smoke. They vibrated painfully over her body, bringing scorching tears to her eyes. The pressure made her skin tight. Any minute she would just implode. It was enough to take her breath away, forcing her to struggle for each panting breath as she pushed past people.

Everywhere she turned there were people crying and trying to choke in breaths from oxygen tanks. Mild burn victims wandered aimlessly trying to find their kids, their wives, their husbands, their siblings. One little girl clutched a singed teddy bear crying in the midst of the churning crowd completely lost. Lilith shoved her way past EMTs and trauma nurses, grabbing one and pointing out the little lost girl with the teddy bear.
She belonged to somebody out here, but Lilith couldn’t help them all. She had to find her own family first.

Lilith was becoming frantic, running past every ambulance searching for any sign of Gregor and Alvarez. Someone grabbed her from behind and she spun around, ready to attack, when she came face to face with a woman whose face was streaked with soot. Her eyes were bloodshot and desperate.

“Please, has anyone found my son?” She clutched at Lilith’s arm like she was a rock in the surging tide. Her fingers felt like hot pokers digging into her skin, searing the woman’s pain into her body. It was energizing and excruciating all at the same time and it just made her want to scream and yank her arm away.

It took Lilith a few seconds to realize that she was wearing a police track suit.
The poor woman probably thought she was an off duty cop here to help with the catastrophic scene. “I’m sorry, I haven’t heard anything.” It was heartbreaking but she still had her own people to find. The woman wouldn’t let go of her arm though. She kept clinging to her, staring at her with those pleading eyes, digging her fingers into her arm.

Lilith was on the verge of panic, trying to pry the woman off her when she heard a familiar southern accent.
“Ma’am, we will help you as soon as we can.” Cohen appeared next to the poor woman and gently pried her arm loose. “We’ll find your son.” His eyes met hers with a significant look that Lilith thought might actually be genuine.

The woman nodded slowly
while wiping at her soot-covered cheeks and shuffled off, aimlessly disappearing into the chaos. Cohen watched her leave and as soon as she was out of earshot, he turned on Lilith. “Are you completely insane??”

“I have to find them!” She spat the words at him and
started back into the crowd.

Cohen snatched her wrist and yanked her backward. “Getting yourself killed isn’t going to help anyone. You go charging around here and that’s exactly what’
s going to happen!”

“Let
go!” Lilith spun and swung, nailing Cohen right in the jaw. As soon as the shock rattled him she ripped her wrist away.

“Dammit!” Cohen
snatched her arm with a fierce grip and pulled her back around. He quickly grabbed both her wrists and pulled her closer. “Stop. I’m on your side, remember? We have to stick together. Ashcroft could be in this crowd right now.”

             
Lilith tried to wrench her arms free again, panic bubbling up inside her, making her lungs feel tight. “I know! I have to find my father and Alvarez before he does!”

             
“And then what?” Cohen’s scream startled a little of the fight out of her. “Assuming that Gregor and Alvarez are even here, assuming they aren’t still stuck inside, say you find them and Ashcroft finds you. What are you going to do to him in a crowd like this? It’s like a roving buffet for him. All you’d accomplish is becoming another hostage or worse.”

             
Her eyes lit up with tears as she stared into Cohen’s hazel eyes. Wait. Hazel? Was his sandy blonde hair a touch darker? Her brain was too rattled to make sense of what she was seeing. All the emotions swirling around her were screaming over her skin. It was like standing in the middle of a hurricane of shattered glass.

             
“Look, I know you don’t want to hear this, but the call came in twenty minutes ago. Judging by this crowd, the fire alarm never sounded. It’s an old hotel. There wasn’t much warning. Still, even if Ashcroft hasn’t found them in this crowd yet, he will and there’s nothing we can do to stop him. We need to get him somewhere isolated.”

             
“I can’t just leave.” Cohen was right, but how do you just give up and allow a monster to take your family? She wasn’t Spencer. “If there is any chance that we can stop this thing, we have to take it.”

             
Cohen just searched her eyes for a tense moment. When she still didn’t struggle, he slowly released her wrists. “We will talk to the cops and EMTs here and get a few officers to escort us around the crowd. It won’t be easy in this mess, but I’ll make it happen. A slight upturn of his lips told her that he had no confidence at all in his words, but he was willing to help her anyway. “You haven’t seen Whitmore or Humphries while you were running around, have you?”

             
Lilith was shaking her head when Chance finally caught up to them, shattering the compassionate moment. “What the hell, Lily? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

             
Cohen saw that pained look on her face and awkwardly rubbed at his jaw. “Your woman has one hell of a right hook.”

             
Well that definitely diffused the situation. Chance actually smirked. “It’s about time someone took a shot at you.” The relief was only momentary. Chance stepped in front of Lilith, completely blocking Cohen from the conversation. “You seriously cannot pull a stunt like that again.” Those hypnotic hazel eyes flecked with green were pleading. “I’m barely holding on here. I need you to stay with me. Let me do one damn thing right with my life. Please.”

             
She immediately regretted barreling out of the car. It was stupid. “I’m sorry for running off, but you have to stop blaming yourself, Chance. You aren’t responsible for the whole world.” His martyr complex was starting to get to her.

             
“And you are? You’re right. I’m not responsible for the whole world. I’m responsible for you and Gregor.” His hands slid up her shoulders to cup her face and it made her heart race, even here in the middle of a disaster. Everything else seemed to fade away. The raging storm of emotions died down, giving her one blissful moment of quiet. “Please, Lily. Let me do my job.”             

             
“I hate to interrupt you two lovebirds, but we are at a raging hotel fire.” Cohen’s voice was clipped, and when Chance turned to look at him, Lilith could see the hard lines of his almost-handsome face and his arms crossed angrily over his chest. “What I was saying when Ms. Adams decided to barrel out of the car like a mental patient, is that we need to find Whitmore and Humphries. They’ll know more about what’s going on here. Once we know who is in charge of the scene, we can get whatever information we need. Let’s split up. You and Chance can search the crowd and I’ll get behind the police barricade and see what I can dig up.”

             
“And how is it any better for you to go running off alone?”

             
“So glad you asked.” The overly sweet smile stretching his lips was drenched in sarcasm. Apparently he did get the concept of sarcasm after all. “Unlike you, Ashcroft isn’t after me. I’m just a meddlesome detective, not a target.” There was a barely restrained anger in his voice but his face read differently. He was scared and his lips were slightly downturned indicating sadness. It was a very odd mix that she really didn’t understand.

             
Cohen seemed to notice her staring at him a little too intently and ran his fingers through his short dark blonde hair. “Look, you two just stick together and stay safe. Text me if you find something and I’ll do likewise.” His words were hurried and with one quick glance, Cohen turned and disappeared into the crowd.

             
Chance grabbed her hand and it was like touching a battery. She instantly felt stronger, better able to deal with the overwhelming emotions plaguing her from every single terrified person in the parking lot. It seemed like the strength she was drawing from Chance created a shield around her.

             
Chance flinched and pulled his hand back, leaving her to be bombarded by the crowd, but it wasn’t like before. She had more strength to deal with the powerful sensations. She could focus, push back the tide. A small smile stretched her lips until she saw Chance’s face.

             
He looked a little pale and disorientated. “What was that?”

             
A small little ball of dread knotted her stomach. “What was what?”

             
Chance frowned and looked down at his hand like he’d never seen it before. “I don’t know. I grabbed your hand and I just felt really dizzy and light headed.”

             
She flashed back to their conversation with Cohen in his office and the ball of dread bloomed into real fear. Lilith looked away and scanned the crowds. She had to get a grip on this crap before she hurt someone and the last person she wanted to hurt was Chance. “Uh, we need to start looking.”

             
Chance shook his head like he was trying to clear it and finally nodded. “You’re right. Let’s get moving.” Lilith was silently thankful that they weren’t going to have some huge discussion about what just happened. She was still panicked about finding her father.

             
They spent the next hour moving through the masses. Ambulances were finally starting to pull out with the more serious burn victims. At least another dozen cop cars showed up to help control the chaos. Firefighters were still battling the inferno, but they weren’t pulling out victims anymore. Anyone still in the building was beyond help now. Buses were beginning to line up at the end of the parking lot. Cops were organizing the uninjured and herding them toward the buses so they could be transferred to another hotel. The sensations of pandemonium and despair were finally starting to lessen.

             
They still couldn’t find a single trace of Gregor or Alvarez. The crowds might be starting to calm down, but Lilith was spinning into full panic mode. “Where the fuck are they, Chance?”