Blood Secrets-Valorian 1 (5 page)

“I know,” he sniveled, then wiped his mouth with his hand. Had there been drool slicking his thin lips?

Eve distanced herself from him and tried to remain calm. “Would you please leave the room?”

He moved toward her. “You smell good, human.”

Eve took a step back, right into her field kit. Two seconds later, she was falling backward.

When she landed flat on her back, the little scrawny vampire loomed over her, licking his lips. He grinned, showing his fangs. Saliva dribbled from his open mouth and down his pointy chin.

Scrambling for anything to protect herself, Eve grabbed the ALS flashlight fastened to her belt. She unhooked it and bashed it across the vampire’s head. The impact of the hard plastic didn’t even make him flinch. He continued to press down on her, baring his elongated teeth. She flicked on the light and flashed it in his eyes. Ultraviolet in the face had to hurt. The vampire shrieked and closed his eyes but continued to close in on her.

She opened her mouth and screamed.

Faster than she could see, the little man was lifted off the ground. Caine stood above her, his hand wrapped tightly around the weasel man’s throat. The vampire’s shoes didn’t reach the ground as he dangled there, held up by Caine’s pure brute strength.

“I could crush you like a cockroach.” Caine’s voice was hard and cold. Eve had to suppress a violent shiver, as the room’s temperature seemed to drop rapidly.

Mahina moved around to Caine’s side, an amused look on her face. “Hey, Valorian, put the little bloodsucker down before he pisses in his pants and ruins your crime scene and your three-hundred-dollar shoes.”

Eve watched as the feral look on Caine’s face faded. She could see him start to relax, letting his shoulders droop. Slowly, he set the weasel down, and then took a step back, his breathing labored but slowing. The room seemed to warm at the same rate as his breathing slowed.

“Take him in,” Caine demanded.

Mahina raised her eyebrow, but said nothing. She took hold of the little vampire’s arm and dragged him toward the door. “Okay, Chuck, we’re taking a ride.”

“But I didn’t do anything!” Chuck sputtered.

Once they were through the door, Caine turned and looked down at Eve. His face seemed to soften as he eyed her. “Are you okay?”

Sighing, Eve closed her eyes. She let her body relax on the carpet. Relief surged over her.

For a moment there, she thought she was going to die. Slowly opening her eyes, she swallowed down the residual panic. Then she paused, spying something foreign under the bed.

Craning her neck, she squinted and tried to make out the shape lying on the carpet a few feet away.

Caine reached down and grabbed her arm. “Here let me help you.”

Eve pulled away from his grip and rolled onto her stomach. “Get me some tweezers and a plastic bag will you?”

“Excuse me?”

She glanced at Caine and raised an eyebrow. “An evidence bag, please.”

He took her case, opened it, grabbed a pair of long tweezers and a bag and handed it to her. Taking them, Eve shuffled on her belly toward the bed and reached as far as she could underneath. Carefully, she plucked the white object from the shag carpet, shuffled backward and rolled over into a sit, bringing the object up into view.

It was about two inches long, blanched and sharpened into a point. She’d seen one before on several occasions, but never like this. Usually, they were attached to the rest of the skeleton.

“It’s a phalange,” Caine announced.

Smiling, Eve bagged the bone and sealed the sack shut. “Good thing I was attacked and ended up on the floor. We might have missed that.”

Caine offered her his hand. This time she took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet.

Still holding her hand in his, he remarked, “Interesting tactics, but good work.”

She gave him a little smile, but pulled her hand from his. Heat had suddenly enveloped her, and she didn’t want to even consider where it was coming from. She took a step back, and reached for her kit to stash the evidence she’d retrieved.

Caine cleared his throat. “I shouldn’t have left you alone. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s all right. I wouldn’t have seen the bone if I hadn’t been on the floor.”

“It should never have happened, Eve. I have to remember that you are not…Other.

Leaving you alone is dangerous, negligent even, and I won’t do it again.”

She waved his apology away. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’m fine. I can take care of myself, you know. I have training.”

“Not for Necropolis, you don’t.”

With that, she noticed his eyes flashed like blue flames, reminding her that she was indeed an outsider in a foreign place with unfamiliar people. People that could kill her in a blink of an eye. Even Caine possessed that power.

Her stomach clenched again, and she had to fight the rising panic of being here, in this place of strangeness, with a vampire. Once a creature of myth, but certainly now as real as she was. Maybe she wasn’t completely prepared, but she refused to be scared away.

She refused to back down from this challenge. She was here until the end, whether she, or Caine, liked it or not.

Squaring her shoulders, she picked up her kit. “I’m fine. Now, let’s get back to the lab and figure out this puzzle piece.”

With that, she brushed past Caine and walked toward the door. The fact that her wobbling knees still supported her and she was able to walk without passing out surprised her to no end. Just as it probably surprised Caine when she felt him following close behind.

B lood spotted the stone steps of the dais.

The cloaked figure in the shadows watched as his servants prepared the sacrificial altar, splashing the human’s blood over the gray consecrated stone. His body thrummed with excited anticipation of the events to come. It wouldn’t be long before his purpose was fulfilled and he could finally go home.

He’d come to Necropolis years ago, quickly adapting to the city and integrating himself into the Otherworld society. He worked and played just like everyone else. No one had any clue of his true purpose, or his true identity. He had successfully fooled everyone into thinking that he was one of them. Little did they know how wrong they truly were.

One of the servants, an eager young witch, scurried over to where he waited, shrouded in the dark. She bowed to him. “Everything is just as you instructed, Master.”

“Good.” He touched the top of her head. “Soon you will be rewarded for your dedication.”

She bowed again, even lower. “Thank you, Master.” Then she scurried away to finish the last of her tasks.

So eager his servants were to please him. Willing to do anything he asked of them. And he had asked many things. Others he had paid to do his bidding—like the vampire that had acquired the human woman’s blood—and he’d paid well. Money meant nothing to him. He had plenty of it and it was for this purpose only. After the ceremony took place, he’d have no need for money, or anything else he could acquire in this world.

Everything he ever wanted, ever desired, lay within his reach. Soon, he would have more power than any amount of money could buy.

Soon, the world—human and Otherworlder alike—would bow to him.

“I t’s not vampire, lycan or human.”

Caine frowned at Givon, as he inspected the bone they had found at the crime scene.

Givon had it under his magnifying glass.

“An ape, then?” Eve piped up from her perch beside Caine.

Givon shook his head. “I’m not an expert, but I’d say not.” He pointed to the bone. “If this is a distal phalanx bone, which I’m sure it is, it’s way too short to be human or ape.”

Impatience thumped at Caine’s head, giving him the beginnings of a killer headache.

“What then? Some other animal?”

“I don’t know.” Givon lifted his glasses and rubbed his fingers over the bridge of his nose.

Caine knew his friend well, and was familiar with the subtle nuances of Givon’s body language. Fiddling with his glasses screamed aggravation at not knowing answers.

Sighing, Caine ran his hand through his own hair. He had been hoping for a break, something, anything that would lead them somewhere on this case. So far, they had nothing.

No hits on the Otherworld DNA or fingerprint catalogues. Nothing on the human ones, either. He was hoping the bone would lead them to the next clue, then to the next, like a treasure hunt. Nothing. They were on this hunt without a map to guide them.

“Do we know any anthropologists?” Caine asked.

Givon nodded. “I know a guy who might help us. A civilian, though.”

“Call him, Givon. We need something.”

The door to the morgue opened, and Jace peeked his head in. “We got a hit.”

Minutes later, the whole team gathered in Caine’s office while Eve pulled up the results of her search. The vic’s prints showed up in the system from a prior arrest, a drunk and disorderly.

“Lillian Ann Crawford, twenty years old.” Eve read off the screen. “86 Soleada Way, San Antonio.”

Caine wanted to feel some relief that they had identified their victim, but instead a sense of melancholy washed over him. As he looked around at his team, he could see the same sadness on their collective faces, except maybe Kellen’s. He never seemed fazed by the crimes.

They had a name, which was a good thing, but somehow that seemed to make it more real. Death was always sad, but when it happened to someone so young, Caine felt a sense of loss creep over him.

Shaking off the feeling, Caine addressed Eve. “We need to talk to her family and friends.

Someone knows how this girl ended up in a motel room with a vampire.”

“I’ll call Captain Morales.” Eve picked up the phone on Caine’s desk.

As she dialed, Caine motioned to the rest of his team to follow him out into the hallway.

Once assembled, he looked at each of them.

“Someone needs to go with Eve into San Antonio to talk with the family. The right questions need to be asked, and I have no faith in the human police to ask them.”

Lyra sniffed. “Don’t look at me. I still have those symbols to decipher. I think I’m really close.”

Caine moved his gaze to Jace. The man’s face was so stern, his eyes so fierce, that Caine didn’t even bother to ask.

Kellen raised his hand. “I’ll go with her.” He grinned. “She’s just the type of distraction I need.”

“Not likely, Kel. You’re a lab man, not a field man. You’d scare the residents of San Antonio.” Sighing, Caine shook his head. “Save it. I’ll go. You’re all acting like juveniles out on the playground.”

Jace snorted. “Hey, you’re the boss. You’re the one that’s supposed to be the professional and set an example for the rest of us.”

“You had better have made some progress on the hair and fiber analysis when I get back,” Caine remarked, then marched back into his office.

Eve had just hung up the phone and glanced at him as he neared the desk. She looked harried, strands of hair framing her face. He noticed that she didn’t try to tuck them back behind her ears. Obviously, she was too preoccupied to worry about it. A slight twitch at her right cheek beside her lips indicated nervous tension. He could just imagine what her captain had said to her about one of them coming into San Antonio to question some humans.

“He’s sending someone to meet us at the east entrance.” She lowered her gaze, and tapped a finger on his desk. “They’ll escort us to the Crawford residence where Detective Salinas will meet us.”

He nodded. He hadn’t expected anything less. He was actually surprised that they were allowing any of them to enter San Antonio. It had been over ten years since he’d been in the city.

“I’m surprised.” He lifted his brow with an unasked question.

“I told the captain that the case couldn’t possibly be solved without you…without your questions, I mean—” she cleared her throat “—that only an Otherworlder would be able to ask the right questions to get the answers we need to solve Lillian’s murder.”

“What’s this Detective Salinas like? Do you know him?”

She nodded but refused to meet his gaze. Was she hiding something? “He’s all right.

Fairly straight up.”

Caine stiffened. Was that hurt he heard in her voice? Possibly anger? He wasn’t as sensitive to sound as Jace, but he could decipher a lot in the way people spoke, and the words they used to communicate. He had extraordinary sensory perception. And right now, it was telling him that there was obviously some history between Eve and Detective Salinas. Romantic history, he assumed by the way her cheeks turned pink when she spoke about him.

“Is there going to be a problem working with him? Is your past history going to interfere with this investigation?”

Her head snapped up and the color of her eyes darkened. It was obvious he had hit a nerve. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m assuming you’ve had some sort of relationship with the detective. Is it going to be an issue working with him? We can’t afford any more liabilities on this case.”

Standing, Eve straightened her shoulders and glared at him. “First of all, it’s none of your business if I’ve had a relationship with this man or not. You are not my boss, thank God for that.” She rounded the desk and stood directly in front of him, her hands on her hips.

He could feel her anger float off her like heat waves. He could almost taste it in the air on the tip of his tongue. “Secondly, I am not a liability. The biggest problem with this case is the hostility here. I sense it with your team—and now with you.”

Without waiting for him to comment, she stormed out of his office.

That went well. Caine rubbed a hand over his mouth. He supposed he deserved that for assuming any impropriety on Eve’s part. It was just that they didn’t need any more problems on this case. He didn’t believe in engaging in anything romantic with coworkers. Nothing good ever came out of it. It was difficult enough without making things more complicated with strained working relationships.

Ha! Talk about strained working relationships! Just having Eve here had put enough tension on his team, and on him, to break a tightrope. He could feel the high level of anxiety from both his people and from Eve. It was so palpable he felt like he was walking in quicksand.