Jordan Summers - [Dead World 01] (3 page)

Mint-scented antiseptic filled the cold air,
attempting to mask the smell of death.

It failed miserably.

Morgan scanned the row of bodies, but nothing seemed
out of place until he got to the one at the far end of the room. Instead of
being exposed like the others. it lay covered beneath a white medical tarp. Jim
never kept the bodies covered. He was convinced that it hindered the dissection
process.

"Put these on," Jim said, handing Morgan lab
gear.

Morgan donned the protective
headgear and gloves, then followed Jim, who hadn't bothered to suit up, to the
table at the far end.

"I found her when I was out doing a routine scan
of the electromagnetic boundary area for unknowns. You know I like to get to
them before it's too late to recycle. She's been dead for about a week, maybe
longer," he said, feathering the ends of the tarp through his fingers.

"We have a lot of unknowns
turning up dead. That's nothing new. You know as well as I do that illegally
crossing the boundary is
dangerous. Those who don't
die at the fence get taken out by the harsh elements or
the animals," he said,
bitterness filling him.

Morgan hated the boundary. The electromagnetic
barbed fence stretched across the southern half
of the
North American continent, bisecting what used to be California,
Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas in order to limit illegal
crossings from no-man's-land to the republics and keep out unregistered
individuals,
unknowns.

He never agreed with the
reasoning behind its con
struction or the separation it stood for. The division be
tween countries, religions, and
humans had been what
started
the war in the first place. People had been so
busy pointing out their differences that they forgot how much they were
alike. He shook his head and
looked at the
tarp in disgust. Just because a person re
fused to be tagged with a
computer chip didn't make
him a criminal. At
least not in Morgan's mind. But it
wasn't
his job to create the laws, only enforce them—
and he did that because more of them were good than
were bad.

"She's not an unknown."

Jim's words slammed into him, disintegrating his
thoughts like ash caught in a heavy wind.
"She's regis
tered with the Republic of Arizona?" Morgan
stilled,
his stomach clenched. He stared at
the white tarp unable to bring himself to touch it. "Who?" He forced
himself to ask.

"It's Renee Forrester."

Oh, hell. He'd dated Renee the year before. They'd
split amicably after a few months, their itch thoroughly scratched. She was
kind, a tad on the shy side, but well liked. He couldn't think of a soul who'd
want to harm her. "Are you sure?" he asked, heaviness settling in his
chest as the loss finally registered.

"I'm sorry, Morgan, but I'm positive."

He nodded, his fists tightening on the cover. Morgan
took a couple of deep breaths, then pulled the tarp back. The condition of
Renee's body punched the air out of his lungs, leaving him disoriented. He'd
seen more than his fair share of dead bodies and learned there were a lot of
ways a person could die. Yet
he'd never seen anything quite like this. Renee had
been
brutalized. No, more than that, she'd been
savaged.

His stomach flipped as he stared
at the body, threaten
ing
to toss the remnants of his dinner onto the floor. "What
the hell happened to her? Where are her
eyes?" H
e swallowed hard, fighting the
rising bile in his throat. The smell was stronger now, cloying as it insis
ted upon entering his protective headgear.

"She's been eaten," Jim said without
inflection.

"Eaten? Hell, she's been ripped apart."
Morgan ste
pped back, his attention locking
on Jim for answers.

"You know I wouldn't say
anything if I wasn't sure."

It couldn't be happening again. No one was that
stupid. Desperation clawed at Morgan's chest, leaving him raw and exposed.
"No," he said, convinced there ha
d
to be a logical explanation. "The zoos never have caught everything that
escaped. You and I both know th
at. Food's scarce. The predators have
gotten a hell of a lot more aggressive lately, if the calls from the ranchers
are any indication."

Jim's shoulders slumped and he shook his head.
'Take a closer look at the injuries, particularly
the area
near her carotid
artery." He pointed to a nasty wound
on her pale slender neck.

Morgan stared at the woman with
whom only a year
ago
he'd been intimate. Renee's left arm was missing,
along with her beautiful brown eyes and half her
lovely face. Blond hair matted with dried blood
hung limply next to her remaining ear. Her intestines spilled
from her abdomen as though someone had dropped
synth-noodles
on the floor. He gulped as he bent forward to examine the area Jim indicated.
"Tell me that's not a tooth indentation."

"I wish I could, but I've
measured the damned thing
three times.
There's no mistaking the weapon. Trust me, it's a fang."

Jim walked across the room and opened one of the
drawers along the wall that held more of his dissecting tools. He took out a
small gold case and brought
it back to the
table. His thick thumbs flipped the latch
and lifted the lid, exposing
seven perfectly formed incisors made out of plaster. He picked up the largest
one and slid it into the wound on Renee's neck with ease. It was a perfect fit.

"Shit! Shit! Goddammit!" Morgan paced a few
steps away, pulling off the protective gear so he
could
breathe. He slammed the equipment onto an unoccupied table. The
clanging sound reverberated in the
silence.
Ignoring his gloves, he ran his hands through
his hair.

Morgan shook his head and then strode back to the
dissection table, his steel-toed boots clacking on the
concrete floor.
"Has anyone else seen the body?" He
looked warily at Jim, praying
the man gave him the
light answer—hell, the only acceptable answer
given
circumstances.

"No." Relief flooded through Morgan as Jim
pulled his glasses from his face and began wiping them on his
shirt sleeve.
"As soon as I realized who it was, I covered
her.
I didn't
want any of my lab assistants  stumbling
upon her."

"Good. Hide the body immediately, but don't dispose
of
it.
We may need her later to identify the killer."

"T
hat's what I'd planned to do after you saw her."
Jim
said.

"You were right to contact
me. I want to handle this personally.
We can't afford to have outsiders involved, not
with public awareness of our existence beginning
to
rise. Besides. I don't want to
panic the town unless I have
t
o." The
thought of the impending hunt chilled Morgan's
bones.

"I figured that would be the case."

"You're sure this couldn't have been caused by
anything
else?" He hated hearing the resignation in his
voice.

"You've
seen the evidence with your own eyes," Jim
said,
with the patience of a man who
spends his time around the dead. "You know what we have here." He
slid
his glasses back onto his round
face. "Nothing out there
has canines
this long, not even the wild cats."

Morgan braced his arms on the table, his gloved hands
curled into fists
around the cool metal frame. He closed his eyes for a second against the
gruesome scene
before opening them again. "Do you know who
did this?" His voice held little emotion,
knowing who
ever Jim named would be
sentenced to death.

Jim shook his head while gathering the tarp to cover
the body. "The tests were inconclusive, but we can safely rule out the
vamps."

"Why?" Morgan asked, realizing it would be
far
easier to stake a vamp than to take out
one of his own.
"Some of them
have long-ass canines, too. Don't they
still need blood?"

"Yes, they do, but the
amount varies from vamp to
vamp. Most
prefer to, ah . . . feed during sex. Renee
shows
no signs of penetration." Jim shoved his hands
into his pockets.
"Speaking of vamps, I spotted Raphael Vega in town the other night."

"What's the two-legged bat doing back in
Nuria?"

"Raphael said he was just
visiting friends," Jim said.

"He doesn't have any friends."

Jim smiled indulgently. "I know you'd like to be
lieve that, but he has a lot of female friends.
Don't you
think it's about time you get over the grudge you've
been carrying against him? He didn't steal Karen
from
you. She went willingly to his bed. Half the town heard her
passionate screams when he was—"

"This isn't about
Karen," Morgan growled out be
tween clenched teeth. "Everyone knows that lab
vamps
aren't to be trusted. Hell, even
the vamps don't trust each other."

Like Morgan and most of the people living in Nuria,
Raphael Vega was one of the many individuals involved in the old U.S.
government's pet project to create a super soldier. The scientists behind Project
Superman had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

What had once only existed in myth and imagina
tion now walked the earth and had fought for
freedom.
The genetically engineered
soldiers were stronger and f
aster than regular men, had greater
endurance, and could withstand extreme injury. For all intents and purposes,
they were immortal.

At the start of the project, the
newly converted sol
diers were touted as
heroes, but then the war shifted and everyone lost. The scientists and
government of
ficials
attempted to
call back their special teams so T
hey could
eradicate them. There was only one small
problem—they could no longer
control the monsters they'd created.

When their numbers were sufficient, the creatures
broke out of their holding cells and had been on the loose ever since. The war
destroyed most records and the new governing bodies moved to distance
themselves from the whole debacle by denying their existence and disavowing all
involvement. This allowed the
Others
to create new lives for themselves
among the purebloods. With new identities in place, they'd blended in and built
entire societies, but all those gains wouldn't matter if humans rediscovered
their
existence.

And dead bodies were the ultimate
attention getters.

"Raphael has interesting timing," Morgan
said.

"So it seems," Jim replied.

He leaned forward. "And?"

Jim shrugged. "You know as well as I do that
vamps don't tend to ingest large quantities of meat or any other food for that
matter. That was one of the tradeoffs for the boost in psychic ability.
Besides, they wouldn't have left so much blood or evidence. They're very good
at hiding their presence and even
better at
disposing of bodies. You can take the vam
pires out of the lab, but not
the lab out of the vam
pires." Jim
joked, but it fell flat. He coughed, his face
flushing under Morgan's
steady regard. "We may not know
who,
but you and I both know
what
did this."

Morgan exhaled loudly. Indeed, he did know what had
done this to poor Renee Forrester. A pureblood against a predator this cunning
didn't have a chance. Let's hope the people of Nuria faired better.

He glanced at Jim. "This is just what we need, especially
with Roark Montgomery trying to gain support for his blood purity bill. If
word gets out..." Morgan's voice trailed off.

"I know, I know. The
republic leaders will send or
ders to
IPTT to exterminate first and ask questions later, like during the war."

Ice settled in Morgan's gut as he considered the
possibility of the International Police Tactical Team
getting involved. He had to put a stop to whoever was
doing
this—and fast. "We better hope like hell the IPTT doesn't get wind of this
or we'll have a bloodbath on our hands." Morgan removed his gloves and tossed
them into a nearby recycling bin.

Jim nodded. "My thoughts exactly."

chapter
three

Gina Santiago, or Red, as the tactical team referred
to her
, slipped one pistol from its
holster and looked around. The weapon beeped softly in recognition of her thumbprint
and began to charge. She hadn't spotted the remaining unregistered
individuals—unknowns—yet, but their stench was undeniable, much like the body
lying at her feet.