Midnight Ash (A Blushing Death Novel) (15 page)

“There’s one fewer puncture wounds on the second body,” I said again, still staring at the photograph. “And it seems like they either got frustrated or lost control near the end.” I pointed to the neck area and the upper torso. “It’s very clean and free of the bloody fingerprints that are covering her lower extremities and torso.”

Patrick leaned in closer, too. Derek came in around the other side of the desk to get a better look.

“So,” Danny said with a shrug. “Maybe they got hungry,” he added with a quick twitch of the corner of his mouth.

I rolled my eyes, then turned to Nova who stood at the door waiting for instruction.

“Was there a party theme at the club tonight?” I asked. I couldn’t remember. Sometimes Damsel would have several in a week. That’s one of the reasons Damsel was a huge success.

Nova shook his head.

“I understand body glitter but this doesn’t match her outfit. She’s wearing yellow. Why would she put on dark blue body glitter?” I asked.

Patrick released a deep sigh and placed his hand over mine, resting our grasped fingers on the desk. His hand was cold, the veins prominent. He needed to feed, and soon.

“It’s not glitter,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s one less bite because Midnight Ash killed one of her clan. He or she must’ve mistaken this woman for you. When Midnight Ash discovered that it wasn’t you, she let the rest loose and they tore at this poor woman’s flesh. The dark blue ash covering her body is the remains of one of her clan, sired by her.”

“We have a vampire ninja assassin in town gunning for Dahlia,” Danny said, filling Derek in.

“Did you say ninja?” Derek asked with wide eyes.

“That’s what I said,” I added as I pointed to Derek’s befuddled face.

“Yes,” Danny said, ignoring me, “I said ninja.”

“Shit!”

“Exactly,” Patrick confirmed.

“Maybe if she misses me long enough, she’ll kill enough of her own clan to make it easier for us,” I said with a weak smile as I tried to lighten the mood. Patrick wasn’t entertained. By the look on everyone else’s faces, neither were they. “All right,” I conceded. “Bad joke.”

“So how many do you think there are?” Derek asked, reverting instantly back to cop.

“Six, including Midnight Ash now that she’s killed one of her own,” Patrick said.

“So . . . do you guys sleep in coffins?” Derek asked, then lowered his head, as if ashamed of the question.

“If we don’t have a permanent residence that excludes all light sources, then yes. It is more convenient and safer, especially when traveling,” Patrick said.

“So to be safe, they would’ve had to ship themselves in coffins instead of, say, taking a flight into town?” Derek asked.

“Why does it always come down to paperwork?” I asked, shaking my head with disbelief.

“Bureaucracy is the bane to the existence of any criminal. There’s always a paper trail. Ya just have to find it, Kid,” Derek said with a wink.

“Not necessarily,” Patrick retorted, putting a damper on the sudden hopeful mood of the room. “Midnight Ash would have funds enough to hire a private jet. It eliminates the constraints she’d run into by standard shipping. She’d be able to come and go as she pleased.”

“Do you have a private jet?” I asked with a huff, skepticism filling my tone.

He paused only a moment before he nodded and turned his attention back to Derek.

Okaaaaay. A jet, really!

“There would still be a paper trail with the flight plans and manifests,” Derek said with an even bigger smile. “That might actually be an easier angle to follow. There’d be fewer private flights coming into town.”

Patrick nodded.

“I’ll get right on it and let you know,” Derek offered as he gathered up the photographs and the police reports.

I caught him by the arm and wrapped my arms around him, surprising both of us with a hug that I hadn’t intended to give him. I guess I was just feeling a bit sentimental in the last 24 hours. I probably needed some sleep to wash all this emotion away.

“Thank you,” I whispered. He pulled away and peered down at me like I’d grown a horn out of the center of my forehead.

“Hey, no problem, Kid. I’m just glad to know what’s going on. I’ve been wondering for a while, you know,” he said with a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders.

I hadn’t known that he’d spent the last months worrying about me. The worrying just got worse from here on out but I kept that to myself. He didn’t need to know that yet. He’d figure that out all on his own. Somewhere in all the mess, he’d become my friend. If he hadn’t been able to accept all of the craziness around me, I’d have missed him. He patted me on the head like a good big brother and left.

Half an hour later, Dean strutted through the door in a dark leather jacket, jeans, and a simple white crew neck T-shirt with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.

I guess my time was up. Good thing I’d managed to pack. My night wasn’t even close to being over.

I hadn’t thought about how uncomfortable a three-hour car ride would be with just me and Dean. I’d only considered doing something constructive to make myself feel like I was helping. Too late now.

We spent the drive from Columbus to Pittsburgh in complete and utter silence. An uncomfortable silence. The only time we spoke to each other was when I apologized for reaching for the radio knob at the same time he did and jerked my hand back.

I’d only brought two bags with me, one for clothes and the other for weapons. When he opened the trunk and threw my bag inside, he’d grumbled to himself about why women couldn’t pack light. I didn’t bother to show him what was in the other bag as I placed the weapons in the trunk.

I wore my Smith & Wesson 1911 in the shoulder holster under my arm. I’d packed a shotgun with silver buckshot, a crossbow, and plenty of stakes. I had my bowie knife stashed in the sheath inside my black knee-high motorcycle boots with a steel toe. I’d packed several liter bottles of holy water and silver-threaded rope in that second bag. I’d also stashed a few of the tranquilizer darts in my inside jacket pocket for safekeeping. A girl can never be too prepared.

We’d be in downtown Pittsburgh in a matter of minutes as we passed through the Fort Pitt Tunnel. When I was little, my dad had always made a
vroom
sound when we passed through the tunnel, like we were going at light speed. For a moment, I missed him. I missed them all and the happy family we used to be . . . before. I buried thoughts of them deep down. This wasn’t the time to dig up old wounds. It wouldn’t help anything.

We came out the other side of the tunnel and crossed the Fort Pitt Bridge over the Monongahela River. It had been a long time since I’d been to Pittsburgh. Years, maybe fifteen or more, and what I remembered was not what glittered before me.

When I was little, Pittsburgh was a steel workers town and looked it; dirty, dead, and run-down. As I gawked at the lights of the busy city, it was different. Clean, vibrant, and alive with people on the streets at one in the morning. There were advertisements on the billboards for Broadway shows and the symphony. I stared out the window at the memory reinvented. I peered out the driver’s side window at a boat on the Monongahela and caught Dean’s eye. He studied me with a sidelong glance.

“Never been to Pittsburgh before, huh?” he asked. His tone was controlled as if talking to me was a chore he didn’t care for.

“We used to come here all the time when I was little. My parents live about 45 minutes away on the Ohio side,” I said, still taking it all in, and ignoring his disdain. He didn’t say anything in response so I let it lie.

We headed to a strip of clubs and bars near Duquesne University where Patrick had directed us to start our
information gathering,
a.k.a. spying, at a place called Savages and Saints
.
I was pretty sure who the savages were. My only question was . . . who were the saints?

There were only a few hours left before dawn so we went straight to the club. We had to get in before the sun came up or we’d have to stay another day.

Evidently, the werewolf community in Pittsburgh wasn’t on good terms with Darshan. We were meeting with the Three Rivers Pack in the morning, once all the bad little vampires had gone to sleep. We hoped the Pittsburgh Pack had some helpful information. Someone had to know something. If not, we were pretty much screwed and Midnight Ash would kill me.

We parked several blocks away and I dug out two extra magazines from the bag in the trunk. Dean didn’t comment when I zipped the bag back up and slipped the magazines into my jacket pocket. We made our way down Watson Street and I moved my gun to a cross draw holster at the small of my back where it was less visible under my coat and V-neck blue cashmere sweater. I had a concealed carry permit in Columbus but this was another state and another city. I didn’t particularly want to be caught carrying.

We approached the litany of half-naked, freezing women standing in line, waiting to get into the club. They didn’t look happy. They didn’t have Nova to keep them company in the cold either.

Dean approached the bouncer without even evaluating the line. Several angry shouts of “Hey, buddy” and “What’d ya think you’re doing?” made heads turn our way that hadn’t noticed us before. Dean slipped the bouncer a bill that looked a lot like a $50 and the velvet rope opened for us, line be damned. We strolled into the club ahead of all the snarls and cries of cold, bitchy women and their unhappy dates. I shrugged at them and went inside. They were the ones who didn’t wear coats, not my problem.

The minute I stepped through the door the music hit me like a sledgehammer in the face, the heavy techno house music thumped hard in my chest, and the haze of fake fog smelled like burnt ozone. The place was full of vampires. Their power bounced off of me like it was coated in rubber. It was different. Everything here was different.

At home, energy was fluid, free flowing, and moved around me like a breeze whipping through my hair. The power signature in this club was constrained. Painful. I felt like I was in the middle of a pinball machine, bumping into solid bubbles of power with each step. A vampire walked by me and the collision of his power bubble into me was like he’d punched me in the gut. I stumbled into Dean as I lost my footing.

He caught my elbow, wrapping his strong fingers around my arm. The heat of his power and feel of his skin seemed to seep into me like a wave on the sand. His power coated every inch of my body, making every cell hum in recognition. I didn’t know what to do with it but I liked it.

He gave me a puzzled expression, cocking a dark eyebrow as he set me right. He didn’t ask. I leaned into his ear. “This place is crawling with vamps.”

“You okay?”

I nodded and stood on my own two feet again. When I put some distance between us, I felt the loss of his warmth like a part of me was suddenly missing. I shook it off and glared up at him.
God Damn it
, I had enough shit to deal with. A crooked little smile tugged one of his cheeks up. I’d never seen him smile before. Like Patrick, it didn’t seem like he did it enough. A shiver ran through my body and curled my toes as that voice in the back of my mind purred in pleasure.

His eyes moved from my gaze and hesitated at my mouth for a split second. I thought for a moment he was going to kiss me. I almost wanted him to. He turned on his heels quick and determined, stepping into the crowd and leaving me with a queasy uncertainty in the pit of my stomach.

He flanked left and I flanked right. We moved through the heavy crowd of people dancing on the floor like this wasn’t our first time. It was easy and I didn’t worry that he couldn’t take care of himself. I knew in my gut he could.

I could feel the one I wanted in the crowd. His bubble was bigger than the rest and much more solid than the others. I moved toward the masked power hidden in the throng of people like he was a beacon in a storm. The power was undeniably male and not nearly as powerful as Patrick but then again, no vampire I’d ever met had been. Not even Ethan. This particular vampire wasn’t even up to Alex’s strength—but then again Alex’s strength lay in her mind. She could fuck you up six different ways before you even knew she was a vampire. This one was, however, the strongest in the club. I’d take what I could get.

After spending so much time with Patrick and his Colony, I’d gotten better at differentiating vampires and their power signatures. Each one had a different flavor, almost like tasting a wine. In the same way that some people could tell which vineyard a wine came from just from the taste, I could tell how powerful a vampire was, their gender, and how old by the force of their power aura and the way it radiated.

This one was out there in the crowd waiting for me. I couldn’t see him, not yet, but he couldn’t hide from me either.

I moved through the dancers, shoving people out of my way until one of them grabbed me back, slamming me through his power bubble with the force of a Mack truck. The weak vampire gripped my arm and pinned me against the nearest wall with too much force. The strength was either new to him or he didn’t care that he could hurt me. Judging from the sneer on his face it was probably the latter.

The dickweed with his hands on me was surfer-boy blond, wearing a simple baby blue polo shirt and jeans. He looked like your typical frat boy with fangs.
Fantastic, an asshole with power, just what the world needs
.

He held me against the wall with a hand on each bicep, his fingers digging into my flesh. He smelled of cheap cologne and Jack Daniels. Vampires couldn’t get drunk off liquor or drugs but some of them still liked the taste. I was pretty sure, by the smell of him, that this ass had had more than his share of whiskey. This one was weak and would always be weak. The bubble of his power wasn’t very large or dense but it had hurt just the same as I passed through it. His weakness didn’t mean he couldn’t kill me where we stood; it just meant he would never be anything more than what he was at that moment, someone’s lackey.

“Do ya wanna go in the back?” he asked, only inches from my face. Abusive to frisky in no time flat. He reeked of alcohol and old blood.

My stomach turned as his scent filled my nose, making my eyes water with the putrid scent.

“I’m pretty sure that I don’t,” I said, rolling my shoulders and trying to free myself from his iron grip. I wanted loose. His fingers pressed hard into my bicep reminding me of how strong he was. I was going to have bruises.

“That wasn’t a question, girlie,” he said in a tone that was sharp and angry. He was used to getting what he wanted, either by his looks or by force. The
girlie
comment made anger percolate below the surface and set my synapses on fire. This fucker wasn’t getting anything from me. He wasn’t the only one angry now. Rage was a good tool, an emotion I knew how to use.

“Actually, it was a question, dipshit,” I bit out.

He slammed me against the wall again, harder. My breath left my body in a hard burning rush from my lungs as my body smacked against the wall. I held my neck stiff to keep my head from bouncing off the cinderblock behind me. I opened my eyes and refocused, waiting for the breath to reenter my body.

Dean fought through the crowd across the dance floor on his way toward me. The undead frat boy released my right arm and took a firm hold in my hair, yanking my head away to expose my jugular. I couldn’t kill him, not with all these people watching. I just had to hope that he had enough sense not to take a chunk out of my neck in public. He couldn’t be that stupid, could he?

He ran a slimy tongue down my neck.
Shit! He was that stupid.
I bent my arms and grabbed a fist full of polo shirt, wrapping my leg around his at the knee. I could take him down but it would cause a scene. His disgusting tongue grazed down my neck until he got to the bend of flesh at my shoulder where Patrick’s marks lay.

He stopped. His entire body froze as if time had stopped.

He breathed in my scent and the magic of Patrick’s mark on my skin. He leaned back from me with wide eyes and a terrified expression staring back at me.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, terrified, his voice quaking. “I had no idea you were spoken for. Forgive me. We don’t have to tell anyone, do we?” he asked, backing away from me with his hands, palms up in defense.

That’s all I needed was for this dipshit to go tell someone and before we could do anything about it, Darshan would know that someone marked by a powerful vampire was in town.

“Listen,” I said, pulling him back to me, pressing my body against his. “I’m from out of town. No one has to know. I won’t tell if you don’t,” I said with a flirty smile. His lecherous grin filled his eyes with anticipation as he pressed a large cold hand on my shoulder.
Yep, he’s dumb.
“You said there were rooms in the back, right?” I ran my fingers up the front of his shirt and pinched his nipple in between my thumb and forefinger. Just a little taste to get him excited enough to follow me.

His eyes fluttered and his fangs descended as he let out a deep breath laced with desire. He nodded with a dumb, empty expression on his face. “Let’s say you and me go find one of those empty rooms and have some fun,” I said, sliding my arm around his waist and turning him away from the crowd.

I caught sight of the vampire I wanted across the crowd. His power leaked out over everyone, beyond the constraints of his bubble as it trailed over the dancers like smoke. He was tall and wispy as if a strong wind could blow him away. His eyes bore through me as I moved, making me feel naked under his gaze. He smiled at me with eyes filled with heat and hunger, flashing fang as if he knew what I’d look like writhing beneath him. I gave him a coy little smile in return. Like a fish on a line. The frat vamp didn’t even notice.

I should’ve just dealt with the vampire I had in my hands instead of dragging him along for the ride but I couldn’t think what to do with him without alerting the entire club to our presence. I was tempting the devil himself to invite the more powerful vamp to my little party; I was outnumbered and out-muscled. The only problem was, I needed the information they had and there was only one way to get it.

Frat vamp led me through a door adjacent to the DJ stand at the back of the club. The noise from the bass disappeared blissfully behind us as the door closed. The hall stretched out in front of me like a hospital wing with white walls, doors, ceiling, and floors. The hallway was quiet with only the sound of the muffled bass vibrating off the walls in a soft thump.

“Each room has a card hanging from a hook on the door. One side of the card is red and the other is green. If the red side of the card’s up, the room is occupied and doesn’t want visitors. If the green side of the card is showing, the room is either empty or doesn’t mind visitors,” frat vamp said with a hint of pride in his voice as if he was the genius behind the system.

I doubted it very, very much.

The door we had just come through opened and the sound of the techno hit me in the back like a slug on the shoulder. I glanced over my shoulder. Dean entered behind a larger group, laughing and groping as they made their way down the hall. He stayed as close as he could without alerting my frat vamp that he wasn’t with the group at all
.

The vamp’s hand rested at the base of my neck, his grip firmer than necessary as he steered me down the hall. His thumb stroked up and down the side of my neck, sending chills up my spine. He could snap it like a twig at the first sign of danger and neither Dean nor I would be able to stop him.

The frat vamp and I found an available room after several failed attempts at green cards. He strode through the door first, leaving his back unprotected. I reached inside my jacket pocket for a tranquilizer dart, wrapping my fingers around the small projectile.