Tempted in the Night (7 page)
"I was beginning to wonder." The man smiled, revealing the tips of his white fangs.
John grimaced at the implied insult, trying to ignore how surreal it felt to be carrying on a conversation with a real vampire. "What now? You try to kill me?"
"Try?" There was a rumble of laughter. "No. I have no interest in killing you."
John didn't know if he believed that. "Did you kill Franklin Brody and the other man?"
"No. They were dead when I arrived."
A new thought occurred to John. "But you staked them, didn't you?" The vampire didn't have to answer for him to know the truth. "You did. In fact, you've been staking all of them, haven't you? All the other criminals you killed. That's why they never became vampires."
John knew it was true. Someone had to have been doing it because he'd stopped calling Mac and Dirk, who had presumably done it before. The vampire, he noticed, didn't try to deny it. Then, belatedly, something the vampire said registered. "How did you know Brody was here? It wasn't public knowledge."
"I went to the morgue earlier tonight and discovered that the body wasn't there." The vampire shrugged his shoulders in a very human gesture. "The
Brodys
have been burying their dead in this cemetery for almost a century—it seemed like the next logical place to look."
"And did you find Simon?" That was what John really wanted to know.
"Not yet."
Jess sat in the car waiting for the detective to finish his search of the grounds. It wasn't the waiting that bothered her
so
much as her total lack of
defense
. She felt too much like the proverbial sitting duck.
A shift in the shadows off to the side caught her attention and she watched a figure emerge. Expecting it to be John, she was surprised to discover it wasn't. Her first thought was that this could be the vampire and she squinted to bring his features into focus, but he was too far away. He moved away from the funeral home in a stumbling gait that was too slow to be a vampire's, and she allowed herself to relax a little as she watched him start across the driveway, passing about ten feet in front of the car.
As he moved under the glow of the driveway light, Jess saw that he was about her age, mid-twenties. He had a serious case of bed head, with his sandy blond hair mashed flat against the back of his head. His suit, by contrast, looked pressed and neat, although the patterned shirt looked out of place.
His attention seemed focused on the ground as he ambled along, almost as if he were drunk. The last thing they needed was a drunk wandering around with a vampire on the loose. Concerned for his safety, she considered getting out
to warn
him. Doubt made her hesitate.
Just then, he stopped walking and slowly turned to face her.
His eyes took on a reddish glow and when he smiled, she saw the two bloodstained fangs.
Alarm slammed through her and she reached for the driver's-side master door locks as he rushed the car. She heard the sound of all four locks snapping into place just as he threw himself against the door. Instinctively, she lurched backward, trying to get as far away from him as the car would allow.
He lowered his head to the window and stared at her, devouring her with his hungry gaze. From this close range, she saw that the decorative pattern across his shirt was actually a pattern of bloodstains.
It unnerved her to be this close without a stake or other weapon. She sat there, her fingers nervously fingering the locket about her neck as she prayed that the locks held under the vampire's efforts to get the door open. It seemed that the pounding against the door lasted forever, but then it stopped. Instead of going away, however, the vampire stared at her through the window. When their eyes met, he started to laugh.
John heard the blaring of his car's horn and swore. The damn woman was going to wake the dead with her impatience, he thought, trying to focus on what the vampire before him was saying. He tried to block the noise from his thoughts, but it wouldn't stop. Then he caught the pattern of horn blows—three long, three short, three long: S-O-S.
Trepidation shot through him and he took off running.
The first thing he saw when he rounded the corner of the funeral home was Simon Brody, looking as alive and well as he had the day his trial had ended, looming over the car. He was smashing his fist against the window, clearly intent on breaking it. John worried that he wouldn't get there in time to stop him.
Then the
Knowing there was no way to catch either of them, John went to the car instead. He pulled the keys from his pocket as he ran and pressed the auto-unlock. When he reached the car, he found Jessica sitting unusually still, with the locket around her neck clutched in her fist. He worried she was in a state of deep shock.
"Are you hurt?" he asked as soon as he had the door open.
She didn't answer, so he ran his hands up and down her arms and legs dispassionately, searching for signs of injury. He even tipped her head from side to side, checking her neck. He didn't think Brody had reached her, but he had to make sure.
"I'm taking you back to the admiral's," he said finally, closing her door and going around to the driver's side. He climbed in, started the car and headed down the driveway, glancing over at her occasionally as he drove. He didn't like her ashen pallor. "You don't look so good—I thought you fought vampires all the time. You should be used to this."
She turned to him slowly and he saw sparks of anger. "I usually have a weapon."
Sheldon Harris raced after Brody until he lost him in the woods. There, he stopped and stood very still as he stretched his range of awareness, using his vampire senses to pick up clues from his surroundings. From the direction of the main road he heard the sound of
traffic,
and from the direction of the funeral home came the sound of the detective's car driving off. Harris hoped he hadn't made a mistake by revealing himself to the detective back at the funeral home, but they were bound to run into each other eventually. The detective had been looking for him, specifically, for weeks now, and Harris had to admit a certain curiosity about the man who seemed to be unusually tolerant of his latest kills, which had all been individuals deserving of death. It might not have been his place to make that determination, but a year and a half ago, Harris had been forced to the harsh conclusion that life wasn't fair.
Harris brought his thoughts back to the present and scanned his surroundings with the trained eye of a former SEAL. Brody had been this way, headed for the main highway. Once he reached it, Harris knew the trail would end, so he turned his thoughts inward, searching the psychic link he shared with Brody, who was his Progeny; the vampire that he, Harris, had created.
He brushed across Brody's mind. Chaos reigned as the new vampire struggled to make sense of what had happened to him, yet Harris caught the distinct thread of delight over having killed. It was disturbing.
With dawn so close, Harris knew he had to abandon his search for tonight. He hoped Brody would get caught out in the sunlight, turn to a fragile type of stone that would blow away with the first good breeze, but knew he wouldn't get that lucky.
Tomorrow night he'd start his search all over again, but for now he headed back the way he'd come. The body of the night security guard still waited for him behind the funeral home where Brody had left him. Harris had to finish what the detective had interrupted before he could go home to his hidden chamber inside the sewer. He supposed he could find a nicer place to sleep during the day, but this place was secure—and sadly apropos to his current life.
Mac swore. "You should have told us earlier."
"I know," John admitted. He and Jess were back at the mansion with the others, sitting in the living room where John had just finished telling them what happened at the funeral home, carefully omitting the part about his personal conversation with the
"It's too close to dawn for us to go searching for him now," Dirk said. "We'll start again tonight."
"What time should we meet?" Jessica asked, drawing everyone's attention to her.
"
We
?"
Dirk asked, looking pointedly at first Jess and then John. "Mac and I will take care of this. You two stay out of it."
"No way.
I'm going with you," John argued, hurrying to make his case before either of them could tell him otherwise. "I know this guy better than anyone. I've been studying him for over a year."
"You think you know where he'll go hunting for food?" Mac asked.
"Yeah, I do." He didn't even have to stop to think about it.
"The university."
He quickly explained Brody's penchant for female college students, and the two men agreed that the university sounded like the most likely spot.
"I don't believe this," Jessica said heatedly, looking at each man in turn. "I've been hunting vampires longer than any of you and yet not only will you not let me go, but you'll take him?" She pointed a finger at John. "He's never hunted a vampire before in his life."
"I never said he was going," Mac pointed out.
John started to argue, but Mac and Dirk rose as one, cutting him off. "This is nonnegotiable," Mac said. "I think you've seen enough to realize just how dangerous vampires can be. We'll handle this."
John left the mansion, frustrated and angry. He might not have been a SEAL, but being a homicide detective wasn't exactly a "
cush
" job; he understood the dangers involved with tracking a killer—especially this killer. Mac and Dirk might not want him to go along, but there was no reason he couldn't conduct his own investigation.
That evening, John arrived at the university a few minutes before
, pulling into a parking space across the street from an off-campus bar. He was lucky to find a spot, considering it was Friday night.
He felt tired, having finally fallen into bed just after dawn. Waking up six hours later, he'd briefly considered going into the office, but the thought of facing "Dick" was more than he wanted to deal with, so instead he'd called in sick. He was pretty sure word of his suspension had already spread throughout the station, so his absence wouldn't be totally unexpected.
Opening his car door, John got out and looked around, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mac or Dirk. He'd called the admiral's house and talked to
Lanie
. She'd told him that the men were patrolling the campus, and though he hadn't asked, she'd told him that Jessica had retired early after Mac and Dirk refused, again, to let her go with them.
John slowly headed for the quadrangle around which the majority of the dorms were located. If he were trying to find a woman out alone at night, the quad would be the perfect place.
He received a few curious looks from the students he passed along the way and had to accept that he no longer looked like one of them. At thirty-eight, the passage of time and stress had taken its toll on him.
He reached the quad and found it alive with student activity.
Unsure where or how to conduct his search for Brody, he had just started a slow walk around the perimeter when he was suddenly grabbed and pulled behind a stand of trees.
John's hand shot out, trying to land one good punch at his attacker—instead, it struck a man's open palm, which closed around his fist and didn't let go.
Then he saw his attacker's face. "Jesus—don't you guys ever do anything normal? A simple 'Hey, we're here behind the bush' would have worked. Or better yet, you could have called me and told me where to meet you."
Mac frowned.
"Sorry, John.
What were we thinking? Oh, yeah. I remember now. We were thinking that
we didn't want you here
."
John ignored him. "Any sign of Brody?"
Dirk shook his head.
"Nothing so far.
Now that you're here, you might as well help us look."
Together, the three waited, scanning every face that passed.
A couple of hours later, just as John was wondering if he'd been mistaken about Brody, Dirk suddenly grew very still. Concerned, John turned to Mac only to notice that he, too, appeared to be listening.
Before John could ask what was up, Dirk raced off across the quad. Not wanting to be left behind, John took off after him with Mac by his side. It was impossible to keep up, and shortly after losing sight of Dirk around a corner, John had to stop and catch his breath.