Unbound (18 page)

Warren continued, voice thick with everything he wasn’t allowing himself to say…and do. “You will be the exemplary superhero in every way. If I even suspect you’re faltering, I’ll kill you myself.”

JJ nodded numbly. Then Warren punched him so hard he fell into the sea of pillows. A cloud of dust rose around him, and he coughed, tasting loss and death and a dry guilt that smothered any burning desire to fight. Warren didn’t want his numb acquiescence, he realized.

Not when there was so much dust.

“I’m not doing this for you.” Warren hissed, pointing a finger at JJ, tears rolling down his cheeks as he said it. “This is for your parents and what they meant to me, and what they sacrificed for us all.”

“I won’t forget again. Ever.”

Though his parents were gone, he would live for them, as they’d once lived for each other. And he’d learn to listen again to his intuition, the inner voice he’d muted while reaching for his own selfish dreams, reaching until Solange had snagged his palm, and pulled him into all this dust.

His answers, his sorrowed scent, seemed to mollify Warren. His leader turned to the bedroom window, trench billowing at his ankles, and looked out at the city he was charged to protect. “You may choose your own name.”

JJ stood and joined Warren at the window. “Hunter.”

Warren looked at him sharply.

“Hunter,” he repeated, sending back the steely gaze. Warren wanted the perfect embodiment of a superhero, so that’s who he’d be. The purest predator in the city. The most concentrated essence of good, he thought, looking up at the sky.

The quintessential hunter.

Because somewhere out there was a woman with a thing for dark-haired men, a preference for Mustangs, and a need for relevance. She took action based on the constellations, her deeds steered by the dark matter in between, and she did it with his daughter, his Lola, in her belly.

And a child, Hunter decided, rubbing faintly dusty fingers together, was a damn good reason to continue the fight.

A
body was waiting for me at the morgue.

That wasn’t the type of message I was expecting to receive when I awoke at sunset, but there was no avoiding it. My voice mail contained a semi-polite message from Archibald Deacon, Savannah’s coroner, informing me that a nightwalker had just been delivered to his morgue. The message was followed by one from homicide detective Daniel Crowley, also informing me of the waiting corpse. A final message was from the now frantic coroner, who wanted me to deal with the corpse immediately. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could do until the sun had finally set beneath the horizon, allowing night to reclaim the world.

The private examination room was in the basement of the morgue, away from the main room that held the majority of the dead. It was one of the few buildings in Savannah with a basement, given the city’s high water table, and it came at a great cost. Due to moments like these, I had been more than willing to make the contribution to the city.

The cinder-block walls had been covered with a thick coat of white paint that had begun to yellow with age. A handful of narrow windows lined the walls more than six feet above the floor. The glass had been painted black to deter any inquisitive people who happened to wander too close. A window-unit air conditioner sputtered and coughed randomly from its perch at the far end of the room, spewing forth a semi-steady stream of cool air.

I looked up from the coroner’s report to watch Knox as he leaned over the body of the dead nightwalker. His lips were curled in disgust, revealing faint flashes of fang. The opposite wall from where I stood was covered with a stainless steel refrigeration unit for corpses. There were only four doors that opened to slide-out drawers. A larger unit was in the main examination room on the first floor.

“Are you sure there were no other wounds on the body besides the main two?” I inquired, turning my attention from the disgruntled nightwalker to the coroner, who hovered close by. Archibald was a short, round man who stood on stubby little legs. His dark brown hair was thinning, leaving the top of his skull nearly exposed. Archie, as I preferred to call him, had been the coroner for Savannah and the surrounding counties for nearly twenty years and we had known each other for almost as long.

“Mira,” he snapped. His bushy grayish-brown brows bunched together over his large, bulbous nose. “Half the body was destroyed! How could I possibly answer such a question?”

“Can you at least tell me if the body was burned before or after he was beheaded?”

“After,” replied a new voice.

Archibald jumped at the unexpected appearance of Detective Daniel Crowley, but I didn’t flinch. I had sensed him walking through the building toward our location in the basement.

“How do you know?” I asked, looking over at Daniel as I closed the file folder that held a copy of the coroner’s report. It was the real copy, one that would never be officially filed with the police department. Archibald would create a second version that would carefully omit any questionable details like the elongated canines, the sensitivity to sunlight, and any kind of genetic abnormalities he was already aware of.

“I talked to some of the guys who were first on the scene,” Daniel continued, closing the door behind him. “When they found the body, one of the officers opened some curtains to let light in and the body started being reduced to ash like a slow-burning ember.”

“They saw him burn?” Knox demanded in a harsh tone. Daniel took a hesitant step backward and looked over at me again. Knox and Daniel had never worked together. In fact, I was the only nightwalker in contact with Daniel and Archie, but it was time for that to change. If Knox was going to aid me with managing my domain, he needed to know the humans I was in contact with.

However, the corpse was unnerving Knox more than I had expected, and the nightwalker was losing some of the cool, unshakable logic that I had come to depend on him for. This unexpected rough edge couldn’t be seen by these trusted humans.

Nodding once to Daniel, I dropped the folder on a nearby desk and slipped my hands into the front pockets of my worn jeans. The relaxed stance helped to ease some of the tension from Daniel’s shoulders.

“It was weird, they said.” Daniel ran his fingers through his sweaty hair, causing large chunks to stand on end. “There was no fire, but they said it was like the body was burning. No one commented that it was the sunlight. They thought the killer might have doused the body with a chemical in an effort to destroy the evidence.”

“I’ve got a couple things I can put in the report that could potentially work as an explanation,” Archie interjected.

“Write down the names of the cops,” Knox ordered. “We may need to adjust their memories.”

Again, Daniel looked at me, frowning. I nodded slightly, approving the request while inwardly I wished I could smack Knox on the back of the head.

Pushing off the wall, I pulled my hands out of my pockets and stretched my arms over my head, extending my entire body into a long, straight line. “Excellent. Anything else I should know?” I was still trying to fully wake up—I hadn’t expected to find myself at the morgue first thing in the evening, especially without even time to shower.

“The call came in at around nine A.M. Anonymous male caller from a prepaid cell phone,” Daniel replied.

“The killer?”

Daniel shrugged, acknowledging the possibility.

“That’s about three hours after sunrise,” Knox muttered in a low voice. He took a few steps away from the corpse, brushing his hands against his pants even though he had never actually touched the body. “Plenty of time to get in and get out after he was unconscious for the day.”

“We’re still trying to dig up which cell tower was used to see if the person was still in town at the time,” Daniel said. His frown deepened as he watched Knox start pacing between the stainless steel table and a wheeled cart loaded with different sharp instruments.

“Anything at the house?” I inquired, dragging the detective’s keen attention back to me.

“No, we didn’t find anything of interest.”

I watched Daniel from under the brim of my baseball cap. The fluorescent lights in the morgue tended to give my pale skin an inhuman pearlescent sheen. It was why both Knox and I were dressed in long-sleeve shirts and baseball caps despite the fact that it was still above eighty degrees outside.

“Knox and I will check it out tonight.”

“Do you know who did this?” Daniel asked. Sweat stains stretched from under his arms and lined his collar. His tie had been loosened and he looked oddly out of sorts without a cigarette in one hand. It was still early in his shift but it looked like he had already been through hell. He must have either come in early after hearing about the strange murder or hadn’t gone to bed yet from the previous night.

“I’ve got some guesses. We’ll take care of this. Get some rest.”

“Mira, I can’t just walk away. If there’s a murderer within the city, I need to track this bastard down and stop him before he kills someone else. That’s my job.”

A smile lifted my lips. Daniel didn’t see the half-burned remains as some bloodsucker that got what it deserved. He saw him as a person who had his life unjustly ended and believed that the rest of the population (humans, nightwalkers, and all the others) needed to be protected from the murderer. I was doubtful many humans would be so open-minded.

“I appreciate that, Daniel,” I said, stepping away from the wall to stand between the corpse and Archibald and Daniel. “And normally I would let you get your man, but this time it’s a nightwalker that’s been killed. You’re not equipped to handle this problem. Knox and I will handle it. We won’t allow the killer to endanger the citizens of Savannah.”

“What about the body? We can’t…People are going to want tests run and…” Archie started, turning my smile into a smug grin.

“I’ll sign the paperwork indicating that his sister dropped by and demanded that the body be cremated immediately for religious reasons. You will then declare that the tests are inaccurate due to a contaminated sample. The cause of death is obvious and we’ll identify and dispose of the body before we leave. Your jobs are nearly done, gentlemen.” The plans flowed forth easily, as if I did this every other night. But the fact was it was rare that I had to deal with the death of a nightwalker. Most of the time, it would turn out to be a lycanthrope or a warlock that was a very heavy magic user. As Keeper of this domain, I was the first and last line of defense for all the supernatural races when it came to protecting our secret.

Both men hesitated, but Daniel finally muttered something under his breath before walking out of the room, his hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers. Archibald said nothing as he waddled over to the desk and pulled out the necessary forms. His white lab coat fluttered behind him, nearly dragging the ground. He marked X’s where he needed me to fill out information and sign. Spreading the paperwork out on the desk, he left Knox and me to the corpse.

Now that we were alone, I pulled off the blue-tinted sunglasses I had been wearing and hooked them over the top button of my shirt. “That could have gone better.” I wanted to snarl in frustration.

Knox paced away from the corpse, his arms crossed over his chest. “They’re unnerved by what we are. It can’t be helped.”

“Bullshit. They were unnerved by your behavior. I’ve seen you easily sway anything with nice breasts and a tight ass. What happened here?”

“Maybe it’s because those men lacked the aforementioned items,” he commented dryly, making me want to throw something at his head.

“Well, you better learn to widen your scope because they’re not going anywhere and we need their assistance. You need them and they’ll be far more helpful if they’re not worried about you grabbing a snack.”

“If you want, I can go tweak their memories,” he offered.

I waved my hand at him, stopping any movement toward the door. “No, don’t go messing with their memories. You need their trust and you don’t get that if you’re mucking around in their brains.”

“They’ll never know.”

“I’ll know.”

Knox nodded, removing his dark sunglasses so that I could look into his brown eyes. “I’ll do better next time.”

“Thank you,” I murmured as I stepped up to the body. It was highly unusual for Knox to be so gruff and harsh when dealing with humans. His nature was very ingratiating, and his dark, handsome looks tended to win over the reluctant. His maker had the same manner. Because of his uncharacteristic behavior, I was beginning to worry that Knox had been well-acquainted with the victim.

Looking down at the steel tray, my eyes skimmed over the badly burned face. The skin was blackened and the eyes were now gone as if they had melted in their sockets, sending the fluid down in to the back of the skull. It looked like he might have had short-cut, brown hair. But the condition of the head wasn’t the disturbing part. It was the fact that it was no longer attached to the body.

It was likely that that was the killing blow, but the murderer could have removed his heart first and then his head. The nightwalker’s chest cavity had been ripped open and the heart cut out using some kind of serrated blade that had torn the edges of the flesh into ugly shreds. At least it was likely that the victim had felt no pain. It appeared that it all happened during the daylight hours, meaning that the vampire had been dead to the world.

“I’m assuming that you recognize who this is,” I said, my own mood growing more sour and anxious as I continued to examine the corpse. I vaguely knew all the nightwalkers within my domain. There were more here than in most cities this size, but then I maintained a tight control over my domain. It afforded those that lived here more of a sense of security and peace than what many cities could offer.

However, during the past few years, I had begun to withdraw from my own kind, no longer wanting to be faced with them. I didn’t want to hear their thoughts in the night, or feel their cool presence as I moved silently through the city searching for my next meal. Knox had taken over much of the night-to-night management. Of course, that simply required him making regular appearances at all the nightwalker hot spots.

“His name was Bryce.” Knox leaned his back against the refrigeration unit, his arms crossed over his chest. His shoulders were stiff and his normally neutral expression was twisted into a frown.

With my hands braced on the table before me, I looked up at my companion. “What’s your problem? Did you know him well?”

A faint shrug briefly lifted his narrow shoulders. “I knew him, but not well.”

“Then what has got you so on edge?”

“He was executed,” he hissed, waving one hand at the severed head. “His head was cut off and his heart removed. He was executed during the day when he was defenseless. How are you not unnerved by this?”

“He was possibly killed during the day,” I corrected, trying to keep both of us calm and rational. “We won’t know for sure until we check his house.” The truth was that I
was
unnerved and more than a little concerned. If Bryce had been killed at night, it was highly likely that the murderer was another nightwalker. And then my only reason for tracking down the murderer would be punishment for allowing the humans to catch wind of it and threatening our secret. However, if Bryce had been killed during the day, we had a bigger problem. But we had to tackle one thing at a time, and a panicked Knox would do me no good.

“How old was he?” I demanded, attempting to refocus Knox’s attention.

“Less than two centuries.”

“How long has he been in my domain?”

“About a decade. Maybe a little more.”

“Was he involved in anything recently that I should be aware of? Changes in allegiance? Was he a part of a family?”

Knox pushed away from the wall and stood, shoving one hand through his sandy blond hair. “I–I’m not sure.”

“Concentrate,” I murmured, looking over Bryce for any identifying marks. Some families were known for branding their members. We couldn’t be tattooed because we always healed, but we could retain some scars if we were low on blood and were unable to heal properly. The process was generally painful and ugly, but then most families were painful, ugly affairs. I didn’t find anything on Bryce, but I wasn’t surprised. Most of his body was either singed or blackened from its exposure to the sun.