Vampires 101 (Twilight Hunters Book 1) A Vampire Romance (11 page)

This was somewhat of a sinister development. Although the situation was really taking on some dark overtones, I didn’t feel I had any choice but to continue looking for answers.

No longer was it just the vampire question. I also wanted to know about Damian, and I needed to find out what was happening to me. Somehow I knew that Damian would have those answers, if I could only find him. Of course that might be the easy part. The hard part would be keeping him from disappearing on me. He had a bad habit of doing that.

“Ok … so when do we leave?” I asked.

Sean threw his hands in the air and backed away from the table. “Whoa … wait a minute! Do you have a mouse in your pocket?  I’m not going anywhere.”

I put on my most intimidating scowl. “Well how am I supposed to find this place? I’ll bet you even have maps.”

“Could be I do, but just because I happened to come across this information, doesn’t mean that I am all too anxious to stick my neck out to find out more,” he grumbled.

I smiled. He was trying to hide it, but I could tell that he couldn’t wait to join in on the fun.

Ok, maybe that could be just a little wishful thinking.

“Admit it. You’re as anxious to check out these tunnels as I am,” I said, hoping a little vocal encouragement would help.

“Like hell! Just what I know has caused me enough problems,” he complained.

“Oh come on,” I urged. “Have you really had any serious threats?”

“Sure have,” he said, his mouth turned down in a frown. “About a year ago the FBI came and took all my computers. They tried to say I was hacking into NASA’s system, which I wasn’t.”

“Well you’re not in prison, so it couldn’t have been that big of a deal,” I reasoned.

“No … well they cleared me of the hacking thing, but they kept my computers for three months. When I got them back, every PC had been wiped clean of everything I’d had on them.”

“I bet that was a pain.” Maybe he really wasn’t exaggerating the potential threat of checking out these underground bases.

Yeah … you could say that. I had years of research on those computers. Lucky for me, I was smart enough to backup everything. It was all on hard drives that I’d stashed somewhere else,” he added with a mischievous grin.

“Cool … so you do have maps?” I was liking Mr. Computer Geek more and more. In my book, someone who could fool the Feds, definitely had some potential.

* * *

Maybe I wasn’t as good at reading people as I thought I was. No matter how much I talked, I’d been unable to convince Taft to join my little excursion into the tunnels below the city. Jeez! I wasn’t even asking him to go with us to Dulce New Mexico, where the big base was rumored to be. At least according to Taft. 

For right now, I thought it best to test the waters a little before barging into the great unknown. The way I figured it, the tunnels beneath Pine View were as good a place to start as any.

Chaz was gone when I returned to my car. I couldn’t really blame him. Even for a ghost, sitting in the car for two hours had to be an ordeal.

My arms were laden with printouts of articles and police reports. Most of the material concerned cattle mutilations, but there were a few involving human victims. After spending the majority of my life with a cop, I’d picked up enough that I could probably make some sense of the information, but I wanted a second opinion. I thought it was a good possibility that vampires could be responsible for the mutilations, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get an opinion from someone who had no clue that vampires existed - someone like Detective John Riley. I would be biased and inject my own theory, but Riley might be able to supply a better explanation.

I fully expected Riley to be out in the field, him being so devoted to his work and all, but he wasn’t. When he looked up from the file he was holding in his hand, I saw dark circles under his eyes. He’d obviously not slept well, if at all.

“Well if it isn’t Hell Brat. I hope you’ve come to finish giving your statement.”

Wincing, I tried out my charming smile on him, though I knew it probably wasn’t going to get me too far. “Sorry … I’ve just been really busy. Actually, I’ve come to ask you what you think of these cases.” Without waiting for a reply, I dumped the stack of papers on his desk.

“Well Cassie … I’d love to help you, but I’m swamped right now. We found a body in the cemetery.”

My mouth fell open. “No way!”

I would have bet my last penny that now that Killer Tom was dead, there would be no more murders. Of course the body was missing from the morgue. Perhaps he wasn’t quite as dead as I’d thought? Damian had mentioned something about the guy not being human.

“Maybe it’s a copycat killing,” I suggested.

“What else could it be?” he shrugged. “I’m sure we don’t have a dead man running around killing people.”

Hmm. With everything I’d seen over the last week, I wouldn’t be too sure. Obviously I couldn’t tell Riley this. “Can I look at the file?” I asked.

He drew his brows together and gave me his no nonsense look. “Are you kidding? This is an open investigation. I can’t let you look at the file.”

“Well could you at least give me the censored version of what happened?” I figured there couldn’t be any harm in that. The press would get at least that much.

A deep breath escaped his lips. It was apparent he found my intrusion irritating, but at least he was trying to be civil. “The victim was a eighteen year old girl. The caretaker found her this morning … not too far from where you were attacked.”

Arching one brow, I asked, “What was the cause of death?”

He shrugged his large shoulders. “Don’t know for sure until we get the coroner’s report, but her neck was broken and she had her eyes and tongue missing.”

A shiver made it’s way down my spine. That sounded too much like the human mutilation cases I wanted him to look at, with the exception that there had been more body parts missing. With the cattle and human mutilations, the lips were also gone, as well as the genitals and certain internal organs. To think that I’d come close to ending up the same way was more than enough to set my nerves on edge.

I pointed to the papers on his desk. “I think you’ll want to take a look at these. The cases are similar to this one.”

Giving in, Riley picked up a few of the news articles and police reports. After several moments, he looked at me. “Where did you get these?”

“A friend of mine has been researching the subject. I was just wondering what you think? How is it possible for someone to remove those body parts and never leave any blood or evidence behind?”

Riley shook his head. “I have no idea … but I don’t think these have any bearing on this case.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He gave me a wink and a smile. “Well if you looked through these at all …  you’d have seen that the first human case dates back to the 50s. It’s highly unlikely that we are looking at the same perp … besides, the official explanation is that the bodies were mutilated by scavengers, after the victims were deceased.”

Sometimes I really hated Riley’s
by the book
attitude. “Ok, but if you look at the reports closer, you’ll see that the wounds could not have been caused by scavengers. I think that they couldn’t explain how it happened, so they just put that label on them.”

Riley’s full lips dipped into a frown. “What are you getting yourself into Cassie? This is fringe stuff. It isn’t even worth looking at,” he said, handing the papers back to me.

Now I was really irritated. Why couldn’t he just admit that the official explanation didn’t make any sense? With a world full of people like Riley, it was no wonder that vampires, and only God knew what else, could roam the streets undetected.

“Fine then.” I took the papers back. “I’ll check it out myself.”

“Cassie.” There was a note of warning in his voice. “If you want to play cop, you need to go to the academy and join the force. I have better things to do than waste time dealing with the mischief you get yourself into … and so does your dad.”

Well how rude was that?

“I can take care of myself just fine,” I told him, turning on my heels and marching away from his desk, hoping he would see just how annoyed I was with him.

“I hear that Burger Nook is looking for a carhop,” he called after me, in a not so soft voice.

Damn him!

He was just trying to degrade and embarrass me. I’d show him.

As I walked away, I held up my middle finger so that he wouldn’t miss it. The few officers that were in the station started snickering.

That would teach him.

Shadow was busy looking over the reports I’d gotten from Sean Taft. Since I’d already read the material several times, I was content to sit and enjoy my nightly dose of cappuccino.

“This is interesting, but I don’t see the connection to what we are looking for. These are not vampire killings,” Shadow said, dropping the papers into a pile on the couch.

At that precise time, my resident ghost decided to walk through the front door, literally. “She’s right you know. I doubt it has anything to do with vampires.”

“How would you know anything about vampires? And where did you go today?” I really hated his uncanny habit of appearing and disappearing without warning.

Shadow’s gazed traveled around the room, and then back to me. “What do you mean … how would I know? I am a vampire, so wouldn’t you think I’d know a little about the subject.” She glowered at me.

“Not you … I was talking to Chaz.” I pointed to where he was standing near the front door.

Chaz laughed. “She can’t see me Dude.”

Shadow stared at the location where I’d pointed. “I don’t see anyone! Are you sure you don’t need to have your head examined again?”

Great! Now even Shadow thought I was nuts.

“He’s a ghost,” I informed her.

She cocked her head to one side and frowned. “You need to see the doctor again. You’re no good to me like this.”

“So where did you disappear to?” I asked Chaz, choosing to ignore Shadow’s comment.

“It was getting too hot in that car. I just thought I’d catch you later,” he replied.

“Don’t be silly. Ghosts can’t get hot,” I laughed.

“Well it damn sure felt like it was getting too hot.”

Shadow leaned over in front of me and snapped her fingers. “Girlfriend … you need to wakeup. There’s no one there!”

Letting out a deep sigh, I looked toward Chaz. “Can’t you do something to let her know you’re real … like move something … rattle some chains?”

A sly smile touched Chaz’s lips and he moved closer to Shadow. Reaching up, he took his fingers and flipped her on the back of the head.

“Ouch!” Shadow jumped. She swung around so quickly that I didn’t even see her move. “That was so not necessary! You’re lucky you’re already dead or I’d be ripping your arms off.’

Chaz laughed. Fortunately Shadow couldn’t hear him.

“So why didn’t you tell me you could see ghosts?” she asked, placing one hand on her hip.

“I didn’t know until last night.”

“What happened last night?” she wanted to know.

Considering that it was unlikely she’d call the men with the straight jackets, I told her what happened. I decided it was best to leave out the adult themed material. “But it could have just been a dream,” I finished.

“Well if Casper thinks it wasn’t a dream, it probably wasn’t. It is really weird though,” she concluded.

I shrugged my shoulders. “What I think is that I’m having one hella long nightmare that I can’t wake up from.”

“Oh yeah! If you do wake up … you won’t be seeing your hot new boyfriend anymore,” she said with a little snort.

“Don’t you know … vampires know best,” Chaz piped in.

I was glad she couldn’t hear him snickering at her. “Don’t you have some unfinished business to figure out?” I said, rolled my eyes.

“Hey … this is just starting to get interesting,” he laughed.

Shadow narrowed her eyes. “What’s he saying?” she demanded.

“Nothing.” I wasn’t about to get in the middle of some bickering contest between a ghost and a vampire.

“So what do you say? Should we go check out the tunnels? Taft gave me a map?” I added.

Shadow sifted through the papers until she found the map that Sean Taft had printed for me. There were lines indicating a network of tunnels. He’d also marked where he thought there would be entrances to the tunnels.

“Look,” Shadow pointed to a mark on the paper. “It looks like there is an entrance in the Pine View Cemetery. That’s interesting.”

Yes it was interesting. In fact, it was down right strange that there would be an entrance to these tunnels in the very place I was attacked. What was it that Grams used to say?

There’s no such thing as a coincidence.

I was really beginning to believe that. Especially when I saw that the crypt Taft had marked as an entrance, was very close to the location where Killer Tom had been hiding - waiting for the opportunity to crush someone’s neck. I just happened to be the moron who was in the cemetery that night.