Chasing Daybreak (Dark of Night Book 1) (19 page)

Crossing my arms over my chest, I faced off with him. “I understand why you don’t want the police to know. It’d look pretty bad for you, wouldn’t it? Having a body show up at your doorstep, a woman who died hooking for you. But you know what? Her family deserves the truth.”

I spun on my heel to walk out the door, but in a blink, Xavier was in front of me.

“The truth? About how she tried to save her husband’s life by selling her body to pay off his debts? Yes, I’m sure that’s exactly what her family wants to hear.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” I asked, steamed at his attitude and not about to hide it. “It doesn’t matter what she did. She was their
family
. They deserve to know the truth because not knowing, always having that flicker of hope that someday she might walk through that door, those kids wondering why their mommy didn’t love them enough to stay with them, it’s living in hell, Xavier.”

It was Shane’s voice that pulled me back from the abyss.

“Isabel, we have to find out who killed her first. Then you can scream the truth from the rooftops if you need to, but like it or not, the Conclave didn’t kill her. Someone did—someone who wanted the Conclave to take the blame for it. Don’t you think that’s a truth worth finding out?”

I sighed, relaxing my shoulders as I turned to look at him. “You’re right. I’m going to find out who killed her.”

“Even if it gets you killed too?” Shane asked, his voice tight.

I smiled bitterly. “No worries. Gerard is good with a shovel. At least you’ll know where to dig for me.”

I’d almost forgotten about Marissa’s little red book until I arrived back at the office. The red light on my machine was blinking, so I hit play.

“Hey, Shane. It’s Richard. Just wanted to let you know I got those names you asked for. Sent them to the e-mail you gave me. You owe me three pints of O-neg. Later.”
Beep
.

Striping off my jacket I turned on the computer and checked my e-mail. Sure enough, there was a message from ladykillr74. I rolled my eyes. Vampires were so unoriginal. I clicked on it and brought up a list of names.

One name on that list was all I needed to see. Pastor Charles Marlowe. Pulling the phone from the cradle, I quickly dialed Shane’s cell.

“Hello?” he answered on the first ring.

“I know who the killer is. We need to find some proof. Can you meet me at—?”

There was a click, and the line went dead. I glanced at the clock; it was a little after midnight. Hanging up the phone, I tried again. The line was still dead.

I rose from the desk chair, heading for the hallway where my purse hung when the cell inside it started to play the
Buffy
theme. I got two steps before the lights went out, plunging the house into total darkness. Taking another step, I tripped over the ottoman I’d just moved earlier that day. I scrambled to the wall and pulled myself up. For a second, I wondered if it were a power outage, then I realized the soft glow from the streetlight outside was coming through my blinds. The blood was pounding in my ears as I strained to listen for movement in the house. Even my quick, shallow breaths sounded so loud I felt like every one was a blinking light pointing to me, to where I hid in the darkness.

Mentally, I cursed myself for leaving my gun out in the glove box. That was when I heard it, a creak on the stairs. The sound of boots on wood, someone walking up from the basement. That was all I needed, a location. The basement access door was in the kitchen. If I hurried, I could make it to the front door before whomever it was made it up the stairs. I bolted, grabbing my purse as I ran by. As soon as my hand was on the doorknob, I felt a sharp pain in my back, and then a blast of electricity ripping through my body before everything went dark.

I blinked. My first thought was,
Hey the lights are back on
, which just goes to show how hard I’d been hit. I shook my head to try to clear away the mental cobwebs.
Bad idea
. My ears rang like I had a cymbal player losing control in my brain. My arms ached, my back itched, and my legs were numb.

My mouth had been duct taped shut, my arms were taped behind my back at an awkward angle, and my legs were taped to my wheeled office chair, which explained the aching, itching, and numbness. Looking around as my senses slowly returned, I discovered I was in my kitchen. And I wasn’t alone.

Why do I always wake up duct taped to something?

Sitting at my small table, flipping through an old photo album, was David Pierce, Pastor Marlowe’s faithful lap dog.

He looked more like an IRS agent on a three-day bender than a serial killer. His hair was sandy colored and slicked back. His suit was clean but wrinkled, and his dark blue tie was askew. He wore black-framed glasses and a watch that either cost what I made in a year or was a really good knockoff. I rubbed my face on my shoulder, trying to pry up a corner of the tape. I knew if I could get the corner up and get it to stick to my shirt, I might be able to maneuver it at least partially off my mouth.

Hey, it wasn’t my first rodeo.

He turned to me, his eyes drawn by the movement.

“Ah, good, you’re awake. You know, you were a very pretty little girl, all smiles and curls.” He stroked the photograph under his fingers.

I mumbled, “Keep your hands off my stuff,” but what came out was, “Mmmmhmhmhm!”

The idea of this freak ogling my ‘naked baby in the bathtub’ pictures just pissed me off. I struggled against the tape holding me to the chair.

He smiled. “All right. I’ll take the tape off, but you have to promise to be a good girl and not scream, okay?”

I nodded, blinking angry tears out of my eyes. He walked over and with one sharp tug, tore the tape off my face. It felt like he took my lips with it.
Hey, at least I could skip the waxing this week.

I gasped from the pain, but also to fill my lungs for the scream I was working up. Before I made the sound, he had a butcher knife in his hand, the tip pressed just under my chin. I exhaled hard, but quietly.

I figured I’d try to put him at ease with a little small talk. “So, I admit, this is a surprise. I thought for sure it was your boss who was behind all this.”

“See? I knew the first time we met that you were a smart girl. Not much gets past you, does it? No, it’s just me. For now, anyway.”

I glanced toward the front door, and he followed my gaze.

“You’re waiting for your partner to come save you. So am I. See, tonight, you’re just the bait. I’m fishing for a bigger catch.”

I bit down on my lip so hard that tears welled up in my eyes again. It was one thing for me to risk my own life, but the idea of this lunatic hurting Shane was almost more than I could stand. I took a deep breath, trying to focus as David continued talking.

“Don’t look so distraught. You’re important, too. So beautiful and smart. I’m going to save you, you know. Pastor and I, we’re going to save everyone.”

“From the vampires?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“Yes. And then, when everyone is safe, we can be together, you and me.”

“You… you killed those people and left them on my door.” It wasn’t a question, but I was trying to process the situation, find a weakness.

“Yes, did you like them? They were gifts, you know,” he added proudly. “I wanted you to feel safe. I read about that arsonist trying to kill you. And then he was out, a free man. I couldn’t let him hurt you again.”

I licked my lips. “And Trudi?”

“The bimbo? Yes. She was at the prayer meeting the other night. When you didn’t show up, Pastor asked everyone to say a special prayer for you. She didn’t like that at all. You should have heard the things she was saying afterward. Not very Christian.”

“You were just protecting me,” I said softly, trying to both stall him and maybe convince him to release me.

“Did you know they were from me?” he asked, his eyes swimming with hope.

“Yes. I mean, I knew they were gifts. I knew they must be from someone… special.”

He stepped back, smiling. My mind was reeling. I tested the restraints on my wrists, but the tape held tight. I started picking at it with my fingernails. I knew if I could just get a tear started, I could probably work myself free. But I had to buy myself some more time.

“Can you tell me about Lisa? Was she special too?” I asked.

“Lisa? No, she was a nobody. She had a chance to help the cause, but she refused. Can you believe that? Turned on her own kind. But even then, Pastor saw that she had a higher purpose to serve.”

“Bringing down the vampires?” I asked. “Making people think they killed her?”

“They did kill her. They killed her soul, making her do those terrible things. Don’t worry. She repented in the end. She was my first sacrificial lamb.”

“And who is the last?”

He turned, frowning, but before he could answer, Shane blew into the house, his voice tight with bloodlust.

“Isabel!”

David looked down at me, but I shook my head. His smile fell once he realized I would not call Shane into that room. I’d chosen sides, and I wasn’t on his.

He moved quickly, too quickly, inhumanly quickly, and delivered one sharp backhand across my face. I felt the dull ache, and then the blood running down from my nose into my mouth. Closing my eyes, I spat, but the sour, coppery taste filled my mouth. When I opened my eyes, David was gone, but Shane knelt in front of me.

“Izzy, are you all right? Where did he—?”

A gun fired from behind him. Shane stood and turned. Reaching behind himself, he withdrew a small dart from his lower back. He had a minute to look at it quizzically before his face slackened.

I didn’t have to wonder what it was. This time, I knew. Whatever article David had read about the incident with Billy Young must have included a tidbit about Shane being taken down with a dose of Ketamine. Silently, I swore to track down the author of the article and thoroughly kick his ass.

Shane dropped to the floor with a thud, unconscious. I screamed and flailed, trying to scoot the chair backwards to get to the drawers behind me, but with no luck. In a heartbeat, David was back. He leaned forward, kissing my forehead, before drawing back to hit me again.

When I woke up, I wasn’t in a burning house, which was a minor improvement over the last time. I glanced around, taking in my surroundings. It was some kind of hospital, or at least it looked like the inside of a large hospital room. The walls were all heavy, white curtains on chains hanging from a slim track affixed to the tiled ceiling. The floor was generic beige linoleum with flecks of colored confetti inside. The only thing that was off was the smell. It didn’t have the sterile, astringent odor of a hospital. It smelled musty and wet, like day-old laundry left in a washing machine.

I was taped to a metal folding chair, but I wasn’t gagged, which was a small improvement. My legs were still numb, probably a side effect of having been taped so tightly to the chair legs, but aside from that and the throbbing pain in the side of my face, I was all right. Shane was another story.

He was chained to a gurney across the room, an IV dripping clear liquid into one arm while another IV drained blood from his other arm into a donation bag.

“Shane,” I whispered. “Christ, Shane, wake up. Can you hear me?”

The white curtain pulled back, revealing Charles Marlowe in a set of green scrubs. “No, he can’t hear you. He’s heavily sedated.”

“What do you want with us?” I struggled to keep my temper in check and my voice even.

It was one of those situations where having a chick tantrum might get me shot or at least gagged. Which was a shame because a tantrum might have felt really good right then.

“David, cut her loose, will you?”

From behind him, David obliged, using the butcher knife from my own kitchen to sever the tape holding me. I stared at it in his hand. Man, I was going to have to buy a new knife set now. No way was I slicing veggies with that again,
ever
. I wondered, a bit hysterically, if I could write that off as a business expense.

Immediately, blood rushed back into my legs, needling them with pain. It hurt like the devil, but it made me focus and pushed back the spiraling craziness that was leaking into my brain.

David took me by the arm and stood me up.

“Come here, I want to show you something,” Marlowe said, leaving the room.

David pulled me along behind Marlowe. I glanced back over my shoulder at Shane, who lay deathly still. The sight might have frightened me more, but it was pretty much how he looked whenever he was sleeping. The only difference was the bright red tube lying against the pale flesh of his inner arm.

As it turned out, my sniffer was on the money. We weren’t in a hospital at all; we were in some kind of converted basement that was sectioned off into clean rooms full of medical equipment.

“Does your flock know this is where their donations are going?” I snipped as we walked past a dirty room. The bed linens were balled up on the makeshift cot. The mattress and the sheets were stained dark brown with old blood. The smell caught me in the back of my throat and made me gag.

Marlowe turned to look at me and smiled before continuing forward, leading us into another room. He pulled the curtain back with a flourish, as if there was some sort of prize behind it. This room was much brighter, lit with beautiful standing lamps rather than overhead tubes. There was a table with a few vases of brightly colored flowers, daisies mostly, and framed photos. On the bed, tucked into frilly pink sheets, was a little girl, a bag of blood being fed intravenously into her small body. Her soft ringlets of hair spilled across the pillow like sea foam, her delicate mouth in a soft heart shape. Only her skin was pale, too pale, reminding me of Shane in the other room.

Marlowe rounded the bed, stroking the girl’s white-blonde hair. “My daughter, Melanie. Isn’t she beautiful?”

“I thought your daughter had Cystic Fibrosis,” I stammered, stunned at the sight.

“She did, nearly died too. I had her brought here. You see, the Lord never closes a door without opening a window. Scientists have been using human stem cells to find a cure for these kinds of diseases, but that’s barbaric, killing human embryos to use for science. But then, God gave us the answer. The vampires. They are monsters, yet their blood has amazing healing qualities. Just a few transfusions and she was breathing on her own, her paralysis cured, her brain damage reversed. A few more and she’ll be awake again, walking around, a normal, healthy child. It’s beautiful, God’s plan.”

I stared at him, slack jawed. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll turn her?”

“No, the first
donor
confided in me that the process for creation must be done a specific way to turn someone. And I have been quite careful, spacing out the transfusions, using different donors. You’ll see. This will be the breakthrough science and medicine have been waiting for.”

I actually felt my mouth drop open at his sincerity. He honestly thought this was the right thing to do.

“And you just took his word for it? I mean, I’m no expert on where baby vamps come from, but I sure as shit wouldn’t pump myself full of their blood and just hope for the best.”

He snaps his fingers in my face. “The Lord will bless me for my efforts. He gave us this plague, and at first, I admit I didn’t understand why. But then I saw it—the wisdom and glory in his plan! How could you disbelieve?”

“So we, what? Harvest the vampires like cattle? Won’t that be hard? You know, ‘cause of the fangs and all? Oh, plus, it’s illegal.”

“That’s why they must not be allowed to become citizens. As animals, we can do with them as we please.”

“They’re no better than animals anyway,” David chimed in.

I pulled away gently, pretending to be dizzy, and backed up against the counter in the rear of the room. For effect, I held one hand out in front of me. “Hold on, just hold on. I’m still… fuzzy in my head.”