Falling to Ash (15 page)

He disconnected.

I rolled my eyes at the phone and pushed Jason Murdoch out of my mind. There were far more important things happening in the world.

I raced down and out of the building and hailed a cab.

Chapter Twelve

THE SKY WAS
brittle-blue and the sun was so bright and jagged that it hurt my eyes, even though I was wearing shades. Was this winter brighter than usual?
Maybe it’s always been like this
, that nasty little voice whispered at the back of my mind.
You’re getting more and more sensitive. Soon you won’t even be able to go outside at all in daylight, and you’ll have to live in shadows for the rest of your very long life
.

I shivered, resting my back against the cool stone of a tall building across from the Common. I’d never been at a crime scene before. Not an authentic one, I mean; a murder scene. It seemed a lot like on those
CSI
TV shows, but there was a truly unnerving quality to the stark reality of it. It was as though we’d walked onto a movie set only to discover this was the real deal after all,
and
there was no switching channels to something more comforting. The whole corner of Boston Common, on the Boylston Street side near the Central Burying Ground, was cordoned off by police cars and fluttering yellow tape. An ambulance was parked there too, and people wearing uniforms and plastic gloves surrounded the area. Everybody looked focused and busy. There were also news vans parked as close as they could get to the crime scene. Uniformed officers held them at bay, but that didn’t stop cameramen trying to get video footage from a distance.

A small crowd of onlookers had gathered closest to the barrier. Everyone had thick winter coats on, aside from Detective Alison Trent, who stood a little apart from the center of the action. She was sipping from a steaming paper cup of what I assumed was coffee. That was what cops drank, right? Like my dad. It ran through their veins. Smith was on the other side of the police tape, crouched down by what I guessed must be the victim.

I hadn’t even thought about my friendly neighborhood detectives being around. What an idiot! I’d been so keen to get here, I just dived into a cab and headed straight across town. Now I had to worry about being spotted by Trent and Smith – they wouldn’t have lost interest in me, and seeing me at the latest crime scene was only going to stir their suspicions.

Checking my sunglasses were in place, I pulled up the
collar
of my jacket and approached the crowd of vultures, who were all hoping for a glimpse of a dead body to tell their friends about back at work. Human beings never failed to amaze me, but then I guess it’s hard to blame them. Life must seem unbearably dull; a murder in such a public area of the city was something to talk about.

I edged closer to the barrier, focusing on the events unfolding around the crime scene in the distance. The group of men and women in nasty shiny jumpsuits were moving away from their huddle beneath the skeletal trees. Surely, surely, it couldn’t be Cait . . . A gap opened, just for a moment, and I was, for once, grateful for my increased vampire senses, especially my enhanced eyesight. I craned my neck, pushing a tall man to one side in my rush to get to the front of the barrier. I caught a fleeting glimpse of the victim –

– and almost cried with relief. It wasn’t Cait. Thank God! That horror and doubt back at the apartment had shaken me to the core. And then guilt crept up on me, because it was awful to feel grateful for the death of another. This girl had been someone’s daughter, maybe someone’s sister. I swallowed and closed my eyes, that brief image imprinted on my memory.

Her eyes were open, which somehow made it worse. They were wide and shining under the cloudy sky. Her wavy red hair was crusted with blood – you almost couldn’t tell, at first, but I could smell it on her. The girl’s
throat
was gone – and so was she. No spark of life left inside, just cold death, her body splayed out like a discarded doll at the edge of Boston Common at the beginning of a new day.

And then I realized that I
did
know her.

Her name was Erin Doyle, and she was gone. Just like her twin brother, Rick. Holy crap, there was
no way
that was a coincidence.

Erin’s body lay spread-eagled in a shallow ditch on the very edge of the Common. The hard ground, still frozen from last night’s low temperatures, looked half dug, as though someone had attempted to cover the girl’s body with dirt but given up halfway. I suspected that whoever had dumped her hadn’t exactly made a serious attempt to hide the evidence. Maybe they really
had
been scared off partway through digging, or maybe the ground was just too winter-hard. Dead leaves scattered the area and crunched under the feet of the various technicians who attended the scene.

I couldn’t see all of her injuries, but I could smell the blood – even from here. Her body was zipped into a body bag and hoisted onto a stretcher. More police came to move the crowd further back. Somewhere nearby, I could hear a child crying and wondered why the kid’s parent wasn’t taking it away from this ghoulish spectacle.

I turned, trying to ignore the sick feeling in my stomach, and found myself way too close to Detective
Trent
. I caught a whiff of her menthol cigarettes, a scent that made me think of her lighter and what had become of it back in the basement of Mass General. Trent was talking to a tall Goth boy who stood hunched into a long black coat, his arms wrapped around himself as though he were trying to hold himself together. I narrowed my eyes, taking in his long face, spiky black hair, and Prometheus band T-shirt. I realized that here was another familiar face, and something went cold inside me. Why were all these victims and their friends people I’d known – well, at least met – in my previous life?

This guy had the unfortunate luck to be named Byron Castle Jr, after his father, who was the guitarist in a rock band called Prometheus. They weren’t huge, but they were a Boston band with a cult following of kids – despite the fact that most of the band members were over forty. I wondered what Byron was doing here, trying desperately to remember the couple of brief times we’d met at college. We weren’t in the same classes, but I’d seen him with Rick and Erin, I was
sure
of it. Was he Erin’s boyfriend?

I wanted to hear their conversation, perhaps learn something important, but at the same time Erin’s body was being dumped onto a gurney and rolled past the still gathering crowd toward a nearby ambulance.

Dammit, I needed to get closer – especially after what happened to Rick. Any evidence that might’ve remained
on
his body had, quite literally, gone up in flames. I couldn’t afford to lose what might be my one opportunity to check out Erin’s body and see if I could pick up the scent of her killer. That had been the plan with Rick, until he went all
Dawn of the Dead
on our asses.

I swallowed and gazed at the watery sun high above in the blue-white sky. If a vampire was responsible for this attack – which was almost certain – then it must have happened during the night when the undead hunted. Saturday night, when so many of us had been at Theo’s. There had been a lot of non-Boston vamps in the city last night. But her body had been dumped in the morning, after the sun had risen. I’d already overheard Trent say this.

Which meant one of two things: either someone was trying to make the death look like a vampire killing, or there were two killers. A vampire and a human, working together.

I shivered, trying to wrap my head around that.

‘Move aside please, miss,’ a neutral male voice instructed as I was nudged out of the way of the passing gurney.

I tensed as Erin’s covered body was wheeled right past me. It was now or never. What was the worst that could happen? A telling off from a cop or paramedic? I could live with that.

I grabbed a corner of the body bag and walked into
the
gurney. I cried out as though in pain when the metal trolley made contact with my legs, and fell to my knees, dragging the slick blue-black material with me as I went down. I’d been pretty good at drama, back in the day. Here was an opportunity to relive my school theater memories. My enhanced strength came in useful sometimes, and I pulled Erin’s concealed body halfway off the gurney. Somehow, I made it all look like a crazy accident and shrieked as I landed on the hard earth.

One of the paramedics cursed and tried to pick me up, and I quickly jammed my foot against the nearest wheel so the other guy couldn’t get the body away from the crowd.

‘You’ve got it stuck on something,’ muttered one of the cops standing guard. The tall, skinny paramedic who’d been trying to help me to my feet began looking at the ground for stray stones or gaps in the hard, cracked earth.

Meanwhile, I took advantage of the confusion and pulled the body bag’s zip down a few inches. I crawled forward and leaned over Erin’s cold body and put my face as close to the livid gash in her neck as I dared, taking a long slow breath and pushing out with my senses. Searching for any clue, no matter how slight, of who or what might have done this. Rick’s transformation had erased any scent other than that of dead meat. Here was my chance with a fresh corpse.

I shuddered as I caught myself with that thought. What had my life become? What had I become? Was I really all Erin had to help her find true justice?

Poor kid.

I looked at this girl – her face, what was left of her throat – and remembered the way Theo had torn into
my
throat and could have left me for dead. This girl could just as well be me.

And then police officers converged on the scene, helping the paramedics to pull the body back onto the gurney and wheel it away – over my foot, I might add – and into the waiting ambulance. It all happened so suddenly, I was left standing on the common with all of my senses focused on the faint aroma of vampire that I’d managed to detect through the slight opening in Erin’s body bag.

The sudden pain that gripped my chest was overwhelming. Like a panic attack, only worse. I curled my fingers into fists, trying to calm the crazy thoughts and feelings that threatened to crush me. There had to be a mistake, it was as simple as that.

I stumbled as a tall man in a dark uniform pushed past me on his way toward the line of emergency vehicles spilling out of the common. For once, I couldn’t be bothered to react to being rudely shoved aside. Numbness began to settle in – a welcome white noise that helped to mask the confused sensations swirling in my gut.

I felt guilty by association – which was weird and totally twisted, but I couldn’t help it. And maybe I
was
partly responsible. I shook my head and forced myself to take a deep breath of the cold air.

My Maker’s scent had been all over that poor girl’s body.

If the Elders found out what Theo had done – what it
seemed
he’d done – their response would be swift and without mercy. No head of a Family would be allowed to go around murdering innocents. If Theo had been a low-level vamp, somebody who wasn’t planning on a diplomatic career within the highest ranks of vampire politics, he might have gotten away with it.

And if anything happened to Theo, what would that mean for
me
?

Or maybe he thought he
would
get away with it – why wouldn’t he? Theo was powerful enough to cover his tracks, and he was very far from stupid.

Cold fingers of doubt poked at my terrified brain but I did my best to ignore them.
No way
, I told myself firmly. Theo was the one who was concerned the murders would draw attention to the real monsters hiding in Boston. He was the head of our Family – a master vampire who knew better. He had
control
. He could certainly feed without killing. I tried to focus.

Why had he made me drink from him last night? The girl’s scent was so familiar to me now because it was
her
blood
that had fortified Theo last night and that I had tasted during our feeding. Surely he hadn’t killed Erin? Even if he had, surely he wouldn’t have left her body right out here on the common? Unless he just figured that the authorities would be called and nobody would suspect anything other than a violent murder. His DNA and fingerprints couldn’t be traced, for one thing. As long as there were no witnesses, he’d be free and clear.

Theo was ambitious. If he’d been tempted last night, or had been overcome by instinct in the heat of the moment as he fed, surely his intelligence would’ve stopped him from making such a fatal error.

Like he stopped himself when he lost control with me?

I shook that treacherous thought off and tried to pull my face into an expression that might look halfway human. What should I do? Should I go to Theo and confront him? What if he really
had
done this and wanted to keep it hidden from everyone –
including me
.

I walked slowly across the common, my head buzzing with possibilities – none of them good. The world seemed to be turning too quickly and my thoughts were spinning to match it. Did I believe that Theo was capable of killing Erin? Capable? Yes. But would he do it? Would he risk everything in a moment of bloodlust?

I didn’t know the answer to that. Just because you don’t want something to be true doesn’t make it
not
true.

Of course, me being me, there was no way I would let
this
new – potentially shattering – development stop me from finding out what was going on. One, I’m nosy. Two, I’m determined. Three, I’m nosy.