Forged in Flame (25 page)

Those aren’t real,
she told herself even as she kept her weapon trained on him. She had cleared her throat a second time before she spoke. “Back away from the woman.” Her voice held the note of command every cop learned at the academy.
 

The man chuckled, released the woman from his grip, and she slipped to the ground in a heap. The killer took several steps back, toward the half wall in front of the parked cars.

“Stop right there.” Grace expected immediate compliance and shook her head when he didn’t.

“How many stories up are we?” His voice held a hint of an eastern European accent and an air of assured superiority.

In an instant, Grace made an assessment. The guy was confident completely self-assured as if he knew what the outcome of their meeting would be.

“Shut up. Step away from the barrier. Put your hands behind your head. Fingers laced together. No sudden moves.”
 

“I do not believe I will be complying with your order.”

“What?” she asked, the strangeness of his language distracting her.
 

“You heard me, Inspector. I am afraid that I cannot comply with your order. You see,” he glanced at the other woman. “She is quite dead, and I simply do not have time to answer all your questions. Seeing as how I have a prior engagement which I cannot miss. Therefore, I must take my leave of you now.”

Before Grace could react, the man turned, took two steps, vaulted over the waist-high barrier and disappeared over the edge. Grace ran toward the precipice as fast as she could, a wordless howl of frustration escaping from her lips.

When she reached the wall, she braced her hands against it and peered over. She saw him falling. Grace cringed and closed her eyes at the moment of impact, opening them a second later. He should have sustained massive injuries. By all rights, he should be dead, but as Grace watched, he picked himself up and brushed dust off his impeccably tailored suit.

The man caught a quick glance up and met her eyes. A smile curled his lips and he tipped an imaginary hat to her before strolling into the night whistling a jaunty tune. Seven stories up, she leaned against the wall, squinting at him over the edge to see where he went. Within seconds, he turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
 

Grace approached the woman’s corpse and knelt beside it. She started to check for a pulse, but stopped short with a gasp when she got her first good look at the woman. The right side of her neck a mess of torn tissue. Frozen hazel eyes stared up at the concrete ceiling, her face stilled in a twisted expression of terror. Grace leaned closer to the body and examined the left side of the victim’s neck.

Two small, neat puncture wounds were centered over the area of the carotid artery. She rocked back on her heels as Eric’s words from a few nights before tickled the edge of her memory. Closing her eyes, she tried to let the memory return, but it slipped back into the murky depths of her consciousness.

Grace shivered and forced her knees to straighten as she pushed herself back to her feet. Turning away from the woman’s body, she stumbled her way to the elevator. With her phone out of commission, her only option to report the crime was using the emergency equipment in the elevator.
 

Several hours later, Grace slammed her car door and stared up at the large house. She’d driven here without thinking, without a destination in mind. Being on the opposite side of an investigation, being the one who discovered the crime had tilted her world on its axis. Though the building stood on the corner in a high-end neighborhood, something about it put her on alert; she frowned and shook her head. “Just what have you gotten yourself into, Kincade?” she asked before climbing the steps to the front door. Ignoring the doorbell, she pounded on the wood, feeling a perverse sense of pleasure each time her hand struck the cold, smooth, unforgiving surface.
 

The door swung open. Eric stood on the other side, staring at her for a moment before finding his voice. “Grace! What the fuck?” He stepped under the doorframe, confusion written on his face.

“No, Kincade. You tell me, what the fuck?” She poked him in the center of his chest. “What the fuck did I see tonight? How the hell did he rip half her throat out? What the fuck was up with his teeth? And more than anything, I want to know how the fuck he not only survived a seven-story fall, but stood up, brushed his ass off, flipped me the bird, and strolled away whistling? Fucking whistling, Eric!” Each question or exclamation had been punctuated by the tip of her finger jabbing his chest. Through her tirade, Eric waited with the hint of a smile. “And while we’re at it, why the fuck are you fucking smirking at me?”

“Perhaps you should ask her inside?” a man standing in the foyer behind Eric asked.
 

“And who the hell are you?” She turned her eyes away from Eric, focusing on the tall one behind him. The guy was about six feet tall, with sandy hair and eyes the color of the sky before a heavy rainstorm.

Eric rolled his eyes, grabbed her forearm and pulled her into the house. Grace tried to fight, but couldn’t break his viselike grip. “If your scent didn’t tell a different story, I’d swear you’d been drinking.” He glanced at the other one who’d spoken. “Nicholas, where can I take her to explain?”

The other man thought for a moment, a slight frown showing before he pointed to a door on the left. “Study’s free. If Christophe’s in there, just tell him I said he can share the library with me if he can’t find another spot. Gods know this place has enough rooms.” A low growl of frustration accompanied his words. With a last glance and shake of his head at Grace, he stalked into the room next to the one where he had directed Eric.
 

“Come on.” Eric sighed, grabbed Grace’s wrist, and pulled her into the study. “Why don’t you have a seat?” he asked, closing the door to give them some measure of privacy.

“I’m not moving until I get answers, Eric.” She planted her feet.
 

“Your heart is running a mile a minute.” He got in her face, eyes flashing with frustration. “You need to sit down and relax before you have a heart attack right here.”

“What’s going on? Tell me right now, or I’ll drag your ass to the station.”

He gently pushed her, and Grace’s calves bumped the sofa. Eric smirked, folding his arms over his chest as momentum dropped her into a sitting position. “You don’t have probable cause.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, and rather than play whatever sit and stand game he had in mind, she planted her feet, determined not to move. “I could give a shit about probable cause right now.”

“Fine.” He shrugged and stepped back, giving her breathing room. “What do you want to know?”

“What the fuck did I see tonight? How did the son of a bitch rip her throat out? Why did his teeth look like the canines had been filed to points? How the hell did he survive a seven-story fall? And how the hell did you know my heart is racing? What the fuck is going on?” She knew she wasn’t giving him a chance to answer, but a small part of her wasn’t sure she wanted to hear them anyway. Who would want to hear confirmation of their darkest fears?

“Well, that’s a lot to cover and, to be honest, I don’t know if I can answer them all. As for what you saw, I’m going to take a wild guess and say you saw the Vampire Killer in action.”

“He was just finishing with her, I think.”
 

From her robotic answer Eric could tell that she was in shock. A feeling that he remembered all too well. He didn’t move, waiting. She pulled her arms tighter around her chest and clamped her mouth shut. If she opened it again she couldn’t be sure about what came out of it.
 

“He was a vampire?” She asked.

“Yes.”

“A vampire.”

“Yes.” Eric kept his voice neutral, not wanting to spook her further. “Now that we’ve established that part, I can answer more of your questions. His teeth had not been filed to points, they are like that because he is a vampire. He survived a seven-story fall because we can do that. I know your heart is racing because I can hear it. You haven’t taken a breath since I started talking and while it’s not a necessity for me, you might want to do the inhale, exhale thing. Now, why don’t you wait here, think about what else you want to know, and I’ll go get you a drink. Then, you and I will talk about this, like civilized adults.”

“What?”

“Sit. Wait.” Eric turned and exited the room, closing the door behind him. He stood with his hand on the knob, looking at the innocent skeleton key in the lock and considered turning it for a moment before deciding against it. Shaking his head, he turned and crossed the living room to the full bar. He grabbed a bottle of Scotch and a couple of glasses before slowly returning to the study. When he opened the door, pleased to see that Grace had moved and sat in one of the high-backed wing chairs, scrubbing her face with her hands. He walked over to her and held out the hand with the glasses in it.

“Here, take one.” Eric reined in his anxiety and kept his tone soothing.
 

Grace peered up at him with some trepidation and accepted a glass. “What’s going on, Eric?” She hated the weak, timid timber to her words, but couldn’t help herself.

“You’ve fallen down a rabbit hole. How you respond to what I’m going to tell you is just about the only thing you’re going to have control over.”

“Oh God,” she shook her head, “I don’t know if I want to know.”

“Then stop asking questions,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “Let us handle everything, and you continue going with the flow, pretending nothing has changed.”

She shook her head and took a deep breath. “But if I
go with the flow,
more people are going to die.” She looked at him for confirmation. “Aren’t they?”

“Yes, they will. But we’re trying to stop that.” He kept his voice level, knowing it wouldn’t help to push her emotional buttons any more than he already had.

“We’re?” She frowned. “You’re mixed up in this more than I think, aren’t you?”

“Yes. But I can’t say much more until you agree that you want to know everything I’m allowed to tell you.”

“Allowed to tell me? What are you into? Some kind of gang?”

“Not quite. It all has to do with what happened back home, that stuff you asked me about the other night, the stuff I couldn’t come clean about.”

“Will you come clean now?” She stared at the drink in her hand as if it were going to come to life and swallow her instead of the other way around.

“I can’t. There’s a lot involved and complete honesty comes with complete trust,” he paused, an impish smile curling his lips, “and a lot of paperwork.”

“Paperwork?” She frowned and furrowed her brow, confused.

“Oh, why don’t you just tell the girl?” a different man, one Grace hadn’t seen before, asked from the open door. Another tall blond with striking lavender eyes, he wore black slacks and a deep purple button-down shirt.
 

“I am not a
girl,
” Grace insisted.

The man flashed her a charming smile. “Trust me,
cherie,
you are a girl to me.”

Eric let out an exasperated sigh. “Christophe, will you please behave?”

Christophe chuckled, “Ahh, but where is the fun in that? Just tell her,
mon ami.
” The blond gave an elegant shrug, the motion somehow seeming to be a part of a seduction. “It is almost always easier that way.”

“Tell me what?” She resisted a strong urge to stomp her foot, as frustration built, pushing her closer to the edge.

“He’s a vampire, doll.” Christophe folded his arms across his chest and moved so he blocked the one way out of the room. “As is the killer you’re searching for, the one you encountered earlier this evening. For that matter, most of those in this household are, as well.”

Grace immediately began shivering, every muscle and instinct screaming at her to run. Her muscles didn’t obey, unable to move or even form a coherent thought. She heard Christophe’s voice as though he spoke from a couple hundred miles away when he said, “Give her a drink, you dolt.”
 

“Dolt? I’m not the one who dropped the bombshell on her without any warning!” Eric’s voice sliced through the fog that had settled in Grace’s mind.

“No, you were just going to dance around it until she died of old age.”