InsistentHunger (8 page)

The pain in Jim’s face had a rawness to it that didn’t come
from hearing someone describe it to you. “You’ve seen the ceremony,” Paige
guessed.

“Yeah.” Jim gave a humorless laugh. “Most hunters have.
Hell, most of us have done more than just see it.”

“But why aren’t you one of—”

“I was tied up waiting for my turn in the circle when a
hunter took out the vamps. Hunters get into this game by escaping a ceremony or
losing someone to one.” Jim looked at her with sharp eyes and Paige knew he
wondered if she would turn to hunting after losing her partner. Right now, she
needed information, not vengeance. However, that would be hard to explain to a
man who’d made killing vampires his life’s work.

“So, it’s not the bite; it’s the ceremony?”

Turning to look at her, Jim said, “This isn’t some virus.
This is pure demonic evil and a demonic ceremony is the only way to make that
happen. Sometimes if you have low-level vamps in the room—the really young or
really stupid ones—the demons that come through the rift will try to steal
their bodies. It’s like watching rabid dogs fight over a bone, but humanity is
the bone. Maybe now you see that you really are in over your head, Silver. Go
home. Go home and grieve for your partner, but don’t get in the middle of a war
you don’t understand.”

“If the demons can force each other, that means there is a
way to get this demon out of my friend.” Paige could feel hope like the tiniest
flicker.

“None that I know.”

“Then I’ll find one.”

Paige headed for the door, a nascent hope growing in her
heart; however, Jim darted forward and grabbed her arm. “You aren’t going to
have the chance. First, if you find him, he’ll try to kill you. Second, when
the demon moves in, the soul moves out.”

Paige shook her head. “You can’t know that for sure.”

“That the soul moves out? Yes, I can. I remember detaching
from my body, the slow slide toward some distant place. I remember that. And if
the ceremony had been completed, I wouldn’t be in this body at all. I would
have drifted off and left a demon in control here. And I know that when you
stake a vamp, you immediately know how old they were. You catch one a few days
after the ceremony and you’ll have a rotting corpse a few days old. Catch a
vamp with a few years behind him and you’ll be left with bones. But if you
catch a vamp that’s older than sixty or seventy, they turn to mist like the one
you saw. They’re dead. They died the second the soul moved out and the demon
moved in, and if you drive the demon out of your friend, then his body is going
to suddenly remember that it’s dead.”

Still shaking her head, Paige refused to believe any of
that. “There has to be—”

“There isn’t. Do you think you’re the first one to lose
someone to a vamp?” he demanded, fury in his eyes. “Do you think other people
haven’t tried or are you just so arrogant that you’re convinced you’re going to
succeed where the rest of the known world has failed?”

“I never said that.”

“No, but you’re acting like it. Do you want to know what
your friend is right now? If they attracted a low-level demon, he’s a big,
stupid walking corpse. He has practically no mind at all. I’d call it a zombie,
only those low-level vamps aren’t big on eating brains. Actually, they aren’t
big on drinking blood either. They’re idiots that bigger and badder vamps use
as guard dogs and cannon fodder. They’re dangerous only in that it takes a Mack
truck to stop them, but if you’re driving a Mack truck right at one, it will
stand there and stare at you stupidly.

“If you walked up to your friend with one of those low-level
vamps in residence, he would never stop until he trapped you, crushed you
against some wall or laid on you and slowly soaked up all your life force while
feeling the texture of your hair between his fingers. You’ll scream and claw
and beg for mercy, but he won’t even notice.” Jim spat the words out and Paige
shivered from the cold fury in his voice and the honesty in his words. But that
wasn’t Brady.

“Brady wouldn’t.”

“Brady’s dead,” Jim snapped. “If he’s one of those ghouls,
he’ll do exactly that. If he’s one of the middle vamps like the one here today,
you can kill him, but you’d better do it fast because they’re strong and fast.
Not the brightest, but then when they can break your neck without trying, they
don’t have to be that bright. And the strongest of them…those are the vamps
that even hunters leave alone. They kill each other, but we just stay out of
their way. Those are the full demons and they’re smarter, faster and more
brutal than any human.

“If a full demon crawled into your friend’s skin, you won’t
last two seconds. Who the hell knows what your friend is now, but if you want
to go hunting him down, you’d better be prepared for what you’ll find.” Taking
off his garlic necklace, Jim thrust it at her.

“You aren’t telling me to avoid him?” Paige stared down at
the woven twine and garlic cloves.

“Hell yes, I want you to avoid him. But I’ve been in the
business long enough to recognize someone who’s not going to listen to good
advice.” Jim let go of her arm, the anger draining from him until he just
looked exhausted. “Peasants used to sprinkle lentils or stones right outside
the grave because the vamps would get so distracted counting that they’d forget
to protect themselves from the ax-wielding villagers. Like I said, not that
bright. So carry something shiny, preferable something small that they can
touch. It’s even better if it rolls and distracts them because they have some
sort of obsession with counting and putting things in order.”

When he put his hand in his pocket, Paige stiffened, but he
brought his hand out with a fist full of tiny beads that shone and sparkled.
“They love these things. And I love them because it’s a lot easier to
decapitate something that’s playing with beads.”

He held his hand out and Paige slowly reached for the beads.
Maybe Jim was trying to help, but the way he was describing it made her feel
like she was planning on killing some mentally challenged child who just wanted
a shiny toy.

“Just don’t decapitate the young ones, the ones that leave a
body. Being a cop, I’m sure you understand how much interest a case gets if the
body is mutilated. Decapitation attracts attention.”

“Yeah, it would,” Paige agreed.

“Oh trust me, I know,” he said with a snort of disgust that
made it clear that he’d had an up-close and personal run-in with a police
department somewhere. “Take out the brain and the demon can’t hold on anymore.
Stakes to the heart usually work, but getting that close to a vamp isn’t
exactly smart.”

Paige looked up from her handful of shiny baubles. “When you
killed that one, I felt like something was scraping at me.”

Jim took a step back, his face thoughtful. “The demon was
looking for a new host. If you have any recently dead or dying around, some
demons are strong enough to jump over, even without a ceremony.”

“Can they get in if I’m not dying?”

He thought about that for a lot longer than Paige expected.
“It’s not like there are scientific studies on this.”

“Shit. They can.” Paige’s stomach soured so badly that the
base of her throat burned with acid that tried to escape up her throat.

“Easily? No. I’ve never seen it happen and a lot of hunters
think it’s an old wives’ tale the older hunters tell to scare newbies. They
talk about demons strong enough to challenge a soul, but most of the stories
say that the human had already compromised his soul by being evil or by just
being so worn down with grief and anger that he wanted to move on. So I guess
I’m saying that I don’t know.”

“And you still risk this.”

Jim pursed his lips and gave her an inscrutable look.
“You’re a cop. Don’t tell me that you don’t understand.”

“I have backup and training and a whole community to call on
if I need help.”

“So do I,” he said without explaining exactly who he had in
his corner. Paige nodded and backed up onto the porch.

“I appreciate this.” She held up the beads and garlic, but
she really meant the information. She wasn’t sure it was much help because
Brady wasn’t the monster Jim described, but it gave her a place to start. At
least she wasn’t going to be out there looking for victims with barbecue fork
injuries to the neck disappearing from the morgue. Sadly, that probably would
have been her first stop without his help.

“Just don’t count on those to help you in every situation,”
he said with a gesture toward the beads. She looked at how they flashed and
sparkled, even in the shadows. “They wouldn’t have stopped this one. They might
have distracted him for a second, but he wasn’t one of the zombie boys. He
still had a brain in there.”

“Just not a good one,” Paige pointed out. The vamp might
have taken Jim if he’d waited in ambush, especially if he was as strong as
Brady.

“No, not a good one, but some of these mid-level vamps can
be smart. And worse, some vamps obsess over someone they knew in life. Your
partner could come after you, and if he does, that means that he’s not some
mindless foot soldier to get distracted by a little bit of flash,” Jim warned
her.

“He might remember me?” This sounded more promising.

“He might remember something. Those sorts go after anyone
who reminds them of something or someone. Some of the older hunters call them
Lamias.”

“Lamias?” Paige felt an urge to start taking notes.

“It’s just another name for a vamp. She was a blood-drinker
from mythology. Apparently she lost her kids, and after she turned demonic, she
got obsessed with drinking the blood of everyone else’s kids. Vamps that get
focused on killing one sort of human, that’s what we call Lamias.”

“I call people like that serial killers.”

“Undead serial killers,” he agreed.

“But if that’s the case, then something of the person is
left. They wouldn’t feel anger, they wouldn’t be driven by memories unless they
had memories.”

“Memories, maybe,” he agreed with a shrug. “They can talk
and walk and pretend to be human if you don’t stand downwind. But they aren’t
the person. If your Brady is a vamp, he’ll know your name, but he won’t give a
shit about whatever relationship he had with you before.”

Paige nodded. She didn’t agree for one second, but she
nodded before she headed out into the yard, looking for her cell phone, and Jim
just stood in the door watching her without trying to follow.

Chapter Seven

Paige had no idea where the day had gone, but the sun was
starting to sink low when she pulled up into her driveway and hit the garage
door opener. The thing clanked ominously, but then again, it’d been threatening
to die for at least a year.

Inside, Paige dropped her cell phone on the table and stared
at the two black and white feathers on the carpet, the sharp shafts tipped with
red. Pulling her weapon, she inched around the corner to the living room.
Nothing looked out of place. She moved to the basement door and the padlock
still hung from the mangled hasp.

Inching down the stairs, Paige called out in a whisper,
“Brady?” The basement was silent, a long slant of light cutting through the
air. “Brady?” Paige moved to the bottom step and trained her gun toward the
dark corner that had been the laundry room. She was starting to feel like one
of those women from a horror movie. However, the alternative included calling
for backup and she wasn’t prepared to do that.

When she got close enough, Paige could see Brady huddled in
the corner where the mold crept up the cinderblock wall. “Brady?” She looked
around, but nothing else seemed out of place. The Christmas decorations had
been picked up and the box sat next to the ruined shelf.

Brady looked up at her, his hands stained with blood and the
fluffy down from a chicken. Black and white flight feathers were scattered
around the drain along with several of the larger bones from a chicken. It
looked like a dog had chewed on them. From the pattern on the feathers, Paige
was guessing that her Plymouth Rock chicken had been turned into dinner and she
hoped Brady’s stomach was pretty strong because most people avoided swallowing
chicken bones.

“There’s something wrong with me. Oh god, I’m evil,” Brady
said, his light brown eyes staring up at her with horror.

“Brady? What did you do?” Paige kept her weapon pointed at
the ground, but she couldn’t stop remembering how the vampire’s head exploded
right before the body turned to dust. She didn’t want Brady dead, but at least
now she knew he could die.

“I’m evil. I killed it.”

“What did you kill? Brady, talk to me.” Paige knew how
strong he was. Who the hell knew what or who else he might have gone after. She
had a couple of neighbors she didn’t like much, but she sure didn’t want them
to end up getting eaten like the chicken.

Brady stared at the bones. “I killed your chicken. It…. I
was just so hungry and I ripped it apart and the blood smelled so good. God,
I’m sorry. I can’t control this hunger, Paige. I’m evil.”

Paige let out a sigh of relief. “Because you ate a chicken?
God, Brady, you really scared the shit out of me for a second.”

“I couldn’t…. Look what I did.” He gestured at the scattered
remains of her barred Plymouth Rock.

“I’ll get an arrest warrant for those serial killers over at
Kentucky Fried Chicken.” Paige holstered her weapon.

Brady pushed himself up off the ground. “You think it’s
funny?”

“No, I think that chicken wasn’t laying eggs and I was
planning to eat her myself sooner or later.”

“But not like—not with—”

“The world’s worst table manners?” Paige interrupted. “No, I
was going to be a little neater about it. I mean, I know you’re a single guy
and you frat-boy types aren’t exactly known for neatness, but this is pretty
disgusting.” Paige made a face at the streaks of blood up his arms and the
cracked bones and bloodied feathers. However, mostly she felt relief.