Serafina and the Silent Vampire (2 page)

“Oh, dandy!” she responded with heavy sarcasm, spotting the stream of blood down the side of his throat and, worse, the two puncture wounds. “Shite, Tam, have you got Jack’s clipper things?” This was going to make life
really
difficult. Jack needed them to create believable-looking puncture wounds on his own neck… But hell, never mind; he’d probably get the chance after Tam “bit” him.

“No,” Tam said in apparent surprise, feeling his neck at the point of her frustrated gaze.

“That was me,” said the interloper helpfully. Without warning, he reached up to Tam’s neck, touching the wound with his fingertip before his hand fell back to his side.

Tam snapped at him, “I’m not gay, you know.”

Sera cast her eyes to heaven. “Did he tell you
he
was?” Couldn’t one actor spot another?

“He doesn’t say anything, in case you haven’t noticed,” Tam retorted.

Sera glanced at her henchman without affection as she picked up the dropped stick. “You know what, Tam? Your loyalty is becoming seriously suspect.”

Even in the darkness, Tam managed to look affronted. His acting had improved by leaps and bounds.

The other man said conversationally, “He can’t hear me.”

“Why, what did you stick in his ears?”

“Nothing. I’m not speaking.”

“Ah. I’m hearing voices in my head,” Sera said with blatant mockery.

“Aye,” Tam replied at the same time as the other man said, “My voice, at least.”

“And that would be because…?”

“You hit your head when you fell,” Tam answered.

“Because I’m a vampire,” said the stranger in the kilt.

Didn’t this idiot know when to quit? Sera took it upon herself to inform him. She stepped nearer and glared right into his handsome face. “So bite me, arsehole.”

This close, his dark eyes seemed to smolder. Every one of her nerve endings fizzed in confused warning. She wasn’t afraid of him, though; it was a long time since she’d been afraid of anyone. But neither was she stupid, and she gripped the sharp stick, ready to use in a flash, if necessary. She was prepared for anything he had to throw at her.

Except what he did.

He whispered, “I’d love to.” His lips curved into a predatory, devastating smile; his voice curled around her stomach, spreading heat where it had no business to be in this situation.

“Give it a rest, and go away,” she said crossly.

“Not a chance. I want to know what you’re up to.”

“I’ll call for help. Have you arrested or thrown out.”

The smile widened. “No, you won’t.” He didn’t trouble to elaborate. They both knew it was the truth.

Sera actually stamped her foot. “Christ, you’re annoying!”

“What do you expect? My supper’s been interrupted.” His gaze flickered to Tam, who was frowning uncertainly in their direction, and then returned to devour Sera in a way that would have been flattering had she not known he was playing a part. As it was, her treacherous body responded with a surge of blatant lust—which at least gave her one last, desperate idea.

She smiled at the stranger and leaned into him, stretching up on tiptoe so that her lips could reach his ear. He smelled of some elusive spice and sweet earth, and suddenly it wasn’t so difficult to act.

“I can tell you’re a man who likes excitement,” she murmured, letting her breath stir his ear, the soft, tiny hairs on his skin. His breath didn’t hitch, but at least he bent nearer her, betraying that he wasn’t unmoved. She smiled again, knowing she was so close he’d feel her lips almost touching his ear. “Wait here for me. I’ll be back in five minutes and we can…talk.”

On the last word, she let her breast brush against his chest. Whatever it did to him, her own body screamed awareness. Her nipples hardened, egging her on, while some intense, wicked excitement threatened to overwhelm her. Because she could win now, make him wait while she and her henchmen did what they’d come here for. And later, she could find out what the hell was going on, and if Ferdy had employed this guy too.

She leaned back, returning her feet flat to the ground. The stranger’s odd, dark eyes flamed with what she hoped was arousal. He said, “Why don’t we ‘talk’ first?” And bent over her.

She stepped smartly backward. “Tam,” she whispered. “I have to get rid of Tam.”

“I don’t mind Tam.” His gaze lifted from the rapid rise and fall of her breasts to her throat. His lips, full and sensual, parted as they smiled, revealing a glimpse of pointed canine teeth.

“Oh Jesus H. Ch—” she began in frustration, and broke off in mid-word as he lifted his hand to her neck, brushing her skin with one soft, blatantly sexual caress.

“It’s you I want,” he whispered. She felt no breath on her skin, no warmth from him to excite her, and yet his words thrilled from her mind to every nerve in her body. And then cold sliced through her like a shard of ice.

It blasted her. Yet there was no vision, only a profound, red-tinged blackness she couldn’t bear to look into. She caught a little fun and pleasure and humor from the mix, bleeding from the darkness, but the overwhelming sensation was of death and pulsating, unreachable memory, cold and black and terrifyingly profound. Although Sera was used to picking up emotions, even visions, from touch, it took her several disoriented moments to realize that this dreadful flood had grown out of the sensual caress of his fingertips, of the smell and feel that was uniquely him.
Him
, God help her.

She threw herself backward out of his awful reach, stifling the cry of agony that tried to burst from her lips.
Christ, who are you? What have you done…?

Their eyes locked. Sera heard only her own panting breath. The smile still curving the stranger’s lips began to die. He took another step nearer her, and she raised one useless hand to ward him off.

And someone screamed, loud and insistent.

Instinct spun Sera around, dragging her gaze and her body away from the stranger. At least, as she bolted through the trees in the direction of the scream, she called it instinct. In truth, as her feet pounded across the rough ground and branches caught at her clothes and hair, it felt a lot like relief.

Someone was following. She hoped to God it was Tam and not—

Her phone broke into song. She didn’t slow down as she seized it and clamped it to her ear. But she’d reached the edge of the trees now, and she could see the panic of people milling around the garden. Most of them seemed to be squashing into the ornamental maze.

“Sera,” Jilly’s voice said from her phone. She sounded shaky, breathy, her pitch higher than usual. “You’d better get over here. The maze. It’s Jason, Ferdy’s son. I think he’s dead.”

Sera stopped in her tracks. “
What?
” Her ears were singing; her heart felt as if it had stopped beating. It had to be a sick wind-up, and yet Jilly’s silence on the phone said very loudly that she believed it. “Oh shite…” As Tam’s footsteps faltered behind her, she said, “It’s all gone tits up. You’d better get out of here fast.”

She didn’t look at him or wait to see if he obeyed. She began to run again toward the maze with an ominous feeling of the sky falling on her head. She was vaguely surprised when people made way for her to get into the maze. A woman in a strappy, black silk dress with a tear at the side, her face understandably white under her perfect makeup, even pointed out which way to go.

The body that was presumably Jason lay on the ground, with his distraught parents on one side. Mrs. Bell was tugging at her once beautifully sculpted hair and weeping. Jack seemed to be administering CPR, while Jilly stared down at his efforts, for once without a word of criticism.

Sera swallowed. “Ambulance?” she said to no one in particular.

“On its way,” said Jilly.

“What happened?”

“We just found him lying there,” Jilly said helplessly. “Me and Mr. Bell.”

Briefly, Sera met Ferdy’s gaze. There was genuine worry in his eyes, she’d swear. Yet behind it was the same gleam that had always bothered her. She’d no idea what it signified, beyond a lack of honesty, but it looked avid, obsessive.

Jack stopped pumping at the young man’s chest. “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I think he’s dead.”

With a wail, Mrs. Bell fell against her husband.

Please, no, please, no. Please don’t let him be dead…
Sera shifted position to follow Ferdy’s attention and saw the two, bloody puncture wounds in Jason Bell’s throat.

She stared, almost numb with shock, before she realized her fingers were clutching in panic at her own neck. At the very same spot the kilted stranger had touched.

She whirled around with a muttered “Excuse me,” and pushed her way back out of the maze.

The rest of the garden was almost deserted. The shadow of the woman in the strappy dress disappeared round the side of the house. But the figure she actually sought was striding, almost gliding, across the lawn: a tall man in a kilt who moved with the grace of a panther. And all the danger, she suspected, of a murderer. She ran after him, reluctant to shout in case he took to his heels. But he walked damned fast, and she had to sprint flat out before, breathless, she finally caught at his sleeve and yanked him round to face her.

He turned with ease, as if he’d always known she was there and wasn’t remotely surprised by her violent tugging. In the glow of the garden lights, he gazed at her in silence. Her words dried up in her throat. All she could think of was the icy blackness of his touch, the blackness of a man capable of anything; and the weird attraction of his profound, unreadable eyes.

“Was it you?” she choked out at last. “Did you kill him?”

He didn’t answer. His lips quirked as if they might smile but didn’t. Then he simply turned and strode away. After three paces, he broke into a run and disappeared round the side of the house.

Was that his answer?

Sera pounded recklessly after him, anxious to see where he went at the very least.

Although the side garden was full of shadows, none of them were human. And at the front, there was no sign of anyone at all except a middle-aged couple who were waiting to direct the paramedics. Sera ran out to the street and scanned both directions. It was empty. Not even a car moved. Only a fine trail of mist or car exhaust hovered in the night air. She could almost imagine it formed the faded features of her quarry.

In the circumstances, the paramedics carried Jason not to hospital but to his own bedroom. As everyone else moved inside to await the inevitable arrival of the police or toward home, Sera slumped against the maze hedge, flanked by a uniquely silent Jilly and Jack.

“Tell me those clippers are still in your pocket,” she said to Jack. He brought his hand from his pocket and showed her. The points were clean.

“I guess Ferdy really had a stalker,” Jilly said heavily.

Sera shook her head. Not unless the kilted stranger of the fast getaway was the stalker after all. “This must have been one of the guests. Jack heard people giggling and talking in the maze.” Which was when the stranger had been performing his little scene with Tam. None of this made sense.

She delved into her pocket for her phone. “Where’s Tam? He came out of the trees with me but did a bunk when he heard what happened. I need to know who that other actor is, and how the hell…” She broke off as Tam’s familiar grunt sounded over the phone. “Tam?”

“Sera, I’m out of this. Call me tomorrow,” Tam said. He sounded breathless, as if he was running.

“Wait! Are you clear of the house?”

“How stupid do you think I am? Of course, I’m clear of it. Well clear. Is that bloke dead right enough?”

“Very. Tam, who was that man with you? The guy in the kilt?”

“No idea. His name’s Blair, if that helps.”

“Is he with you?”

“No, I presume he’s still at the bloody party with you! Look, I’m getting in my car now—”

“What happened to your neck?” Sera interrupted, gripping the phone harder as if that could somehow keep Tam on the line. “What made those marks?”

“What marks?” Tam sounded bewildered. Over the phone came the distinctive sound of a closing car door. “There’s nothing wrong with my neck, unless it got scratched by brambles. Bye, Sera.”

He managed to break the connection in a particularly determined kind of way, and Sera gave up, dropping the phone back in her pocket.

Jilly said, “We fucked up, didn’t we?”

“Big style,” Sera agreed. Tragically big. The sound of police sirens screamed through the air. A man was dead.
Dead.
And she’d been too busy arsing around to prevent it. Again. History had a sick sense of humor to keep repeating itself like this. “It’s going to be a long night.”

One of many as she learned to live with this.

****

Blair could still smell his quarry on the wind. Although she drove, she’d left the car window open, and he was more than capable, once he’d reformed into corporeal state, of following across the city on foot. Fading was a useful un-life skill, but unfortunately it played havoc with the senses, and it was largely luck that had reformed him only feet from the vampiress’s car. This was the best lead he’d had, and he was damned if he’d lose it. Although he
was
conscious of a twinge of regret. It would have been good to stay a little longer with the beautiful psychic. He was hungry, since she’d interrupted his meal, and the scent of her blood had been extremely alluring. But he was too old, much, much too old to let even the most intriguing of women get in the way of his supreme goal. Which was, of course, personal comfort.

By the time his quarry reached the Roseburn area, Blair was running across the rooftops, keeping time with her car below. She parked in a residential street of Victorian houses and got out. She looked slim and sexy in her black silk dress. It didn’t seem to matter to her that it was torn and stained with human blood.

Blair thought quite seriously about jumping down and draining her dry. She’d just caused him a massive amount of trouble, present and future. But on the other hand, he needed to know more, and perhaps he owed her for leading him here. He’d see what he could learn first.

She went up a short garden path to a quiet, detached house. A bit of wood stuck out above the door, with two short chains dangling from it, as if it had once held a bed-and-breakfast or hotel sign. The building bore an air of neglect, and it seemed to be in darkness. Blair leapt across the street to the house’s roof, and the vampiress in the black dress glanced uneasily upward as if, at last, she’d sensed something. However, whether or not she saw him, she was distracted as soon as the front door opened.

Blair leaned right out from the roof at an impossible angle in order to see. A middle-aged man, attractively gray, had opened the door. The girl brushed past him, and he made to follow. Then he paused, hesitating, and slowly turned his face upward.

Interesting. Another human psychic who’d sensed his presence faster than the vampire. Perhaps that was why he reminded Blair of the scolding girl at the party.

“Uh… Good evening,” the man said, apparently unfazed by a vampire leaning at almost ninety degrees off his guttering.

Blair inclined his head. Even more interesting, although the girl in the black dress was the only vampire currently in the house, the whole building reeked of undead presence.

“Who are you?” the man asked.

Blair was disinclined to answer that. He considered going inside, killing the man and the vampiress by way of a territorial message to the others. It was one solution, and it might work. But he realized that alongside his irritation lurked a grain of curiosity which a murder spree would not satisfy.

“Can I help you?” the man asked. “Would you like to come in?”

Blair stepped off the guttering, and the man fell back in spontaneous alarm. As Blair landed, soft as a cat, his knees only slightly bent to absorb the force, the man reached for the door with one hand and shoved the other into his pocket as if for a weapon. Blair smiled.

“Not yet,” he said telepathically and walked away. He had the feeling the man understood. Blair waited until the man closed the door; then he walked up the first side street, jumped onto the nearest roof, and doubled back. Perhaps he’d just spy for a while. Besides, a rather juicy couple of young men were wandering up the road, and he rather fancied a midnight snack.

****

Being discovered in the dead man’s bedroom was not the introduction to the police that Sera would have chosen. She’d calculated it was worth the risk—erroneously, as it happened.

She’d snuck in while close family and friends looked after Jason’s parents downstairs, and sat on the edge of the bed to take Jason’s cold hand and will him to talk to her. With his eyes closed and all vitality gone, he looked unexpectedly young and unassuming. His straight, brown hair was mussed-up, almost like a schoolboy’s, and he had a faint scattering of freckles that brought a lump to her throat. She couldn’t bring him back, any more than she could have brought Mattie back, but she could at least discover what had happened to him.
Who
had happened to him.

With his hand in hers, she closed her eyes and reached out to him.

Blankness. She picked up nothing from the touch of his dead skin; no bewildered or angry spirit came anywhere near her. It almost felt like Jason had never been.

Maybe she was too wound-up. Maybe memories of Mattie were interfering. After all, the events surrounding Mattie’s death had been a major turning point in her life—the last time anyone had made a decision for her. Now Sera was in control;
she
made the decisions. Although they weren’t always good ones, or this young man wouldn’t be dead and silent on the bed beside her.

With an effort, Sera refocused her mind, trying to banish all the personal baggage. There was only Jason Bell, suddenly and mysteriously dead.

And still silent.

The bedroom door clicked open, jolting Sera back to her soundings. Her fingers scrabbled, searching for something, anything of Jason’s to keep for later. Encountering a cufflink, she twisted it free and palmed it, just as a uniformed police constable entered with Ferdy.

The policeman raised his ginger eyebrows at her in surprise. She stood at once, refusing to look as guilty as she felt as she surreptitiously dropped Jason’s purloined cufflink into her leather jacket pocket.

“Is this your daughter?” the policeman asked Ferdy.

“Oh no, this is Miss MacBride. I hired her in connection with the stalker we were telling you about.”

The policeman’s already suspicious eyes hardened. “You’re a private investigator?” he asked, not bothering to hide his distaste.

Sera looked him in the eye. “I’m a
psychic
investigator.” As she expected, that deprived the boy in blue of speech long enough for her to add, “I’m Sera MacBride, owner of Serafina’s Psychic Investigations.”

The constable’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing in here?”

Sera held his look; she was used to his kind of contempt. “Trying to reach his spirit.”

The policeman snorted. But he had to swallow whatever cutting remark he’d been about to make when Ferdy asked quickly, “Did you reach him? Did you reach my boy?”

Sera shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. Perhaps it’s too soon.” Or perhaps, like Mattie’s spirit, he’d never talk to her, because it was her fault he was dead.

“Aye. Perhaps,” said the copper disparagingly. “Did you touch the body at all?” Although he was busy writing in his notebook, his eyes tried to pierce her with quick darts over the top of it.

“No,” Sera lied.

“Come downstairs with me, please.” Despite the deliberate civility, it was not a request. Sera only shrugged and passed under his arm out of the door.

“Is that it?” Sera asked, heading for the stairs. “Aren’t you going to examine him, take photos and stuff?”

“My colleagues from CID will be here shortly.” The bedroom door shut with a definite click, and the constable followed her and Ferdy downstairs. But as Ferdy went to join his wife and closest friends among the guests, the policeman detained her in the spacious hall. “A few questions, Miss MacBride.”

“Sure.”

“What did Mr. Bell hire you to do, exactly?”

“Stop whoever—or whatever—was stalking him and his family.”

“Did you?”

“Not yet.”

“How much did you charge him for all the garlic and crosses?”

“It’s all part of the service,” Sera said brazenly.

“Aye? I bet you don’t give him a rebate either.”

“Why should I? It worked, didn’t it?”

“How do you come to that conclusion?”

Sera smiled. “Have you seen any vampires in the house?”

She turned away from him, meaning to go into the larger room where the rest of the guests were giving their names to another policeman before being allowed to leave. But at the last minute, he grabbed her jacket sleeve.

“How do you sleep at night?” he snarled. “Ripping folk off when they’re down, playing on their grief like a vulture. You people make me sick.”

An automatic retort sprang to Sera’s lips, but she never made it. She waited silently, staring at his name badge—PC Alex McGowan—until he released her, then walked away in search of her henchmen. Right now, she made herself sick.

****

It was as they were being allowed to leave at last that Sera finally found her moment to ask Ferdy about his mysterious guest. He came up to her as she made her way to the front door with Jilly and earnestly asked her to visit him tomorrow morning.

“Of course,” Sera said at once. “Mr. Bell… Did you invite anyone called Blair to your party?”

“Jane Blair? Our neighbor? Retired school teacher from Mary Erskine’s?”

“Definitely not! Tall young man, dark or auburn hair, wearing a kilt? Might be an actor or another investigator? Like us?”

Ferdy shook his head. “Doesn’t ring any bells. And I didn’t hire another investigator. Why?”

“I’ll explain tomorrow,” she said hurriedly. Plainclothes police were arriving, and this time they’d brought all the suited-up forensics people she expected. She didn’t watch
Taggart
and
CSI
for nothing. They were piling into the house with their equipment and climbing the stairs after PC McGowan, who didn’t like Sera, and everyone else was waiting to speak to Ferdy.

It was pandemonium, and yet as Sera muttered sympathy and farewell and reached for the door handle, the policeman’s exclamation cut through the din like an axe.

“What! Where the hell’s the body?”

****

Sera’s Citroën screeched to a halt outside Jack’s modern block of luxury flats overlooking Haymarket, just as Jack inserted his key in the door. He glanced over his shoulder without surprise as Sera unwound the window. “Get in,” she called.

He didn’t even attempt to remonstrate, just took his key out of the door, walked back down the steps, and climbed into the backseat of Sera’s car.

“Nice one, Doc,” Jilly flung at him from the front passenger seat. “Your dead man walked.”

Jack sighed. “I know. But be fair. He fooled an actual doctor too. What is it with these people? What are he and old Ferdy up to?”

“Fuck knows,” said Jilly baldly.

In the rearview mirror, Sera saw Jack blink. He still hadn’t got used to the shock of such foul language emanating from the angelic-looking Jilly, whose halo of shining golden hair and frail, perfect beauty belied her much earthier character.

“Where are we going?” Jack asked.

“Tam’s,” Sera said.

“He won’t be in,” said Jilly, who was Tam’s cousin and knew his habits pretty well. “He’ll be in Spier’s Bar.”

Sera nodded and kept driving.

“Have they found him?” Jack asked.

“Jason? No. Not yet.”

“Wouldn’t we be better looking for him than for Tam?”

“I need Tam to tell me who this Blair character is. I found him wrestling with Tam in the trees, as if they were playing out some vampire scene of their own. Tam was cagey about the whole thing.”

“Probably thought it was funny till you showed up, then crapped his pants,” Jilly offered. “Tam likes a laugh, but he’s always been scared shitless of you.”

“Not as scared as he’s going to be,” Sera promised.

Jilly glanced at her. “It wasn’t his fault, you know.”

“No,” Sera agreed. “It was mine.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, Sera. At least Jason isn’t dead.”

“Thing is,” Sera said, gazing fixedly at the headlights in front, “I’m pretty sure he is.”

Jilly’s fair head swiveled to stare. “You mean someone stole the body? Who the hell could have done that with the house full of police? Dead bodies are heavy. You can’t just stuff them under your coat and swan off with them unnoticed!”