Eli and I exchanged glances that were full of meaning, mostly about needing to get on the road and after Santana, but I had a feeling that if we tried to leave, the angry, silent cop would happily shoot us in the backs.
Sloan returned in minutes, looking grim. “Two human victims have expired, and a third is receiving CPR. A fang— A vampire is here,” he corrected himself, “named Edmund Hartley. You know him?”
“Yeah. He’s good people. He has a gift for healing. ’Bout this tall”—I held out a hand—“slender, nondescript, mild-mannered looking. Like a librarian.” I leaned around Sloan and spotted Edmund in the courtyard. “Yeah. Him.”
Sloan frowned. “Okay. I’ll let him feed them. But we’ll keep weapons on him.”
I figured Edmund would be insulted, but he wouldn’t do or say anything against the weapons. He was too low in the vamp hierarchy to do that. I pointed to the end of the hallway. “Mind if we check out the back of the house? That’s where we think Santana and the other vamp were before they heard gunfire and took off. In which case we’ll need our weapons.”
“Knock yourselves out,” Sloan said. “I’m calling the ME’s office and Homicide.”
I took the statement as a hint that if we wanted out of there, instead of getting caught up in the investigation, we needed to slide away without asking permission. We reweaponed and hoofed it to the back half of the house. It was actually set up as a totally independent second home, the décor similar but contrasting to the front half, and more expensive. Lots more expensive. There was leather everywhere—the soft stuff that would make good gloves—and gilt everything, and the crystal chandeliers were even bigger than in the front of the house, the rugs even fancier, and the drapes even swaggier. If that was a word.
My guess about the drained humans had been right. The crew hadn’t finished cleaning, and there were fresh and old bloodstains here and there. It was getting uglier by the moment. We moved through the house, from the entry beneath the gallery, through the pale yellow and cream kitchen, the breakfast nook, the coffee bar, and the wine bar, taking in the damage. In the wine bar, someone had decided to try a little of everything, and there were empty and partially empty bottles, broken bottles, and spilled wine everywhere. Along with signs that more had taken place there than just a lot of drinking. My chest went tight as I studied the place with eyes and nose.
There was blood—fresh, not old and brown—here and there, in sprays along the walls, in small puddles—and other bodily fluids. Some of it was human. Some was from the vamps we had killed. Santana had partied there and drank his fill. My ribs hurt as I put it all together. Santana had raped his way through the hostages.
If we had started the night’s search there, we could have taken him down and saved the humans.
Eli swore as he recognized what the evidence suggested.
“Yeah,” I said, the fury so heated beneath my breastbone that it felt like a hot, liquid pool, like molten stone. “I know.” I rubbed my sternum with a fist, trying to ease the pain. We moved on through the house, finding the royal-style bathroom where Santana had bathed in a magnificent marble tub, trying to put out the flame that persisted, burning inside him. There were knives strewn about the place, showing traces of blood. I bent and sniffed one, catching the reek of scorched vamp and the scent of saliva. I had a feeling that Santana had tried to cut the fire out and that Dominique had indeed been there, helping, and had licked the blade clean. This dude needs to die.
I didn’t realize I had spoken it aloud until Eli said, “Let’s get to it.”
Under cover of night, we slipped out of the house and into our SUV.
CHAPTER 19
Too Much ’Tude and Not Enough Manners
We followed the stink of the Son of Darkness for miles as the sky lightened with the coming dawn. Santana dipped into pools and bayous and even puddles along the way. Eventually I lost the scent and thought about returning to the house for my bloodhound fetish necklace to keep chasing him, but if we caught up to him, that would have left Eli to take out the Son of Darkness alone, a vamp who was smelling more and more of the stink of madness. Pain can do that to anyone, and a previously poisoned and insane vamp might stand a greater chance of insanity than even a regular vamp.
Not that I told Eli that my reason for staying in human form was to keep him from having to fight Santana alone. I wasn’t stupid. But before Mr. Macho and I could go home and get cleaned up, we had to check out the locations of the final 911 calls. Thankfully, we could do that on the way back to the house, backtracking through the city.
The first location was near a small park I wasn’t familiar with—Samuel Square. The address was on Loyola Avenue, a new town house. We rode around the block, scoping out the place, before we pulled over and got out. Dawn was minutes away when I took a deep breath, over my tongue and past the roof of my mouth.
The smell of blood met my nose instantly. “Oh crap,” I whispered.
Eli was holding weapons before I could finish the words.
“Dead humans. And Brute’s hurt,” I said.
Eli frowned, a real frown, harsh lines bracketing his mouth. There was nothing we could do for the dead except call Sloan. But a bleeding werewolf was a lethal werewolf. The cures for the werewolf bite, from were-taint contagion, were only sometimes successful and required spending a lot of time in bed with Gee DiMercy and . . . Eli would probably rather shoot himself than go through the cure. I stood a better chance of surviving unchanged than Eli did.
But the presence of an injured werewolf meant I needed advice and probably help. I pulled my cell and ran my fingers through my contact list. I didn’t have a lot of friends, and the list of the ones who could help with a werewolf were few and far between. Like, two.
“Call him,” Eli said.
I knew he meant for me to call Ricky Bo LaFleur, my ex, but I still hesitated, my fingertip hovering over the name.
“Soul is the other choice, and she’ll follow PsyLED rules and regs. Rick is a cop but he’ll put you, and Brute, and this city, before protocol.”
I blew a raspberry and punched Rick’s name on the screen. I heard the line open, the near-silent sounds of linens and a mattress moving and groaning. The soft sound of a woman murmuring—Paka, the liquid syllables of her native African tongue, questioning. “It’s okay,” Rick said. “Just work.”