“It is, except for the very old. If the old ones are in a safe enough position, they will eventually regenerate. The young and very young simply take longer to truly die.”
“So someone as old as Quinn could regenerate?”
“No. Director Hunter could. Quinn would probably be on the cusp of the required age, so surviving would be a fifty-fifty proposition.”
The longer I worked with vampires, the more I learned about them. And the more secretive the bastards seemed. “So what other juicy little tidbits are you vamps hiding from the rest of us?”
“Not a whole lot, I assure you.”
“Yeah, believing the sincerity behind that statement.”
Jack glanced at his watch rather than replying. I took the hint and quickly headed out to collect the car keys from the caramel cow.
B
ob Dunleavy lived in a small house—or town house, as the estate agents liked to call them—a couple of house blocks down from the Springvale police station. Maybe the boys in blue wanted to keep an eye on him. Or maybe Dunleavy figured that he’d fly under their radar by living so close. Though if his record was anything to go by, it hadn’t worked so far.
Smiling slightly, I rested my arms on the steering wheel and studied the town houses opposite, not only checking for indications that Dunleavy was home but also looking for hints about the man himself.
If his house was anything to go by, Dunleavy was a slob. Which pretty much explained his lengthy record—a neat thief was often harder to catch than a messy one.
This section of Springvale was an old, established area and the house blocks around here were large enough to have three smaller houses built on them. Most of the old houses in this street had already been torn down to make way for their smaller cousins, and the “for sale” signs dominating the front yards of the remaining two suggested it wouldn’t be long before the whole street was shared residential.
Dunleavy’s town house was the rear one—the one closest to the back fence and the railway lines behind it. It was clearly visible from the road thanks to the fact it sat front-on to the driveway rather than side-on, like the other two. Dunleavy’s neighbors had to hate that fact. While their little places were neat and tidy, his was anything but. Talk about bringing the tone of the neighborhood down.
Two of his front windows had been smashed, the holes covered by soggy-looking cardboard that was held in place by long strips of black tape. Scraggy-looking curtains hung sadly from either side of these windows, and were yellowed with age and slashed in places. The other windows were covered by taped-up newspaper. The front door was a mess of peeling paintwork and holes, and even the brickwork looked worse for wear—almost as if it had the dust of eons coating its surface.
I couldn’t see anyone moving around inside, even though there’d been bursts of movement evident in the other two town houses. But that didn’t mean anything. Dunleavy did most of his work at night, so he was probably asleep right now.
I grabbed my coat and climbed out of the car. The wind hit, pulling at my hair and slapping my skin with its iciness. I shivered my way into the coat and heartily cursed the winter weather. Though at least it wasn’t raining yet.
After locking the car, I shoved my hands into my pockets and made my way across the road. A curtain covering a window in the first town house moved, and a face briefly peered through the glass. An older woman, her features pinched and harsh-looking. I gave her a smile of acknowledgment and she quickly dropped the curtain back in place.
Maybe the reason Dunleavy had been caught so often wasn’t so much a product of his carelessness, but rather his nosy neighbor.
I continued on past the second town house. The eleven o’clock news was blasting out from either a radio or TV inside, and the smell of burnt toast hit the air. I drew it in, savoring the sharp aroma even as my stomach rumbled a reminder it had only had toast for breakfast, and made a mental note to grab a burger on my way back to the Directorate.
There was a small van parked out the front of Dunleavy’s garage. A quick look through the windows revealed piles of newspapers, discarded take-out containers and, stacked neatly in a plastic box attached to the van’s side, several duffel bags. Dunleavy’s tools of trade, no doubt. I climbed the crumbling concrete steps and raised a hand to knock on the door. Only to freeze as a familiar smell spun around me.
Blood. Thick, ripe, and very, very fresh.
And with it came the scent of death and excrement—smells I knew entirely
too
well.
Dunleavy—or someone else—was dead inside the house.
And Gautier had been here.
Chapter 4
F
or several heartbeats, I didn’t move. Scarcely even dared to breathe as I listened to the wind, sorting through the scents that ran with it, noting the sounds that ran underneath it. There was no hint of life—or even
un
life—coming from this apartment. Only from those behind me.
Gautier might have been here, but he wasn’t now. I’d feel him—or any other vampire, for that matter.
And while part of the excrement scent was definitely his, there was more to the smell than simply his presence. It had a very human aroma to it—and the one thing Gautier had never been was human.
Meaning someone had probably shit themselves inside the town house. Of course, anyone who had
any
brains would be scared shitless by Gautier. He was one nasty mother.
I stepped back from the door. The lock was in place, and there was nothing to indicate it had been forced in any way. If Gautier
had
been here, he hadn’t come through the front door to get at Dunleavy. Though the only way he could have forced his way through the door in the first place was if Dunleavy had previously invited him in. If there was one rule about vampires that was true, it was the fact that they couldn’t cross thresholds uninvited.
“I called the cops, you know.”
I wasn’t sure what leapt higher—my feet or my heart—and even as I spun around, I was reaching for the weapon I didn’t have. Mainly because I’d taken it off near the coat stand at home last night, and hadn’t gone back to pick it up in my rush to get out of Kellen’s door this morning. Jack would have my hide if he found out.
Thankfully, I didn’t need it. The voice belonged to the sharp-faced old woman from the first apartment. I took a deep breath, trying to calm my racing pulse and ignore the fact that it could have been
anyone
who’d crept up on me. God, I was still so green at this, I was a danger to myself.
“What?” I said, perhaps more brusquely than I should have.
“I called the cops.”
Great. Just what I needed to deal with on top of a possible murder. “And you’d be Mrs….?”
“
Ms.
Radcliffe.” She drew the knitted shawl draped over her frail shoulders closer to her body as the wind gusted again.
“Ms. Radcliffe, I’m a guardian.” When her expression showed little comprehension, I added, “With the Directorate of Other Races.” I grabbed my badge—which I always carried—and showed it to her. “I’m here to talk to Mr. Dunleavy, so there was no need to report—”
“Not now,” she interrupted, expression suddenly cross. “Before. When all that racket was happening.”
“Before when? And what sort of racket are we talking about?”
“Must have been seven-thirty, eight o’clock, something like that. And the noise—” She sniffed. “Sounded like they were throwing things about and smashing up the place.”
“No screaming? No arguing? Nothing like that?”
“No. They were quiet this time—except for smashing things up, that is.”
“They who?”
“Him and his dirty little piece.”
I raised my eyebrows and somehow resisted the urge to grin at the bristling disapproval in the old girl’s voice. “His girlfriend?”
She sniffed again, and somehow managed to make the sound disparaging. “If that’s what you want to call her.”
“What does she look like?” Not that I actually wanted to know, but I had no idea how good the old girl’s sight was. Maybe she’d seen Gautier and didn’t realize it.
“Thin, with big tits. Dark hair, dark skin.”
Not Gautier, then. The wind swirled around us again. His scent was fading fast. If I wanted to uncover what, exactly, he’d been up to, I had to get inside. Which meant getting rid of the old biddy—and that
obviously
wasn’t going to be easy.
“Ms. Radcliffe, I really need to talk to Mr. Dunleavy—”
“It ain’t much use, you know,” she cut in. “The noise stopped hours ago. It’s been dead quiet since then.”
Dead
being the operative term. “Ms. Radcliffe, please go inside, out of the cold. I’ll come and talk to you later, after I finish here.”
“Yeah, been told that before,” she muttered, but turned and went back to her town house. Though I had no doubt she’d be peering through the curtains once inside and watching my every move.
I turned back to Dunleavy’s and scanned the windows. No sign of any window being forced—though really, there was no need to when all anyone had to do was push back the cardboard that took the place of two panes. But no one had—maybe because of old eagle eyes in the first town house.
The garage showed no sign of forced entry, either. Whoever had killed Dunleavy—or whoever else was dead inside—must have gone through either the side windows or back door. I walked to the end of the porch and peered around the corner. No windows in sight, broken or otherwise. Just a view of uncut lawn and a fence line that seemed far too close to the end of the building. I stepped from the porch and walked along the wall. The ground under my feet seemed to vibrate, and the wind began to rush around me. I stopped, wondering what the hell was going on, my heart going a mile a minute—then snorted at my own stupidity as the reason came into sight. A goddamn train.
Why was I so jumpy? I might be green when it came to being a guardian, but I’d always been a jump-first, look-later type. And yet here I was, letting an old woman and a train spook me.
Why?
The blood.
The answer came almost as soon as I asked the question. I might be a wolf, I might love to hunt, and I had
certainly
killed in order to protect pack and self, but I’d never loved the taste of fresh blood. It was the one thing Rhoan and I didn’t share. He not only loved the hunt, he loved to rent and tear and kill. I never had, even if I
had
occasionally participated in it.
And eating and loving a rare steak was
not
the same as sinking your teeth into flesh, let me tell you. Even
if
that flesh was only rabbit flesh—which was the only thing we wolves were legally allowed to hunt these days. Steak came in plastic containers and just had to be unpacked and cooked. Steak didn’t continue to struggle for life after your teeth had found its flesh.
And yet, deep down, there was this fear that one day I
would
come to love it. That one day, my vampire genes would assert themselves fully and I, too, would come to enjoy the warm rush of life that flooded the mouth when teeth sunk into fresh flesh.
The shudder that shook my body was soul deep. But in reality, there was no choice for me. My destiny was gathering speed and no one really knew just what the future held. I was a dhampire, and what I would become was already patterned in my DNA. I might currently be more wolf than vampire, but who knew what the future would bring? Especially with the drugs that had been injected into my system by the psychos who’d been hiding under the guise of lovers over the last year or so.
And becoming a guardian, being around death and destruction and blood on a regular basis, might very well be the first footsteps down the path of acceptance. It was a known fact that the more death became a part of your everyday life, the easier it was to accept. I might fight it, but for how long?
Would there come a time when I loved the hunt
and
its aftermath as much as my brother did? As much as Gautier?
God, I hoped not. Surely fate had shoveled enough shit on my plate without adding
that
as well.
I shuddered and rubbed my arms as the last of the train cars rumbled past, then walked on. Blood or no blood, I had to see what had happened in that house.
I stopped near the end of the town house and took a quick peek around. No one in sight. I ducked around, keeping low as I ran past the intact windows. There was an odd, darkened patch of soot-like substance on the concrete near the back steps. Dunleavy had obviously been burning something recently, though why he’d do it so close to his house was anyone’s guess.
The back door was wide open, and the scent of blood was stronger than before. I ignored the wild part of me, the part that relished the smell if not the taste, and cautiously walked up the steps.
The small laundry beyond the doorway was shadowed and quiet. The washing machine lid was open, the tub half-filled with clothes. I glanced at them, noting the dark overalls, the faint smell of oil and petrol. Work clothes. Or, more accurately, thieving clothes. I walked through the laundry and stopped at the next doorway, tasting the air and listening. The blood scent was coming from the right—from what looked to be a bedroom—the shit smell from the left. Given I could see an upturned TV and lounge chair, it was obvious that some sort of confrontation had happened in the living room.