Chapter Four #2
The clan followed a normal human schedule.
They worked during the day and slept during the night.
Rex, Harmon, and the others kept a vampire schedule, which was why they’d left the pack in the early morning and had gone to bed shortly after arriving.
They’d known it would make them more vulnerable, but the alternative had been arriving in the evening before people here went to bed.
It would have been useless and would’ve given Jacob the opportunity to refuse them entry.
Jacob finally moved. He stepped out into the hallway, snapping at people.
Now that he was gone, Harmon inched closer to Rex, who was once again staring at the body on the floor.
He wasn’t the only one. All five of them had run when they heard the screaming, and now, they were gathered around the body.
“What do we do?” Mallory asked.
“I don’t think we have a choice,” Rex answered. “I promised Jacob we’d find the killer.”
“What were you thinking?” Merrick grumbled.
Rex glared at him. “That I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.”
“I could have taken Jacob.”
“Could you have taken all the other people outside the door, too? Because you know Jacob wouldn’t have been fighting alone. He might be reluctant to call himself clan leader, but that’s how a lot of people here see him. I’m sure that if he ordered people to fight, they would.”
Harmon suspected he was right. The people here were hurting after so many years of Martin being in charge.
They didn’t know what to do when someone wasn’t ordering them around.
They were lost and needed guidance, which was why some people were already clamoring to become the next leader.
No matter how reluctant Jacob might be, he had more power than a normal clan member. He knew that people looked up to him.
That made him dangerous.
Just like Harmon had expected, it was fairly easy for Jacob to send everyone away. Harmon could hear whispers and conversations as the people went back to their rooms. Some of them sounded angry, but most appeared confused. They weren’t the only ones. Harmon had no idea what was happening.
“Everyone’s gone,” Jacob said as he walked back in. He carefully avoided looking down at the body.
“We can’t leave him here like this,” Rex said. “What do you do when someone here dies?”
Jacob frowned. “You want to know what we do with our dead?”
“Well, this guy is dead. You can’t leave him here, which means you have to do something with him. Unless you want us to take care of it?”
Jacob looked horrified. “No. I’ll do it.”
Harmon resisted the urge to roll his eyes because it wouldn’t help, but he’d already had enough of Jacob. What did he think they’d do, finish drinking the cadaver dry?
Merrick crouched next to the body again. He had his phone in hand and Harmon wasn’t surprised when he started taking pictures. That caught Jacob’s attention again, and he stepped forward. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I am doing?”
“You can’t take pictures.”
Merrick looked unimpressed when he glanced up at Jacob. “Can’t I?”
“It’s not respectful.”
“Do you know how many dead people have their pictures taken every day? Have you ever watched TV? I realize those cop TV shows aren’t real, but surely you know how this works.”
“You can’t call the cops.”
Merrick snorted. “You think? That’s why I’m taking pictures. The body isn’t going to stay like this forever, and we’ll need to be able to look back on all of this.”
Jacob looked like he wanted to continue arguing, but when Merrick reached out to gently poke at the knife in the guy’s chest, he turned slightly green and turned away. Harmon would have snickered if he hadn’t been sure everyone in the room would hear him.
Merrick seemed to have the situation in hand, so Harmon stepped away. There was no need for him to be hovering there. He might be a vampire, but he didn’t enjoy the sight of dead bodies.
“You okay?” Rex asked as he moved with Harmon.
Harmon wanted to snuggle against Rex’s chest, but instead, he nodded. “It’s not the first body I’ve had to deal with.”
“Same.”
That wasn’t a surprise. When people lived as long as they did, they saw a lot of humanity, from birth to death to everything in between. “Who do you think killed him?” he asked.
“Hard to say. I know it’s not one of us, but that doesn’t help. I don’t think Jacob actually believes it was us, but that doesn’t mean that he knows who it was. I think he felt this would be the perfect way to get rid of us, and he wouldn’t be wrong.”
“He should’ve been smart and shown us that he could be a good leader. We might already be gone if he had.”
“He doesn’t exactly strike me as being smart.” Harmon wouldn’t say that Jacob was stupid, but he’d been making stupid decisions.
They waited until Merrick was done and satisfied with the pictures he’d taken to leave the room. Jacob said he’d take care of the body, and Harmon didn’t need to know what that meant. It was none of their business. The clan would handle the body however they usually did, and that was that.
The problem was that the murder made everything more complicated. The situation had already been hard enough without adding stabbing people to the mix. Harmon was sure that no one in their small group had even thought about killing any of the clan dragons, but it could be anyone.
“We need more information,” he said as they walked back to their rooms.
Rex nodded. “Should we wait until tomorrow when everyone wakes up?”
The five of them took a moment to think that over. Harmon knew what he thought was the better idea, and he was sure he wasn’t the only one.
“No,” Merrick eventually said. “We need to start talking to people before they go to bed. Jacob is first on the list. We need more information on the dead man. So far, we’ve only been told that he was a supporter of Martin.
That might be the reason he’s dead, but it also might not be, and we have to find out. ”
Rex sighed heavily. “All right. Who wants to deal with Jacob?”
They all looked at each other again. No one volunteered, which made Harmon snicker. “I’ll talk to him,” he told the others. “In the meantime, you guys should get ready. Something tells me this is going to be long and complicated.”
“My life is long and complicated,” Merrick grumbled.
“Isn’t that a good thing?” Mallory asked. “It means you’ll be able to spend more time with Alpin. Think of the many years you’ll have with him.”
“He is the person making my life complicated.”
Harmon smiled. No matter how much Merrick complained about Alpin, he loved the guy. He wouldn’t be with him if he didn’t.
“We can meet again in half an hour,” Merrick said as he disappeared into his bedroom.
Harmon decided he might as well get it over with. Jacob was still down the hallway in the bedroom, so the easiest way to talk to him would be to catch him there. Harmon headed that way after patting Rex on the arm.
“I’ll be right back,” he promised.
“You better because, if you’re not, I’m coming to get you.”
It sounded like a threat, but to Harmon, it was a promise, and he hoped Rex would keep it.
* * * *
REX WASN’T SURE WHAT Harmon told Jacob, but forty-five minutes later, they were sitting in what looked like a conference room.
It was odd to see this kind of place in someone’s home, but he supposed that with so many people living together, sometimes, it was needed.
It made him wonder if there was a similar room where Harmon lived.
The table was a massive rectangle that spanned the entire length of the room. There were plenty of chairs around it, but there was also space for people to stand around it. The five of them had huddled at one end of the table, ready to get this over with.
Something told Rex it would be a while before they were able to leave.
Jacob was there, too, looking like he was about to bolt. He was sitting on the edge of his chair, still pale, glancing from one vampire to another. He wasn’t giving Merrick and Arlen as much attention, which Rex was pretty sure displeased Merrick.
“Has the body been taken away?” Arlen asked.
Jacob jumped as if startled. Maybe he had been. Rex didn’t like him, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t affected by what had happened. One of his clan members was dead. It couldn’t be an easy thing to deal with.
He nodded at Arlen. “It has been.”
“Can you tell us a bit more about the man who died? You said he was one of Martin’s supporters.”
“He was, and vocally so. That’s one of the reasons most of the clan avoided Brian. He had very strong opinions.”
“And how did Martin feel about Brian?” Rex asked, leaning forward.
Jacob hesitated. “I wasn’t close to Martin, so I can’t give you any details, especially about how he felt about people.”
Rex waved those words away. “Just tell us what you noticed and what you think.”
“Martin knew that Brian’s main goal was to become his second-in-command, and he liked that. He’d chosen Lou, but he didn’t care about either of them, and he was always pitting them against each other. I think he enjoyed watching them fight.”
“Do you think he ever seriously considered putting Brian in Lou’s place?”
Jacob shook his head. “I don’t think so, no. Martin and Lou grew up together. I don’t know if Martin ever liked Lou, but Lou was loyal. That meant something to Martin, no matter how much fun he had watching them fight.”
“What happened after Martin and Lou were killed? Actually, why wasn’t Brian at the fight?”
“He was supposed to be. He got sick the night before.”
That seemed like a massive coincidence. Something told Rex that Brian hadn’t wanted to be part of the fight. He couldn’t blame the guy. He wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with that, either, if he’d been in his place.
But how had Martin and Lou taken it? They were dead, so they couldn’t be Brian’s killers, but Brian wasn’t the only supporter they’d had.
“Who would want him dead?” Merrick asked.