Chapter Five
Either Anika Draper was hiding from me, or she’d left the city. Not even Bastien, the Clinton County vampire master, could find her. He didn’t think she’d fled, though. He, like Max, believed she was holed up somewhere close, trying to recover from the damage my magic and my blade had dealt her.
I was becoming a little obsessive, because in my heart—and no matter what Max or my own research told me—I believed I could retrieve what she’d stolen. Surely some of it remained inside her. I absorbed power. I could soak up whatever lingered, and if none of my magic was left, I’d take hers.
It occurred to me that she might have taken my ability to absorb power, but I wouldn’t dwell on that. No sense being negative.
Not quite a week after my attack, I was back to work. Half the supernaturals in the city were hunting the siphoner, and I had no doubt that we’d find her eventually. Even if she left Jakeston. I’d track her down. No matter where she went.
But I had other responsibilities, as well.
“I sure enjoy this, Kaity Bug,” Joe said. “Riding shotgun with you, chasing ghosts, killing…” He frowned, his voice fading.
“Vampires?” I asked helpfully.
He pursed his lips. “Bad guys,” he said. “I missed being normal.”
I laughed. “We hunt vampires and rogue supernaturals. We take clients who need us to get rid of their ghosts. We fight demons and protect the city. You’re a vampire, I’m a wolf. When have we ever been normal?”
Remy Simon leaned up from the back seat. “Staking vampires is the most fun, isn’t it?”
Joe didn’t let the hunter rile him. “Sometimes breaking a hunter’s face and making a meal out of him is even more fun.”
And that riled Remy, who, as a human hunter, was a little on the biased side. “Sick bastard,” he growled.
I knew Remy was sticking close to me because he now believed that I was at risk of being killed by whatever I came up against, but I didn’t mind. I wanted a fight to come so I could prove to them all that I was still Kait Silver. That I could still fight and come out on top.
And maybe I wanted to prove that to myself, as well.
Joe grinned and gave me a wink when I glanced at him, but before he could say anything, my cell phone rang.
It was Lucy. “You’re on speaker, Luce,” I told her. “Remy and Joe are with me.”
“Good,” she said. “That’s good.”
I simply waited. Lucy had something to tell me, and when it was extra heavy, sometimes she was slow at getting to her point.
“My dreams,” she said finally, reluctantly. “Ugh, Kait.”
I blew out a hard breath. “I’m listening,” I said.
“There’s a girl,” she said.
I nodded, though she couldn’t see me. There was always a girl, and there was always an asshole hurting her. At least in Lucy’s dreams.
“Well fuck,” Remy said, not as patient as I was. “Whatever’s going on with her, she’s going to die while you’re figuring out how to talk. Spit it out, Spooky.”
Lucy wasn’t a fan of Remy’s nickname for her, but at least it got her going. “She was restrained on a bed,” she said.
She trailed off for approximately two minutes.
“Yeah?” asked Remy. “And?”
“Quiet, Remy,” I snapped. “Let her talk.”
“I’d love to let her talk,” Remy replied. “But it seems like she forgot how.”
She did seem to be a little more reluctant to talk about her dream than usual. “Are you okay, Lucy?” I asked.
“Okay,” she said. “Yes. Yes, I’m okay. I should have sorted out my thoughts before I called you.
My mind is still half asleep. Half in that place.
” She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and her voice was stronger when she began again.
“She’s restrained on a bed. The room is big and it smells sort of…
old. Dusty. It’s cluttered. I know that, but I didn’t see it. ”
“Maybe she’s in an attic,” I said.
“I think so,” she agreed. “It feels like an attic. She’s terrified of the person who has her, and I get the sense that he enjoys her terror.
Other than the terror, all I felt was hopelessness.
She doesn’t believe she’ll be found.” She hesitated.
“Or…maybe it’s more like she doesn’t ever believe her life will be better if she is. ”
I frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Joe said, emotionlessly, “that all she has known for a very long time is hell.”
“Yes,” Lucy said softly. “She has no hope.”
“Okay,” I said, and my protective instincts rose up to choke me. As did my rage. “Give me something I can take to Rick, Lucy.”
“I don’t have much yet. She craves ice cream. She wears a wedding ring. She’s a brunette. She’s worried about a cat.”
“So we’ve got an overweight married woman with a cat,” Remy said. “Probably only one or two in the whole city.” He laughed, amusing himself.
“She’s young,” Lucy said, ignoring Remy. “I get the feeling she married when she was still a teenager. I don’t know if she’s still married, if her husband is alive, or what he looks like. I don’t have a name. I can’t see her face.”
“It’s early. You just started dreaming about this girl. Every dream will give you something new.” I didn’t have to reassure her. She knew her ability better than anyone. But maybe she needed the reminder.
“That’s right,” she said, her voice a little brighter. “I don’t think she’s in immediate danger. I don’t think he’s going to kill her. He wants to keep her alive. Aware.”
“I’ll give Rick what we have,” I told her. “Let me know when you dream anything new.”
She yawned. “I will.”
“Lucy,” I said, before she could hang up. “Any word from Sam?”
“No. I’d tell you immediately.”
“Thanks, Luce.”
“Don’t worry,” she murmured. “Sam likes to disappear sometimes. He’s fine, and he’ll be back.”
I knew she was trying to convince herself more than me. We both missed the shapeshifting serial killer, but he was the love of Lucy’s life.
Sam had tried to convince Detective Moreno that he hadn’t killed the childless blonde woman—and if he was telling the truth, then someone had killed her and made it look like Sam’s work.
I didn’t believe Sam had killed her, but Rick wasn’t convinced, and he was still working the case, hoping to find evidence of a copycat.
Joe, Remy, and I were currently on our way to check out a report of supernatural activity, as Rick put it when he called me, in the Pocket. The Pocket was the nickname for an isolated dump of a village called Falton, just outside the city. The police tended to give it a wide berth when they could.
It was a dangerous, dismal place. It was also where I’d first seen Sam. Sometimes a certain type of supernatural went there to do bad shit. Demons, for instance.
“Let’s see if we can get out of Falton and to the office early enough to make Max happy,” I said, as I drove cautiously through the streets of the Pocket.
Rick had given me a location that was right in the middle of the town.
Not all the residents of Falton were totally against police presence in their streets, because one of them had called in the report.
“The caller said there was a crack in the curtains in the abandoned house across the street,” he’d told me.
“She said it looked like someone was flying or floating through the room. She looked through her binoculars, which apparently she keeps hanging on the wall next to her shotgun and a picture of her dog. She saw a dark figure moving around the person flying—or floating—and is convinced either aliens or witches are doing human sacrifices and cooking them in cauldrons.”
I’d snorted. “She thinks a witch is flying on a broomstick through a house?”
“This is what you get when you agree to work for Jakeston DSA.” And there’d been a smile in his voice.
The JPD had recently shuffled him to a new building and given him a new title, and he’d gone without arguing.
Rick was now senior detective of the new Department of Supernatural Affairs, which boasted a whole six employees and was treated to much smirking by most of the public and nearly all of his colleagues.
But after the vampire attacks and the cover-ups that came after, someone had quietly stepped in and created the new department. No one seemed to know who was behind the DSA, but Rick had immediately been transferred over to help run it.
And he’d brought me over with him.
I still had my laminated ID with the red line which told the city that I was working for—and with—Mayor Louis Hedrick. After the first few times I’d been stopped or questioned by a cop, they’d finally just started ignoring me when they saw me at a crime scene.
Ordinarily I’d have parked my car a good distance from the Pocket, because chances of returning and finding half of it missing were good.
But I wasn’t trying to hide my presence.
I’d park in the driveway next to the house and between Joe, Remy, and me, we’d be able to keep an eye on the car as we walked through the house searching for broomsticks and cauldrons.
Our biggest issue would come from either residents trying to shoot us or the roving “guards” who patrolled their streets. We’d come up against both before, and they were a pain in the ass. They were also dangerous and not to be underestimated.
Relief flooded me, though, when I realized all over again that I no longer had to worry about Joe. And Remy…well, no one in the Pocket was going to take down the boogeyman.
So I wasn’t worried when I pulled into the short driveway next to the empty house.
But the second I got out of the car, my wolf growled. I chalked it up to the normal bad aura of the Pocket. The darkness was filled with unpleasant scents and my wolf’s nose was extremely sensitive.
Amongst the oil, old food, and garbage, I smelled burning wires, marijuana, and decades of tar and nicotine coating the walls. I felt the despair and fear and suspicion of the Pocket.
None of that was unusual. But then, as we neared the front door, another scent wafted through the cracks to drown out the other smells.
Fresh blood.
Rivers of fresh blood.