CHAPTER SEVEN
Davien
I brOUGHT MY motorcycle to a stop, my boot kicking out the stand, then lifted my arm to check the time and exhaled a quiet, irritated breath.
It was almost four thirty in the morning by the time we’d made our way to the latest scene.
It’s not that vampires needed sleep in the way humans did, I was just so done with this night and I had a knot in my gut about this one.
At least the damn drizzle had finally stopped.
We approached the alley in silence, both of us scanning our surroundings out of habit, and it hit me straight away—the scent.
Thick. Metallic. Blood. The air had changed before we’d even reached the body.
It saturated the space to a degree that would have undone a lesser vampire in seconds, dragging instinct to the surface with little time for control. The scene was a mess.
Not clean. Not precise. Not controlled.
Thankfully, Marlette and I were not so easily affected.
The blood was everywhere. Splashed across aged brickwork, pooling unevenly along the ground and smeared in erratic patterns that spoke of a struggle.
And in the middle of it all lay the body of a middle aged man.
He’d clearly been left right where he’d been attacked, twisted slightly, as though whatever had taken him had seen no need to move him afterwards.
He’d been attacked here.
Fed on here.
Left here.
I exhaled slowly, dragging a hand down my face as I took it in. The contrast to the forest scene we’d just come from was immediate. Honestly, it was a little jarring.
This scene was drenched in chaos.
This clearly wasn’t the same perpetrator.
Not even close.
“Do you smell that?” Marlette asked, her voice low, controlled.
I stilled, forcing my focus past the overwhelming scent of blood, filtering through it with careful attention. She was right, there it was, beneath the blood.
There was a scent.
Faint, but present.
I frowned slightly, isolating it further. It was unfamiliar to me. Entirely so. And that, more than anything, gave me pause.
It was vampiric, but I had made it my business to know every vampire within this city and its surrounding territories. There weren’t that many. There never had been. We weren’t native to this place, and the Ninth ensured numbers remained… manageable.
Which meant that this scent right here… should not exist.
I turned my head slightly, meeting Marlette’s gaze. “A rogue one?”
“Could be, but I think there's a more likely scenario—a newbie.”
“We’ve had no reports of rogues of late, especially in the upper city so I guess that fits. But a newbie? Why would anyone turn them only to leave them? Here… where their presence would mean instant death. I’m not picking up any other scents. Whoever made this mess, did so alone.”
Marlette smacked her lips in concentration. She took a moment to think.
“A dhampir perhaps? I’ve heard there are a few down south.” She finally suggested.
“Valerius’s?”
“My guess is as good as yours, Davien.”
A dhampir was a plausible explanation. It fit the scene—the kill.
If a dhampir had become of age, they would have little control over themselves, including their need to feed, which would explain the lack of control and the mess of the killing.
Whatsmore, if it was one of Valerius’s, it would explain why it was alone.
Valerius—the prince of vampires and head of the Ninth had fathered several dhampirs in an attempt to grow his personal armies, taking no care to keep track of who was born.
He treated it as a test; if they found their way back to him he deemed them worthy of his presence.
Fully knowing that most wouldn’t survive the transition.
He didn’t follow the old laws, hating those who did. He had no respect for life.
“Let’s see if we can pick up a trail then, get this dealt with so we can carry on chasing our tails on our never ending hunt of the unknown.” I said.
Marlette let out a quiet, amused breath as she crouched beside the victim, drawing in a measured inhale, committing the scent to memory.
She moved first.
I followed.
The trail was faint, but it was there—threading though the alley and towards the adjoining building. Nothing about it was concealed. If anything, it felt careless.
Or inexperienced.
We entered without resistance, the door at the rear was left unsecured, and we made our way inside. The building was old—narrow corridors, peeling paint with the faint smell of damp clinging to the walls.
Interestingly, the victim’s scent lingered strongly here, insinuating that they resided here… along with the predator that had ended their life.
“A couple?” I suggested.
Marlette paused for a moment, then shook her head. “No, his scent is concentrated here at this door and the one further down the hall,” she said, nodding to the door at the end of the small hallway. “This other scent is only mingled with his down here.”
Marlette took the stairs first, leading us up a steep, narrow flight of creaking wood that protested under even the smallest shift in weight.
“I hate old stairs like this,” I muttered, ducking slightly to avoid catching my head on the low ceiling.
“Not my fault you're too tall,” she replied, a hint of a smirk in her voice as she continued upward without slowing.
I exhaled through my nose but said nothing further.
She stopped on the landing, head tilting slightly as she followed the scent, then lifted a hand, indicating to the plain, unremarkable door in front of us.
“This one.”
I stepped past her and knocked.
Once. Twice.
Silence.
No movement within. No shift in the air. No nervous heartbeat.
I didn’t bother waiting any longer. A brief adjustment, a subtle shift of pressure and the lock gave with little resistance.
The door opened quietly.
The scent hit me immediately, the same faint one we’d been following from the alley. Except in here, I was swallowed by it.
I stepped inside, my gaze sweeping the space in a single, efficient pass.
Small.
Neatly contained.
Lived-in.
The flat was modest but… intentional. Soft furnishings, books stacked in uneven piles, a worn sofa by the window. Personal touches everywhere, half-finished cups of tea, a jacket draped carelessly over the back of a chair.
A woman’s space.
That, more than anything, caught my attention.
I moved further in, slowly, deliberately, taking in the details.
This place was far too cluttered, far too lived in. Something wasn’t right. “Something’s off.”
Marlette didn’t respond. She was already moving through the room, careful, methodical, touching nothing she didn’t need to.
Everything was too human.
Too mundane.
This place was in complete juxtaposition with the violent crime that had led us here.
There were no signs of struggle. No disruption that matched the violence we had just witnessed. No indication that anything capable of that kind of attack belonged here.
And yet—
The unfamiliar scent lingered.
I strode into the kitchen and opened a cupboard to find various boxes of tea stacked tightly into the space, like someone had tried to stuff it in there without a single ounce of effort given to organisation. I pulled out a box of hibiscus tea to see it was only four years out of date.
Internally, I gagged.
Did humans really drink this stuff?
Grimacing, I closed the cupboard again and made my way back to Marlette.
“Here,” Marlette said, after a moment, handing me an electricity bill she’d found.
Miss Ailsa Delaney.
“Name mean anything to you?” I asked.
“No. You?”
“No,” I said, folding the piece of paper and putting it in my pocket.
We continued our search, moving with care, disturbing as little as possible. Drawers remained mostly closed, objects returned exactly as they had been found.
A soft thud broke the silence and I turned to see a… cat.
It sat perched on the arm of the sofa, watching us with an unblinking, unimpressed stare, tail curled neatly around its paws.
Marlette crouched slightly, her attention shifting.
“Well, aren’t you a pretty thing,” she murmured, her voice softening.
The cat blinked slowly in response.
I watched the interaction for a moment, then exhaled. “You’re talking to it.”
“Yes.”
“It won’t answer.”
“That’s not the point.”
I glanced back towards the room, then to her again. “We’re here to investigate a kill, not make furry acquaintances."
Marlette reached out, letting the cat sniff her finger before giving it a light scratch beneath the chin. It leaned into her touch without hesitation.
“Animals notice things,” she said simply.
“That doesn’t make it a reliable witness.”
“No,” she agreed. “But it doesn’t make it useless either.”
I studied the animal briefly. It remained entirely at ease, unbothered by our presence, by the scent, by anything that should have unsettled it.
Interesting.
“You’re assuming it lives here,” I said.
“I’m assuming its owner lives here,” she replied. “Which means sooner or later, whoever left that scent behind will return for this one.”
A fair point.
I said nothing further.
The cat gave a short chirp, as if satisfied with our conclusion, before settling back into its place on the sofa, eyes half-lidded but still watching.
Marlette straightened, her expression returning to its usual composure as she glanced around the flat once more.
“Does this look like the home of a rogue to you?” she asked.
I followed her gaze—taking in the small, careful details again. The normalcy. The evidence of an ordinary life.
“No,” I said.
And that was the problem.
Who are you Ailsa Delaney?
But there was no point stewing over it any longer tonight.
“Right, I’m tired so I’m calling it a night,” I said, already heading back to my bike. “But I think it would be wise to keep eyes on the place. See if she does come back.”
“You think she will?”
“You saw the place, she clearly left in a hurry. She’s bound to come back for some belongings or at the very least to feed that cat.”
Marlette smiled, that dumb cat no doubt on her mind. “I’ll make some calls.”