Sanguinary (Night Shift Book 1) Read online

  “Sir?” I leaned forward to see if I could piece together what he meant. The photos were from the last two crime scenes—the ones staged by the perp the uniforms had already started calling the Vamp Killer, though to be honest, at that point we weren’t entirely certain a vampire had done the killing.

  “That’s how long we’ve got.” He began piling the 8x10s, one on top of the other, in no apparent order. “Fifty years.”

  “Until what?” I asked.

  He tapped the photos into a neat stack, set them aside, and leaned forward, placing his elbows on his desk and clasping his hands in front of him. “Fifty years until we’re all either vamps or food.”

  I suddenly couldn’t feel my hands. “According to whom?”

  He shrugged, not breaking eye contact with me. “All the experts. I could show you the reports. They’re marked top secret, but I guarantee there’s a copy somewhere in the police district of every major city in the country.”

  I felt shocky, alternating between too hot and too cold, but I didn’t disbelieve him for even a second.

  “The bastards are organized, Davis—and sneaky as hell. We don’t know anything about them, and they know everything about us. Nine years in, and we’ve already lost.”

  Almost ten years, actually, since vampires had come rising up out of the darkness all over the world, claiming they’d always been here.

  But they didn’t have an explanation for revealing themselves—at least, not one they gave to us. Best anyone could figure, they had waited until there were enough vamps that they had a chance of winning if it turned to all-out war.

  It hadn’t. Not yet. Not quite.

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were conspiracy theorists, people who claimed that vampires weren’t what they said they were—that they were from a different dimension, or were aliens from another world.

  I didn’t really care where they came from, as long as they didn’t go around killing innocent humans. And they didn’t have to kill the ones they fed from.

  But they liked killing.

  It had been intensely bloody for a few years as we humans had learned to fight back, had relearned that stakes and beheading and the cleansing fire of sunlight were our friends.

  We thought we were winning this not-yet-war. Or at least, I had. Sure, there might be the occasional rogue vampire killing for the fun of it, like the psycho taking out women in Dallas right now. But there were more of us, and as evidenced by my experience at the blood house, the vampires preferred truce, too.

  But there was also a good chance it was only our superior numbers keeping the vampires from openly declaring war on us.

  And if they were building up their numbers…

  Fifty years. Oh, dear God.

  “That’s why I’m going to be sending you undercover,” James said. “We don’t have any other choice. We have to get someone on the inside, and Garrett’s the cleanest insert we’ve got.”

  An image of my partner begging the vampire not to leave him flashed through my mind.

  There was nothing clean about that.

  I blinked the mental picture away and spoke tentatively. “I’ve been on the Sucker Squad for three years, sir. Won’t the vampires know who I am?”

  “Maybe. But from what we can tell, we only ever catch the least important vamps.” He shrugged, one shoulder hitching up around his shirt collar. “And honestly? Even the times we’re sure they’ve known we were working to place agents among them, they simply don’t seem to care.”

  We were definitely in trouble. But I had to try.

  God help me, I actually thought, Garrett can handle a basic introduction to a vampire contact.

  That was all he was supposed to do: get me in, then get him out.

  The best laid plans, and all that.

  Chapter 6

  “So tell me what you know about Sanguinary,” I said to Reese. We stood in the shadowed arch of a doorway a few blocks away from the blood house. It was close to midnight. I barely remembered having stumbled out of the house, hanging from Reese’s arm, reeling like a drunkard on the tail end of a three-day bender.

  And that was after only a slight bleeding.

  Reese opened the bottle of orange juice he had insisted we stop and get from the convenience store at the other end of the street. He handed it to me, and I took a long drink. He apparently wanted me refreshed. Healthy.

  Peering past the recessed doorway, Reese scouted the area around us. When he saw no one coming from any direction, he spoke. “It’s a group of vampires, a small contingent. But powerful and growing. They don’t want to integrate with humans—or rather, they think that any integration should be in the form of changing humans to vampires.”

  “So they’re dangerous. Typical vamps,” I said, almost snarkily.

  He stared intently into my eyes. “We’re all monsters.”

  I didn’t rise to the bait. “More than usually dangerous, then?”

  With another glance around the empty street, Reese nodded. “Although I don’t know for sure, my guess is that they’re behind the murders you’re here to solve. I don’t think it’s a rogue vampire at all. I think it’s the whole group of them, either doing the killing themselves, or at least giving the orders. They’re gaining more and more power, and I want them taken down.”

  I paused, momentarily sidetracked by a stray thought. “Why call themselves the ‘Sanguinary’? Other than the blood connection, I mean.”

  He shrugged. “It means both bloody and bloodthirsty, so I guess it fits.”

  “How long has the group been around? Why are they showing up now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” He took his cowboy hat off and tapped it against his leg—a movement I was beginning to recognize as a sign of agitation. “They were around before I was turned.”

  I was missing something here—something that Reese was hiding—but I didn’t know enough to ask the right questions. So I asked what I could.

  “How long ago was that?” I didn’t know if it was rude to ask a vampire his age, but I wasn’t going to let vamp propriety stop me.

  “Eight years.” Pointing at the half-empty orange juice bottle in my hand, he raised his eyebrows. “Finish that. We need to go.”

  Eight years.

  I didn’t know of a single vampire who had been around before they all showed up a little over ten years ago. None of the Sucker Squad files mentioned any elder vampires—not that the humans knew about, anyway, not outside of fiction.

  Fifty years before we were all under the vampires’ control, unless someone could learn enough to stop it.

  The knowledge that the vampires had not really been around before ten years ago was a piece of solving that puzzle, I was sure. Did the Sanguinary include the older vampires who were rumored to exist?

  My instinct told me I was on the right track.

  I needed to give Jeanie a call to find out if they’d gotten DNA back from the Winspear scene. I wanted to find out if the slip of paper that said Sanguinary on it had been in the victim’s blood. Had the vic known about the group before she was taken? Had that been what had drawn the Sanguinary’s attention to her?

  I tilted the orange juice up as I swallowed the last of it, then handed the empty back to Reese, who tucked it into a pocket.

  “Okay. What can you find out?” I asked.

  He glanced up at the sky, as if he could judge the hours until daylight without a watch. “Give me a couple of nights—I’ll keep politicking for entrance. Having you as my bloodgiver will help with that, I think.”

  An unwelcome tremor ran through me at the words. I looked straight ahead and ignored it, along with the tiny voice in the back of my head that suggested he hadn’t told me much that I hadn’t already known. “What’s next?”

  “I’ll be in touch either tomorrow or the next night,” he finally said.

  “And what should I do in the meantime?” I asked.

  Reese reached out with one finger and brushed it against the collar
of my shirt. “Laundry, maybe?”

  I followed his gaze down to where he had touched me and found two small, round bloodstains marring the fabric above the spot where his fangs had slid into me earlier.

  I shrugged his hand off of me and stalked out of the alcove, ignoring both the way my nipples sprang to attention at the memory of the bloodletting and the dark chuckle I heard behind me.

  Chapter 7

  By the time I got to the street where I had parked my car, I could no longer see Reese.

  But I sensed his presence, watching to make sure no one bothered me on the dark and empty sidewalk.

  I couldn’t decide how I felt about that.

  Iverson was waiting by my car when I got there—I assumed the van was somewhere nearby, as well.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I unlocked and opened my car door, shaking my head. “I can tell you care by the way you rushed in to save me back there when Mendoza took my gear.”

  He had the good grace to look uncomfortable.

  “Look, I understand.” My voice was tired. “We need to know what I can find out more than we need any one cop. Just tell me: Did you hear anything else once I handed over the equipment?”

  “No,” he said, seemingly thankful to turn the discussion to a more businesslike topic. “They disabled it pretty quickly. Captain wants you to send in a report tomorrow. Leave it at the mail drop.”

  I blew a breath out and swung myself into the driver’s seat. “I’ll see what I can do. I’ve got some laundry to take care of first.”

  In my rearview mirror, I could see Iverson standing in the street staring after me all the way to the corner as I drove away.

  * * *

  By noon the next day, I had washed not only the shirt I’d been wearing the night before, but every piece of clothing I owned.

  I had spent the rest of the previous evening putting together a report confirming the Sanguinary connection to the murders and had left it in the mail drop early that morning.

  It was a relief to focus on the simple, homey task of laundry.

  Having finished the last load for the day, I was trotting up the stairs from the first-floor laundry room, basket in hand. I hadn’t been out for a run in several days and was beginning to be able to tell. Even this jog up the stairs left me slightly breathless. Tomorrow, I promised myself. Tomorrow I’d hit the gym.

  I felt so damned tired. I was beginning to suspect that might come with being a bloodgiver.

  Wrapped up in my own thoughts, I didn’t notice the man standing in the shadows of the stairway a few doors down.

  He saw me, though. It was clear he was waiting for me. As I balanced the basket on my knee with my elbow and used the other hand to unlock the apartment, he moved toward me, and that was when I saw him.

  I took a moment to scan him as he approached, hands in pockets. Dark hair, tan skin, dark suit. Sunglasses—probably a Ray-Ban knockoff, though I couldn’t really tell the difference between fakes and the real things. When he got close enough to speak, he took the sunglasses off.

  “Detective Davis?” he asked, his voice polite but professional.

  Definitely a Fed.

  “Just Cami, these days,” I replied, working to keep my voice neutral. If the Feds were working with the Sucker Squad right now, no one had told me about it.

  “Cami, then,” he said. “Can I talk with you for a moment?”

  “ID?” I asked.

  He pulled it out and flashed it at me, then passed it over when I propped the basket on my hip and held out my hand.

  Yep. FBI.

  “Okay, Agent Stan Chandler.” I handed his badge back to him. “Come on in.”

  I didn’t look back as I moved inside, but I could hear him following me as I dropped the basket on a chair. I kept moving, through the small living room and around the counter separating it from the kitchen. “Water?” I asked, opening the refrigerator and pulling out a couple of bottles.

  He took one from me. “Thanks. It’s hot out there.”

  “So,” I said, after I took a long swig from my own bottle, “what can I help you with?” I leaned my hip against the counter.

  “I was wondering if you could talk to me about the blood house.”

  I took another drink. “Blood house?” I moved toward the living room to give myself time to think. He was watching me too carefully; I didn’t want him to see me considering his words. “What do you want to know?” I asked, sitting down on the couch. He followed my lead, lowering himself onto the loveseat across from me and leaning forward, his expression open.

  It was a technique I had used before—it made suspects feel comfortable, as if we were merely two friends chatting.

  Fat chance.

  “I want to know why your chief has you checking it out,” Chandler said, his voice still calm. “I want to know what you’ve learned.”

  I shook my head. “I think you’ve got your wires crossed, Agent. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’m no longer with the force.”

  He snorted—not the kind of sound I expected to hear from an FBI agent. “You know, if it turns out that Felicia Monroe made it to Louisiana—if there’s any evidence of the killer crossing state lines—we could make it a federal case.”

  He leaned toward me, elbows on his knees and hands clasped loosely, trying far too hard to look casual.

  “In fact,” he said, dropping his voice, “as soon as we’re sure the doer is a vamp, we can take over the case.”

  Time to shift the topic, at least a little bit. Leaning back, I swallowed the rest of my water in one long gulp. “Not my department anymore.” I shrugged. “Maybe the FBI should take over the case. Doesn’t look like the Dallas PD is getting anywhere.”

  Chandler leaned back, stretching one arm out along the back of the couch and crossing one ankle over his knee. “Maybe so.”

  “I really don’t have anything to tell you. My former partner is introducing me around the vamp scene. I need a job, and the vampires need…” I paused suggestively. “Well, they need all kinds of things.” I crooked up one corner of my mouth. “I don’t know if I’ll go back to the blood house.” Forcing myself to lean back, to look relaxed, I tilted my head at the agent. “But I’m sure you’d be popular. They seem to like the clean-cut type.”

  That got a response, though I’m not sure I would have noticed the shiver that ran down his back if I hadn’t been watching as carefully as I was.

  “So you haven’t learned anything about the Sanguinary?” he asked. His voice was much calmer than that shudder would have led me to expect—it was as if he hadn’t had any reaction at all.

  My heart, on the other hand, sped up. I was glad Chandler wasn’t a vampire, because he probably would have picked up on the response. As it was, though, I kept my expression blank.

  “Sanguinary?” I asked. “Not a clue.”

  He stared at me for a long time, trying to make me nervous, to force me to fill the quiet. But I was a pro, too—he wasn’t going to break me with silence. I let it go on long enough to make most people uncomfortable, then took a breath as if I were about to speak. I blew it out and leaned forward to put my empty water bottle on the coffee table in front of me.

  “You might consider checking in with the local police,” I said. “If there’s anything illegal going on at the blood house, I certainly didn’t see it. Other than the usual vampirism, of course.” I blinked at him. “Maybe I could write down Captain James’s information for you.” I mustered the most innocent tone I could manage. “Or perhaps Chief Wallace? They’ll certainly have more information than I do these days.” I stood and gestured toward the door. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have some errands to run.”

  Agent Chandler rose and reached into his pocket. “Let me know if you think of anything?” He held out a business card “And could you please tell your partner, Mr. Garrett, that I’m looking for him?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry. We’re not partners. I haven’t talked to him sinc
e he introduced me around the blood house.”

  “If you do hear from them, then.” He pressed the card into my hand, and I took it.

  “Of course.” I smiled as I ushered him outside, then started to close the door, but he stopped it with his palm.

  “And Ms. Davis?” he said. “I don’t believe you.” He pulled his sunglasses back over his eyes, nodded at me, and walked away. The Feds were working the Sanguinary angle too. If Chandler got too close, he could blow my cover. I needed to let Iverson know that other agencies were nosing around.

  I glanced down at the cell phone—the new one, the one that only Reese and the department had access to—sitting on the end table by my couch and chewed lightly on my bottom lip. I was already reaching for it when it rang.

  Captain James’s voice was cold and hard on the other end of the line. “We think Garrett’s in trouble. He checked into some fancy rehab clinic last night, way out of his league. We’ve got intel that the hospital’s a front for the vamps, and something big is going down tonight. We’re running a sting, and we need you to come in for it.”

  Acid churned in my stomach. What the hell had Garrett gotten himself into?

  “You think Garrett’s in on it?” I tried to sound professional, but a thread of anxiety ran through my voice anyway. “Or is it a way to get rid of him?”

  “The vamps put him in there, one way or another. There’s no question about it: Either they placed him there or he’s there because of their bite.” I could practically hear James’s shrug over the phone. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter why he’s there. He’s one of ours. We’ll take down the clinic, get Garrett out, and get him help.”

  I couldn’t help but feel guilty for my part in the department’s decision to send my partner back into a situation that sparked his addiction.

  What had happened to him at the blood house after he left with Dahlia and her friend? Had it been so bad that he had felt the need for vampire rehab? Or had the vampires convinced him to go in?

  “You can’t pull me out of the Sanguinary op,” I said, leaning my back against the door as if to keep it closed. “I’m getting close to something important here. If I break cover now, we might never get near the Sanguinary again.”