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As if the facial mutilation wasn’t enough, several sets of fang-size holes marred her neck and collarbone. From the heavy purpled bruising, they were evidence of the M.O.D.—method of death: exsanguinations. Damon had stopped hoping for the existence of a higher power long ago, but, damn, he prayed the mutilation had occurred after she’d already been drained. The thought of her suffering from the injuries to her face as a vampire slowly bled her out was more than even he could handle. Every inch of his being longed to kill the sick bastard who’d done this. The worthless piece of shit deserved to die a slow, painful and torturous death. And he intended to make sure that happened.
He carefully examined the holes on her neck. There was no mistaking it. Her wounds were definitely fang marks, the exact shape and width of the average vampire’s canine teeth. Walking to the coroner’s cabinet, he searched until he found three cotton swabs and the containers used for sending away samples for DNA analysis. He traced one around the edge of her fang bites, another near the edges of her facial wounds and the third over a small speck of dried blood on her cheek. He capped all three samples and glanced down at the body.
A feeling of disgust hit him. Desecrating the poor girl’s corpse was the last thing he wanted to do at that moment, but he couldn’t risk her turning into a vampire within one month’s time. He needed to take preemptive measures to ensure she wouldn’t turn, the measures he should have taken with Mark. Pulling his stake from inside his coat, he placed it over her heart. He closed his eyes, inhaled a deep breath and thrust the stake downward.
He opened his eyes again. Dry bloodless flesh, but otherwise there was no reaction. He let out a long sigh of relief. It was bad enough she’d been murdered by a vampire, but thank God she hadn’t turned in the process. Bile rose in his throat as he thought of Mark being one of those bloodsuckers. Of Mark killing humans to fuel his own immortality. Because once turned, there was no fighting the change, and for the first year a vampire’s blood thirst raged so hard that all the self-control in the world wouldn’t aid him.
Removing the stake from her heart, he pulled his cleaning rag from his pocket, wiped off the lacquered wood and placed the stake inside his jacket again, then closed the drawer, sealing the corpse inside, and walked to Tiffany’s side.
Tiffany lifted her head from the trash bin. Shoving her hair away from her face, she inclined her head toward the drawer. “Is it closed now?”
Damon nodded. “Yeah, let’s go.”
She shot out of the morgue and toward the car as if someone had lit a fire under her ass. Judging by her pale white face, she was more than a little spooked. She didn’t speak again until she slid into the passenger seat.
“I thought you had a strong stomach,” he said as he slid behind the wheel.
She shook her head. “I thought so, too.”
Damon wasn’t surprised. Regular people thought being immune to motion sickness constituted a strong stomach. Dealing with the dead was different. She would need to toughen up for med school, if that was still her goal. She’d been prepping for her studies when they’d last communicated, several months ago. He opened his mouth to comment, but caught himself.
Do not go there, Damon.
He shifted the car into Drive and paused to plan out his next move. Getting the samples into the headquarters database via his personal analysis equipment before the evidence could be comprised needed to be his first priority.
Within a few seconds they were back on the street, and he sped away from the hospital.
She slumped against the headrest and closed her eyes. “Where are we going now?”
He held back a string of profanities. Sending off the samples meant taking her to his place. What the hell would Mark say if he knew he was taking Tiffany home with him? His hands tightened on the steering wheel. The image of her lying across the black Egyptian cotton sheets of his bed sent his sexual imagination into overdrive.
No. Nothing would result from her being in his home, near his bed. He owed Mark that respect. “To my apartment.”
She let out a long sigh. “What for?”
Damon shifted into gear. “To analyze the samples.”
When they reached the Temple Building on Franklin Street, Tiffany’s eyes widened.
“Holy guacamole! You live in the Temple Lofts?” Her eyes scanned the tall brick building. “Very nice.”
He didn’t respond.
She gave a slight laugh. “That’s definitely not where I expected you to live. I mean, obviously, driving this Beamer, I’d be stupid to think you didn’t have some dough, but dang. My little hellhole of a college apartment is nothing compared to this.”
Damon slid out of the car and slammed the door. Tiffany followed suit.
He led the way to the entrance as she trailed behind him. Several minutes later they were on the third floor. He unlocked his door and flipped on the lights.
Tiffany followed him into the two-story loft apartment. Her face lit up. She glanced at the twenty-five-foot-high ceiling, clearly admiring the open staircase and the high quality furniture. Mostly black, white and tan. He’d gone for muted but classy, not to mention that he prided himself on keeping his apartment virtually spotless.
“Wow. Very impressive.” She walked to the skyline window and studied the lights of the city.
Damon closed the door behind him and locked the dead-bolt. “What were you expecting?”
She spun to face him. “Huh?”
“You said this wasn’t what you expected from me. What did you expect?” He stripped his jacket off and laid it on the kitchen island.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess something a little bit…rougher around the edges.”
He removed the Desert Eagle from the back of his pants and placed it on the counter.
The large silver gun thunked as it hit the countertop. Rough around the edges? Try jagged on every corner.
He watched as Tiffany ran her hand over the banister of the wooden staircase.
“If you’re a member of the Execution Underground, what are you doing in Rochester?”
Damon froze for a moment, but then forced himself to relax. He kept his back to her and managed to speak evenly. If she knew he was responsible for her brother’s death, she’d never trust him. Sure, there were other reasons for hunting Caius, but he knew how sharp Tiffany was. He would need a damn good excuse to make her think he had absolutely no connection to her brother, much less any knowledge of his death. Keeping his mouth shut was the best option.
He walked to the refrigerator and pretended to search for something to drink. “Who said I was a member of anything?” He grabbed a bottle of water and closed the fridge. After chugging down the water in a few quick swigs, he turned to her again.
She rolled her eyes. “Look, my brother was one of you, okay? I understand how you guys are with keeping your secrets, never admitting your true occupation to anyone, blah, blah, blah, but there’s nothing to hide here.” She shrugged as if secret international networks of lethal hunters chasing the supernatural were no big deal. “I already know the Execution Underground exists, so why the tight lip?”
He recapped the now-empty plastic bottle and placed it on his countertop. “Organization or not, I don’t make a habit of sharing my personal life—with anyone.”
She gestured to the large open space around them. “Uh…I’m in your apartment. How’s that for personal?”
He smashed the empty water bottle with his palm. Man, she drove him up a wall with the nonstop questions. But what wouldn’t he give to throw her over his shoulder and carry her up to his bedroom. Maybe in another life.
Another life where he wasn’t a worthless excuse for a hunting partner, where his mistakes didn’t cause innocent people to get killed and where the deaths of more than one person didn’t rest on his shoulders. Mark could have gone after Caius without the need for a transfer, closing in much sooner than Damon could. And any extra time meant bodies piling higher.
“There’s no division of the Execution Underground in Rochester. I know that because otherwise my brother would have worked here. So why are you here?”
He took the samples from his coat pocket and walked toward the tech room. It had been meant as nothing more than a bedroom, but it hadn’t even taken him two days to hardwire everything in place. His own personal contact with headquarters.
“Stay here.”
She shot him a scathing look before she marched to the other side of the room and flopped on to the white leather couch.
Certain she was firmly planted in place, he slipped down the short hall to the tech room. He punched in several series of codes to unlock the door and stepped inside. The wall was lined with monitors of all shapes and sizes. The highest-end technology headquarters could supply him with was all contained within this one room. It was a tech nerd’s wet dream.
Damon dropped into the desk chair and typed several numbers on the keyboard. The monitor rang like a telephone until a small beep confirmed that Chris had answered the other line. Seconds later his face appeared on one of the monitors.
Chris’s expression was one of concern. “Hey, Damon. How you holding up?”
Damon held up the three samples. “I need these processed as fast as possible. If I load them into the DNA analysis machine, can you connect with my database and look them over?”
“Yeah, sure. Though…want to trade jobs? I’d rather be an assassin.”
Damon fought back a small smirk as he rolled his chair to the opposite wall and carefully loaded the specimens into the scanner, which processed the data instantly, locking the genetic code into Damon’s control system. Only the technological abilities of the Pentagon and the CIA rivaled those of the Execution Underground, and even they sometimes fell short.
“The samples are from the latest victim. One blood culture, one saliva analysis and one unknown.” He fixed Chris with a hard look. “Looked like the killer ate the body. Ate it. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the bloodsucker ate it.”
Chris raised an eyebrow. “Like a zombie?”
“Sure, whatever you want to call it. But vampire, zombie or who knows what, I don’t care what it is. I just want to know who and where it is so I can stake it straight through the heart.”
Chris focused on one of his monitors and typed at full speed. “The blood looks normal, nothing unusual about it. But the saliva and the unknown, I’m going to have to get back to you on those. There’s something off about them.”
“Off like how?”
“Like there’s a different genetic marker that’s screwing up the whole code. They don’t look anything like normal.” Chris pounded away at his keys. “Are all these from the victim on the far side of Franklin Street?”
Damon gripped the arms of his chair like a vice. “What do you mean, the far side of Franklin Street?”
Chris stopped typing and looked at Damon through the screen. “The most recent killing ten minutes ago on the far side of Franklin Street. A P.D. informant tipped us off. He said he’d call you. He saw it on patrol, and he’s been holding off on calling the cops. I thought you said this was the most recent one? I—”
“I have to go.” Damon stood and jabbed at the keys, beginning to shut down his system. “Chris, I didn’t know about the newest killing and F.Y.I., I live on Franklin Street.”
Tiffany pressed her ear against the door. She strained to hear even the smallest sound, but the door was apparently soundproofed. She sighed. She missed her brother every second of every day, and, as pathetic as she knew it was, she needed to know if Damon was in the Execution Underground, regardless of whether he’d fought alongside her brother or not. Anything that would help her hold on to Mark’s memory was worth fighting for. And she had lost B, too… .
Part of her hated him for the role he’d played in Mark’s death. The other part missed him like hell. She could have used a friend these past three months.
The steel-reinforced door was yanked out from under her ear, and she toppled into Damon’s chest. “What the hell?”
Holy guacamole!
Looking past him, she spotted what he was hiding: a control room that wouldn’t have been out of place at NASA.
Damon slammed the door shut behind him, helped her regain her balance and then hurried past her in a full-on jog. She heard his steel-toed boots clomp up the staircase. What in the world was going on?
She raced after him.
When she reached the top of the stairs, she watched as he threw open the doors of a walk-in closet lined with weapons.
Whoa. Mr. Tall, Dark and Scary sure packed a whole lot of heat.
He shoved various weapons into the military loops on his belt before he slammed the closet doors shut and thundered down the stairs again as if she weren’t even there.
She followed. “What’s going on?”
He grabbed his jacket and gun from the counter, slipping the jacket on and tucking the gun into place before she could blink.
He wrenched open his front door. “If you’re coming, then haul ass. If not, stay here and keep this door locked no matter what.”
He nearly closed the door on her as she rushed after him.
She stayed at his heels as he ran out to the street. She grabbed his shoulder. “What’s going on?”
“Dead body nearby. The vamp probably ghosted it by now, but to be safe, hold your stake at the ready and follow my lead.”
A shot of adrenaline raced through her, and her brain switched to hunting mode.
They jogged to the nearest alleyway, but stopped before moving forward. Tiffany’s eyes widened as she caught sight of the uniformed police officer on the ground. He slumped against the wall behind him. A trickle of blood ran from the crest of his hair. The man groaned.
Damon knelt beside him. “You the informant?”
The cop nodded. Man, the poor guy had taken a beating.
“Were you bitten?”
The officer coughed, blood spewing from his mouth. He spit out a tooth, and then shook his head.
Damon placed a hand on his shoulder. “Good. Are you alright?”
The cop gulped as if trying not to spit more blood, before he managed to say, “Yeah. Hurry. Called patrol, thought I’d lose consciousness. Fifteen minutes till they’re here.” His last several words came out in a slurred mess. Slowly, he lifted his hand and pointed toward the alleyway. “Go.”
Damon gave his shoulder a light, reassuring squeeze. “Thank you.”
Standing, Damon slipped into the alleyway and blended into the shadows at its mouth. Tiffany remained close at his heels. Moving at a slow steady pace, she snaked around the corner right behind Damon. She followed each careful step he took with equal care.
Halfway through she bumped into his shoulders as he came to a sudden halt.
In the middle of the alley, half-hidden by shadows, lay a limp and bloodied body. A pool of dark blood, black against the barely lit pavement, formed in the shape of a halo around…his head?
Tiffany covered her mouth. Her head spun, and she steadied herself on the brick wall of the building that formed one side of the alley. Most vampires preyed on the weak, on those they thought were the easiest targets—not because they couldn’t handle it, but because they liked an easy snack. The only exception was the most ancient bloodsuckers, whose strength was legendary. They barely had to lift a finger. Nausea hit her stomach. The last time she’d seen a young, strong, capable man killed by a vampire was when she and Mark found their father lifeless on their living room floor as their mother clawed uselessly at the monster’s arms. He’d sucked the life from her throat, deaf to Mark’s and Tiffany’s screams. Though she hadn’t yet found him, she would never forget his face.
“He’s not drained completely,” Damon said, his words barely above a whisper.
Tiffany shuddered. There was something not right about this.
Vamps didn’t leave leftovers, yet a puddle of blood surrounded the man’s head. A newborn vamp wasn’t capable of that kind of self-control, but an ancient vamp would lick his dinner plate clean and leave. Near invincible or not, vampires chowed down, drank every last drop of their victim, then they beat feet. They weren’t about to make themselves known to the human population. They were greedy arrogant bastards, but they weren’t stupid. Modern man packed an arsenal of weapons, and an all-out attack from the human race would lead to their demise. Tiffany often wondered if the world would be better off knowing what monsters crawled out after dark. But humanity couldn’t cope with the existence of anything “other,” anything different. They couldn’t handle the truth. They would panic.
Numb, Tiffany stepped out of the shadows and slowly walked over to stand near the corpse, a young guy of around thirty-five who looked as if he’d been healthy and fit before the vamp got him. Now the man’s arm was detached from his body, gnawed to shreds. Exactly the way the young girl’s face had been. His eyes were wide-open, staring toward the night sky, the stars drowned by the lights of the city. Bending down, she carefully brushed her hand over his eyelids, closing them for the final time. She stood.
“Tiffany!” Damon roared.
Before she could comprehend what was going on, he tackled her full force and knocked her to the ground. A loud hiss pierced the darkness, and her mind snapped to attention. A fierce, red-eyed vampire stepped forward from the shadows, its fangs already extended and blood ringing its mouth.
Damon crouched in front of her, blocking her from the vampire’s attack. As the creature lunged, Damon ripped the Desert Eagle from his waistband and fired a round into the bloodsucker’s gut. With such a high-caliber bullet, the vamp’s midsection blew to pieces. Blood and guts splattered over the alleyway, but that wasn’t enough to kill it. Only a severed spine, decapitation or a stake straight through the heart would destroy a bloodsucker for good. The vampire screeched and staggered. It held its internal organs in as the damaged flesh knitted over, healing the bullet wound. It lifted its head. Glowing red eyes pierced through the darkness.
“You will die, hunter.” It crouched in front of the body, guarding the corpse as a lion guards its prey.
Suddenly it ran at Damon, barely visible thanks to its intense speed. It clawed at Damon’s throat, but he kicked his steel-toed boot straight into its still-healing wound. A feral growl escaped the monster’s throat. Damon fought the vampire blow for blow, matching its supernatural strength with a power she’d never seen in a human being before.
For several seconds she stared, completely frozen. She watched their killing dance as the vampire’s blood spilled in all directions, yet each time it lunged, Damon emerged unscathed.
Holy hell. She couldn’t sit there. She had to help. She ripped her own stake from her belt and rushed into the fight.
She lunged at the vampire from behind and stabbed the meaty flesh of his shoulder. Not enough to kill, but enough to injure. In an angry fury, the vampire spun and grabbed at her. She dropped to her knees and sucker punched the bloodsucker straight in the groin.
Take that, sucker.
Human or vampire, getting hit in the crotch hurt like hell.
The creature doubled over in pain, falling on top of her. They rolled across the pavement, each trying to gain the upper hand. Though she was stronger than the average man, the vampire’s supernatural strength overpowered hers. With all its weight it pinned her to the ground. If it sank its fangs into her neck she would be done for. Like a snake, it hissed and threw back its head to attack. A growl, deep and full of anger, sounded in her ears.
It wasn’t the vampire.
Chapter Five
Suddenly the weight of the vampire’s body disappeared. Tiffany’s chest heaved from adrenaline and fear. She stared upward and saw the vampire’s feet dangling above her as the creature struggled helplessly. Damon clenched the monster by the throat. His whole body shook with uncontrollable rage as he crushed the bloodsucker’s esophagus.
“Stake it before I tear its head from its neck,” he growled.
She scrambled to her feet and with both hands drove the lacquered wood of her stake into the vampire’s heart. One last batlike screech ripped through the night before the monster exploded like a bursting sack. Blood splattered over her face and torso, and she thanked God she’d remembered to close her mouth.
Damon lowered his hands and unclenched his fists, and the last remnants of the creature’s flesh fell to the ground.
With her one semi-clean hand Tiffany wiped the vile liquid from her face. “I hate when they do that.”
Damon fixed his stare on her. The raw power that surged from him hit her full force. He was fierce, terrifying and beautiful all at once.
“You are not leaving my sight,” he said. “Understood?”
She nodded, at a total loss for words.
Drenched in vampire blood, he walked over to the dead man and hoisted him into his arms.
He resettled the weight of the dead man’s body over his shoulder before nodding for her to follow him. They needed to get out of there before the cops showed up, and fast. As they snaked down the back of the alley, the distant sound of sirens, followed by the red-and-blue lights casting into the alleyway, lit a fire under their feet. They moved faster. Tiffany sighed. Thank goodness help for the wounded officer had arrived.
They kept to the shadows all the way to the Temple Building before slipping up the fire escape. Two people soaking wet with blood, holding a mutilated corpse, was not a sight for civilian eyes. Damon hit a keypad beside the fire escape window and they climbed into the loft. Wow. Keypad on the fire escape? How paranoid was he?
Once they were safely inside the apartment, they positioned the body on the kitchen island. She stripped off her leather jacket, and Damon followed suit. He held out his arm, and she laid her coat across it. He placed both coats in his laundry room before returning to the kitchen. They both used the sink and washed the caked-on blood from their faces and hands.
Tiffany stared at the body as she used a dishrag to dry her face. “What the hell was wrong with that vampire?” They were the first words either of them had spoken since the alley.
Damon shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen a vampire guard a dead body, or leave so much leftover blood in its victim like that. And I’ve definitely never seen a baby vamp capable of stopping in the middle of a feeding to take a breather, and strong as it was, from the sloppy movements of that thing that was a baby vamp as sure as I live and breath.”
She attempted to wipe some of the blood off her shirt and failed miserably. “It was like it was an animal with a piece of food. Vampires are chickenshits. Every peon vamp feeding off the street runs like hell if their victim is already dead and someone approaches. And you’re right, what kind of bloodsucker leaves blood like that? I’ve learned at least that much from hunting.”
Damon shot her a look. “You shouldn’t be hunting vampires alone.”
She glared at him. “Oh, yeah, why’s that? I’ve been hunting vampires for years.”
“You’re not trained. If I hadn’t been there, that bloodsucker would have drained you.”
She turned away from him. Her jaw clenched, and frustration built up inside her.
“How many times have you come that close to death?” he asked.
She stared at the floor.
“How many times, Tiffany?”
“Lots, okay?” She spun to face him. “You’re just like my brother, acting as if I can’t handle myself. Just because I’m a woman doesn’t mean I’m incapable of fighting. Why do you act like I can’t hold my own?”
Something sparked behind Damon’s eyes, something she couldn’t interpret. “Because you can’t.”