Chapter One
BENTLEY
As soon as I walk into the office, I know something’s up. Everyone is gathered around a screen that’s playing something I can’t really see through the bodies crowded around it.
Curious, I make my way forward as someone turns off the lights, brightening up the screen.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Marcus barks, answering the very question I wanted to ask though I didn’t have the desire to bark it loudly.
“I don’t know, this just started broadcasting,” Finn says as I step up to them. Finn Hayes is the only human who works at the Vampire Related Crimes Unit and seems to be quite an interesting addition to the group. He joined recently during our last large case where a man by the name of Perry had created a group of humans who were trying to sow discord between the two species. They’d created a drug that had resulted in Marcus, Briar, and me attacking Finn, which I thought would be the last we saw of him, but he’s still with us and ready to take on another case, which I’m grateful for, since he seems to have helped us figure out how to work together as a team.
He just recently began dating Marcus, who is the oldest vampire in the department as well as my superior. All of us work as detectives, and if the vampire who is flashing his fangs while bound and blindfolded on the screen has anything to do with it, it seems like we have a new case.
I stare at the screen as the man sits in the metal chair, rocking it this way and that. He tugs at the chains that rattle as he twists his body, his expression one of panic.
“I’ll fucking kill you! I’ll kill you! Who the hell do you think you are?” the man asks, and I wonder if he knows about the camera.
“Is this live?” Marcus asks as he looks over at Alexei who’s one of the few still at his computer.
The Russian vampire, who is also on our team, nods. “It went live exactly two minutes ago and has already been shared thousands of times. We’ve seen a glimpse of a second person, probably the abductor, but nothing more than that. They haven’t said or done anything yet.”
“We already have a cyber team trying to track it down, but it all depends on how tech savvy our perp is,” Brooks, the deputy chief and our leader, says from the front of the room.
I’ve never dealt with a case like this before, but I guess with internet and technology becoming more relevant, things like this were bound to pop up. Obviously, there are a lot of cyber issues, but that usually falls into a different department.
My attention shifts back to the screen as the man on display lets out a sob. The background behind the man is a black sheet and there’s nothing else to give us a good idea of where he’s at—no discerning factors that could tell us where this is being recorded. It could be in someone’s house for all we know.
There’s a minor flash of the second man, mostly black clothes, and then a gun makes an appearance. The second man reaches in, still only showing his arm at most, and pulls the blindfold off the captive. The man yanks his head back to look at his captor and growls something inaudible at him. There’s nothing on his face that tells me that he recognizes the abductor, but my guess is that the captor has something covering his face. It’s clear he doesn’t want anyone to see him.
The abductor points toward the camera with his gun and the man shifts his eyes to look. He seems surprised but his eyes are darting back and forth, like he’s fixated on something beside it instead of directly in front of it.
That’s when the vampire shakes his head, turns back to his captor, and yells, “Fuck you. You won’t get away with this. Fuck you!”
The attacker shoots him in the leg and the vampire screams before his head is physically aimed in the direction of the screen. The captive hesitates until the gun is pressed against his head. I notice that the vampire is either extremely young or there’s something in the bullet because his leg isn’t healing. Instead of instantly healing, blood is oozing out of it, dyeing his pants red.
“I-I… fuck. Fine! I’ll do it!” he says. “Just promise you’ll let me go when I’m done?”
He glances at his abductor who must nod because he turns his attention back to the camera. “My name is Trent Wilder and they want you to know they’re coming for you. That you’ll be next. You know who you are and what you’ve done. The only way to survive is to give yourself up to the police. If you don’t, you’ll be d-dead within one month.” The vampire shifts, turning toward his attacker. “P-Please. Please, I’ll spill everything to the police. Let me go, I’ll tell them everything!”
The feed cuts and we’re all left standing in silence.
“If he killed him, he probably would’ve killed him on camera, right? Do we know the location yet?” Briar asks.
“The video’s settings show our local area, but that doesn’t mean he’s local,” Alexei explains. “You can state you’re from anywhere or put tags to direct a specific audience toward it, but we’re left to assume that yes, it’s our area. We could get a location on the captive and tell better by his place of residence. We’ll need someone to run sounds and see if they can pick up anything from the audio.”
“He was using specialized bullets too. You could see his leg wasn’t healing,” I say. But how the fuck did they get ahold of a bullet like that?
“Trent Wilder… Trent Wilder,” Finn says over and over as he rushes for his computer. Marcus and I crowd around him since he seems to have an idea. “The name sounds extremely familiar, right? Anyone else think it does?”
Marcus nods. “Wilder… the last name rings a bell. I think they’re an elite family of vampires. Old money. I don’t recognize the man who was on screen, though, but he could possibly be a relative.”
Within minutes, Finn finds out exactly who the man is, and like Marcus said, he’s a middle-aged vampire with a lot of old money coming from his father who is also a vampire.
I slide into my seat and pull up my own search on him and see that the man’s name has exploded along with the video and speculation of where he might be. People are already calling it a setup or a government conspiracy, and I know that within twenty-four hours, the internet will be abuzz with misinformation unless we do something to stop it. I watch the video again from the beginning to catch anything I could have missed but not much happened in the two minutes before I showed up.
The attacker never gives away anything, and you can’t even see an inch of his skin anywhere. He never comes on screen to allow us to guess his height or body type. His black clothes are baggy and give nothing away.
Marcus sets his phone down and leans into us. “They’re trying to track the IP address but they’re thinking he used an anonymizer or something like that to make it impossible to track. I don’t know, I know very little about computers. The video wasn’t live long before it got pulled from the streaming service.”
Brooks steps out of his office and gives us a wave the moment he spots us. “Church, bring your team in here.”
“Of course,” Marcus says as he waves at those of us sitting at the cubicle facing each other. There are three desks on each side, and while it was supposed to promote teamwork, instead, it just made for a lack of privacy when you didn’t want to stare someone in the face. Finn at least made it fun compared to how it was before he arrived. He’s already changed the dynamic of the group and he’s only been with us for one big case. It’s clear he plans on sticking around for more.