“It wasn’t always like this.” Lian said that a lot, and always with the same combination of morbid wonder and disbelief. “I mean it. It had gotten worse recently.”
“Even more reason then, I should get back to work. Got a couple more places to visit.” It wasn’t a lie. She still understood my meaning perfectly.
“Right. Let me know if you need anything. I’ll call if I don’t hear from you.”
“Thanks, Li. Love you.”
“Love you too, girl. Be careful out there.”
I slipped my phone into my pocket and thought about how badly I could use a long, hot shower, and a drink. For some reason, I hadn’t expected my return to Anchorage to be so fraught with complicated emotions. I saw now how naïve I was being.
The last of the crime scenes I visited provided a welcome distraction. I had followed them in chronological order from least to most recent, which meant the intersection leading away from the Golden Klondike gentlemen’s club practically reeked of vampire-scented brutality. A few cars cruised through as I walked along the tree line off the side of the road. As soon as I was within range, I closed my eyes and began the reconstruction.
When I opened them again, the images I saw gripped my heart in an iron fist. There was no blood to speak of, but the ghostly afterimage of the body splayed in the middle of the road was so grotesquely clear compared to most of the others. The head, twisted around on a clearly broken neck, stared blankly toward me. All of a sudden, the breath caught in my throat.
“A vampire?” That was new. The previous victims had mostly been bear shifters, just as Lian had said, but there was no mistaking the sickly pallor or the metallic irises of the corpse, clouded in death as they were. He looked a lot more like the vamps I was used to—that is to say, like he’d crawled out from under a rock.
And straight into the true embrace of death.
Another car zipped along the road, passing straight through my vision. I crouched down in the snow to get a better look across the pavement, waiting for a lull in traffic. Two more sets of headlights went by, and then the street fell dark and quiet. Now was my chance.
Springing up out of the crouch, I ran, leaping the snowbank. Exertion made the conjured images flicker, but I had long since learned how to hold my concentration on the move. The nearer I drew to the spot where the slain vamp lay, the more I could sense in the atmosphere, past energies swirling together to create an approximation of the night he died.
That was when I felt something new and all too recently familiar, the bold trace of an aura I had come across less than a week before.
Orion.
He was somewhere in the vicinity.
And another thing I recognized all mixed in, a whiff that gave me flashbacks to rain and gray skies and the clutter of a rushing cityscape pierced by the towering shape of the Space Needle.
The vamp on the ground at my feet was from Seattle. Like me, two thousand miles from home. And I was pretty sure I knew now who killed him. That piece of information shifted my focus entirely. I straightened up, lifting my head into the breeze. The remnants of the Alaskan clanmaster’s energy glimmered on the breeze. Not enough time had passed to dull them beyond recognition.
I turned back toward the woods and began to follow Orion’s trail.
Chapter 7
Logan
A body in the cellar was something of an unwelcome surprise to both Seth and me. It was hidden for a few days now by the state of the corpse and reek once Seth had unwrapped it from its plastic casing Orion arranged. It was, unsurprisingly, another vampire, rendered ghastly pale by the uncompromising touch of Death,
Seth caught my eye as I glanced down from the top of the cellar door and motioned impatiently with one arm.
“Hey, get down here, angel-boy. We’re on corpse-hauling duty tonight.”
I stared at him, into fiery eyes brimming with destructive energy. He was smiling, but there was a thin mask of cruelty behind it. He was constantly on the edge of raging frenzy, waiting for any excuse to spill over. I wondered if he would come up and try to fight me.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He shrugged, a brief, irritated jerking of the shoulders. “Orion doesn’t tell me shit, the son of a bitch. He said something about throwing it into the river.” The smile began to turn down into a scowl. “What are you waiting for? Get moving.”
Despite knowing it would give the demon satisfaction he did not deserve, I complied. He and Orion were each too much of a hassle to deal with at their worst—the easiest thing was to keep quiet. I had nothing to prove on the surface—if a line was ever crossed, they’d find out quickly how I could hold my own.
We pulled the corpse up to level ground. Just as we dropped it on the floor, arms and legs akimbo, Orion stepped around the corner to join us.
Seth made a face. “I thought the dead ones turned to dust,” he remarked.
Orion laughed mirthlessly. “In the sun, my friend, so long as the sun is the thing that does the killing. I’m afraid I’ve stolen the privilege for myself this time. This asshole tried to negotiate with me. Didn’t turn out well for him.”
Seth leaned down to lift his side of the improvised litter. “Let’s get this over with. I’m already bored.”
“Don’t worry. When they finally realize what fate befell him, I’m certain we’ll all be busy.” Orion’s eyes lit with a strange, almost maniacal flame every time he spoke of his rivals. I half believed he had killed this doomed creature on purpose, to goad his enemies out of dormancy. They had spent the past weeks dancing around idle, fruitless negotiations as more and more turned up mysteriously dead.
At last, it seemed that the time for halfhearted diplomacy had passed.
We walked in silent formation, the body balanced between us, through the densely forested wood between the house and the shore. The Alaskan wind blew coldly through my hair and ran its frosty fingers along my neck. To me, the sensation was a comfort, though I noticed Seth shake it away in an angry blast of steam. For once, however, he declined to speak.
We heard the river before we could see it, its voice muddied by the slough of ice rushing between its banks. The ice rumbled as it struggled for position on the ever-shifting surface.
“Here.” Orion stopped. “Wait for a break in the ice.”
“And what do we do if he doesn’t go under?” Seth demanded. The question was on my mind as well, but I let him have the honor of asking. Judging by the way Orion’s gaze narrowed slightly, it was a wise decision.
“He will.” The phrase rang with finality—our leader had spoken. Seth grumbled something else under his breath. Orion turned his attention to me. “Close your eyes,” he ordered. The strangeness of his command didn’t strike me until I had already done as he asked. His voice, low and insidious, now sounded in the back of my mind. “Do you sense that?”
At first, no. But then I caught a foreign vibration, hiding beneath the clutter of everything else. The aura hummed in the background, quiet, unassuming. The only thing I knew initially was that it belonged to a living creature.
“Who is it?” Even as I asked it, I understood the question to be moot.
“You are about to find out.” Orion steered me firmly in the direction from which the unidentified aura emanated. “Go and teach our little visitor some proper manners. And bring her back when you’re finished.”