His tone or expression must have set Parker’s detective instincts tingling. “You’re getting serious?”
The other man laughed at what he must consider a witty one-liner, but Boaz played dumb and took the words at face value.
“Everybody’s gotta settle down some time.” He clasped Parker on the shoulder. “I’m going back for another look.”
“Make it quick.” He shook his head, still chuckling, and checked his watch. “The cleaners are getting antsy.”
Leaving the pitted strip of asphalt, Boaz trudged back into the woods to do what he did best.
The victim had been identified as Angelo Willis of Clan Willis, whose newly turned lover, Ron, had met his end at the railroad museum earlier in the night.
Boaz had expected to find Ron’s murder had been a punishment for the younger vampire stepping out on his lover, but this killed that line of inquiry stone dead.
Ron hadn’t had it easy, but Angelo, the poor bastard, had suffered more.
Wrists opened from palm to elbow, throat slit, and femoral arteries gaping, he had been hung naked between two pines and left to bleed out. Beneath him, the pine straw glistened black in the moonlight, and the size of the puddle made it clear the vampire hadn’t fed since news of Ron’s true death had reached him.
Chin pointed skyward, he stared up at the treetops. Or, he would have, had his phone not covered his eyes. Like all the others, music played from the device, but the song wasn’t the same. Another dead end.
“He’s still alive, well, undead,” Honeywell murmured from right behind him. “We need to cut him down.”
Jessica “Honey” Honeywell was the reason Boaz was out in the middle of nowhere debating that very thing. He had dropped in to say hello to a friend, Mark Chambers, on his way out of town when his old flame waylaid him with a link to his case. Now he had more questions with no answers than when he arrived to meet with Addie.
How dead was too dead when you were already undead? He had no clue. Only a master vampire could tell him if Angelo was revivable. His corpse was intact, his decapitation thwarted by a thin strip of meat.
Boaz examined the knots and made a mental note of them, but the killer used all manner of materials to bind and subdue his or her prey. “How old is he?”
“Two-fifty or three hundred.” She leaned over his shoulder, her breath in his ear. “He’ll turn to dust and blow away come morning.”
Choosing to ignore the come-on, he kept his game face on. “Can they revive him in this condition?”
“Hard to say.” She withdrew a fraction when he didn’t reciprocate. Honey was smart like that. “The master of Clan Willis is upper limits for a made vampire. If it can be done, he’ll know how to do it.”
“The head is still attached.” Boaz leaned in as close as he dared without disrupting the evidence underfoot. “Might explain why decay hasn’t set in.”
If the clan master could save him, Angelo could tell them who did this.
“I heard you got yourself a girlfriend.”
The change of topic didn’t surprise him. “And?”
“Also heard you were staying at the Whitaker place.”
“Yeah.” He rolled his hand, waiting on her to get to the point. “What about it?”
“Rumor has it you’re off the market, but I don’t buy that for a minute.” She sized him up, made sure he knew she still liked what she saw. “You’re as available as ever, right?”
The words got stuck in his throat, but he pushed them out in the face of her amusement. “Not exactly.”
“Oh, honey, no. You’re either monogamous, goddess help us all, or you’re the same old Boaz who’s always known how to show a girl a good time.”
A reluctant smile kicked up his lips. “Why can’t it be both?”
“Mm-hmm. See? You never change.” She bumped shoulders with him. “Can you make it by my place?”
Again, the words didn’t want to come. This time he figured it was because his heart was pulling him in one direction while duty yanked him in another. The idea of belonging to someone was…not terrible. Strange, but doable. He might even grow to like it.
His parents weren’t the lovey-dovey type, but they had built a solid life for each other and their kids. Sure, Mom and Amelie fought like cats and dogs, and Dad would rather stare into space than see what was right in front of him, but that’s just how things shook out for them.
It could have been a lot worse.
“I’m an honest man these days,” he joked to let her down easy. “Don’t tempt me.”
“You really mean that.” Honey spun an earring through her fingers. “Huh.”
“It’s new,” he said gruffly. “I’m still figuring out what to do and how to act.”
“Seems like you’ve got what not to do down pat,” she teased back. “That’s the big one.”
The old Boaz might have viewed juggling three women as a challenge, but that was before he set eyes on Grier, all grown up and everything he ever wanted. And even then, he still took Adelaide’s hand and made her a promise he couldn’t break. Slowly but surely, it was sinking in that he was too damn old for the bullshit he got up to in his youth.
Plus, the one thing he could say for himself was he didn’t cheat. He hurt women, he knew that, but he made it clear up front what they could expect from him. Fun. That was it. No strings. But some still got attached.
“Okay.” Honey picked her way behind the corpse. “Do you think whoever did this realized they were leaving us a witness?”
The smooth transition from personal to business was one of the reasons he liked her so well.
“Maybe whoever called this in scared them off before they finished the job.”
“Maybe.” She pursed her lips. “It was an anonymous tip, so it’s hard to say.”
How anyone found Angelo out here left Boaz twitchy with the certainty the killer called it in themselves. That meant they wanted to get caught, or they wanted other vampires in the area to know they were being hunted.
“The other kills were similar to Ron’s death,” he reminded her. “Newly resuscitated vampires.”
“You can’t think we’ve got a vampire hunter.” She laughed hard once then sobered. “Seriously, those went out of style ages ago.”
“They crop up now and then.” Humans watched movies, read books, got ideas. “People notice neighbors, coworkers, even their friends acting strange. They hold that behavior up against what they think they know about vampires and decide it’s their civic duty to go on a killing spree.”
The one human killed so far had been the primary food source for his vampire lover, so the hunter hadn’t been too far off the mark. It was the only mistake he had made so far, if it was one. They might have viewed the human as guilty by association.
The problem with those statistics being, they were ninety percent sure this killer was also a vampire.
To his knowledge, no vampire had ever gone on a killing spree of this magnitude against its own kind.
“That would explain why they’re sticking to freshies.” She frowned. “They’re easier to identify and simpler to kill.”