I pulled up in front of a small house belonging to one of the officers I’d seen at my apartment the other night. I’d picked it over the other one mainly because it was closer to where Jack and I lived—a house in a residential neighborhood in northeast Portland. After the fight and the drive over here, it was after 11:00 pm. All the lights in the house were out and no car was in the driveway, but it could have been in the closed garage. I sat in the car, staring up at the house.

What was I going to say? Take me to your leader? I snorted. Like that wasn’t cliché at all. But I needed to know more about what was going on. I checked the note again. This officer’s name was Kevin Newland.

Gathering my courage, I got out of the car and went up the walk. I knocked lightly, not wanting to wake anyone. Then, when no one answered, I pounded harder. A light flipped on upstairs, so I lowered my hand and waited. A few moments later the downstairs light came on and the front door cracked open.

The officer peered out through the crack, rubbing blurry eyes. I recognized him from both my apartment building and his employee file picture. “Can I help you?”

Instead of answering, I pushed the door into him, knocking the officer back a step. In his sleepy state, Kevin couldn’t keep his balance, and he fell to his butt on the tile of the entryway. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.

“Hey!” Kevin exclaimed, sounding more awake now.

Still riding the high from draining that vampire, I leaned down and grabbed the neck of the officer’s T-shirt, which proudly displayed him a graduate of Oregon State University. Figured he was a beaver. Rivals to my school, the ducks. I still felt loyalty to my school, despite the fact that I hadn’t finished my degree. A wave of anger went through me, hot and sharp.

Balling the fabric in my fists, I hoisted him into the air and slammed him against the foyer wall, as if he didn’t have a foot of height and a hundred pounds on me.

“Who is trying to kill me?” I growled, getting in Kevin’s face. I actually wasn’t even sure he was involved; he could have lied on the report because he didn’t know how to explain how I got away from him and his partner. But if he did know, I was hoping that by bluffing, that I could rattle him into telling me something.

Even though I wasn’t thirsty, being this close and smelling his fear and sweat made my throat ache. I could feel my fangs trying to descend. This time I was able to clench my teeth and keep them up, but just barely. I was sure my effort gave me a truly terrible grimace.

“What?” Kevin gasped, his eyes bulging. He clawed at my hands and kicked at me, but I hardly felt the blows, and he couldn’t break my iron grip. My grin widened. I could get used to this vampire thing.

Kevin’s face was turning purple, so I lowered him down so that his feet touched the floor, and loosened my grip on his throat. “There have been two attempts on my life so far that I know of, three if you count my dead roommate. You know who’s behind it, don’t you? That’s why you lied about seeing me, isn’t it!”

“No, Everett. The boss sent us to protect you,” Kevin gasped.

I stared at him. “Wait, by boss you mean…”

“Lady Ann. She was concerned about her favorite acquirer.” I rolled my eyes at that. Worried about her amulet, more like. “But I guess we got there too late.” Kevin gave me a curious look. “How’d you get out, anyway?”

I let go of Kevin and stepped back. “Jumped out the window,” I muttered, trying to process this new info.

“The window? From the sixth floor? You’re crazy, man.” Kevin shook his head.

“Why didn’t you say she sent you?”

“Would you have believed us? Besides, it’s not exactly discreet to go around yelling the name of Portland’s most infamous mob boss, is it?”

“True.” I crossed my arms and regarded the crooked cop. “If you were there to protect me, why the guns?”

“We were a little on-edge,” Kevin coughed.

I rolled my eyes. “Does the Lady know who’s after me? Or why?”

Kevin shrugged and slid down the wall to sit cross-legged on the floor. “I don’t know. Think she tells grunts like me things like that?” He winced and massaged his throat. “Quite a grip you’ve got there.”

“Yeah, I’m a…” I trailed off. Jack had said the supernatural world was on a need-to-know basis. Plus, it was my one advantage over the would-be killer. Better to keep quiet about it for now. “Been working out.”

Kevin looked up at me with pursed lips. “We searched your apartment, but didn’t find all the goods. Figured you had it on you. Lady Ann is most excited to see the latest artifact you promised her.” He held a hand out expectantly.

The artifacts stolen from my apartment were valuable, sure, but the amulet I carried had been specifically requested by Lady Ann. I didn’t know how’d she’d known it was there at the museum, since it had taken me over a week of searching the badly organized depths of the storage rooms afterhours to find it.

A surge of possessiveness swept over me, and I shivered as I fought to keep from clapping a hand over the pocket that held the amulet. I hesitated, unsure of what to say. It wasn’t just that it gave me leverage over her, the amulet was mine. I didn’t know where the feeling came from; I didn’t have any particular attachment to the gaudy gold thing. All I knew is that I would sooner cut off my own arm than hand it over to anyone.

Besides, something he said didn’t sit right with me. He’d gotten there after the apartment had already been ransacked. But he’d said “didn’t find all the goods”, implying they’d found some. I remembered the empty baggies scattered on my floor. The goods had already been taken before the cops cornered us there.

Which meant that hadn’t been the first time they’d been there that day. I backed away from the officer, feeling sick. They were the ones who’d ransacked my apartment and killed Lindsay, likely using the excuse of the welfare check to get inside. And it explained why no one had called in the ransacking: it had been done by cops. Lindsay had likely been killed after they realized she didn’t know where I was.

They’d left after that, but been drawn back by the 911 call made by the neighbor I attacked. Maybe he’d been able to describe me well enough, or maybe just the address of the call had made them suspicious that I’d made the dumb mistake of going back home.

I tried to keep my realization off my face as I stared down at Kevin, trying to figure out what to do. I couldn’t let him know I was onto him, but I needed to give him a message to give to Lady Ann.

Finally, I said, “I was mugged leaving the building the night I stole it.” I’d had enough practice at lying lately that it came naturally, rolling right off my tongue without hesitation. Plus, it helped that everything I said was technically the truth; I was just leaving out the important part and letting Kevin come to his own conclusions.

Understanding blossomed on Kevin’s face and he groaned, dropping his hand. “And you’ve been looking for it. You thought my partner and I might have been involved.”

I nodded. “Clearly I was wrong.” I turned and started walking toward the front door.

There was the scrape of a drawer opening and then Kevin said in a hard voice, “Everett, where do you think you’re going? The boss would like a word with you.”

Hand on the doorknob, I looked over my shoulder to see Kevin had a gun pointed at me. The drawer of the table beside the door was open, and an empty holster was visible inside.

I raised one eyebrow at the gun. “You think that scares me, after the week I’ve had?”

Kevin just stared down the barrel at me, eyes narrowing. He obviously wasn’t going to let me go without a fight.

I concentrated on the feeling I’d gotten before of time slowing down. I hadn’t done it on purpose yet, but it was worth a try. Being shot hurt, so it was not an experience I wanted to repeat. The world faded as I rushed toward Kevin. I knew it had worked because Kevin’s expression changed in slow motion from confident to shocked. I slapped at Kevin’s gun hand, knocking it to the side before tackling him into the wall.

A shot rang out from the gun and a window shattered. A car alarm on the street started blaring, but I barely heard the commotion as I buried my fangs in Kevin’s neck. I sucked greedily, and Kevin struggled for only a moment before sagging. Clinging to his torso, I followed him to the floor.

The blood was good, but not as good as that vampire’s had been. Funny, at the time I hadn’t liked the taste, but now I wished I had it again. I took a few more disappointing licks, and then shoved Kevin’s unresisting body away from me. Kevin sunk down, a giddy smile on his face. He didn’t look as out of it as Officer Hubbs yesterday night, but he was in no condition to stop me now. And if the venom worked like Jack had described, he wouldn’t remember me coming here or using vampire powers. Or he wouldn’t be able to trust his memory.

He deserved to die for what he did to Lindsay, but I didn’t think I could face myself if I took his life in cold blood. I already felt bad enough about hurting that vampire earlier, even though it had been self-defense.

For good measure, I took the gun from Kevin’s limp hand, then snagged the holster from the foyer table. I snapped the gun back into the holster and stuffed it in my jacket pocket before leaving the house. Kevin was already sitting up, looking dazed. The car alarm was still blaring outside.

“Come back!” he called after me with a pleading note in his voice. I ignored him and kept walking.

Jack’s car, parked on the street in front of the house, sported a newly shattered back passenger side window, and a bullet hole in the back seat. I looked back at Kevin’s shattered front window and groaned. Just my luck that stray bullet hit Jack’s car.

The lights of the car flashed in time with the alarm. Sighing, I took the fob out and clicked the alarm off before getting in. Jack was going to kill me. I just hoped he was still alive to be mad.

---

Continue on to Chapter 13

---