Chapter 24

I LOOKED AT GREG, whose bleak face mirrored the gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach. “I don’t know, Em,” I said. “I don’t know where they could be, but I know we’ll do everything in our power to find them. And we’ve got a lot more power than we did when we were alive.” I gave her my best reassuring look at that last bit, but she didn’t look too reassured.

“Let me look at your neck again,” Greg said, moving over to the couch beside Emily.

“What? Leave me alone, Greg,” she said, swatting him away.

“Be still,” Greg snapped at her. She froze and looked at her brother. He had a look on his face that I recognized instantly, but Emily had never seen. He had an idea, and nothing was going to get in the way of him investigating it. Emily sat still and put her hands down as Greg examined her throat.

“Dammit, she’s healed already.” He scooted away from his sister and looked over at me. “I wanted to examine the wound to see if there were any tool marks or anything strange about the edges of the cut.”

“From what I remember, it was very straight, like a scalpel cut almost. Maybe Bobby has photos.” I pulled out my phone to text the morgue.

“If he doesn’t, the crime scene techs certainly will,” Greg said, standing up and moving over to the computer table. Emily followed him, then took half a step back as the entire tabletop lit up into a touchscreen. Greg tapped on the surface for a few seconds, then picked up a wireless keyboard and sat down.

I finished my text to Bobby, replied to a message from Sabrina checking in on Greg, letting her know that we had a house guest for the foreseeable future, then sent a text to Abby telling her the same thing. I’d heard her moving around upstairs, so I knew she was awake, and she was showing remarkable restraint in not coming downstairs. A message to William telling him I wouldn’t be in the office today finished my mundane tasks, and I joined my partner and our newest vampire at the computer.

“This thing is badass,” Emily said when I sat down.

“Yeah, your brother is kind of a genius,” I replied.

“No kind of about it, buddy. I’m a genius. I’ve got the Mensa membership to prove it. And you know what else I’ve got?”

“A login to the police department computer system. Sabrina gave it to you, remember? I was right there. McDaniel was tired of you hacking into the place, so he gave you access.” I love my partner, but damn it feels good to deflate him every once in a while.

“Who’s Sabrina?” Emily asked.

“My girlfriend,” I said. “She’s a homicide detective.”

“They have vampire cops? That’s wild.”

“She’s not a vampire,” I said.

“You date somebody that’s still alive? That’s gotta be tough, keeping your secret.”

“Oh, she knows all about us,” Greg said. “She’s worked cases with us.” His face went dark. “Lieutenant McDaniel, her boss, he’s the one that . . . identified you. Last night, I mean.”

Emily gave her brother a reassuring smile. “It’s okay, bro. I’m getting used to it. The whole dead thing. It’s no big—holy shit, that’s me.” The reassuring smile fell away, and Emily went even more pale as her eyes got huge and she pushed back from the table.

I looked up at the giant monitor hanging on the wall, and there was the sequence of crime scene photos Greg had called up. Emily lay on the ground, posed, like the other women we’d found, with her hands folded on her chest. She was fully clothed, and other than being far too pale to be alive, she looked like she was just sleeping.

Until you looked at her from the right side, where the slash across the side of her neck was visible even from several feet away. Nothing else looked out of place, and I ignored Emily’s shock. I couldn’t help her work through this part. Nobody could. She was going to have to come to grips with her new place in the world on her own, or she wouldn’t. Nothing I could do or say would make much difference in that.

“Zoom in,” I said.

“I can do one better,” Greg replied. He clicked a few keys, and images scrolled by on the screen. Full body shots from all angles, then closeups starting at the feet and working their way up. He paused on the shoes and hands, but Sabrina and Fitzpatrick had her clothes and were checking it for trace evidence, so if there was anything there that would lead us to a killer, they’d find it.

After a few clicks, Greg landed on a closeup of her neck, filling the screen with the wound. He zoomed in, rotating the image so the slash ran horizontal across the screen. “It’s deep,” he said. “Looks like one cut, no hesitation.”

“Yeah, this isn’t the first person he’s killed like this.”

“This blade is sharp, man. Like you said, maybe a scalpel.”

“But why?” I asked. “He can just open her up himself if all he’s doing is drinking from her.”

“Yeah, but he can’t drain three people in one night, and certainly not one right after the other. You just can’t hold that much blood. There’s something else going on here.”

“What are we missing?” I turned back to Emily. “Is there anything else you remember about the men? What about the inside of the limo? Was there anything lying around that you didn’t remember at first?”

“Like what? Transfusion kits? Jars to collect our blood so they could save it for later, lobster bibs to keep their . . . oh god, that’s disgusting.”

“What is it?” Greg asked.

“They really did have lobster bibs in the back of the limo. That didn’t come out of nowhere, I really saw them. The little plastic ones with pictures of a grinning lobster on them! Oh God, that’s so gross!”

“Also kinda funny,” I said. They both glared at me. “Sorry, but it’s funny!”

“It also tells us why he cut her throat,” Greg said. “You’re not going to like it, though.”

“Too late,” I replied. “This asshole is murdering young women and girls in my city. I already don’t like it.”

“Yeah, well, this means he’s got human blood-drinkers with him. That’s why he had to cut Emily’s throat—they don’t have fangs.”

I felt the muscle in my jaw tighten as I fought not to punch something. “That explains the lobster bibs, too. Humans aren’t built to drink blood as fast as the carotid pumps it out, so they’d make a mess. Dammit.” I was furious, and a little disgusted. We had to drink blood, and Greg and I did everything we could to avoid taking it straight from the source. Now here were these human assholes murdering people to drink blood for kicks. I found myself really hoping one of the victims had some kind of disease they could catch that way.

“But why did she turn? If he bled her out and let the humans drink from her, she would just be dead.” Greg drummed his fingers on the table as he mused.

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know how any of this works. Something about Emily breaks the laws of vampirism? He used a magical vampire scalpel? I don’t know. I just know this guy’s making vampires in my city, and we’ve got to stop him.”

“How are we supposed to do that without all the facts?” Greg asked.

“Well, what do you know?” Emily asked. She held up her hands as we both stared at her. “Look, I’m late to the party, but maybe there’s something I can see that you’ve missed.”

I stood up and started to pace. “Okay, so we’ve got a rogue vampire who knows enough about politics to stay out of sight, but not enough to completely escape notice. Unless he wants me to find these particular victims for some reason.”

“And he’s taking some victims and leaving others for us to dispose of. Because a newborn is either going to sleep until daylight, in which case the sun will dispose of the evidence for him—” Greg started, but I cut him off.

“Or she’ll wake up starving and be unable to control her urges, in which case I put her down,” I said. “So why would he not want to keep these three women in particular? Greg, call up all the missing persons reports in the last three months.”

I stared at the screen as it began to fill with images. Soon the monitor was full, and the pictures began to scroll upward. Hundreds of faces flashed across the LCD display, most of them young men and women.

“Jesus Christ,” Emily said. “How many of them are there?”

Greg tapped at his keyboard, and a number popped up at the top of the screen. “Nine hundred and five in the last ninety days.”

“Holy shit,” I said, sinking down into my chair. “How has this not gotten some news coverage? That has to be just a ridiculous spike in disappearances.”

Greg tapped around a few more seconds, then put the keyboard down and turned to me. “It’s just barely over the statistical average, bro. Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD handles around 3,500 missing persons cases every year, so nine hundred in a three-month span isn’t even a noticeable increase. This guy could take two or three people every week forever without raising suspicion.”

“I had no idea,” I said, leaning back. “And most of those faces look young.”

Greg looked at the data displayed on the tabletop. “Seventy percent of the missing persons reported are teens, so yeah, they are young.”

“Okay, put up what we know about the victims left for me,” I said.

Greg minimized the wall of the disappeared, and three young faces appeared, side by side. All were crime scene photos, since there were no morgue photos of the first two and Emily was still beside us.

“We know Emily Knightwood, age twenty-eight. She’s the oldest of the victims by a pretty wide margin,” Greg said. He kept his tone clinical, but I knew looking at his sister’s face up there tore him up, even if he could just look to the side and see her standing beside my chair.

Greg highlighted the first girl’s picture. “The first victim we were alerted to was Julia O’Connell, aged eighteen. Smart girl, loving family, no indicators that she would run away. Worked late shift at a diner.”

“We should see if there is any security camera footage from Landmark we can get for Emily to look over. She might recognize one of the guys from the bar,” I said.

“I sent an email to Sabrina suggesting that very thing. She says welcome to the family, Emily, and don’t take after your big brother,” Greg replied.

“I think I’m going to like this chick,” Emily said, and it was the first real smile she’d given us since she woke up.

“What about the second victim?” I realized that I knew absolutely nothing about the woman, just that I’d killed her in a parking lot for something that she couldn’t control. Whoever this vampire was, he had a lot to answer for when I found him.

“Kara O’Grady, twenty-three.”

“I’m not much older than that,” Emily said.

“Five years, kiddo,” Greg said.

“Kiss my ass, big brother.”

“Anyway,” I said, interrupting the siblings and motioning for Greg to go on.

“We don’t know a lot about Jennifer. Theatre degree from North Carolina School of the Arts—”

“I think it’s UNC School of the Arts now,” I said.

“Whatever. You get the idea. She was a theatre kid, went to college, got a degree. Last known place of employment was a lighting rental shop up on North Graham Street. She got off work one Saturday and wasn’t seen again until her body was located. Also pretty low-risk overall. Worked some odd hours, and spent a lot of time in clubs, but from what the police have been able to drum up in the last couple of days, she was usually there working lights for concerts.”

“So, we’ve got a high school kid, a lighting technician, and your sister. What do they have in common?” I looked at the three pictures and couldn’t see it. Two brunettes and a blonde, One Asian woman in her late twenties, two white girls. One teen and two women in their twenties. All working pretty mundane jobs that put them in contact with the public, but nothing high profile. I couldn’t connect the dots.

“You said that most missing persons are really young, right?” Emily said, leaning forward onto the table.

“Yeah, most are under eighteen,” Greg agreed.

“What if this Julia kid is the pattern and I’m an outlier?”

“What are you getting at?” I asked.

“We already know our vamp thinks I’m too old. Why? I’m not the demographic he’s hunting. If there are a couple thousand missing teenagers in Charlotte every year, then what’s a few more? As long as he picks them up from high-risk groups or areas, goes for the drop-outs, they might not be missed. But he made a mistake with Julia.”

“Julia did live on the east side. That’s a neighborhood in transition, but there’s still a high dropout rate,” Greg said.

“And a teenaged girl working until midnight on a school night would probably look like somebody without a strong family structure, regardless of the facts,” I added.

“So she looks like somebody that wouldn’t be missed,” Emily continued. “Because there’s a lot of turnover in restaurant jobs, and it’s not unusual for somebody just to not show up for work.” Emily ran her fingers through her hair. “So if he’s hunting high-risk teens, and just randomly catches Julia—someone with a strong family and who’ll be missed—that doesn’t fit the pattern, he tosses her out? Maybe?”

“But what about you and Jennifer?” Greg asked.

I jumped in. “Adults and college grads are more settled. They have steady jobs and are more likely to be missed. So he dumped us. But why would he keep Shelly and Quinn? Why not dump them, too?”

“Yeah, it sounds like at first he didn’t want to keep you, but something made him change his mind . . .” Greg’s voice trailed off as he looked at Emily.

“What?” she asked.

“Your purse was with you when we found your . . . you.”

“Yeah, so? I’ve gotta have my ID to go to the clubs.”

“Do you remember anyone going through your purse? In the car, or before they . . .”

“You can say ‘killed me,’ Greg. I’m not going to shatter.”

“Well, did they? Go through your purse?”

“I don’t know. Wait, yeah, the driver was rummaging through all our stuff while the leader was talking.”

“That’s it, then,” Greg said, and his face was grim.

“That’s what?” Emily asked, looking between us.

I didn’t say anything, but I knew where he was going.

“The driver must have said your name. The leader recognized it and stepped in to turn you before you bled out. That’s why you didn’t just die.”

“Because of my name? I don’t get it.”

“Not because of your name. Because it’s my name, too. Because of who I am.”

“And who your best friend is,” I said.

“What the hell are you two talking about?” Emily almost yelled.

“I’m the Master of the City. This guy has been leaving newborn vampires for me to find as a slap in the face to my authority, to show that he’s above my rules. He killed you to drive that point home even harder.”

“Because you’re my sister. Or at least we share a last name.”

“They’d know more than that,” Emily said. “If they know who you are, then the picture in my wallet would be a dead giveaway.”

“Picture?” Greg asked.

“Yeah, from when you took me to Carowinds for my birthday when you were in college. You still look exactly the same.”

“I would,” he said. “I turned less than three months after that.”

“So the goon sees the picture, reads the name on the license, and makes the connection,” I said.

“He tells his boss, who decides to send a very personal message.” Greg finished my thought for me.

“Message received,” I said. “This son of a bitch wanted my attention, he’s got it. I just don’t think he’s going to like how it goes from here.”

Then my damned consistent phone of doom rang.