Vampire Babylon - Night Rising Part 22

Dawn couldn't tear her eyes away. Blood...redhaloed Klara Monaghan's body.

Red on white.

Sn-a-nnnzzz,went Breisi's camera.Sn-a-nnnzzz.

Nausea crashed through Dawn, and she closed her eyes, wanting to blank it out. She'd never seen a neck ripped open like this, had never imagined it could happen to someone she'd talked to only yesterday.

A plain white car roared into the lot, and Breisi and Kiko hid their cameras. Two men in rumpled suits got out. Detectives.

Breisi and Kiko made like gawkers, launching into an unscripted lament about the dead woman. An acting cla.s.s coach would've been proud. They ambled off to the left, near some bushes, then slyly crouched down for a better view.

But Dawn went to the right, ignoring the corpse, trying to get herself together. That's when she heard a whisper.

"Dawn."

She told herself it was just a sputter, a wheeze from the exhaust of the dying engine that was her body. A brain burp. But then she heard it again.

"Dawn."

Hands darting toward her revolver and pocket-bound crucifix, she moved closer, near a wall that separated Klara's apartments from another complex.She glanced back at her partners, caught Kiko's eye and motioned toward the wall to show them that there might be something back there. At the same instant, one of the detectives pointed to Breisi and Kiko.

"Hey, you're too close!" he yelled.

Beyond the crime-scene tape, Burks made her way over, probably intending to distract the detective and earn her kickback.

But just as Kiko and Breisi stood to greet the detective, someone grabbed Dawn's arm.

She couldn't do much more than gasp as she was tugged behind the wall. A big shadow greeted her.

Without thinking, Dawn swung at her attacker. He raised his palm, caught her fist in his hand.

But she'd already whipped her body around the opposite way, twisting, leg flying out to connect with his knee.

h.e.l.lelujah. He keeled sideways, thudding against the wall.

"Dawn!" His familiar voice was muddled with pain.

Breath rasping, she held back, took a good look at her a.s.sailant.

"Matt?" She relaxed out of her fighter's stance. Anger turned her fear inside out, exposing her nerves. "You dips.h.i.+t. What're you doing here?"

He was pus.h.i.+ng himself away from the wall. Something-a cat?-scuttled past them, setting Dawn on edge again.

"I wanted...to ask you the...same question." He touched his knee, then frowned, tested it. Took a few seconds to compose himself. "Not that I should be worried about you."

She started to be glad to see him, recalling what had happened this afternoon at Chez Rose. The kiss. Mmmm.

It reminded her, though, that one kiss didn't mean he could tell her where she could be and couldn't be. Or that he could grab her and yank her behind walls when he felt like it.

"You couldn't just come out to say hi?" she asked.

"Trying to keep a low profile."

A tame fog grew golden under the clank and fizz of a streetlight that was struggling to stay on. Groaning and favoring his knee, Matt leaned back against the wall, his light blue eyes narrowing, containing a low fire-the deepest part of a flame. Nearby, a cat yowled.

Dawn stayed on guard, arms curved at her sides. She felt the night tingling at her back, up her spine.

"I'm wondering," she said. "If you're on my dad's case, why're you at Klara Monaghan's murder scene?"

He clenched his jaw, immovable.

A terrible thought hit her. "Are they connected? What do you think Frank did?"

Again, not a word.

Furious, Dawn reared back her fist again, ready to strike out at anyone, anything. Just as her hand hurled toward his tight lips, she pulled her punch, keeping her wrath contained."d.a.m.n it.d.a.m.n it." She pressed her fists against her forehead.

Frank. What did you do, Frank?

"Hey..."

She felt Matt's hands on her shoulders, heard him sniff at her eau de garlic. Too drained to brush him off, she sank against him, used him to regain her strength so she could fight her doubts. Meanwhile, she took in the scent of his s.h.i.+rt: musk, spice, unidentifiable headiness.

Spreading her palms against his chest, she parted her lips, breathed against him, tasted him with every intake of oxygen. As he talked, she felt the vibrations of his words run over her skin.

"Still wearing that garlic," he said. "What do you think you're protecting yourself from?"

"Maybe I just had a nice Italian dinner."

"Dawn, go home. It's safer. You don't need to be around all this."

Tell that to Kiko, The Voice, and their predictions, she thought. h.e.l.l, even this PI who she barely knew realized she was out of her league.

Yet...Dawn exhaled against Matt. She hadn't even told Frank "I love you" back when he'd said it to her during their last phone call a month ago. They'd been arguing about some dumb thing-take your pick-and she'd hung up on him.

As if pus.h.i.+ng away from the thought, Dawn distanced herself from Matt, building herself back up to the big girl she'd trained herself to be. He just stood there, his arms awkward, like she'd robbed him of something.

"When you said you wanted to get together again, I was picturing a whole other scenario," Dawn said, trying desperately to get back her emotional footing.

"I'm not joking around here."

"And what do you mean by 'all this'? What do you know?"

Behind the wall, a car peeled out of the lot as a few more peeled in, ushering in a collage of red-blue cop car lights on the face of the apartment buildings. Closer, another cat screeched, its cry strangled to a fading wince.

"You and your partners saw the body." His mouth curled down at the corners. Anger? "Tell me why you're here and I just might share my theories."

A devil's bargain. Even if it was tempting, she knew that Limpet would kill her if she sang the tune of their investigative details.

But...h.e.l.l, what if she broke this wall of silence between the two parties? What if, in spite of all this game playing and secrecy, Matt Lonigan reallywasan ally?

But if that was true, why wasn't The Voice allowing the other PI to come on board?

Logic told her that she'd better just go with her growing bond with Kiko and Breisi...and whatever she had in The Voice-the devil shealreadyknew.

s.h.i.+t. "I'm here because Klara was a friend in the biz," she lied, taking the easy way out. "Her roommate called."

Matt glared at the ground. The muscles in his forearms bunched, veins rising to the surface of his flesh as he went taut. His anger pulsed between them."Matt, are-"

"Do you believe in vampires?"

Dawn took a step backward. Did he just say what she thought...?

"Do you?" When he raised his head, his eyes were a cool, cutting blue.

Her new cell phone vibrated on her belt, but she had more important things to deal with instead of answering it.

"Believe is a pretty strong word," she said, still hedging.

"Do you think they exist?"

Part of her needed to talk to him about this, needed to hear that he was rulingoutvampires in this case. Hearing it from someone relatively sane would've done a lot for her desire to cling to delusion. After all, Matt never mind screwed her. He didn't go around with bladed crossbows or stakes. And up until a few seconds ago when the word "vampire" had entered the picture, she'd thought he was the most normal thing going on in her life right now.

Up until a few seconds ago.

But, once again, common sense told her to pretend that she thought he was joking around, to blow him off for the sake of keeping their investigation to themselves.Acting!, as Kiko would've said.

So that's what she did. "You're talking about Dracula and Lestat-things with fangs that run around with capes and b.l.o.o.d.y appet.i.tes?"

Wonderful performance. Applause, please.

"Did you see Klara's body, Dawn?"

Again, her stomach dipped, grew heavy with a red-tinged illness. "Not in detail."

"She bled out through a neck wound, and I'm not talking about two neat little punctures, either. I'm talking about a tear, like someone was feasting on her."

"G.o.d, okay, I've got the gist of it." Pain sharded through her temples. Was he testing her, trying to shock the truth out of her?

"You think a vampire did that?"

Somehow, she'd again succeeded in making it sound ludicrous.

After giving her a long look, Matt walked to the end of the wall, thumbs. .h.i.tched in his belt loops. From there, the beat of cop lights swirled over his body as he fixed his gaze on the crime scene. The wall was blocking her own view, thank G.o.d.

"Let me tell you something," he said. "When I was a boy, my parents and I left the theater one night...I was ill...and when we went out the back door, into the alley..." He stopped, cleared his throat. "We ran into this man. He was crazed. My dad tried to hand over his wallet-he didn't want any trouble-but the man...he..." Matt looked lost, like he couldn't believe what he was saying. He tilted his head. "He took my dad, and with these...teeth...fangs...he ripped out his neck. Then, while I sat there like a coward, he did the same thing to my mom. I finally found my legs and ran away. I screamed and screamed, but..."

Stunned, Dawn walked closer to him, but Matt evaded her. The patrol vehicles' lights seemed to grab at his clothing, unsuccessful in their attempt to hook him back as he returned behind the wall to the dim lighting.

"It happened a long time ago," he said, tone flat. "I'm sorry. That's beyond awful."

"But useful. It gave me the incentive to become a detective. I took criminal justice cla.s.ses in college, discovered that the police academy didn't agree with my...point of view..." His laugh was etched with hard finality. "And here I am."

How could he talk about this so rationally? "So you think...a vampire...killed your parents?"

"The police reports said it was some raging psycho who belonged in a mental ward. But they didn't see the guy, his bared teeth, the inhumanity of him. That's why I decided they were full of c.r.a.p and I was going to work my way around the system. PIs have a lot more freedom to maneuver than cops."

"Matt..."

He held up his hands, warding her off. "Really. It was years ago. You know how it is."

His clear-cut reminder of a parent's death weighed her to the spot. But it also linked her to him, because they were both struggling to shed a child's misery and loss.

"And now you're a vamp hunter, is that what you're saying, Matt?"

He laughed.

"Right?" she repeated.

"Are you able to come to that conclusion through personal experience?"

He knew about the red-and silver-eyes?

Panicked, she brushed past him, searching her way out of the trap he'd so carefully built around her. The cop lights bathed her as she came to the end of the wall.

"Wait." He grabbed her arm below where she was wearing the jacket sleeves pushed above her healing burn wounds.

Was it her imagination, or was he checking them out a little too closely?

She yanked her arm away.

It didn't stop him from finis.h.i.+ng. "The best way to stay safe is to stay home. I mean it. This isn't your area of expertise." He shrugged, his gaze shyly going to the ground, then back up to her. "I want you in one piece, for selfish reasons."

"Because we're going to get busy after this is all done? Flattering. But I'm not one to wait around for other people to take care of my problems. Frank'smyresponsibility."

"That's n.o.ble, it really is." He came to hover above her, his body blocking the streetlight. He was all darkness and heat. "But there's something more going on that you really don't understand. I don't know exactly what it is yet, but I'll find out. You should ask your boss about it. Demand some answers. Thenstay out of it."

"I've already asked questions until I'm blue in the face."

"Then dig a little deeper into Mr. Limpet yourself."

"So I can help you with your detective work?"

He backed up a step, smile flas.h.i.+ng. "When you're ready and willing, I won't turn you down on that. I'm just waiting for you to come to me when you've sorted some things out, Dawn. That's all." Cutting him off, she raised her hand in an abrupt good-bye, walking back to the crime scene and leaving him in the dirt.

Demand some answers. Yeah, like it was that easy.

As she took in the news vans that had just arrived, the ever-growing crowd of onlookers, the fear lancing the night air, her heart rate picked up.