Blood Law Read online

  For Daddy

  acknowledgments

  Writing can be a solitary path, but no writer is ever truly alone. There are usually many supporting characters who work tirelessly to see a book created and to keep an author sane. I’m no exception, and would like to pay heartfelt tribute to the following people.

  Thanks to Carolyn Haines for her guidance, friendship, encouragement, and hours of reading various rough drafts. You saw something in those early pages and helped me find my voice. Alex, Varik, Tasha, Harvey, Darryl, and the other residents of Jefferson wouldn’t exist had it not been for your support.

  I want to give a huge thanks to my wonderful agent, Marian Young, for not only being completely awesome in every way but also answering hundreds of questions, guiding me through “the process,” and most important, taking a chance on a new author with a crazy idea to have vampires running amok in the Mississippi backwoods. I couldn’t have asked for a better champion, and I’ll never be able to fully express the depths of my gratitude.

  Thanks to my truly amazing editor, Danielle Perez. While I may have started with a good story, you’ve made it leaner and meaner with your insights, suggestions, and questions. Like Marian, you took a chance on a new author, and your support has been incredible. “Thank you” doesn’t begin to cover my appreciation for all of your hard work.

  To my equally incredible publisher, Nita Taublib, thank you for your wisdom, insights, and support. Huge thanks to the Dell art department for creating such an outstanding cover. (I’ve been left speechless, which is virtually impossible for a Southerner!) I’m truly honored by the dedication of everyone at Dell who worked to bring Blood Law to fruition. Many thanks!

  I would also like to thank some very special people for sharing their knowledge and expertise. Thanks to D. P. Lyle, M.D., for providing forensic information, and thanks to Ron O’Gorman, M.D., for answering some of my medical questions. Thanks to the members of the underground vampire communities (names withheld by request) who shared their personal experiences. Thanks to the members of law enforcement who responded to my questions on various Internet forums, e-mail lists, and in person. I wish I could name you all individually. Please know that I appreciate everything you do on a daily basis and thank you so much for your insights! Any errors or acts of creative license involving the aforementioned individuals or groups are my own.

  Special thanks go to all the students who passed through the University of South Alabama’s fiction writing workshops, read various incarnations of this book, and offered their feedback and suggestions. Extra-special thanks go to Michelle Ladner and Kim Robertson for slogging through the full complete manuscript. More special thanks go to Annmarie Guzy, Ph.D., for helping me to understand that gore isn’t always the way to go. Sometimes it’s the slow and steady creeping shadow that is the most effective. And to the USA Horror Club I pay special tribute for their constant and unfaltering support that is not unlike a crazed machete-wielding maniac or a horde of rabid zombies—y’all rock!

  Finally, I want to thank my friends and family—Carolyn W., Ricky, Sarah, Robert, Mary, Mike L., Steve, Dan, Bobbie, Thomas, Joe, Debra, Joey, Lauren, Crystal, Jim, Nicole, Brent, Lucy, Chris, Liz, Dave, Brent, Jr., Theresa A., Theresa B., Heather, Athena, Alexis, and Mike Z.—for their patience, support, and willingness to share mass quantities of caffeine and chocolate. If I’ve forgotten anyone, it wasn’t intentional, and you know who you are and how much I appreciate you. However, the most special of thanks are reserved for two people.

  Mom—thanks for encouraging me from a young age both to be creative and to understand the value of having “a real job.” You were my earliest reader, critic, and supporter when I was a kid and making up my own stories—complete with dialogue for you! You’re the best, and I love you!

  Mark—you’ve stuck by me through the shadows as well as the light. I could never name all the ways in which you supported me and this book. You read pages. You cooked. You looked after the cats. You brought me mochas when I needed a boost and flowers when I forgot to stop and smell the roses. You saw me on the bad days as well as on the good, and you’re still here. I couldn’t have gotten this far without you. Thanks, babe, and I love you!

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Excerpt from Blood Secrets

  Copyright

  prologue

  SIX LIFELESS EYES FOLLOWED HIM, SILENT WITNESSES WHO would never share their stories, never reveal his secrets.

  He tried to ignore their accusing stares by turning his back to them, but six pinpoints of heated malice bore into him as he swung the hammer. Each strike drove the sharpened cross through layers of flesh and bone to pierce the still heart of his latest victim.

  No, he shouldn’t call it a victim. It was nothing to him. It wasn’t even human. It, and others like it, would pay for their crimes. Crimes committed against him, his family, and against God himself.

  Those bastards would pay for what they had done to Claire. He would see to that.

  The final blow landed, and the hammer fell to the blood-soaked cement floor with a dull thud, splashing drops of congealing blood onto his already stained work boots. He stared at his handiwork. It was perfect, just like the others. He wiped a bloody hand across his sweating brow and smiled.

  “That bitch’ll never figure this out,” he said, turning to his mute audience. “Not until it’s too late, anyway.”

  Six lifeless eyes stared at him in adoration. Three mouths opened in a silent chorus, singing his praises, as he waltzed to a tune of his own design with the memory of his beloved Claire.

  one

  October 13

  ALEXANDRA SABIAN HATED CEMETERIES. DURING HER twenty-plus years as an Enforcer with the Federal Bureau of Preternatural Investigation, she’d been in far too many. Some thought cemeteries were calm and peaceful places, but for her it was like stepping into a waking nightmare.

  Blue and white emergency lights strobed across the landscape, casting strange shadows on the ground. The pulsing wash created the illusion of movement in the corners of her eyes, which relentlessly searched for the shadows that moved against the direction of the light.

  Crime scenes attracted both the living and the dead, and it was her job to listen to both.

  She pulled her shoulder-length auburn hair into a crude ponytail and secured it with a paper hair cap similar to what surgeons would wear in an operating room. She carefully stepped into a disposable Tyvek jumpsuit and slipped paper foot coverings over her boots. Preservation of the scene was vital, especially with outdoor sites. In today’s world of forensic science, a stray hair or fiber could make or break a case, and this was one case she wanted to get right. The protective gear she donned was to prevent cross-contamination and had the added benefits of rendering the wearer androgynous, giving the appearance of multiple Pillsbury Doughboys prowling the scene.

  She signed in her name and badge number with the communications officer responsible for keeping track of everyone who entered and left the scene. Steeling herself against what awaited her on the other side of the yellow tape barrier, she ducked under the barricade and picked her
way through the headstones, snapping a pair of latex gloves into place as she walked.

  “Murder, my ass,” someone said in a raised voice from a group of uniformed officers huddled in the darkness. “Killing vampires should be considered a public service, if you ask me.”

  Alex recognized the voice as belonging to Harvey Manser, Nassau County’s duly elected sheriff and all-around jackass. His dislike of vampires, and even more so of her, was well documented, and the feeling was mutual. Tonight, however, she wasn’t in the mood to respond to the obvious bait he provided. She ignored the comment and kept walking.

  Even though it’d been forty years since vampires—her people—had revealed themselves to humanity, relations between the two species remained tense. Progress had been made in educating the human population about the difference between real vampires and those portrayed by Hollywood, but some of the old fears remained and combined with the new. She could understand their fear. Suddenly waking up to discover that humanity wasn’t the only intelligent life on the planet must have been quite a shock.

  Floodlights illuminated the scene, and she blinked against their glare as she joined the group of similarly attired detectives and officers surrounding a freshly discovered body. Centuries of evolution had made her entire race photophobic—a misnomer because they didn’t actually fear light. Instead, they experienced varying degrees of eye discomfort or pain, depending on the amount of brightness. Like most vampires, she thought wearing sunglasses during the day was a fair trade for the superior night vision she gained. Not that it helped her much under the glare of police spotlights.

  “Alex.” A short Doughboy wannabe with a round caramel face broke from the group. “I’m sorry to call you out in the middle of the night like this.”

  Alex shrugged, already focusing on the scene before her. “Night. Day. Doesn’t really matter. It’s not like killers punch a time clock, right?”

  Lieutenant Tasha Lockwood sighed. “No, I guess not.”

  As the liaison officer between the human-operated Jefferson Police and Nassau County Sheriff’s departments and the FBPI, Tasha had worked closely with Alex for the six years Alex had been living in the tiny southwestern Mississippi town. While neither of them would categorize their relationship as a friendship, they’d built a level of mutual respect and understanding that both found comfortable.

  Alex indicated the body with a thrust of her chin. “So, what’ve you got for me?”

  “Same scenario as before,” Tasha answered, leading her around the scene’s perimeter. “Caucasian male vampire, nude, no signs of defensive wounds on hands or arms, no blood present at the scene, cross-shaped stake driven through the heart, and—”

  “No head,” Alex finished as they stopped beside a tombstone, in front of which the body lay.

  The corpse lay on its back with its arms stretched out at shoulder height, feet bound with bright yellow nylon rope, in a classic crucifix position. The ragged neck stump abutted to the sleek black granite tombstone, so it appeared as though the marker itself was the body’s head.

  The image of another body, bloodied and lying crumpled beside a gravestone, pushed its way into her consciousness. She closed her eyes and forced the memory to retreat into the darkness of the past once more. Opening her eyes, she looked over the scene and noted the leather pouch draped around the arms of the cross-stake. “Who called it in?”

  “Anonymous tip came into the main switchboard at JPD,” Tasha answered. “The nine-one-one system automatically logs the numbers of calls received. Switchboard doesn’t.”

  “Photos been taken?”

  “Yeah, it’s all yours.”

  Alex skirted around the tombstone, careful not to disturb the body’s position, and knelt beside it, inhaling deeply. A vampire’s sense of smell was ten times that of a human, and she found a complex kaleidoscope of scents: the cleanness of pine from the trees hidden in the darkness beyond the floodlights. The earthy smells of a nearby freshly dug grave. The stink of sweat mixed with adrenaline from the humans moving at the periphery of her vision. Leaning close to the corpse, she inhaled again and fought the urge to sneeze. “Body smells of decay and a faint trace of ammonia.”

  “Ammonia?” Tasha echoed. “Didn’t you say the same about the other bodies?”

  “According to the ME’s report, our killer scrubbed the bodies with an ammonia mixture, presumably to limit the amount of evidence we could gain. It also keeps initial insect activity to a minimum.”

  “Crap. Well, that makes our job all the more difficult.”

  “Yeah, but it also tells us that our subject has at least a working knowledge of forensics, which is one more reason for us to be careful when handling the scene.” Plucking the leather pouch from the cross-stake, Alex pried the cords open and dumped the contents into her gloved hand. A golden wedding band. A Mississippi driver’s license. Two bloodstained pieces of what appeared to be ivory.

  “Are those teeth?” Tasha asked, peering over Alex’s shoulder.

  “Fangs,” she said, poking them with her gloved finger. Disgust rose within her. Vampires didn’t grow fangs until puberty, when hormonal changes forced the body to undergo its physical transformation from child to adult, and they were permanent dental fixtures, not the retractable kind favored by film and fiction. Until that time, human and vampire children were virtually indistinguishable. Defanging a vampire was the equivalent of forcibly castrating a human—a brutal practice that was reported all too frequently.

  She dropped the fangs back into the leather pouch and examined the ring. It was a plain golden band with no inscription or other identifying marks. She checked the corpse’s left hand and saw a clear delineation in the skin coloration of the third finger that matched the width of the band. “Our victim was married,” she said, and added the ring to the pouch.

  “Interesting,” Tasha said. “Our last vic was single.”

  Four days prior, Alex and Tasha had worked a similar scene across town. The body of Grant Williams, an employee of Phancy Photos Studio and Video, was discovered in a loading bay at Kellner Hardware. Williams had been positioned in the same manner, and the pouch draped over his cross-stake contained fangs, a blood-smeared photo of the victim and his girlfriend, and his driver’s license. A tattoo on his lower back had helped them confirm his identity.

  However, Williams wasn’t the first body. Nine days before, a startled security guard at a rest stop north of town had found the body of an as-yet-unidentified vampire in one of the men’s room stalls.

  Alex held the new license in her hand, turning it toward the light. “Eric Stromheimer, age ninety-seven, address is four thirteen Cork Lane.” She glanced at Tasha. “He’s local, just like Williams.”

  “You’ll notify the family?”

  “I hate this shit.” Alex slipped the driver’s license back into the pouch. Notifying families that a loved one was dead was never easy, and when that loved one had been murdered, it was even worse. She stood and slowly began searching the ground around the body for anything that appeared out of place.

  “Evening, ladies,” a young man pulling a gurney said as he approached.

  “Hey, Jeff,” Alex replied without glancing up.

  “May I be the first to say that the marshmallow-man look is not flattering on either of you?” Jeffery Stringer, assistant medical examiner for Nassau County, announced with a broad grin.

  Tasha launched into a lecture about proper conduct at a crime scene, to which Jeff alternately smirked and chuckled, and Alex rolled her eyes. Twenty-three, long-limbed and skinny, and with delusions of being a ladies’ man bouncing in his head, she knew Jeff was more talk than action, and even though his comments often bordered on inappropriate, she just as often found he brought a much-needed levity to an otherwise gruesome occasion.

  “Besides”—Tasha was wrapping up her lecture and glancing at her watch—“how can you possibly be so damn chipper standing in a graveyard on a weeknight?”

  Jeff grinned as he la
id out a black body bag next to their victim. “Caffeine, sugar, and sex. Not necessarily in that order.”

  Tasha groaned and shook her head.

  Alex snorted and paused in her search. “That’s more information than I needed, Jeff.”

  He shrugged and worked a pair of latex gloves over his long fingers. “The lieutenant asked.”

  Alex chuckled and resumed her search of the surrounding area. She circled the perimeter marked by the tape and on each subsequent pass moved closer to the center point—Eric Stromheimer’s headless body.

  Jeff whistled softly as he squatted beside the headstone for a closer look. “Another decap for your collection, huh, Alex?”

  “I’d prefer the collection to end with three, thank you.”

  “So would Doc Hancock.” Jeff rose and grabbed a large case from the gurney. “By the way, I called him, and he’s not going to be happy if this interferes with his New Orleans plans this weekend.”

  “Granddaughter’s wedding?” Tasha asked.

  Jeff nodded. “He said if he misses seeing her walk down the aisle, then he was going on strike. In the meantime, he’d be able to take a look at your latest acquisition in the morning.”

  “Great,” Alex muttered. “That means he should have the autopsy done by the time the cavalry arrives.”

  “Cavalry?” Tasha faced her. “What cavalry?”

  “I called FBPI headquarters after Doc Hancock gave his findings on our last victim. A couple of forensic techs and a mobile lab will be here tomorrow. Once they arrive, we’ll be able to process evidence quicker.”