Rhoan parked several houses down from Sal's, then opened the trunk and tossed me a laser. He pocketed one himself then gripped a rifle. In my brother's estimation, you could never have enough fire power.
"Front and back?" .
I shook my head. "These are terrace houses. You'd have to run right around the block to get into the back lane."
If they had a back lane, that was. Some of these areas didn't. "Let's just hit the front together."
He nodded and walked forward, the rifle held at the ready by his side. A hunter ready to hunt. I turned on the laser and followed. The soft whine of the weapon powering up was a whole lot louder than either of our steps.
The pale yellow picket fence that divided Sal's little front garden from the street came into view. Bright red hollyhocks spilled over the pickets, contrasting sharply to the blue spikes of the monkshood. Names I knew simply because our mom had loved the cottage garden look when we were kids.
The door—a heavy wooden thing with metal straps running around its length—seemed untouched, as did the front windows. My gaze rose. One of the first floor windows was open. A lace curtain hung out, fluttering softly in the breeze.
Rhoan opened the front gate and ran lightly to the door. He tested the handle, then shook his head and side-stepped to the window, quickly and carefully peering around the frame.
Again, he shook his head then pointed to the upstairs window. I pressed on the laser's safety, shoved it into my pocket, then shifted shape. In seagull form, I flew up to the window and into the house.
The minute I landed, I shifted to human form, but remained kneeling, the thick brown carpet soft on my knees. The house was quiet and smelled ever so faintly of dog and vampire. There was no hint of blood riding the air, no hint of death. And in this room at least, no sign of violence.
I rose, grabbed a blanket from the bed, and dangled one end out the window. Rhoan grabbed the end and swiftly climbed up.
We moved to the door. After a three-two-one count on his fingers, we moved out—him high, me low. There was no one in the hall. And no one in either the two remaining bedrooms or the bathroom.
Which left the lower part of the house. I flicked to infrared and scanned the area immediately below the stairs. There was no sign of blood heat, no sign of life. Relief slithered through me. While it didn't mean there wasn't unlife, it did mean that Kye wasn't here.
Although Jack would surely have mentioned if he was. But I guessed that depended on whether they'd caught the tracking signal yet.
I glanced at Rhoan. "Anything?" I murmured.
He shook his head. "The house is empty as far as I can tell."
Which supported my own findings. I took a step down. The stair creaked softly and I paused, listening. The stillness remained, nothing moved, and yet… I suddenly wasn't so sure we were alone.
I padded down more stairs, my gun held at the ready and my muscles jumping with tension. The house remained still and free of any unusual scent or sound.
We reached the bottom step. I pressed my back against the wall, noting the glass littering the hallway. Someone had thrown a mirror—it lay in broken pieces near the front door.
Goosebumps fled up my arms as I stared at the broken shards. Two women had been killed by something that had probably come through their mirrors, I'd been visited in my sleep, and now we had a broken mirror here. Coincidence? More than likely not.
A quick scan of the front two rooms didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary. We turned and made our down the hall, our footsteps as silent as the house.
But as we neared the back room, the sensation hit me—an uncomfortable and all too familiar wash of heat. The sort of heat that came from lust. The sort of heat I'd felt when I'd followed the man who'd come out of Vinny's building last night.
I stopped abruptly. Rhoan glanced at me, one eyebrow raised in question. I signaled that I could sense someone inside and he shook his head, meaning he couldn't. Which was odd, but it didn't make me doubt what I was sensing. I learned long ago to trust what I felt. It might never have gotten me into less trouble, but at least it did give me a heads-up.
He raised his hand again and began to count down. When the last finger fell, I went in low and fast, slapping down on one knee as I scanned the room with the laser at the ready.
I had one brief glimpse of a man—the man Kye had identified as Carlos Martez—then he was gone, his body exploding into a mass of writhing, boiling black smoke that fled sideways. I followed with the laser, saw the mirror. Fired.
But I was too late.
The smoke that had been a man hit it a fraction of a second before the laser beam, the last of him disappearing into the confines of the mirror just before it shattered. I rose and ran over, but the glass was empty of anything but my reflection.
"What the fuck was that?" Rhoan said.
I glanced at him. He stood near the doorway, his gaze sweeping the room and his gun still held at the ready. "That," I said heavily, "was probably the vampire responsible for murdering two women. He's possibly also the vampire behind our beheadings."
"Vampires can't just up and disappear into smoke." He scanned the room a final time, then relaxed a little and lowered his weapon. "And they certainly can't disappear into mirrors."
"I don't think we're dealing with an ordinary vampire here."
"But even if he's an emo vamp, the same still applies. They just can't fade into mirrors."
"Unless they were something that could before they became a vampire." I pocketed my laser and began picking up the pieces of glass. If he could disappear through a mirror then he could reappear too, and I wasn't about to chance an ambush.
"So, what was he looking at so intensely?" Rhoan said, walking lightly across the room.
"I don't know." I rose and walked back down the hallway, opening the front door and tossing the mirror's remains out into the garden. Hopefully the bright sunshine would stop him using the shards as an avenue of return. I did the same to the mirror that had been smashed in the hall, then on the way back to the kitchen, I checked the other rooms. I found a mirror in what looked to be the main bedroom, and dumped it whole and intact outside. It looked old and may have well been an heirloom. And while I enjoyed baiting Sal, I wasn't about to destroy something she held dear.
Rhoan was kneeling where our vamp had been, but glanced up as I entered. "It's a trap door."
I raised my eyebrows. "Sal has a panic room."
"Pretty sensible thing for a vampire to do," he commented. "Especially given the human history of distrust when it comes to vampires."
"It's generally not that bad these days." The door itself wasn't large—it was big enough for a body to slip down into but little else. It was also metal, and looked strong enough to withstand a bomb.
"Tell that to the vampires who have lost their heads," Rhoan said, voice wry. "Or to the humans that wanted to belt your lights out."
"That's different." I knelt down beside him and ran my fingers across the cool metal, looking for something that might act as a lock or a switch to get into the thing. "Besides, it's not humans decapitating the vamps. How we supposed to open this sucker?"
As far as I could see, there was no damn lock. There wasn't even enough of a gap between the door and the metal frame around it to squeeze fingers in and rip it open.
"I don't think anyone is meant to." He raised a fist and pounded heavily on the door. The sound echoed through the stillness, and from what seemed a long way away, a dog yapped.
I grinned. I knew that bark. And if the little terrier I'd rescued was alive down there, then surely Sal was, too.
"Sal," I shouted, leaning forward a little, "it's Riley and Rhoan. The threat is gone. It's safe to come out."