Em looked at Jarek. He had a resigned expression on his face. He shrugged.
"Yeah, I've got time," she said into the phone. "Meet you at the lab?"
Em made Nick stop for pizza before they headed off to the warehouse. She knew what that coffee machine in the office was capable of, and if Nick hadn't eaten he'd be strung out for hours.
She also knew, thanks to Jarek's little re-con mission, that they were unlikely to find anything usable at the warehouse, even if Nick had found the right one. If she thought about it, she had to admit she'd chosen to come along on Nick's little adventure at such a crazy hour of the night because she wanted his company.
She shared his meat-lovers with extra cheese, sucked down a Coke and watched Nick eat. He ate like he worked - with determination and with enjoyment. She envied him.
He looked up at her and caught her watching him.
"What?" he said smiling, a string of melted cheese stuck to his chin.
She grinned. "Nothing." She reached across and brushed it off for him. He smiled goofily and kissed the inside of her wrist as she drew her hand back.
"It's past midnight, Em. I hadn't realized. I totally lost track of the time. Sorry if I've spoiled your evening. You should have said no. We can always check it out tomorrow."
"It's fine. I wasn't doing anything."
"That family do I mentioned is on tomorrow - I mean, today. You still want to come with me?"
That puppy dog look was back on his face, Em noticed. She loved it. He really wanted her to go.
"Sure," she said lightly. "Of course I do."
After the pizza, they'd set off for the harborside again, passing Alina's club with a line out the door.
The warehouse was the one they were looking for, the one Will had 'told' her about. Em was impressed with Nick's sleuthing. Nice work, given he had so little to go off. She wondered what this 'random criminal vibe' was he was going on about.
The building was tucked away at the end of a battleaxe block, nearly wall to wall with the surrounding buildings except for one narrow, dirty alley running along its south side. Whoever was using it certainly didn't have to worry about visibility.
They found a door padlocked with a lock that looked so old Em was certain it would fall apart if she breathed on it. She dug a pick out of her handbag, and reached out to grab the lock. The instant her hand made contact with the metal, the all-too-familiar headache roared to the front of her mind. Em immediately pulled back her hand as if she'd been burnt. She stumbled back a little.
"You okay?" Nick peered at her in the dim light.
"Yeah," said Em, pushing back the hair that had fallen into her face. The headache had retreated as soon as she pulled her hand away. It was still there, throbbing in the back of her head, but the sudden flare up seemed to be over. "Yeah, it just ... there was a sharp bit, that's all."
Nick looked dubious. Em didn't want to touch it again and she held the pick up for Nick. He ignored it, took a few steps back and then gave the door a good hard kick. It swung open.
"Urgh!" Em immediately covered her nose. The stench that washed over them was almost unbearable. It was like a hot wave, the air thick with decay. In the back of her head, the headache pulsed and then bloomed like a rose, full and ripe all through her mind.
Em stepped up behind Nick and buried her face in his shoulder in an attempt to filter the air. He turned to her and they stood there, one hand over their faces, their other arms around each other, surveying the carnage in front of them. They could both handle a few corpses, but this, this was much, much more...
The warehouse floor was lined with bodies. Every single one of them was male, every single one of them was drained dry to an ashen grey pallor. Em shivered. No one vampire would ever have an appetite this large.
'A bit of a mess' Jarek had said. A bit of a mess? Surely even the Family's commander in chief would have thought this worth mentioning. At the very least it was a gross violation of the Family's cull protocols.
But this wasn't vampire...
"What does this mean?" said Nick, appalled.
Em could only shake her head. This wasn't a cull. This was mass murder.
The next twenty four hours were hell.
Nick called it in - it was his research that had found them the crime scene after all. Em stood with her back to the carnage and listened to him speak.
"It's a warehouse. Back of Darkes Lane, the northern end," he said into the phone.
There was a silence then which stretched out for longer than Em thought was normal. She looked at him. He had stepped out of the warehouse door to make the call, but was now staring in at the bodies with his eyes a little wider than usual and his expression blank.
"I don't know how many," he said. "No," he was shaking his head, "no, I don't know how many, okay? We're going to need a few teams..." He trailed off. "Sorry, Robert. I haven't seen anything like this before. It's big. It's a mess. You'll see what I mean."
Em felt sorry for him. She guessed this evening hadn't turned out the way he'd expected. He'd had a little triumph at the research, called Em and expected to have a fun-filled evening with a tinge of adrenaline as their little excursion confirmed his theories. Em hadn't expected this either. She'd thought they'd end up having some drinks together and moving onto bed and a different kind of adrenaline. The remains of the psycho killing spree spread out on the warehouse floor in front of them was not on either of their wishlists for the evening, she thought dryly.
They waited outside the crime scene and watched for the first of the professionals to arrive. Nick paced back and forward across the narrow alley way. Em sat on the edge of the gutter tucking her coat up behind her knees. Her head was pounding. It was the same headache of old, but it seemed brighter here. The bodies in the warehouse were amplifying it. Like a heady perfume that sets off a migraine, the bodies carried the scent of whatever it was that was causing Em's pain. Now there were so many bodies, the pain was all the stronger.
She sighed and pressed both her palms into the side of her head.
Nick saw her and came to sit next to her, putting an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close.
"You okay?" he asked.
His voice was gentle and caring and all of a sudden Em wanted to dive into it. She didn't care any more about anything. Let Jarek take Alina back to the Family, let her father descend in all his fiery rage, let whoever was draining the city's most gorgeous young men dry drink their fill. She didn't care, so long as she had Nick's arms around her and the warmth of his chest to lean against.
She wanted to run away with him and spend the rest of her life in bed with him. She wanted to take his hand and fly like fury through the dimensions and show him the chaos and wonder of the universe. She wanted to wake up every morning to coffee and bagels and him. She wanted the both of them to live together. Forever.
"I'm okay," she said, slipping her arm around his waist and smiling up at him. "I'm fine."
And then the first of the squad cars arrived.
Things got busy after that. The entire scene, the warehouse, the alleyway, all the approaches, had to be researched, sketched, photographed, tagged and bagged. There were thirty seven bodies altogether. Robert had to assign three pathology teams to the job, never his favourite way of doing things, but they needed to get these bodies to a morgue as soon as possible. Some of them had been there for quite a while.
When Robert arrived he saw Em and Nick working side by side as two professionals should, but when Em looked up to greet him, she saw that Robert had noticed something else as well. His eyes flicked from one to the other and he frowned slightly. Em couldn't help being impressed. She'd hidden her relationships with both the men from the other, and she'd always thought she'd done a good job of that. But something had just given her away. She wondered what it was.