My hands clenching his shirt trembled as I fought the urge to sink my teeth into his throat. But it was more than just the need to drink in his blood. The monster that lay deep within my chest roared to life, demanding that I rip flesh and break bone. I wanted to hear him scream in pain until the sound echoed through the empty warehouse. I needed him drowning in pain, instead of emitting the terrified little whimpers that escaped him now.
Slowly I regained control of myself. In my world, I had the right to tear and rend and shred. He attacked me first. He tried to kill me at Bryce’s and again here. Unfortunately, I had other plans for this shivering sack of flesh that would serve me better than a moment’s joy in killing this bastard.
“I thought so,” I said, shoving him a little as I released his shirt.
Again, I turned and walked away. Knox accompanied me out of the warehouse. His mouth opened the moment the steel door closed with a solid clang behind us. “We forgot to ask about the video camera,” Knox said, sliding to a stop in the gravel.
“He’ll only lie about it, wasting our time,” I said, halting him before he could go back into the warehouse.
“But if they have your picture—”
“I’m screwed, I know.” Screwed was an understatement. If it got out that I was a nightwalker, even as a joke, the Coven would have my head and heart on a platter before sunrise. “Do we have anyone who might be able to hack into the Coalition database?”
“Hackers? Nightwalkers, no. But Barrett has at least a pair.”
“Perfect.” I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and dialed Barrett’s number. “He’s at the warehouse, but won’t remain here for long. He’s all yours now,” I announced as soon as he picked up the line.
“Thank you,” Barrett murmured in a low voice. He was grateful, but he wasn’t particularly happy. He owed me now and it sat heavy in his stomach.
“You can track him by the scent of my blood,” I added, twisting the knife.
Barrett knew the only way my blood would get on Franklin would be if he managed to wound me. He now owed me a very big favor considering I had walked away from a very personal slight so that he could have his revenge. And if there was one thing that all the other races had in common, it was the fact that not one of us liked to be beholden to the other.
“What do you need?” he said as if he were grinding the words up in his clenched teeth.
“A favor. He may have gotten me on film earlier. I need all evidence of it erased. Files, e-mails, and possibly data removed from the Coalition database. Do you have people who can handle it?”
“You know I do,” he replied. His voice sounded a lot less gruff than earlier. As favors went, this one was fairly easy. His people were potentially getting access to our enemy’s files while he was evening a score with me.
“My fate is in your hands.”
“Don’t worry, Mira. I’ll keep you off YouTube.”
Smiling, I shoved the phone into my pocket and pulled my keys out of my other pocket as we walked around the side of the building to where my car was parked. Opening the trunk, I dug around in my little bag for a fresh shirt. “So did we learn anything of value tonight?”
“That a nightwalker was the one to contact Franklin,” Knox replied.
He was right. A werewolf would never have been able to blur a person’s memory like we saw and it was extremely unlikely that a warlock or witch would be able to find where Bryce kept his daylight sanctuary. However, nightwalkers frequently shared that information when they allowed other nightwalkers to bed down with them during the day in rare moments of trust or when seeking to start a family.
“Whoever it was didn’t know how to properly mask her appearance. She vaguely looked like Katie, but it was very shaky as if the person was struggling to either hold the illusion or was unable to properly mend Franklin’s memories.”
“A fledgling?” Knox asked. He sounded skeptical and I couldn’t blame him.
“Possibly.” I quickly unbuttoned my shirt and looked down to find that the wound had completely healed, but now there was a trail of drying blood running down into the waist of my jeans. Wiping off as much blood as possible, I threw the shirt into my trunk to destroy later and pulled on a dark gray T-shirt.
“It could just be an older nightwalker that never had any proper training,” Knox suggested.
“A fledgling seems unlikely,” I agreed, shutting the trunk of my car. “Bryce didn’t have any fledglings of his own and he should have been old enough to easily defend himself from any of the fledglings within the area.”
“Which is maybe why a fledgling got the Coalition to do the dirty work?”
“Could a fledgling be so stupid? She had to know that we would look into this and track her down.” I turned and leaned against the car for a minute, my arms folded over my chest.
“And maybe that was a part of her plan,” interjected a new voice. I looked up in time to see Bishop step from the shadows beside the wall of the warehouse. “Maybe this fledgling’s goal is to kill you as well as this Bryce person.”
“She’s getting closer if that’s the case,” Knox added, making me scowl at him.
“Don’t make faces at the boy, Mira. He’s right,” Bishop teased. “You’ve been nearly killed three times already to-night and you’ve yet to catch this schemer.”
“I can understand killing Bryce for some reason related to our world and even the attempts on me. It’s all involved with our world. But why kill Katie Hixson? All she wanted to do was to enter our world.”
“Don’t know,” Knox said with a shrug of his shoulders. He stood before me, his hands shoved into his front pockets. “Jealousy? Maybe the fledgling didn’t want Bryce bringing over Katie or maybe she was jealous that he would rather spend time with Katie than with another nightwalker.”
It wasn’t a new story. A fledgling was hurt because a nightwalker fell for a human and wanted to turn him or her. I’d seen it all play out like a Shakespearean tragedy—everyone dead. “We need the answer to those questions.”
“Only one place left to get them.”
“Gregor.” The name escaped me in a low growl. If there was one nightwalker I wouldn’t mind seeing with his head and heart removed, it was Gregor. He was a few centuries old and controlled a clique of nightwalkers that I found more than a little annoying.
For now, I would have to put aside my distaste for him. If Bryce was known to travel with Gregor on occasion, then the nightwalker would be able to give me more information as to who might have had Bryce killed and Katie Hixson drained.
8
Gregor wasn’t at the Dark Room. Adam quickly informed me upon arriving that when Gregor discovered I was looking for him, he left the Dark Room and asked that I meet him at the Docks. I could only guess that the nightwalker didn’t want to be seen being questioned by me. I could understand his hesitance, but that didn’t make me happy about it.
The Docks was a nightclub near the riverfront that catered to the local Goth scene with its dark, smoky decor and nonstop industrial music blaring in the background. It was one of my favorite places to spend an evening. The clientele were content to just let me enjoy the music and the dancing. It was a good place to hide when you were trying to avoid the world around you.
Slipping ahead of the crowd that waited to get into the club, I slapped a fifty on the counter per my usual no-questions policy with the management of the club. They didn’t ask to see my identification and didn’t attempt to put one of those paper strips on my wrist indicating that I was over the age of twenty-one. I didn’t come to this place to drink alcohol.
Gregor sat alone at a table in a dark corner of the nightclub. He wore a dark red, knee-length jacket over a black shirt and black double-breasted vest with large silver buttons. A gold chain for his pocket watch hung from his vest pocket. His whole attire screamed of Victorian aristocracy, making him appear to be horribly out of place in this bar filled with black leather, silver chains, and tattered lace. Regardless of the fact that Gregor had actually survived the Victorian era, he was now part of the Steampunk generation, which was a somewhat distant cousin to the Goth movement that refused to completely fade away. While I doubted he believed in their mentality, the Steampunk generation did fit his taste in clothing.