The Redemption of Boaz Pritchard Read online

  “That’s nice.” The man lowered his flashlight by degrees. “Maybe you can reschedule for tomorrow.”

  “Maybe we can.” She leaned out the window an inch or two. “What are your plans, Officer…?”

  The light clicked off, and I blinked away spots, curious how Cass could see a damn thing with her more sensitive eyes.

  “Abernathy,” he supplied, eager to please. “I don’t have any, but I’m off after five tomorrow.”

  A purr turned her voice to silk. “You don’t say?”

  As she swooped in for the metaphorical kill, three men tramped out of the woods at the edge of the road, and my vision cleared enough to recognize the tallest and the blondest of them.

  “Cass.” I quelled the urgency in my voice. “We really should let the nice officer get back to work.”

  She followed my line of sight straight to the last person who needed to see me, or her, or us. Together. We couldn’t afford him making any connections. I might not have a record, but Cass’s was a mile long. He would have questions, and any answers I gave him would damn me.

  “Here’s my card.” She handed the officer a black rectangle with her information in red. “Call me.”

  Honestly, I was surprised when she passed on blood spatter or a bite mark in one corner to really drive home she was a vampire. I could picture her listing it below her name—VAMPIRE—as if it were a profession.

  “I’ll do that.” He tucked it into his shirt pocket. “You ladies have a nice rest of your night.”

  “Oh,” she promised, “we will.”

  Her three-point turn, complete with pause to flip her glossy curtain of hair over her shoulder for the sentinel’s benefit, would have done a shampoo ad proud.

  “We have a source now,” she announced after raising her window. “You can thank me later. Or now. Now is good.”

  Meaning she planned on wining him and dining on him to get intel on what had brought out the big guns.

  “Thank you,” I said dutifully. “You’re the very best vampire ever.”

  “Aww.” She patted my thigh. “You know what I like.”

  “I do know what you like.” I grabbed her wrist. “That’s why I’m going to have to ask you to keep your hands on your side of the car.”

  “And now I know what you like.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m a vampire.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Your heart almost exploded out of your chest when you recognized Boaz.”

  “He could have spotted me. Worse, he would have noticed I was with you.”

  Cass was on record as finding Ron’s body. Boaz would wonder, once he realized that, what my connection was to her. I was a Low Society necromancer. I couldn’t resuscitate humans, turning them into vampires. Beyond that act of creation, most necromancers didn’t mingle with their offspring. Let alone with someone else’s.

  Tapping the side of her nose, she turned smug. “That’s not what your pheromones said.”

  “You’ve told me a hundred times that fear and arousal smell the same to you.”

  As a vampire, she provoked a prey reaction in her lovers, so it was hardly surprising.

  “No, I told you they smell equally good. That’s not the same thing.”

  “I’m glad we cleared that up.”

  “Can I stay at your place tonight?”

  Another inglorious fact about middle-aged vampires I learned from Cass.

  They get lonely.

  Really, really lonely.

  And once they bond to you, they’re like barnacles on the hull of a ship. You have to chip them off if you decide you want them gone.

  “I’ll make up Hadley’s room for you.” I hung blackout curtains with Velcro closures in there months ago for this very reason. Right after The Garlic Incident. “Just remember to lock the door so Dad doesn’t walk in on you.”

  “I’m a vampire, not an idiot. I know the drill.” She clicked her nails on the rich leather of the steering wheel. “Do you want to watch a movie?”

  “Sure.” She would pass out after the sun rose, and we both knew it. “Keanu or Dracula?”

  “Not all vampire movies are about Dracula,” she huffed. “And not all vampires wear black silk capes with red lining.”

  “True and true.” I snickered. “I’ve seen your closet, though. You own such a garment.”

  “It was for Halloween,” she screeched. “Why must I keep telling you that?”

  “Halloween two years ago,” I reminded her. “What’s it still doing in there?”

  “Who knows?” She tossed her hair. “I’m a very busy vampire, and I don’t have time to properly organize my closet.”

  “It’s not like you’re immortal or anything.”

  “What a cruel thing to say. We both know I’m not truly immortal.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry enough to let me cop a feel?”

  “Nope.”

  “You understand I had to ask.”

  “I do, and you understand I had to hard pass or I would start waking up with you curled around me during the day.”

  “What a lovely mental picture that provides.” Her chuckle was positively evil. “I could teach you all kinds of things before you marry.”

  “I’ve waited this long. I might as well let Boaz teach me all kinds of things after we’re married.”

  We hadn’t even kissed yet, so after was good. Much better than me learning ahead of time I didn’t do it for him or that he didn’t do it for me. I would feel more confident in my ignorance once there was a ring on his finger and his escape paths has been barred—mine too.

  Seven

  The flashy car executing a precise three-point turn tickled the back of Boaz’s memory, but he couldn’t place where he had seen it. The blonde behind the wheel also struck a chord, with that electric hair color, but the tinted windows made an ID impossible from this distance. His night vision was good, but the IED that cost him his left leg nearly took his sight in that eye. The charm he kept on a key ring in his pocket helped, but magic could only do so much.

  Parker stepped onto the asphalt beside him and watched the taillights until they burned out. “What?”

  “That car look familiar to you?”

  “I’ve seen it around. Hard to miss a Ferrari.” The sentinel hooked his hands on his hips. “Pretty sure it belongs to a local vampire.”

  “Find out who.” A tightness in his gut told him the car or the vampire or both were important, and that same instinct was what saved his life overseas. “I’ve seen it before, but I can’t put my finger on where.”

  He preferred motorcycles, but fast cars did it for him too. A sleek beauty like that would have earned a passing glance. Too bad he hadn’t had time for a closer inspection. Maybe next time.

  And there would be a next time.

  His recollection of where he had spied a fob to match that spendy car guaranteed it.

  “I’ll ask Abernathy for the plate number, and we’ll run it.” Parker made a note. “You’re staying out at the old Whitaker place, right?”

  Tension shot through Boaz’s shoulders, curving them in an instinctive hunch as if he’d been caught misbehaving instead of engaging in Society-appropriate conduct for a man engaged to the Whitaker matron.

  Then again, he had the next best thing to a girlfriend back in Savannah who would be less than thrilled to learn of his travel accommodations, let alone his recent and secret engagement.

  Goddess, he was tired.

  Dragging a hand down his face, he wished he could hop on his bike, drive home, and pretend none of this had happened. That he could find another way to save his sister, his family, that didn’t cost him the first woman to make him think, to make him feel.

  I am so sorry.

  “Yeah,” he rasped. “That’s where I’ll be.” He hesitated. “I would prefer a call to a drop-in.”

  Parker, who had known him a long time, shook his head. “Her father know
you’re staying with them?”

  Boaz ran a finger along the inside of the collar of his tee. “Yeah.”

  That was the polite answer, the one that didn’t expose how Addie ran the household and not her father.

  And he was about as thrilled with the prospect of Boaz for a son-in-law as learning Godzilla was rampaging through their small town.

  His tone or expression must have set Parker’s detective instincts tingling. “You’re getting serious?”

  The other man laughed at what he must consider a witty one-liner, but Boaz played dumb and took the words at face value.

  “Everybody’s gotta settle down some time.” He clasped Parker on the shoulder. “I’m going back for another look.”

  “Make it quick.” He shook his head, still chuckling, and checked his watch. “The cleaners are getting antsy.”

  Leaving the pitted strip of asphalt, Boaz trudged back into the woods to do what he did best.

  The victim had been identified as Angelo Willis of Clan Willis, whose newly turned lover, Ron, had met his end at the railroad museum earlier in the night.

  Boaz had expected to find Ron’s murder had been a punishment for the younger vampire stepping out on his lover, but this killed that line of inquiry stone dead.

  Ron hadn’t had it easy, but Angelo, the poor bastard, had suffered more.

  Wrists opened from palm to elbow, throat slit, and femoral arteries gaping, he had been hung naked between two pines and left to bleed out. Beneath him, the pine straw glistened black in the moonlight, and the size of the puddle made it clear the vampire hadn’t fed since news of Ron’s true death had reached him.

  Chin pointed skyward, he stared up at the treetops. Or, he would have, had his phone not covered his eyes. Like all the others, music played from the device, but the song wasn’t the same. Another dead end.

  “He’s still alive, well, undead,” Honeywell murmured from right behind him. “We need to cut him down.”

  Jessica “Honey” Honeywell was the reason Boaz was out in the middle of nowhere debating that very thing. He had dropped in to say hello to a friend, Mark Chambers, on his way out of town when his old flame waylaid him with a link to his case. Now he had more questions with no answers than when he arrived to meet with Addie.

  How dead was too dead when you were already undead? He had no clue. Only a master vampire could tell him if Angelo was revivable. His corpse was intact, his decapitation thwarted by a thin strip of meat.

  Boaz examined the knots and made a mental note of them, but the killer used all manner of materials to bind and subdue his or her prey. “How old is he?”

  “Two-fifty or three hundred.” She leaned over his shoulder, her breath in his ear. “He’ll turn to dust and blow away come morning.”

  Choosing to ignore the come-on, he kept his game face on. “Can they revive him in this condition?”

  “Hard to say.” She withdrew a fraction when he didn’t reciprocate. Honey was smart like that. “The master of Clan Willis is upper limits for a made vampire. If it can be done, he’ll know how to do it.”

  “The head is still attached.” Boaz leaned in as close as he dared without disrupting the evidence underfoot. “Might explain why decay hasn’t set in.”

  If the clan master could save him, Angelo could tell them who did this.

  “I heard you got yourself a girlfriend.”

  The change of topic didn’t surprise him. “And?”

  “Also heard you were staying at the Whitaker place.”

  “Yeah.” He rolled his hand, waiting on her to get to the point. “What about it?”

  “Rumor has it you’re off the market, but I don’t buy that for a minute.” She sized him up, made sure he knew she still liked what she saw. “You’re as available as ever, right?”

  The words got stuck in his throat, but he pushed them out in the face of her amusement. “Not exactly.”

  “Oh, honey, no. You’re either monogamous, goddess help us all, or you’re the same old Boaz who’s always known how to show a girl a good time.”

  A reluctant smile kicked up his lips. “Why can’t it be both?”

  “Mm-hmm. See? You never change.” She bumped shoulders with him. “Can you make it by my place?”

  Again, the words didn’t want to come. This time he figured it was because his heart was pulling him in one direction while duty yanked him in another. The idea of belonging to someone was…not terrible. Strange, but doable. He might even grow to like it.

  His parents weren’t the lovey-dovey type, but they had built a solid life for each other and their kids. Sure, Mom and Amelie fought like cats and dogs, and Dad would rather stare into space than see what was right in front of him, but that’s just how things shook out for them.

  It could have been a lot worse.

  “I’m an honest man these days,” he joked to let her down easy. “Don’t tempt me.”

  “You really mean that.” Honey spun an earring through her fingers. “Huh.”

  “It’s new,” he said gruffly. “I’m still figuring out what to do and how to act.”

  “Seems like you’ve got what not to do down pat,” she teased back. “That’s the big one.”

  The old Boaz might have viewed juggling three women as a challenge, but that was before he set eyes on Grier, all grown up and everything he ever wanted. And even then, he still took Adelaide’s hand and made her a promise he couldn’t break. Slowly but surely, it was sinking in that he was too damn old for the bullshit he got up to in his youth.

  Plus, the one thing he could say for himself was he didn’t cheat. He hurt women, he knew that, but he made it clear up front what they could expect from him. Fun. That was it. No strings. But some still got attached.

  “Okay.” Honey picked her way behind the corpse. “Do you think whoever did this realized they were leaving us a witness?”

  The smooth transition from personal to business was one of the reasons he liked her so well.

  “Maybe whoever called this in scared them off before they finished the job.”

  “Maybe.” She pursed her lips. “It was an anonymous tip, so it’s hard to say.”

  How anyone found Angelo out here left Boaz twitchy with the certainty the killer called it in themselves. That meant they wanted to get caught, or they wanted other vampires in the area to know they were being hunted.

  “The other kills were similar to Ron’s death,” he reminded her. “Newly resuscitated vampires.”

  “You can’t think we’ve got a vampire hunter.” She laughed hard once then sobered. “Seriously, those went out of style ages ago.”

  “They crop up now and then.” Humans watched movies, read books, got ideas. “People notice neighbors, coworkers, even their friends acting strange. They hold that behavior up against what they think they know about vampires and decide it’s their civic duty to go on a killing spree.”

  The one human killed so far had been the primary food source for his vampire lover, so the hunter hadn’t been too far off the mark. It was the only mistake he had made so far, if it was one. They might have viewed the human as guilty by association.

  The problem with those statistics being, they were ninety percent sure this killer was also a vampire.

  To his knowledge, no vampire had ever gone on a killing spree of this magnitude against its own kind.

  “That would explain why they’re sticking to freshies.” She frowned. “They’re easier to identify and simpler to kill.”

  “Ron was the link to Angelo.” Boaz exhaled. “That’s how the killer found Angelo, why they risked it.”

  A cautious hunter was rarer still, and even more dangerous. Most humans made mistakes identifying the monsters among them and got caught early on. This one had been operating for months, all across the country.

  “Jaden was the first vampire killed in the area.” She thought it through. “He was one of Ron’s lovers, so that’s our link.”

  The killer must have asked Jaden for na
mes, and Jaden gave up Ron, who then fingered Angelo.

  “We need to find out where Jaden was from originally,” Boaz said. “There’s got to be a link between him and the previous victim from Savannah.”

  Jaden might have been the first in the area, but they tended to happen in clusters. There must be a reason the killer left Savannah to come here. They still had no concrete evidence pointing toward why he had hit Savannah after a stent in Maine, but Boaz would find it. No matter how long it took him.

  “I’ll get Abernathy on it.” He paused. “I caught him flirting with a woman at the roadblock earlier. I couldn’t tell if he had the hots for the driver or for the car. Any idea who was behind the wheel?”

  “The woman who reported Ron’s murder, I think. I didn’t get close enough to ID her, but I heard talk a clan master bought his top earner a new ride, so it fits.” She glanced toward the flashing lights. “She’s a bounty hunter, a vampire. She was tracking him for a payday when she stumbled across his corpse. Odds are good she was out searching for Angelo tonight when Abernathy put a kink in her plans. His clan was desperate to locate him before he did something foolish.”

  “Tracking this killer could make her a target.”

  “With a job like hers?” Honey scoffed. “She can protect herself.”

  The brutal tableau before him burned in his mind’s eye. “I bet Angelo thought the same thing.”

  Waving the cleaners in, Boaz tipped his chin to Honey then set out for his bike to head back to the Whitaker place for the day. They would have reports ready for him to read at dusk, along with fingerprints to compare to the previous crime scenes.

  Eight

  Cass woke me up with one of her favorite stalking games. She let herself into my room, climbed onto my twin bed, and straddled my hips. She leaned down, hands cuffing my wrists, and raked her fangs across my juicy carotid while purring deep in her throat.

  And then she hissed when I flipped her off me, onto the floor. She landed nimbly, like a cat.

  The self-defense classes were her idea. Really, she only had herself to blame.

  Not bothering to open my eyes, I murmured, “Not today, Satan.”