Page 10 of Hunting His Vampire Mate

“We’re part of a task force, operating out of Salt Lake City,” I lied smoothly, flashing her my badge. It was a fake, but a good one. It was backed up by a gentle compulsion spell that we’d blackmailed one of our witch contacts in Las Vegas into—albeit grudgingly—casting over it. Sheriff Dennison frowned, but she visibly relaxed a notch. I added, “We believe that the murders in your town may be connected to a string of similar killings that happened in our area. The perp in our case was never caught.”

More lies, of course. But plausible ones.

Sheriff Dennison narrowed her eyes at us still further, seeming like she was trying to size us up. After checking into the motel earlier, we’d changed into our matching black suits with freshly ironed white shirts. So long as we both looked the part,talked the talk, and had the badges to go along with it, most folks didn’t bother to look too much deeper.

“You think he’s moved, then? Your killer?”

Michael sat next to me and flashed his trademark FBI ‘gotcha’ smile, except without any real teeth behind it.

We’d played this role a hundred times.

“He?” Michael asked, jotting something down in the fancy little notebook he always brought to these types of meetings. He glanced back up at her, arching a brow. “Do you have reason to believe the perpetrator is male, Sheriff?”

“Most serial killers are men, Officer—” She broke off, frowning at him. “Huh. What did you say your name was?”

“It’s Special Agent,” Michael corrected her, flashing his best shit-eating grin, the one he always used to charm the locals. “Special Agent Hollens.”

“You got a first name?”

Michael winced. “Eunice.”

Sheriff Dennison let out a bark of genuine laughter. “You’re joking.Eunice?”

“I wish I were,” Michael chuckled alongside her, shaking his head ruefully, and then smiling at her again. There was a reason Michael was usually the one to do all the talking in these types of situations. Because he was charming as hell when he wanted to be, and he could sell bullshit like there was no tomorrow.

It was a common tactic of ours, for one of us to pretend to have a truly embarrassing first name, in order to break the ice with local law enforcement. We’d had nearly this exact conversation in at least a dozen places, and it had never failed. Though, that was mostly Michael’s delivery.

He added, “My parents were jerks, Sheriff. You don’t know the half of it. Please just call me Hollens. Everyone else does.”

“You’re not going to make me call youSpecial AgentHollens?”

“Not unless you want to.” Another disarming smile, complete with dimples and sparkling eyes. My heart might’ve beat just a touch faster at the sight of it.

That wasn’t an especially heterosexual reaction to have, right?

Oblivious to my sudden confusion, Michael added, “Just Hollens will do.”

Sheriff Dennison shook her head, still chuckling. “Okay, then, Hollens. If your case really is similar to ours, then you’ll be able to tell me a little about these victims. If your details match up with my case, I’ll give you whatever information you need.”

Michael didn’t miss a beat.

“First off, your victims are an even mix of men and women. This guy doesn’t have a specific type. The only things they had in common were that they all in the prime of their lives. They were murdered and their bodies were dumped in the street afterward, like they were garbage.” Michael lost his smile as he watched her. “And they all had puncture wounds on the side of the neck, which tore open the carotid artery.”

All the amusement drained away from Sheriff Dennison’s face, and it was replaced with a flash of genuine anger. No doubt, the folks in this town were demanding answers she couldn’t provide. They wanted solutions. And, from the look of it, she legitimately seemed to want that too. I’d been doing this so long that I could tell when the local law didn’t give a shit anymore, but she was one of the ones who still did.

Michael went on. “The wounds look almost like bite marks at first glance. But they’re way cleaner than what an animal would do to a person. Our best guess is that this killer takes these victims to the kill site, uses a weapon of some sort to puncture the carotid artery, drains out the blood for unknown reasons, and then dumps the body somewhere out in public.” He paused. “We assume that only because the bodies are almost completelybloodless when they’re found. But the dump sites are really clean. Surgical, even.”

Sheriff Dennison stared at him, her eyes widening at that last bit in a way that let me know Michael had scored a direct hit. Of course, given that we already knew exactly what type of creature this was, that was to be expected.

Still, poker probably wasn’t her game.

“It was a nightmare to keep the word ‘vampire’ out of the local papers,” Michael added, with a small laugh. “Could you imagine the media circus if the press caught wind of the exact nature of these killings? Hell, we’d be giving this jerk exactly the attention he wants, right? That’s got to be at least part of the reason he’s out there killing all these innocent people like this, right? I mean, what other reason could there possibly be?”

This was always a bad moment, where we intentionally tipped our hand maybe just a hair too much, in our little dance to weasel information out of the local badges. Usually, having enough details about unexplainable killings helps us to sell our story. After all, if we weren’t law too, then how on earth would we know all that? And if we intentionally say a littletoomuch, it seems like we actually give a shit. But that part only ever worked on people who actually gave a shit themselves, though. Like Sheriff Dennison.

“We’re trying to bring whoever is doing this to justice,” I added, going for the coup de grace. The final two-step in our little tap dance. It helped that it was extremely true. “These victims deserve that much, don’t they? That’s all we want.”

She looked back and forth between us again, and then settled back in her chair, her hands steepled in front of her. I watched it as all the suspicion drained away from her expression. She nodded, as if to herself, then let out a small exhalation of breath.

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