Page 10 of Heart and Soul
“Right, like a tattoo. A thick black stripe that goes from the bottom lip down the chin, and all the way down the throat. You’re a billion years old, right? You know all the vamps around here.”
“I am, and I do.” His brow furrows. “But I’ve never seen such a marking. A black chin.” He shakes his head.
“Not one of Henry’s, then?”
“Definitely not.”
“A rogue, maybe?”
“I couldn’t say.” He shoots me a wary look. “Agent Davies, this wouldn’t happen to concern the case with—”
I cut him off, too freezing to bother with bullshitting. “Yes, it does, Deputy Director, and I’m sorry, I know I’m not supposed to touch that case, but this is something new, and Madison West is stretched thin right now. She can’t make this a priority.”
“Need it be a priority?”
“Yes,” I urge.
“For Detective Brenner, you mean.”
“For…” I let my voice trail off, embarrassed.
“For the two of you,” he says.
“Yes. Forus, it’s a priority. Did Oliver tell you these might be the same vamps that killed…” Again, I don’t finish my thought.
Reed’s eyes harden. “Nora’s mother? Yes, I’m aware.”
“Does Nora know?”
“Absolutely not.” His voice takes on a lethal edge. “With all she’s been through, I’d be supremely disappointed should such conjectures be made known to her.”
“No, hey, I ain’t saying shit, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“In any case, those would no longer be the vampires who attacked Nora and her mother. Detective Brenner describes them as having white eyes.”
“That’s right. Revenants. Theyweredead, until some necromancer reanimated them.”
“In body only, an important distinction. Their minds are gone, leaving empty shells. Necromancy is a hybrid of dark sorcery and demonic ritual. Their bodies are now hosts for demon spirits.”
“I get that, but will Nora see it that way?”
“The vampires who killed Nora’s mother aredead.” He puts a solid period—full stop—at the end of that sentence.
“Yes, sir.”
Having laid down the law, Reed then blinks, and his face softens. “Therevenantswho killed Detective Brenner’s sister, however, are still out there. And you have reason to believe that one of them is marked with a black chin?”
“Last night,” I explain, “Me and Brenner were…well, that’s…it doesn’t matter what we were doing, but all of a sudden he remembered something about the attack that he’d never remembered before. And the memory came back to him at the same time that—”
“—Henry died,” Parker finishes, intrigued. “A compulsion was released.”
“We thought that Henry had already released Brenner’s compulsion, but apparently he kept this one detail hidden.”
He frowns. “A detail which, as I said, means nothing to me. There is no vampire with a black chin that I’ve ever seen.”
“And you’ve seen a lot.”
“More than you could imagine.”
