Page 60 of High Stakes and Soulmates
His eyes flick over to mine like they’re challenging me. “Sure is.”
I’m not so sure that’s true, but I say, “That’s disappointing.”
Cyrus simply watches me until the noise of someone walking by draws my attention. “Here comes Zach to woo you.”
“I’ve already been wooed,” I inform him. “By you.”
Zach gives me a nod but gets caught up by Maeve before he can come over.
“Uh-huh. I hear you,” Cyrus says as he picks up some gloves and snaps one at me. I think he’s hoping it’ll actually hit me, but I catch it and pull it on. He replaces his, and once we’re geared up, we head inside.
“Again, it’s a couple; again, one is drained;and again, the other is staked to the wall. These houses have no security systems in place. None of the neighboring houses have anything that would catch it. No one sees anything. It’s impossible to draw anything from the cases. I don’t understand. We do know that the blood on the wall has an anticoagulant, so it’s not fresh at any of the scenes.”
So… it could be blood reserved for a vampire’s feeding, then. Most feed right from the source, but in dire situations we always have blood on hand. It won’t revitalize us like the blood straight from a human would, but it keeps us from starving.
I follow Cyrus into the kitchen and look at the woman pinned to the wall. “How is no one aware this is happening?” I ask, uncertain how an unregistered vampire has gotten past so manypeople and absolutely no other vampire in the city has seen them. “Oh, the son of the last victims found… nothing came of him, right? The guy we ran the fingerprints and blood on?”
“No. But the scenes have been meticulous. The only blood has been from the victims and the blood used on the wall. And then we have the confusing fact that some of the human victims were involved in the death of other victims. Are they making them kill each other?”
“Could be how they’re getting into their homes,” I suggest. “In the case of the older couple, they knew their neighbors. If they needed to get in the house without any sign of forced entry, having a neighbor bring the killer in would definitely work.”
“That’s what I was thinking… but then why did the neighborgo back home? They literally sat on this for days and never told anyone,” Cyrus says.
I stare at the dead woman for a long moment before my eyes switch over to the streaks of blood next to her.
“Hey, Ezio!” Zach says, all smiles. Like… this is not the smile you wear when you greet someone. This is the smile you wear when you want someone’s attention. How the hell could I have been so blind? I glance over and see Cyrus’s eyes fixated on us, but I’m not even sure why. I already told him I would wait years for him.
“Good evening,” I respond.
“Hopefully, we didn’t pull you away from anything too important,” Zach says.
“Nope. I had nothing better to do, so I was simply harassing some college students.”
“Sounds concerning,” Cyrus comments.
“It’s okay, it was Julian’s class. I was teaching them artwork.”
Zach looks mistakenly impressed. “I didn’t know you were an artist. What kind of artwork were you doing?”
“Uh… the G-rated kind,” I assure him.
“The way you say that makes me assume it wasn’t,” Cyrus says.
I grin at him, pleased that he understands me so well. “It’s fine. It was just stick figures doing simple things like piggyback rides and leapfrog.”
Zach laughs way too hard at that. How was I so blind? I was convinced he was over here wooing the shit out of Cyrus while he hasn’t looked away from me once.
I step to the side when something catches my attention. “None of these lines have been the same, but they’re always in the same area and same side of the body… have you overlaid them?”
Cyrus examines them. “I… don’t think we have. That’s a good idea. Let’s get that sent over and see if they can get it to us quickly. Meanwhile, let’s walk around.”
“Okay.” I follow him as we move throughout the house, but I don’t notice anything off.
“Should we call the dog in?” Cyrus asks, talking about Julian.
“I don’t know… I’m not noticing anything in any of the rooms. Let’s head outside,” I say as Zach hurries up. I assume he’s going to laugh overly hard at something I say again to prove to me that I’m the funniest person ever, but instead, he holds out a tablet that Cyrus takes.
“I think you’re right, Ezio. I think it spells something. The lines butt up perfectly where they meet,” Cyrus muses as he looks at it. It… doesn’t look like a whole lot of something at the moment, but he’s transfixed. He hurries outside and over to his car while Zach and I follow. He grabs a pen for the tablet out of his bag before leaning against the car as I watch him try every word in the alphabet with the first line.
