The Garden District was a beautiful and ornate neighborhood, with gorgeous, historic houses and mansions, along with lush and green gardens. The historical homes had been built by wealthy settlers, but now in this prestigious neighborhood, most houses had price tags that ran into several million.

I imagined Nate Wilder's mansion was one of those. I stopped at the gates and pressed the intercom, announcing my presence. The gates opened and I drove up the long driveway, admiring the beautifully kept gardens and massive weeping willow trees along the way. The house itself was a large Victorian, restored to its original grandeur, with white columns and the scrollwork of cast iron balconies. Definitely in the millions.

I stopped in the circular driveway and made my way up the stairs to the front doors, suddenly nervous.

The door opened and a young woman in a maid's uniform greeted me, ushering me inside. My breath caught at the impressive entranceway with a massive staircase running up each side of the room, meeting at a balcony in the middle. The tiled floor revealed a pattern of a large, meandering tree, cleverly depicted in the tiles. I'd imagine the design looked stunning from the balcony.

I was beckoned into a front room leading off of the foyer. I felt him before I saw him, a raw energy washing over me.

"Mr. Wilder? Your guest." The young woman ushered me into a sitting room and left, pulling the door closed behind her. Nate Wilder had been thumbing through a magazine when I'd entered, but he put it to one side and rose.

"Ah," he murmured, moving toward me. "Enforcer Black I assume?"

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice."

"Pleasure." The way he drawled the word had me thinking of what I'd done with Carter the night before. My thighs clenched.

I sighed, pulling the zip of my Kevlar jacket down so it wasn't so constrictive around my tight throat. I moved across to the windows. It was daylight outside yet the sun wasn't bothering him. Special UV tint, I assumed, reaching out and pressing my palm against the window, the coolness of it soothing.

"Go ahead." He settled back into his chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him, arms crossed loosely over his chest.

Taking a deep breath, I turned to watch him as I filled him in on what the SIA knew. Four victims. One definitely had a stamp to his nightclub on the back of her hand and her body had been found in his warehouse. The other victims had stamps but they couldn't be clearly identified as his logo.

"Okay. First of all, let me tell you I am not involved in this. I spent years in the Special Forces protecting humans. There's no way I'd intentionally harm one." I believed him. I didn't want to think he was involved, but someone was going to considerable effort to implicate him.

"Secondly, I haven't been to that warehouse since I bought it nine or ten years ago. And before you ask, I bought it because a crooked politician told me the zoning for that area was being changed and I was going to convert the warehouse into a nightclub. Obviously, the politician lied and that didn't happen. Mistlyn zoning changed instead and I bought and converted a warehouse there."

"Why keep the original warehouse? Why not sell it?" I was curious.

"I can afford to keep it. If someone made a decent offer I'd sell, but who knows? Zoning may change one day and I can develop it as I originally planned."

I nodded. Seemed plausible. When you can afford a multi million dollar mansion, holding on to an old derelict warehouse was small change.

"As to the nightclub, I might be able to help you with that."

"Really? How?"

"We have security cameras everywhere. We can go through the footage and see if your victims did visit the club. And who they left with."

He’d beaten me to it, I was just about to ask him about surveillance cameras. Friggin awesome. I smiled my delight at him. He leaned back, watching me.

"One condition," he said.

"What?"

"I want to work the case with you." I started to shake my head, but he added, "If someone is using my club as a hunting ground and trying to set me up for it, I have a right to be involved." His voice had an edge of steel to it.

"That's not my decision to make. Above my pay grade. You'll need to talk to Director Ridgeway. And she's off until tomorrow. Full moon and all."

"Your director is a werewolf?"

"Sure. The SIA has all sorts of supernaturals and paranormals."

"What are you? You're not vampire or werewolf." I saw him raise his nose slightly and sniff my scent.

"No, I'm not either of those things." I agreed. "Let's not get off track. I need to get moving on this case before we have another victim on our hands. Where can I view the footage?" I was prepared to beg. He had what I needed to move forward in catching whatever nut job was killing humans.

"I have an IT lab here. My team and I occasionally freelance…as private investigators."

"Really? I didn’t know that, but okay." I nodded, an IT lab indeed. This could be the big breakthrough I needed.

“Doesn’t pay to advertise the fact. Civilians can often gain much more useful intel than any agency.” Standing, he strode across the room, beckoning me to follow.

He led me through the massive house, down several flights of stairs to what appeared to be an underground bunker. He stopped before a thick steel-plated door and spoke his name into a box on the wall. The door clicked open and I stepped in behind him. Wow. A massive white room greeted us. It was divided into four rooms by glass walls. To my right a room containing banks of computers, servers and electronic equipment. To the left a room with three medical gurneys, trolleys, fridges and cupboards that looked like they housed medical supplies. I moved down the center corridor; everything was pristine and state of the art. A hum buzzed through the air, my best guess was an air filtration system. The second room on the left housed a large island bench with microscopes and other scientific equipment, and finally, the last room held two square cages. We had similar cells at the SIA.

"Wow. Quite the setup," I murmured, impressed.

Nate guided me into the computer lab, the glass door sliding closed behind us silently.

"Can I log into the SIA server from here?"

"Sure." He indicated a monitor along the far wall. I pulled out the chair beneath it and laid my hands across the thin membrane keyboard, keying in the address of the SIA server and my login credentials. I'd just gained access when the door behind us slid open. I glanced over my shoulder at the newcomer.

Another tall one, though his build was leaner than Nate’s. His hair hung in waves to his shoulders, a light brown color that matched the light beard he sported. His hazel eyes met mine.

"Ethan, meet Enforcer Black. We are assisting the SIA with their inquiries surrounding Crimson Mist."

I rose and extended my hand to the other man. "Please, go ahead and call me Raven."

"Raven Black?" Nate looked at me.

"The nuns chose the name Raven and a social worker chose my surname. I suppose they thought they were being funny." I shrugged.

"Pleased to meet you, Raven." Ethan shook my hand then moved over to the main terminal in the center of the room. "So what are we doing?"

"I'm after footage from the club, seeing if we can spot any of my four victims. One we definitely know was at Crimson Mist, so I want to check out who she was with and if anything happened while she was there. The other three, we don't know if they were at Crimson Mist itself, but they were at a club and Crimson Mist might be the clue linking our victims together. I'm just pulling up pictures and dates now." I went back to my own computer and pulled up the victim's ID photos, taking care the vampires didn't get a glimpse of the morgue shots.

"I've been playing with a 3D facial recognition software," Ethan told me, "I'll give it a run first, might save us some time."

I sent him the files and then sat back and watched as his hands flew across his touch screen setup. Touching, grabbing, swiping. Literally manipulating files with his fingers. He loaded up Allena Niles’s image and ran the app. The video played in fast forward, tracking, measuring and discarding faces and images. We'd been at it for half an hour when the video froze and a face outlined in red zeroed in on the screen.

"Got her." Ethan grinned. He moved the video frame by frame as Allena shuffled forward in the lineup outside the club, made it to the front and received the stamp on the back of her hand. The footage was date stamped three days ago. The search resumed, picking up bits of footage from inside the club. At the bar buying a drink. Dancing. She appeared to be there with girlfriends, but they all left together. Everything looked fine. So she wasn't taken from the club. Ethan copied the footage we needed, then loaded up the first victim's image and set the date range I gave him. Hours passed as we trawled through the footage. We'd found the second victim, she'd been at the club as suspected, but again, nothing untoward happened there.

I rubbed my eyes and yawned. I'd been up all night and, glancing at the time on my phone, half the day. If I could get all the footage I needed before the start of my next shift, I could start cross-referencing, identify if the victims interacted with the same person, had the same group of friends. It was a big job, but it was the only lead we had. I propped my elbow on the desk and rested my head against my palm, tired eyes watching the video stream. I could hear Ethan and Nate talking, their voices becoming muted as my eyes closed.

With a jerk, I opened my eyes. My comms unit was buzzing. I reached for my wrist, confused to discover I was lying down. What? Where was I? A scraping noise reached my ears and I froze. Not knowing where I was and what was happening, I pulsed out my power. I heard a muffled oath and quickly sat up, reaching for my pyre-gun, only to find it missing.

"It's okay. You're safe." Nate's voice. I rubbed at my eyes, scanning the room. I was on one of the gurneys in the first aid room. And there was my gun, on the trolley by my side. My eyes met Nate’s as he stood frozen. We were in the bunker. Right, right. Releasing him, I pulled my power back in.

"Sorry," I mumbled, pressing the button on my comms unit. It was a security check from SIA. I'd missed logging in for my shift. I called in, explaining I was in the field and would be in later.

"That was unexpected." Nate approached warily, hands out, indicating he meant no harm.

"I bet. Sorry again. I was disorientated. I don't remember falling asleep." Picking up one of my discarded boots from the floor, he eased my foot into it, slowly drawing the zip up the inside of my calf.

"You ran out of steam a couple of hours ago. Figured you'd be more comfortable in here rather than face down on the desk."

"I didn't drool, did I?"

"No, but you did snore."

I laughed. "Did not. Did I?"

He laughed, pulling on my other boot and lifting me down from the gurney. "Nah. Now tell me, what was that little stunt?"

"Ah yes. My freeze ’em and leave ’em ability." I shrugged. "Just something I can do. Don't know how or why, just is. I know, I know, it's fascinating." I put up my hand to stop him. "But I still have working human parts and I really need to find a bathroom." I could see by the expression on his face that he wanted to explore my power further, just like everyone else that discovered it. But I wasn't joking about my bladder.

"No bathroom down here. We'll go upstairs. You must be hungry as well." My stomach growled on cue. Before I could stop him, he clasped my hand and led me back upstairs. He left me outside the bathroom and gave me directions to the kitchen. After using the toilet, I splashed water on my face and tidied my hair. Dark shadows marred the skin under my eyes. I looked great. Just great. Three hours sleep was not enough. I left the bathroom and found my way to the kitchen. Nate was waiting, looking sheepish.

"I'm sorry. We don't have much...food...in the house." He was looking at the fridge and my curiosity got the better of me. I opened it. Inside, stacked neatly shelf upon shelf, were bags of blood.

"Okay then." I closed the door. I glanced around the kitchen. Designer. Top of the range.

"I'll order something in. Pizza? Chinese?" He suggested.

"No please, I need to head into work anyway. I'll grab something on the way. I hadn't meant to be here so long. Sorry for the imposition."

"I liked having you here." He sounded surprised. The thing is, I liked being here with him and Ethan as well. They were easy company and Ethan was clearly an IT genius. The footage he'd found was invaluable to the investigation.

"We need to talk."

I turned to look at him. "Talk?"

"The investigation. Clearly, the connection you're looking for is Crimson Mist. Anything to do with my club, I will be involved in."

"I'm not saying no, Nate. It's not up to me. Like I said, you'll have to take it up with the director."

"Who's off being a wolf tonight."

"You're not being species prejudice are you, Nate?"

"Of course not! If you knew me better you'd never suggest that."

"But I don't know you better. And you're pushing me on something I have no control over." I puffed out a frustrated breath. Lord, I was tired and I didn't want to argue with him. "I've got to go." Pulling myself together, I turned, walking away without looking back.