Chapter Twenty-Seven
As Seb interrogated Owun, Aiden Blackthorne and Camille watching, I glanced out the office window. I’d woken on the sidewalk feeling like crap but aware of a bubbling, like champagne, in my blood. I’d gotten steadily better as the effervescence diminished, until now I felt normal. Better than normal.
Below us, Alliance vampires were brooming piles of body parts together, apparently confident the right pieces would rejoin and in a few days all the bad guys would be as good as new. Weird enough. But that wasn’t the weirdest thing going on.
Apparently, we were on the cusp of vampire war.
“Admit it.” Seb slapped Owun, deforming the male’s malicious smile for a moment. “Admit you’re the murderer.”
“Hoping my lord Lorenzo will stop his advance?” The Cadre master’s title was a mockery of respect, underlined by Owun’s unnerving, bloody grin. “I admit those murders were dotted from Chicago to New York to infuriate my lord Lorenzo. I admit the killer, whoever he or she was, staged the murders with the Meiers Corners tourist pamphlet to point here, and to implicate Elias. Certainly, Cleomenes was involved in trying to lure you within reach, even though Elias was the main target. He’d paid well for the privilege of drinking ancient blood, and it wasn’t just with cash. But though he helped the murderer, he—or she—almost certainly owes allegiance to a much greater power than that old fart.”
Seb briefly closed his eyes, his pain evident. We’d been played from the beginning.
“But me, the murderer?” Owun shook his head. “I’d look at that Elias character. His disappearing makes him look real guilty. And Cleomenes never liked him.” The male’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Neither did you.”
“Enough,” Seb roared. “Where is Elias?”
He must’ve poured his darkest mesmerism into his voice because it rang like a hammer in my skull.
“I-I d-don’t kn-know.” The words forced themselves from between Owun’s clenched teeth.
“The truth,” Blackthorne noted.
“You sack of shit.” Seb slapped hands on the table in front of Owun and leaned in, face-to-face.
Despite his bravado, the younger vampire flinched.
“Tell me all. From the beginning.”
“Th-the Shadow Lord.” Clenching his eyes, Owun shook his head, vigorously. Slowly, he opened them, with that unnerving grin. “Try your worst. I’m immune.”
Owun clamped his lips shut.
“Damn it.” Seb slapped a frustrated hand against the table. “New York will be here any minute. Elias is missing. What can we do?”
“Tell Lorenzo what Owun said,” Blackthorne said. “If he’s at all reasonable—”
“He’s not,” Seb said. “Not where Elias is concerned.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know the full, horrific details.” Seb heaved a sigh. “All I know is that Lorenzo was once a lord in the Borgias’ Italy, not just of vampires but of humans. He gobbled up territory—territory that mysteriously came open. Well, if you consider bribery, treachery, and assassination a mystery. Lorenzo was on his way to becoming king, and then suddenly…he wasn’t. He disappeared and his machinery was dismantled. By the time he surfaced again, the Old World was sewn up, and he had to start over in the New—with Elias only a stone’s throw away. Really, it’s a miracle war hasn’t blown up before this.”
“You’re FBI.” Camille crossed her arms, her hair and makeup perfect but her white peasant blouse soaked with blood. “Find proof. Proof Owun is the one Lorenzo wants, proof that’ll rock Lorenzo back on his heels.”
Seb snapped, “What do you think I’ve been trying to do?”
The vampire woman shrugged. “Then we get a confession.” She leaned down to Owun, who turned his smug smile on her, and tickled him with one long, blood-red fingernail. “Admit it,” she purred. “Admit you committed the murders to start war between Lorenzo and Elias.”
“Or we beat the confession out of him.” Blackthorne stood at his elegant ease, arms crossed. In contrast, the look in his eye considering the young vampire was predatory, almost hungry.
Owun’s smile disappeared. Hope splashed me.
Seb shook his head. “We could, and it would even be true. But will that stop Lorenzo? Especially if he believes we compelled Owun? Coerced him to confess to save our own skin?”
Owun’s smug smile returned and edged into nasty.
I clutched my backpack’s padded shoulder strap. We needed proof, and our lead investigator had none, all because a fanged little menace wouldn’t talk.
Then I remembered my sketchpad. “Seb. I might have an idea.” I motioned to him, leading him outside the booth, and shut the door behind us. “I don’t want him to hear. Is this far enough?”
“Better if we go down.”
On the main floor, I swung my backpack around and pulled out my pad. “After you taught me about the investigator’s eye, my drawings got weird. I thought I’d lost my ability to draw the truth because I was too focused on aberrations. Freaky stuff. Now I think I was drawing the truth—and those drawings were freaky because I was freaked out. Scared.”
Gently, Seb said, “With everything that’s happened, who wouldn’t be frightened?”
“You weren’t.” While I spoke, I’d flipped through my sketch pad. “Here it is. See?”
I showed him my pad, open to the sketch I’d made of Owun.
I’d drawn his fangs, not long and perfectly symmetric, but tiny and kind of snaggle-toothed.
“His fangs aren’t even.” Seb frowned. “But the vampire in us makes us perfect, unless we destroy ourselves or when we’re just made…” His frown deepened.
“Yes. I thought these were because of all the scary stuff that went down with Cleomenes. But I’d made the drawing before the airport. Seb, I draw, not what I think is right, but what I see. I didn’t draw Owun’s fangs the same length because they aren’t.”
Seb sucked in a breath. He’d seen where I was going with this.
“The reading I’ve done says human teeth are unique. Dental records are as good as a fingerprint. So a young vampire—”
“Owun’s bite will be unique, too.” He grabbed me and lifted me from my feet. “Brie, you’re a genius. All we have to do is get a mold of his teeth and compare them to the bite marks from the murders…oh, damn.” He settled me on the floor.
“What?”
“I erased any supernatural details.” Self-disgust seared his features. “I knew tampering with the evidence was wrong.”
“All of them?”
His frown cleared and his gaze snapped to mine, gleaming with excitement. “The last murder. The one discovered after we were already here. I haven’t had time to alter the record. A cast would’ve been made of the puncture wounds, complete with accurate measurements, to try to identify the murder weapon or weapons.”
“Great! Then all we have to do is get an impression of Owun’s bite and match it to the records.”
But just as we were about to find a dentist or police to help, Thor hustled Sera inside and slammed the door. As the lock clicked home, the sound of feet, dozens of them, came from outside the main doors. And one voice.
“Elias, you fucked-up bastard!” a male yelled. “You are dead meat.”
Seb shuddered. Horror shook me to my shoes. That must be Lorenzo.
We were out of time.