Sweet Last Drop (3 page)

I shared his smile and then deliberately made my face somber, knowing that he wouldn’t appreciate my next line of questions. “In all your twelve years of experience, how many animal attack victims do you suppose you’ve had to pronounce dead?”

Berry’s smile wilted. “Little more than a dozen, likely.”

“Just over one per year then?”

“I’d have to check our records to be certain, but I’d say that sounds about right.”

“Do animal attack victims usually sustain such severe injuries, or would you consider Lydia’s injuries exceptionally severe?”

Berry crossed his arms. “Now, Miss DiRocco—”

“DiRocco is just fine.”

He shook his head. “If Walker thinks Lydia was attacked by an animal, than she was attacked by an animal.”

I opened my mouth, but Berry held up his hand.

“To you that may sound presuming, but to me, it’s a testament to Walker’s abilities and fine work ethic. I know without a doubt that Walker will research the tracks, determine the animal, and find it. If he determines the tracks are not animal, he’ll tell us that, too.”

I nodded. “I understand. I feel the same assurance about Walker’s work ethic from my brief time working our case in the city, and you’ve been working together for years.”

Berry nodded with me.

“I’m not asking you to question Walker’s professional opinion. I’m asking you to give me yours. In your twelve years of experience as coroner of Erin, New York, do Lydia’s injuries resemble the dozen or so other animal attack victims you’ve pronounced dead and their injuries?”

Berry sighed. “No, they don’t.”

“What’s different about Lydia?”

“Her injuries are far more severe. Typically, an animal feels threatened, is protecting her young, or has rabies. In any of those circumstances, the victim may sustain a life-threatening injury, such as blow to the head. Once the victim is unconscious, the threat is neutralized, and the animal goes on its way. Signs of a struggle are sometimes visible and can be substantial, like cuts, bruises, and bites. But Lydia—” Berry’s voice caught. He shook his head.

I touched his shoulder softly. “I know.”

He cleared his throat. “She was torn apart.”

“I’m sorry. I—” I opened my mouth to find a delicate way to ask my next question, but Berry met my gaze. His eyes were red and shone from his welling tears. I reminded myself that these weren’t my people. My acquaintance with Walker might encourage their friendliness initially, but if I made grown, weathered men cry after every interview, no one would want to talk to me, about the investigation or otherwise. My next question wasn’t an end-all anyway, so I swallowed it. “I’m very sorry. It’s especially hard when they’re so young.”

Berry nodded.

Walker returned empty-handed from scanning the scene. I bid Berry a final thank you for his time, and Berry pounded Walker’s back in that same rough handshake-hug they’d greeted one another. One look at Berry’s watery, flushed expression, however, was enough for Walker. He narrowed his eyes on me over Berry’s shoulder. I blinked back, exuding unperturbed innocence the best I could considering the circumstances, but the moment we were tucked in the privacy of his Chevy pickup, Walker exploded.

“What the fuck was that?”

I matched his glare with an admonishing look of my own. “You said I could interview the coroner, did you not?”

Walker opened his mouth.

“When you brought me here you knew full well I’d ask questions,” I said before he could answer. “Apparently, you even warned people. I’m good at what I do because people connect with me. I become a person to talk to, a person to confide in, but if you warn people that I’m a reporter, it only makes me one thing: a reporter. And people don’t open up to reporters.”

“I warned them for good reason! Berry was crying, for heaven’s sake!”

“My questions didn’t make him cry, Walker.”

“I saw him! He—”

“But it wasn’t my questions.”

He ran his hand roughly over his face. “I know.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Walker raised an eyebrow.

I smiled. “Not about my questions. I’m sorry about Lydia.”

He nodded. “Me too.”

Walker started the ignition and followed Berry’s van through the narrow gravel road out of the woods. Outstretched branches slapped the windshield and scraped against the side doors as we dipped and popped in and out of man-sized potholes. I winced in sympathy for his tires. The road could hardly be considered a road, even for Erin, and I remembered from Walker’s brief tour of the town this morning that it led somewhere specific.

“What’s at the end of this drive?”

Walker’s jaw tightened.

“If we drove deeper into the woods would we—”

“You can’t let it go, can you?”

I blinked. “I’m just making conversation.”

Berry pulled out onto the paved road, and his arm lifted from the window frame in a backhanded wave. Walker waved back, turning right out of the woods.

He sighed. “The trail leads to Gretel’s Tavern. It’s not technically a road. It’s his driveway.”

“His?”

“Buck McFerson.”

I opened my mouth to push my luck with another question, but a shadow moved on the edge of the tree line up ahead.

We still had a few hours of daylight. The sun’s rays streamed across the expanse of the road and dappled in glowing spots over the median and into the woods, but on the inner edge of the woods, where the tree line darkened from its leafy canopy and sunlight couldn’t quite reach a shadow within the shadows, two glowing orbs blinked through the leaves.

“Walker, there’s—”

“Don’t start,” he snapped. “I’d like to escape from work sometime during the day, and preferably with you, but if you can’t separate church from state, then—”

I squeezed my nails into his bicep. “There’s a vampire up ahead.”

Walker’s muscle flexed under my hand. He stared ahead for a moment, and I knew the moment he caught sight of its reflective eyes. Walker’s hand tightened in a trembling vise around the steering wheel. “We can’t catch a fucking break.”

“The sun hasn’t set. How is it out?”

“She keeps to the shadows.” Walker took his foot off the gas and sighed. “Daylight doesn’t impede her or her abilities anymore as long as she avoids direct sunlight.”

I glared at Walker’s speedometer. “Why are we slowing down? Do you know her?”

“Of course I know her.” His grip on the steering wheel creaked. “There’s an old train overpass up ahead.”

“Walker, I don’t think stopping is the best—”

“Bex can’t withstand direct sunlight without bursting into flames, but she’ll make short work of us if we cross into the shadows under the overpass.”

Bex.
I glanced at her again and the road up ahead, and sure enough, the overpass cast its shadow across both lanes, effectively road-blocking our drive.

“So speed up! What could she possibly accomplish in the few seconds we’re under the overpass?”

His jaw clenched. “This truck is fairly new. I don’t want her denting its grill again.”

I blinked. “She’s done this before?”

“If we don’t stop on our own, she’ll make us stop.”

I shook my head, both aggravated and impressed. As per my usual experience in dealing with vampires, Bex left us with very few choices, all of which ended in her favor. “She chose this position to deliberately block us, knowing you would stop.”

“Or hoping I wouldn’t.” Walker flipped up the center console. “Take your pick.”

I peered into the console’s depths and shook my head in appreciation of its contents. “You’re certainly prepared,” I said, hefting a familiar item in my palm. It looked like a pen, but when I clicked the top mechanism, a wooden stake sprang from its tip.

“Always.”

“This one’s new,” I commented, picking up a men’s Invicta skeleton wristwatch. It seemed like a simple watch, but nothing in Walker’s arsenal of weapons was ever what it seemed.

He grinned. “One of my newest, actually. The hands detach from the watch on a pressurized spring and fire from the twelve like little spears.” He pointed to the tip of one of the watch hands. “The arrowhead design of the watch hands anchor the shot in place, or at least, I’m hoping it will. Once shot, the spear should be impossible to remove without creating more damage.”

“Let me guess… silver?”

“It’s effective. Why deviate from what works?”

“Very true.” I placed the watch back into its holder in the console. “I think I’ll just stick with my silver nitrate,” I said, reaching into my jacket to pull out the spray I always carried with me, but my fingers slipped through a hole in my right pocket. “Shit.”

Walker raised his eyebrows.

“I had spray with me this morning.” I abandoned my pocket and tightened my hand around the pen-stake. “Maybe I should hang on to this after all.”

“You do that. And take more silver nitrate as well. More never hurt.”

“Thanks.” I snatched a can of the silver spray from the console and shut its lid. I preferred the silver nitrate over the stake because if a vampire turned the spray against me, it wouldn’t harm me. I couldn’t say the same about a wooden stake. One stab through the heart would kill me as effectively as it would kill them.

I actually had more than Walker’s weapons as protection against vampires, including new silver earrings I’d bought to match the silver necklace Dominic had given me, but I couldn’t tell Walker about the necklace. A vial of Dominic’s blood hung from the chain in a hollow, glass pendant. I’d shied away from wearing it when Dominic had first bestowed the gift—in general, I made a habit of avoiding jewelry containing bodily fluids—but his blood could heal injuries when applied topically. Anything that could do that was more precious than silver nitrate and stakes combined. Inevitably, no matter the caliber of weapons we carried, I’d need to heal in some capacity after interacting with vampires.

I swallowed nervously as the Chevy rolled to a halt a few feet shy of the shadows. “Just because she’ll burn, doesn’t mean she won’t cross into the sunlight anyway. Dominic once deliberately melted his hand on silver just to prove a point. They don’t think of pain and injuries like we do because they heal so quickly.”

“I know,” Walker said. He opened his truck door. “But she won’t.”

“I don’t want to bet my life on it.”

“It’s not a bet. It’s guaranteed. Bex is very careful not to remind me of her true nature. She doesn’t threaten me with her fangs or claws like Dominic. She never allows herself to burn or growl in front of me. I’ve seen her drink blood from a wine glass, for God’s sake, as if that’s more civilized than drinking it from the vein. After all her time and efforts to seduce me, I doubt she’ll stop now.”

I snorted. “I’m doubting,” I said, but despite my reservations, I gripped the door’s handle and stepped out of the truck to face Walker’s Master.

Bex was fully disguised in human-illusion, as I referred to it. Dominic had a similar look right after he fed, like the blood swelled his muscles, shined his hair, and smoothed his skin to healthy perfection, so he looked deceptively human without any of our human flaws. Bex was no exception. Her body, though feminine, was lean and sculpted. She wore dark skinny jeans, brown cowboy boots, and a fitted tee as if she were just another hometown heartbreaker. Her bronze locks swayed in gentle waves past her shoulders, and her glowing complexion looked smooth and tempting. Despite the act, as valiant an effort as it was, Bex couldn’t hide the telltale luminescence of her reflective, yellow-green irises that bled to white toward the pupil.

Bex may have looked flawless now, but I knew from experience with other vampires what she’d look like when she didn’t drink blood. I’d been stabbed by their gargoyle-like claws and bitten by their razor-sharp fangs. Although Dominic enjoyed flaunting the sculpted perfection of his well-fed body, he also enjoyed taunting me with the monstrous version of himself. To see how long I’d last before flinching. To test how close he could draw near before I stepped back. I called his bluff most days, but one day I suspected, like the wild animal he imitated, his instinct would be to strike.

Bex smiled, carefully close-lipped. “Ian. It’s lovely runnin’ into y’all,” she said, her voice a dainty drawl, more belle and less redneck than the rest of Erin’s locals. I wondered if her dialect was an act to lower our guard or if she was truelly southern.

Walker crossed his arms. “Can’t say the feeling’s mutual.”

I stepped around the Chevy and grimaced as pain stabbed through my hip. I’d sat on a bus for most of the day, but I knew by the click and grind of bone on bone that the little time I’d spent on my feet had been too much. Five years had passed since the stakeout I’d taken a bullet for Officer Harroway. The injury had been worth the story I’d scooped, and of course, it’d been worth saving Harroway, but I’d live with chronic arthritis for the rest of my life.

I gritted my teeth against the pain and tried not to limp the ten feet it took to reach Walker. We stood in the shining warmth of sunlight, and like a divider between us, Bex remained confined to the overpass’s shadow.

Bex cocked her head. “Won’t you introduce me to your friend?”

“She’s of no concern to—”

“DiRocco,” I said, and Walker groaned.

Bex’s eyes flicked to study my face and something, not quite recognition, but something akin to familiarity, sharpened her gaze.

“Cassidy DiRocco, night blood to Dominic Lysander, Master of New York City,” I specified. I nodded in greeting instead of offering my hand. She wouldn’t extend hers into the sunlight and I sure as hell wouldn’t extend mine into the shadows. “Great to finally meet you.”

Bex didn’t say anything for a moment. I braced myself for her attack, considering the threat she posed to Dominic, but she just stared at me, stock-still. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was shocked. After living a few hundred human lifetimes, I’d imagine that shock was rare. I’d been an iron-clad cynic at only thirty years old; then I’d met Dominic and discovered the existence of vampires. Now, shock was normal.

“Likewise,” she said, suddenly animated again. She smiled wider, still close-lipped but lovely nonetheless. Her amiability didn’t seem forced, but I’d bet that without that strip of sunlight between us, I’d already be dead, or maimed and writhing at the least. “Your reputation precedes you.”