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  “Four degrees centigrade,” Tremelay added. “The blood has to be at that temperature consistently or it starts to break down and would be useless. Kyra said our killer is probably a doctor or possibly a nurse with emergency room experience. Evidently it’s hard enough to hit the vein right, for this they’d need to support the artery so it didn’t slip aside when the needle was inserted. They’d also need to know how to speed the blood flow so they could remove a significant volume as quickly as possible before clotting began to occur.”

  “Even with an artery?” I shook my head, envisioning a firehose of blood. Arterial spray was a real thing and not just something in the movies.

  “Twelve gauge is big, but not all that large, Ainsworth. Speed is limited by the size of the needle, and the longer it takes, the more likely the blood is going to clot.”

  I shuddered. “How long?”

  “A few hours at the quickest. Less if they used some sort of anticoagulant drug. A whole day if they had problems hitting the artery right or didn’t know how to speed blood flow. Given that the guy went missing Monday and showed up dead early Tuesday morning, I’m agreeing with Kyra that at least one of these guys is a doctor or an ER nurse. They knew what they were doing.”

  “So you’re really thinking this is a blood-for-pay scheme?” I asked.

  Which meant it wasn’t my responsibility any longer. No supernatural baddie. Just a human killer. I was grateful that Tremelay had shown me all this, explained it all to me, so I wouldn’t spend any more time obsessing or worrying over it. And I wouldn’t embarrass myself by going to Dario and asking if one of his family might have caused this man’s death.

  But something about this still worried me. There was something in the back of my mind that wondered if Tremelay wasn’t quite right about the murderer or the motives.

  Janice had immediately suspected vampires. They would definitely have a reason to take five to six liters of blood from a guy. There were other supernatural creatures that liked blood and quite possibly had fangs that were similar to twelve gauge hypodermic needles.

  “I’m putting my money on a rich guy needing heart surgery who is Rh-null blood type, but I could be wrong about that. Could be someone…or something…else that is willing to pay big for ten pints of rare blood.” Tremelay fixed me with a hard stare. “Vampires with exotic tastes, maybe? Vampires who would pay big and store blood in bags in a freezer for later.”

  “They don’t like stored blood. It’s doesn’t satisfy their hunger. If it’s vampires, then they would have gorged on it all right away. And they wouldn’t have wanted to drink from bags no matter how fresh. Part of the nutrient transfer is by drinking right from the vein. If Kyra’s right and this was from needles, then it’s not vampires.”

  One of Tremelay’s eyebrows went up. “And this is information you got from your vampire boyfriend? You’re sure he wouldn’t lie to you…oh let’s say because he doesn’t want you to get mad that one of his buddies has kinky tastes and killed a guy, and have you cut him off from the bedroom nookie?”

  Nookie. I smirked knowing full well that Tremelay could curse like a sailor when he wasn’t in the storage room of a coffee shop. He’d throw around photos of dead people, but didn’t want to drop the f-bomb in public. Silly guy.

  “It doesn’t make sense as a vampire killing. Plus I’ve have up close and personal experience with vampire bites. They don’t look like this.”

  They didn’t. And now that I had decent photos, that fact was glaringly clear.

  “There was another of those ‘animal attacks’ in the north part of the city Wednesday night, and Snyder told me this morning he had a call about a dead man found in Pigtown that had bite marks on his neck.”

  I sucked in a breath, worried that Dario was losing control of his city. “It’s not Dario’s Balaj. There are vampires coming in from outside the city and his group is trying to keep them out, but it’s a struggle since they don’t have the numbers they used to. I want to tell you things will get better, but they might not.”

  Tremelay shook his head. “This is going to blow up, Ainsworth. That story in the paper…what can you do to clamp down on this before these vampires send our homicide rates through the roof and cause a city-wide panic?”

  “I’m meeting with Dario tonight,” I assured the detective. “Let me get an update from him and see what I can do to help.”

  If I wasn’t chasing down Dearg-Due and Mandurugo, I’d have time to help Dario. I’d just need to convince him to let me help. And somehow manage to squeeze in enough sleep that I wasn’t dozing off during my shifts.

  Speaking of which…

  “Okay then, let me know. You take care of this vampire situation, and I’ll work on the blood-for-money murder.”

  Blood for money. It was like the bathtub-kidney urban legend, where someone went to Mexico, got drunk, and woke up in a bloody bathtub with one kidney, a bunch of stitches, and a note telling them to go to the hospital, only with blood and this man never woke up.

  It was a bit of an urban legend, but black market organs weren’t. They truly happened. People bought and sold kidneys, portions of livers, a lung, or even body parts resulting in someone’s death depending on the profit.

  Tremelay was right, it did sound like a human on human crime. A doctor would have access to all the information, tools, and knowledge. And a doctor might be aware of a patient desperately in need of a rare blood type for a serious surgery—a patient willing to pay big for that blood so he could have that surgery sooner rather than later.

  Finding that killer would be his job, and helping Dario would be mine. I followed Tremelay out of the storeroom, wincing at the crowd in the coffee shop. We’d wrapped up just in time, because my break was over, and I could tell from the noise outside the storeroom that once again, the line of customers was nearly out the door.

  Chapter 10

  The coffee shop was in utter chaos all morning. Chalese and I worked the machines while Brandi and Sean handled the registers and called the orders. By noon we were nearly out of pastries and Sean had been to the back room twice for more espresso and extra bottles of gingerbread syrup. Things had thankfully slowed down a bit, so Sean told me to head home at three—which was a whole lot later than my scheduled quitting time of noon. I wasn’t going to complain about the overtime, even though my feet were killing me and I was beat.

  My scheduled visit with Chuck at the prison was at five, so I headed home wondering if I’d have time for a decent nap before driving over. Probably not. An hour nap would just leave me groggy, and I really didn’t want to meet with the mage while not fully awake and alert. Plus who knows what the traffic would be like to Jessup on a Black Friday afternoon.

  Instead of a nap, I ended up taking Fulk for a quick walk, then calling Janice.

  “Thought you were going to wait for me to call before you went with that article?” I asked when she picked up.

  “I had to get it out there, so I went with what I had. Why? Do you have something else for me?”

  I pursed my lips, trying to figure out exactly what I could tell Janice without getting in trouble with Tremelay.

  “Well, there does appear to be an issue with some rogue vampires up north of the city, but I’m not absolutely sure they’re responsible for the deaths that are being attributed to animal attacks. I’m seeing Dario tonight and we’ll discuss it.”

  “And what about the guy in the morgue that didn’t have any blood left in his body?”

  “I’m getting to that,” I told her. “But first, there are some homeless people who have died of overdoses but are anemic. I’m talking to Dario about them as well.”

  “The guy at the morgue—”

  “The guy at the morgue.” I waved a hand to slow her down, even though Janice couldn’t see it. “The police are looking for a human murderer on that one.”

  The reporter made a pfft noise. “Because they don’t know about vampires.”

  “Tremelay knows about vampire
s,” I countered. “And he’s convinced it’s not them or anything else supernatural. I can’t go into any details, but the situation is such that this is probably a one-off murder, and not part of a spree or anything.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Janice groaned. “How the heck is that not a vampire murder? Needle-like fang marks on the guy’s inner arms. Drained of blood. Classic vampire.”

  I winced. “Except it’s not. I promise you, Janice. Tremelay is no dummy and he’s looking for a human murderer.”

  Janice was silent for a few seconds. “Wait. Is this like a bathtub kidney thing? Black market blood? How the heck is that profitable? Is there something about this guy’s blood that makes it worth enough to kill him for it?”

  Janice was no dummy either.

  “I can’t say. But it’s not vampires.” I headed into the kitchen, needing a drink. Something with caffeine since it wasn’t looking like I’d be getting a nap today. Soda. Or iced tea.

  She snorted. “Not that guy, but the others…”

  I rolled my eyes, even though she couldn’t see that either. “It’s not Dario or his Balaj. If vampires contributed to or caused those deaths, then it’s rogues from outside the city, emboldened since the Balaj is all of twenty-five vampires right now.”

  I yanked a lone can of Diet Coke out of my fridge and pulled a glass from the cabinet while I listened to Janice go on and on about the threat to humanity, and how vampires shouldn’t be allowed in the city at all. Popping open the can, I opened the freezer door and scooped a handful of ice cubes into my glass before I realized something.

  There were ice cubes. And no puddle of water on my kitchen floor. I frowned at the floor, then looked at the ice maker. Had I called the property management company? I didn’t remember calling them. And even so, the thing was broken on Wednesday when I’d left to go to my parents’ house. They’d either come out on Thanksgiving to replace it, or this morning when I was at work.

  Huh. That was a pretty quick response for an ice maker. These people were a million times better than the management at the apartment in Fells Point. Maybe I should get them a little something for Christmas to show my appreciation.

  “Aria? Did you hear a word I said?”

  I started guiltily, shutting the freezer door and putting my glass of ice on the counter. “I know you’ve got your objections about vampires and how they feed on humans, but I don’t have any problem with consensual, symbiotic relations between vampires and their blood donors.”

  Well, I did have problems with it, but not to the level of Janice’s issues. My concerns were the addictive nature of vampire venom and how that interfered in the free choice of the donors in their continued service. It veered too closely to drug addiction in my mind, and I questioned whether an addicted person really could be seen as giving consent or not.

  It was a conundrum. Vampires needed human blood to live, and they couldn’t help the addictive nature of their venom. Still…just thinking about it made my heart race.

  “I’ll help Dario and the Balaj keep these other vampires out,” I told her. “And if I find the ones who killed those people, I’ll deliver justice.”

  There were no vampire prisons, well besides the cages in Dario’s and Leonora’s houses that were meant for temporary restraint. Justice was death. Dario and his family wouldn’t hesitate to deliver that punishment, and neither would I. A vampire that killed couldn’t be trusted to live among humans.

  “Call me this weekend?” Janice asked. “I’d like an update before I run anything on the alleged animal attacks.”

  “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything,” I promised before hanging up and pouring my soda.

  The caffeine didn’t help, but thankfully the quick nap I was able to squeeze in did. Splashing some cold water on my face, I headed downstairs, let Fulk out for a quick potty break, grabbed the huge plastic tub of Fisher’s popcorn that was my monthly tithe in return for Chuck’s cooperation in going to and remaining in prison, then headed out.

  Traffic was reasonably light, and although there were quite a few people visiting friends and family at the prison this afternoon, I got through security with a quick efficiency. They’d taken the tub of popcorn as they always did when I visited, but Chuck had told me that they delivered it to him back in his cell. It seemed the mage had some sort of arrangement that I probably didn’t want to know about with the prison staff where he got all sorts of items from the outside that prisoners would normally have been denied. It wasn’t just popcorn either. I was pretty sure the guy had his spell book and magical supplies with him. Everyone seemed to treat him with a respectful caution, so I had no doubt he’d been putting that spell book to good use.

  The guy could have easily gotten out of there—either bribed the guards, or spelled the guards, or spelled the doors open, or levitated over the fence. I was pretty darned sure at least one of those would have been possible if not all of them. Why he remained here was a mystery to me. I was sure it didn’t have to do with the continued supply of popcorn from me, nor from our monthly conversation. No, I got the impression Chuck felt safer in prison than on the outside. And that worried me.

  I sat down in the plastic chair and waited. Chuck was escorted in, not cuffed or restrained in any way. He looked good, as if he’d been eating well and getting lots of sunshine.

  “Thanks for the popcorn,” he told me as he sat. “I love that stuff. It’s the highlight of my month. Well, that and your interesting company, of course. Who, or what, chewed your neck up?”

  That’s right. I’d last met with Chuck prior to everything going down between the two vampire groups.

  “It was a crazy Halloween,” I told him. “I got evicted. Some asshole vampires came down from Philly and tried to oust the Baltimore Balaj and take over. I killed the Philly Master, but not before he mauled me. I got rid of my demon mark.”

  I didn’t mention Dario’s and my relationship, nor the sweet ritual space in my new digs. That stuff was none of Chuck’s business. Actually none of this was Chuck’s business but our deal was that I told him of my magical and Templar doings, and he gave me hints about whatever horrifying thing Fiore Noir had been sacrificing souls to keep at bay.

  “Did you lop his head off?” Chuck asked cheerfully. “That Philly Master, I mean.”

  It would be best to keep this one vague. “No. Let’s just say my body is a temple.”

  He laughed. “You’re clever. You’re the sort who thinks outside the box, which I can’t say about any other Templar I’ve had the misfortune of knowing in my life.”

  I made a mental note to ask my mother and father if they’d ever heard of Chuck. I couldn’t imagine that he would have met with more than one Templar and had them not take note. Although the guy didn’t exactly look like a stereotypical mage. He looked more like a retired stevedore.

  “It’s warm this winter,” he commented out of the blue. “Warmer than it should be.”

  It wasn’t technically winter yet, and I wasn’t sure what he meant because it had been freaking cold ever since before Halloween. But I knew what he was referring to. One of the hints he’d given me about the Big Bad he and Fiore Noir had been spelling against was that it would come in the spring, or earlier if we had a warm winter.

  I was so not ready for this…whatever it was, and I immediately sent up a quick prayer for a sub-arctic blast to come our way.

  “How cold is cold?” I asked him.

  His smile was downright jolly. “Colder than this.”

  “So if it stays this temperature, when can I expect this thing to appear?”

  Chuck shrugged. “Probably after the new year. Sooner if it warms up.”

  Maryland weather was weird. We’d have subzero days, followed by weeks in the mid-forties, then a few days in the sixties, then back to low twenties. It was absolutely possible that we’d have spring-like weather in December.

  I leaned forward in my seat. “What is it, Chuck? I need to know. I need to be prepared.”


  “Won’t matter. There’s nothing you can do to prepare for this. Well, except get the heck out of the city, that is.”

  This was starting to piss me off. “All I know about this thing so far is that without the magic you guys were doing, it’s going to come, and that it prefers warm weather. Come on, Chuck. You’ve got to give me more than this.”

  He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “It’s not just the weather. That development in the north part of the city is hurrying things along. The vibrations have disturbed its slumber. We were keeping it asleep, but now it stirs.”

  “So it dwells in the ground.” I eyed him for confirmation and got none. “It prefers warmer temps, and lives in the ground, and some excavation near the city is waking it up and pissing it off.”

  Chuck just sat there, looking bored.

  “Has it always lived in the ground? Baltimore was founded in 1729. Why now? Why is this thing waking up now and not a hundred years ago, or a decade ago?”

  “Before Fiore Noir, others were charged with singing it to sleep. They all died out a long time ago, and we only discovered its presence and the danger a few years back. We lack the magic of the original guardians, but we had to do something.” He shrugged. “So we did what we do best. Our own specialized magic.”

  It still didn’t excuse killing human beings, destroying their souls. I don’t care how noble Fiore Noir felt their cause, the temporary safety of many did not justify the sacrifice of a few.

  But still, his words chilled me. A creature of the earth that had slumbered for ages. Guardians who had died out. I’d need to research this, to find out exactly what it was and how to either keep it asleep or kill it. The worst part of this whole thing was not knowing what the heck I might be up against in the near future.