Normally I liked to feed straight from the source, but the bagged blood had been taken today, meaning it wasn’t too old to taste like shit yet. Anything over two days was disgusting to me, though it was still fulfilling.
It was like drinking a hot beverage when it should be cold. I could do it, I just didn’t like doing it.
“Tell her, again, if she calls that we’re no longer in a relationship and that if she has any other inquiries, to forward them to Adelaide.”
Abraham choked.
I grinned.
“That’s kind of harsh,” Fox said from the corner of the room where he’d been sitting since I’d arrived. He was holding a cigarette between his fingers, though it wasn’t lit. It’d been a human habit that he’d brought into the afterlife. Though he knew better than to light up in my office.
“I think it’s time to pull the big guns out,” I said, denying him.
Adelaide was Fox’s sister, and he knew, just as well as I did, how harsh she could be when it came to the men she felt were under her protection.
Though, Adelaide was a human—or human-like. She’d been digesting vampire blood for over three decades, which had enabled her to keep her youthful appearance.
Adelaide, unfortunately, didn’t have the right genetic make up to take on vampirism. Fox, and I, had tried numerous times to turn her to ill effect. Luckily during one of those times, we realized that she could digest vampire blood, and benefit from its effects.
She’d been an asset to not only me, but my company, and I planned to keep her as long as I could.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
I flipped Pavlov off and took a seat behind my desk.
“What else happened tonight that warranted all four of you being in the city?”
Normally they were spread out in the surrounding area, and I had to call them in to get them to come to me. They liked their own territory, and since my power and magic gave off a ‘don’t come into my territory’ vibe, they usually stayed away unless I’d called them in.
Being invited into the city by me was something that changed the dynamics of our power shift, allowing them to come in without repercussions—such as feeling as if I was peeling their skin off their bones with my inadvertent power release.
“There was a call put out sometime around midnight asking for assistance, yet nobody can remember pushing the silent alarm,” Abraham grumbled. “And conveniently enough, the alarm was pushed from somewhere in your central office, meaning only a few would’ve been able to access it.”
“Did you check the logs to see who was here?”
I had a bio-scan that scanned everyone and everything that entered and exited my office. It didn’t matter whether you were human, shapeshifter, or vampire. If you had a body and triggered the alarm, it scanned you.
“There were eight people here, all of them your own personal staff. All claim not to have seen anything,” Fox said from his spot propped up in a chair. “Their logs on their computers also show them in their office, working on what they were supposed to be working on at the time of the alarm going off, too.”
“Can you tell where the alarm went off at?” I asked.
There were five alarms in the office, and four of them were where people could press them if needed. The only one they couldn’t access was the one in my office, and I damn well knew nobody had been in here.
Even though any of the men that were currently in my office could’ve gotten there if they wanted to.
Teleportation was fun like that sometimes.
“The copy room,” Fox answered. “No smells. No impressions. I don’t think they were here when the alarm went off.”
“You think it was set off remotely,” I guessed.
They all nodded.
“Why did they want you here?” I asked.
That was the million-dollar question, and none of them had an answer for me.
Though, the question was answered not even fifteen minutes later as they were getting ready to go home.
An explosion rocked the building. Windows cracked but didn’t explode. The walls shuddered. The sprinklers started to lower.
But they didn’t go off. Something in which I was very thankful for.
“Fox, take all my belongings to my house,” I ordered. “Then y’all start looking for answers.”
My sigh was audible.
Though, this wasn’t the first time my place of business had exploded, hence the reason I needed the silent alarm in the first place.
“They must’ve thought that by planting a bomb they’d bring down the building… with all of us inside.” Abraham sounded amused.
He would be. He’d been the designer of this building, and it was likely an ego boost to know that his engineering held against a fucking bomb.
“Get out of my office,” I grumbled. “Meet at my house around dusk and we’ll discuss what we’ll do next.”
“With your permission,” Abraham drawled. “I have a few leads I want to follow up on before I meet with you again.”
I waved him off.
“Feel free.”
“I’ll come back as soon as my suspicions pan out.”
“You’ll call if you need help,” I ordered him.
His grin was wide.
“Maybe.”
With that, I picked up my phone, pocketed it, and teleported to my bedroom where I immediately stripped out of my clothes and walked into the bathroom.
Starting the shower with a simple thought, I stepped inside, sighing as the hot water washed over me.
Fuck, it felt good to be home.
CHAPTER 7
If I eat this pepper, is the diarrhea it’s going to give me worth the dollar?
-Acadia to Corbin
ACADIA
“What?” I semi-shrieked as I snatched the paper from Keisha’s hands.
Keisha tried to snatch it back, but I turned my body so that she couldn’t get it without physically crawling into the seat beside me.
“I told you,” she said. “You could’ve just listened to me. I would’ve read the entire thing word for word.”
I didn’t reply, too busy reading about Constantine’s office blowing up to care what she had to say.
It was true! His office had been hit not long after I’d gotten my brother to release him.
“It says police were refused entrance,” I read to my friend. “Do you think that was because they treat them so badly?”
“Yes,” she answered instantly. “They’re just as likely to do more damage than they are to help anyone.”
“The majority of Constantine’s employees are undead,” I informed her. “Likely they wouldn’t have cared, even if there had been humans there. They’re of the mind that they made their bed, now they have to lie in it.”
“No paramedics or firefighters showed. Only the police, and that was only due to a noise complaint of the fire alarms going off. They likely wouldn’t have shown at all if it hadn’t had been for that.”
I agreed.
The prejudice against the undead was freakin’ outrageous.
The general population didn’t even give them a chance, then went out of their way to make them feel unwelcome.
Such as setting their buildings on fire and planting bombs.