Light spilled into the alley from the moon and the nearby street lamps, bathing the narrow alley in hues of silvers and blues. Shapes became focused until I could see clearly.
Two things hit me at once. One, the demon was gone. And two, a body lay on the ground not ten feet from me.
Shit. I ran to the bundle. She was lying on her side. Female from her sheer size and the width of her shoulders under the thin black jacket she was wearing—at least what was left of her.
My lips parted as I ran my eyes over the body. Because, yes, it was a body. No one could be alive and look like that.
The skin over her face, hands, and neck was dried, as though all the blood and liquid from her body had been drained. Her teeth were too large, and barely a hint of a nose was left. Just two holes sat where the nostrils used to be amidst skin stretched over a skull. There was no way to determine her age. It was as though I was looking at the dried face of a thousand-year-old mummy.
What the hell? The only demons I knew that could suck a human into a dried mummy were a succubus and its male counterpart, an incubus. And yet, from what I knew, it would take days or even months to ingest a human’s life force and all of its liquids to end up looking like a dried prune.
Plus, incubi and succubae didn’t have the skills to conjure up a cloak of darkness. Their magical skills ended with just regular glamours and tricks of the minds. Easy stuff. They had nothing this complex and powerful in their repertoire. This didn’t make sense.
Nausea bubbled up. Shit. This was bad.
“Damnit,” I breathed. “I don’t need this right now.” I knelt next to her, grabbed her shoulder and gently turned her over. My heart caught in my throat.
Narrow scoops of flesh were missing from the side of her neck at the jugular.
I felt the blood leave my face and settle around my clavicles.
Holy hell. A demon hadn’t done this. A vampire had.
Vampires were civilized, educated, and had mastered the art of passing for humans so well that even I could mistake them for a human every now and then. Plus, they normally didn’t go around killing humans—not for thousands of years at least. We had laws for this kind of thing. Humans were off the menu for vampires. If human blood was offered voluntarily, that was socially acceptable. But if you were caught killing a human, it was a stake in the heart for you.
Over the years, I’d heard the stories of vampires gone rogue on killing sprees. It was inevitable. All societies and races, human and half-breed, had their share of crazies.
Now it looked like I had a rogue vampire on my hands. And he or she was killing innocents in my city.
My stomach churned as I rolled my eyes over the dead human. Something wasn’t right. It would take a normal vampire days to drain all the blood from its victim. Unless the vampire was old. Ancient. Powerful. And if that was true, I had a bigger problem on my hands than a simple rogue vamp.
I had an ancient vampire with powerful magic.
“Oh my god!” screamed a female voice behind me, making me jerk.
Heart pounding, I whirled around and looked into the faces of four humans. This night was just getting better and better.
“What did you do?” exclaimed the same voice, belonging to a dark-skinned woman in her thirties. She waltzed right up to me in her tight red dress. As she stared at the body, her large eyes widened by the second and her mouth opened in silent “o.” I’d seen that expression before on so many humans and on so many occasions—the expression of disbelief, horror, and the usual “this can’t be real.” Yup, I’d seen them all.
A man with tanned skin and glasses came up next to her and pushed her out of the way to get a better view. He stared for a moment. Then blinked. A sound escaped his throat as he spun around, sending chunks of his vomit in wide arcs all over the pavement.
Lovely.
I stood up slowly, my mind swirling with spells and hexes, but I readied a memory charm instead. To hit four humans with a memory charm wasn’t impossible, but it would take some expert coaxing to keep them still while I did it.
The other two humans, a woman in a black wrap dress and a man in a dark suit, kept their distance—obviously the smarter ones.
“She’s a terrorist,” said the man in the suit, his face twisting in anger.
Okay, I take it back. Not so smart.
“This is some kind of bio weapon,” said the same man, pointing a shaking hand at me. “Like anthrax or something. It’s not natural. It’s engineered.” He covered his mouth and stepped back, grabbing his date with him.
Okay, so I did look guilty and this situation really looked bad as I knelt next to the body. Though, without a magical explanation, human forensics would show that the body had been drained completely. It would have taken some kind of lab or medical equipment to do it, and a person in an alley alone wouldn’t have been able to pump all the liquids out of a body.
“It’s not anthrax,” I said, my voice calm as I gauged the distance between me and the closest human who was still vomiting. Hit him when he’s bent over, and all that. “Anthrax doesn’t drain you of your bodily fluids. It attacks your lungs.”
“And how do you know that?” accused the same man. “You sound like you know all about this.”
Great. This was certainly going nowhere fast. “Google it if you don’t believe me.” I sighed. “But I didn’t do this to her. I found her like this.” Totally true. But the accusations that rippled over their faces and reflected in their eyes said otherwise.
“You killed her, you fucking psycho,” said the same man in the suit, though from a safer distance from me and my supposed victim.
“I didn’t,” I said as I took a step forward towards the man who had stopped vomiting. His face was pale and looked like he might resume spewing chunks at any moment. Damn. Humans were so overly dramatic and so quick to judge. “You have to believe me. I heard a scream and I came to investigate. I only wanted to help her.” I could tell I was just wasting my breath. I was already guilty in their eyes.
The man in the suit’s face was screwed up. He shifted from foot to foot, looking like he was contemplating either bolting or hitting me with a hard object—perhaps hitting me and then bolting. “Then why aren’t you calling 9-1-1?” his face went hard with accusation. “Where’s your phone.”
Touché. Time to work the memory charm.
The woman in the red dress gasped. “Look, she’s wearing gloves,” she exclaimed, pointing at my hands, and I stilled. “She’s got gloves! Gloves!” she shrilled. “It’s anthrax! She’s going to use it on us!”
Ah. Hell.
“You’re not going to get away with this. You killed her!” cried the woman in the red dress, just as her friend pulled out her cell phone, pointed it at me and started taking pictures. I ducked my head just as her date pulled out his cell phone and dialed three numbers.
Yup. That was my cue to leave.
I turned and ran.
They didn’t follow. Screw the memory charm. It was too late for that. And I wasn’t about to stick around and wait for the cops. That wouldn’t go so well—for the cops.
The last thing I needed was the attention of the New York City cops on my case, especially when I had a rogue, ancient vampire skilled with magic loose in the city.