Lover Arisen, page 2
A tear formed in his eye. He would have gone back in time if he could have. But he was too weak. In his arrogance, he had waited too long—
With a savage yank, he cut off the penis and the scrotum, easily slicing through the delicate, sensitive skin. The pain was gasoline in his veins, his heart exploding in his chest, the rapid pump enlivening him, the adrenaline surge giving him a little of that which he needed a deluge of.
As black blood flowed down the insides of his thighs and pooled around his feet, he lifted his palm up to eye level and drew in through his nose. He smelled nothing. Then again, who could smell themselves? Whether perfume or body odor, the nose only knew what was fresh and new, not that in which it had been stewing.
He had been told once he smelled like baby powder. By a human whom he had disemboweled shortly thereafter.
As he recalled his offense, it seemed so childish. But he had had rage to spare back in those days. Now, he had to ration…
The thought disintegrated as if to prove the point he could no longer recall desiring to make.
Beneath the organs he had removed from himself, black blood gathered in the cup of his hand and ran a descent down his wrist. He watched it flow, black and slow and lazy, gleaming in the ambient light that had no source.
“My son.” He cleared his throat and spoke more loudly. “My son shall recommence and continue if I go no further.”
The demand did not effect a damn thing.
“My son shall return now!”
As naught occurred, t’was the same as his cloak not vanishing and the dagger refusing to come unto his palm, the lack of power within him robbing him of his dominion over objects that should have been an easy summon.
Frustration kindled into anger that alit into rage, and he cast the flesh across to the bedding platform in what should have been a throw of strength. When the momentum was little more than a shove at the air, he knew he should never have let his one and only progeny rot as he had. But he had felt disrespected and underappreciated for all he had done for the male, and though the great Blind King of the vampires was named Wrath, the Omega might as well have had that dark emotion as his own middle name.
He had been so vengeful and so petty. A terrible combination.
Now he was here, abruptly old and infirmed, with no one to help him, no son to bear him up, no legacy left within his Lessening Society. He was doomed to be where all of history retreated with enough passage of days and nights: A distant memory that died out when the last of those who knew him went unto their graves.
He had been hubristic about his future. And now… it was too late.
In disgust with himself, he was going to turn away and head to the place where he would find one last chance for a rival… when he noticed movement upon the bedding platform.
Shuffling forward, he stood over the black bloody mess he had lamely tossed over. The components of what had been his sexual organs were twisting and turning upon themselves, melting, melding… reforming. Germinating.
It was a tender mass, however, and he wished he could remain and protect his only begotten. Knowing he had to leave it in such a vulnerable state, the Omega stood over his progeny and played witness to the mass doubling in size, and then incrementally coalescing into an infant: Arms and legs, chubby and uncoordinated, sprouted from the trunk, as the head also emerged. Movement unrelated to the gestation was next, the limbs beginning to flex and churn.
Underneath the veil of black blood, the skin was white and matte, like bone.
“My son,” he whispered.
If the evil had been capable of love, he knew that the feeling so many lived and died for was what was coursing through him the now, the strange, unfamiliar weight behind his breast forging a connection with the burgeoning young that was nothing logical, everything instinctual.
And indeed, though he resented it, he knew that the sensation was in fact love because he had felt it for one other. His sister, however, the so-called great Virgin Scribe, had always been too busy for him, too concerned with her single act of creation, to pay any attention to the brother who had followed her everywhere when they had first been called into existence by the Creator. Her negligence had been the seat of his hatred for the vampires.
So petty. So childish.
“I must needs go.” He brushed his hands over eyes that watered. “You shall survive. With or without me. You’ve done it once before.”
Though he wanted to stay, he had to get into the Brotherhood’s most sacred place, to those jars the fighters had collected over the course of the war. In them, though dried and in some cases ancient, were the hearts that had pumped his blood through the bodies of his inductees, trophies for the Brothers as dead vampires had been his trophies against the Scribe Virgin. If he could consume those repositories, he could fuel himself by accessing the residue of his essence left in those chambers. Yes, it would be only scraps, but there was volume. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cardiac muscles would be available to him, and even morsels could fill one up if there were enough upon the plate.
He was also certain where they were located. The Creator had been forced, out of fairness, to allow the Omega one advantage to cure an act of overreaching by the Scribe Virgin.
So no, he would not die, never, not ever. No extinction for him.
Fuck that prophecy.
But just in case? His son would live on after him—and as he had to force himself to go, and as he worried over what would happen to the young if he did not survive, there was an irony. The Omega’s need to ensure the continuation of a part of himself, of a fraction of who and what he was?
It was the one and only thing he had ever had in common with mortals.
Now he understood why humans cherished their children.
And vampires, too.
CHAPTER ONE
Present Day
267 Primrose Court
Caldwell, New York
No, not this one. This one is not for you.”
As Detective Treyvon Abscott stepped in the path of Detective Erika Saunders, she stopped. Then again, that was what you did when you hit a brick wall. Her partner was a former college football player, an honorably discharged Marine, and at least four inches taller and seventy pounds heavier than she was. But even with all that going for him, he still braced his weight and put both palms out in front of himself, as if he were protecting his end zone against the likes of a Mack truck.
“Dispatch sent me here.” Erika crossed her arms over her chest. “So I know you’re not standing in my way right now. You’re just really not.”
Behind her colleague, a run-of-the mill two-story house with an attached two-car garage was strobe-lit in blue, the flashing lights of the squad cars parked in front of the driveway reflecting off the storm windows, turning a family’s home into a disco ball of tragedy.
“I don’t care what dispatch said.” Trey’s voice was quiet, but I’m-not-fucking-around deep. “I told you on the phone. I got this on my own.”
Erika frowned. “FYI, your detective of the month award could get revoked for this kind of scene hoarding—”
“Go home, Erika. I’m telling you, as a friend—”
“Of course, I”—she indicated herself —“have never gotten a collegial award. You want to know why?”
“Wait, what?” her partner said. Like she was speaking a different language.
She dodged around him and spoke over her shoulder as he stumbled over his own feet to turn around. “I’m not a good listener and I don’t like people in my way. That’s why I never get awards.”
Marching up the walkway, she heard cursing in her wake, but Trey was going to have to get over himself—and she was surprised by the territoriality. Usually, the two of them got along great. They’d been assigned together since January, after his first partner, Jose de la Cruz, retired following a long and distinguished career. She had no idea what kind of hair Trey had across his ass about this particular—
“Hey, Andy,” she said to the uniformed cop at the door.
—scene, but she wasn’t going to worry about it.
“Detective.” The uniformed officer shifted to the side so she could pass. “You need booties?”
“Got ’em.” As she slipped a set on over her street shoes, she noted that the hedges around the entrance were all trimmed and a little Easter flag was pastel’ing itself on a pole off to the left. “Thanks.”
The second she entered a shallow foyer, she smelled both vanilla-scented candles and fresh blood—and her brain went to a hypothetical episode of Cupcake Wars where one of the contestants got their hand stuck in a mixer.
Care for some plasma with your Victoria sponge?
Wait, that would be The Great British Bake Off, wouldn’t it.
While her brain played chew toy with all kinds of stupid connections, she let it warm itself up and glanced to the right. The disrupted living room was what she expected in terms of furnishings and decor. Everything was solidly middle class, especially all the framed pictures of two parents and a daughter in the bookshelves, everybody aging up through the years, the kid getting taller and more mature, the parents getting grayer and thicker around the middle.
Those photographs were her first clue as to why Trey had tried to put his foot down.
Well actually… there had been a couple of others when she’d been getting basic details from dispatch.
Ignoring the alarm bells that started to ring in her head, she stepped around a broken lamp. In spite of all the homey-homey, the place looked like a bar fight had gone down in front of the electric fireplace: The flowered couch was out of alignment and its cushions scattered on the rug, one armchair was knocked over, and the cheap glass coffee table was shattered.
There was blood splatter on the gray walls and the low-nap carpet.
The facedown body in the center of the sixteen-by-twelve-foot room was that of an older white male, the bald spot on the back of the head identifying him as the father according to one of the candids taken at a field hockey game. He had one arm up, the other down by his side, and his clothes were vaguely office, a button-down shirt, it looked like, tucked into polyester-blend slacks. No belt. Shoes were still on.
Two long steps brought her in close, and her knees popped as she dropped onto her haunches. The knife sticking out of his back had done quite a bit of work before before being left deep inside his rib cage: There were a good four to five other stab wounds, going by the holes in the shirt and the bloodstains on the cotton fabric.
As she took a deep breath, she had a thought that half the oxygen in Caldwell had mysteriously disappeared.
“Erika.”
Her name was said with an exhaustion she was familiar with. She’d heard that special brand of tired in a lot of people’s voices when they were trying to talk sense into her.
“Frenzied attack.” She indicated the pattern of stabbings, even though it wasn’t like there was any confusion about what she was addressing. “By someone strong. While this victim was trying to run away after they’d scuffled.”
Erika rose up and went farther into the house. As she passed through an archway that opened into a kitchen, she was careful not to step on any bloodstains. The second body was faceup on the wood laminate flooring in front of the stove, the wife and mother sprawled in a pool of her own blood. The victim had extensive head and neck trauma, her facial features totally unidentifiable, the bones all broken, the flesh pulverized. So much blood covered the front of her that it was hard to make out the pattern on her t-shirt, but the leggings had to be LuLaRoe, given the garish repeat of peaches against a bright blue background.
Above her on the cooktop, a glass-lidded saucepan full of what appeared to be homemade Bolognese had boiled over, a black-and-brown halo of the stuff toasted around the heating element’s coil. Behind it, a big pot filled with only two inches of water sat on the largest of the burners, and next to the mess, on the counter, an unopened box of generic-brand spaghetti was beside a cutting board that had half a diced onion on it.
The woman had had no clue as she’d chopped the onion, browned the beef, and filled the boiling pot that it was the last meal she’d ever cook for her family.
Bile rose into the back of Erika’s throat as she glanced across at the open cellar door, the stairwell lit by an overhead feature mounted to the side wall.
“The killer had two weapons,” she said to no one in particular. Mostly so she could get her goiter to calm down. “The knife used on the father and a hammer used here. Or maybe it was a crowbar.”
“Hammer,” Trey interjected grimly. “It’s upstairs in the hall.”
“She started the water boiling.” Erika went over to the basement steps and breathed in deep. “Then she went down there to the washing machine—which explains the vanilla fragrance. It’s not scented candles. It’s Suavitel laundry detergent. My college roommate, Alejandra, used it all the time.”
“Erika—”
“She hears the commotion upstairs. Runs up to see what’s going on. By the time she’s on this floor, her husband is dead or in the process of dying and the killer is on her with that hammer.” Erika met Trey’s dark eyes. “There was no damage on the front door so the father let the killer in. Do we have a Ring?”
“No.”
“Where are the other two bodies—upstairs?”
Trey nodded. “But listen, Erika, you don’t need to go—”
“You’re on my last nerve saying my name like that. Anytime you want to cut out the pity, I’m ready to be treated like the adult I am instead of the child I was.”
She went back out through the living room and took the carpeted steps to the second floor. As soon as she got to the top landing, all she had to do was look down the dim, narrow hallway. At the far end, in a bedroom that was the color of Pepto-Bismol, two bodies were in full view, one on the bed, the other propped up against the wall on the floor.
Erika blinked. Blinked again.
And then she couldn’t move any part of herself. She wasn’t even breathing.
“Let’s go back downstairs,” Trey said softly, right by her ear.
When her colleague took her arm, she pulled free of the compassion and went forward. She stopped when she got to the open doorway. The body on the bed was half naked, a t-shirt shoved up above her pink-and-white bra, her black Lululemon leggings yanked down and hanging off of one foot. She had dark hair, just like both her parents, and it was long and pretty, curling at the ends. In her right hand… was a gun. A nine millimeter.
For some reason, the pink polish on the fingernails on the grip stood out. There were no chips in the finish, and as Erika glanced over at the cluttered top of the dresser, there was a little bottle of OPI in the exact shade. The girl had probably done them earlier in the day, or at least very recently.
Right next to the nail polish on the bureau was a framed picture. The girl who was now dead was standing next to a young man who was a good head taller than she was. She was looking into the camera with a wide smile. He was looking at her.
Erika’s eyes shifted over to the second body. The teenage boy in the photo was propped up against the pink wall, his legs straight out in front of him like he was a scarecrow that had fallen off its pole-mount. He had the muscularity of an athlete, with broad shoulders and a thick neck, and he was handsome in the way of a quintessential jock, square-jawed with deep-set eyes. There was a big patch of blood on the front of his Lincoln H.S. Football shirt and some splatter up his throat as well as under his chin. His hands were stained red, likely from when he’d killed the mother by beating her face in with the hammer.
His jeans were open at the fly.
Focusing on the gunshot wound, she noticed a second one, lower down, just under the diaphragm.
You got him twice in the torso, Erika thought numbly. Attagirl.
As she took a step forward, she noticed that the door to the room was busted in. Between one blink and the next, she heard the pounding, the crying, the screaming, as he’d broken the thing down after the daughter had locked herself inside, after her parents were murdered right under her—
Erika covered her ears as they began to ring.
“It’s fine,” she mumbled as Trey stepped in front of her again. “I’m fine.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
“The hell you will.”
Leaning to the side, Erika looked at the girl’s face. She was staring at the ceiling, the makeup around her now-vacant eyes smudged, the sooty rivers down her cheeks and smeared lipstick making a clown mask out of what had no doubt been very expertly applied, given the amount of brushes and compacts on that dresser top.
There was one other mark on her visage, but it wasn’t from MAC or NARS or whatever. The bullet hole at her temple was a circular penetration, and the entry wound was relatively neat, just some powder residue around a small pink-and-red extrusion of flesh. It was what was on the other side of her skull that was more gruesome, the bone, blood, and brain matter splattering across her pink duvet.
“He came with three weapons,” Erika heard herself say. “The knife, the hammer… and this gun.”
Had she gotten the nine millimeter away from him as he’d attacked her? Yes, that was how it had to have gone down. He had broken in here after he’d killed both her parents, and he’d gotten on her… and she’d somehow disarmed him… maybe because she’d pretended to go along with the sex?
She must have listened to the slaughter downstairs, heard her parents’ panic and pain. At least one of the pair of them, probably both, had no doubt yelled up at her to lock herself in and call for help—
“The parents don’t know yet,” Trey said. “His, I mean. We just sent a squad car over to the address.”
“Who found them all?” she asked roughly.
“We did. She called nine-one-one before she shot herself.”
Erika’s eyes quickly scanned the bed—there it was. A cell phone was on the bloodstained duvet cover, right by her.
