subject. He pressed two fingers against the woman’s cool cheekbone and tilted her head. Like the other “vampire” victims, her throat had been slashed, a single strike with a sharp blade. Theblood around her looked like a lot, but such a wound would have bled considerably more had someone not siphoned some of it away.
Or drank it,
he thought. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help it. Every possible scenario had to be considered, even that. Teeth, however, had not made that wound. Teeth tore, and this was a clean slice.
He moved his fingers away carefully, lowering her head to its original position. She was a pretty woman in her midthirties, he guessed. She wasn’t athletic; her body was curvy, even plump. But she was tall and healthy looking and had probably carried the weight well.
Alex preferred women like Larissa, who was blond and compact, five-six. She kept her hair short, curling in slightly toward a prominent jawline. In her work clothes, dark pants, light blue shirt open at the collar, with a dark jacket over it, she looked almost masculine, but Alex had seen her in other clothes, played tennis and run laps with her. When she put on a dress, she was as female as could be.
Screw it. He didn’t just prefer women
like
Larissa, he preferred Larissa herself. His crush on her had been pronounced since her second day on the squad, and when they’d been assigned as partners, he had thought his dreams had all come true. He was physically attracted to her, he found her smart and interesting, and he liked her no-nonsense approach, even though it was so different from his. Because it was different,maybe—he thought their varied styles of policing made them complementary, so they would be less likely to miss anything.
But she, as it turned out, considered him overly cerebral. He had considered intentionally losing control once in a while, maybe clocking a suspect on a whim, spoiling evidence by clambering around a crime scene exclaiming over whatever he saw. That wasn’t his way, though, and he didn’t honestly think it would win her over even if she didn’t see through it. Which, perceptive as she was, she probably would.
He wasn’t her type of cop, and he wasn’t her type of boyfriend.
So he suffered in silence, just glad to have the opportunity to work closely with her.
Maybe someday,
he told himself,
she’ll see her mistake. Realize what she’s been missing.
Maybe she wouldn’t, but Alex couldn’t have continued to function as a homicide detective if he wasn’t also an optimist, so he kept hoping.
If he couldn’t close this case in a hurry, he might not continue functioning as a homicide detective anyway. The pressure from above was intense, and getting heavier with every passing hour. He turned back to the ravaged corpse, wishing a clue would fall into his waiting hands.
12
A FTER HIS SEMISUCCESSFUL rat experiment, Larry Greenbarger spent several more days inside the old man’s house, re-creating his formula, with slight variations, for human use. Or
former
human use, anyway. He hardly slept, leaving his work only long enough to feed.
Now he believed he had it right. Had he been back at the Operation Red-Blooded facility, he could have had a selection of captive
nosferatu
on which to test his work. He hadn’t run across any vampires since that April night, though. He had only one at hand.
He would have to try the stuff on himself.
He figured he didn’t have much to lose. If it killed him—well, he was already dead. If he stopped walking around, that would just mean one less vampire in the world. No great loss. He liked being upright and sentient, if not alive, and he enjoyed his own company, but his guess was that if he finally died completely, he wouldn’t be in any position to miss himself. He didn’t have any faith in the idea of an afterlife. If heaven or hell did exist, their keepers wouldn’t let vampires circumvent the system; therefore he didn’t have to worry that by
Glenn van Dyke, Renee van Dyke
Jesse Ventura, Dick Russell