Tainted Blood (Hell's Belle Book 2) by Karen Greco Page A

room. "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap. I'm just..."
    "I know. You look exhausted." She smiled gently at me. "And you know what, a team of demons arriving last night may explain this."
    She turned on the flat-screen TV hanging on the wall. The local Rhode Island news station flickered on. A live shot of a crime scene with a mess of police cars was on. Darcy turned up the volume.
    "The medical examiner cautioned that it would be at least two weeks before initial autopsy results would be revealed, but police sources say that the bodies were drained of all blood..."
    Darcy hit mute. "There were 17 victims. This was right over the state border, in Fall River, Mass. Weird that this siren rolls into town and this happens, no?"
    "Drained of their blood? That sounds like a vampire nest." I triumphantly pulled a mug out of the cabinet above the coffee pot.
    Darcy nodded. "I know, but there are no known vampires in the Fall River area. Say what you will about Lizzie Borden, but her ghost usually keeps that city clean of any other supernaturals."
    " Lizzie Borden took an axe, and gave her mother forty whacks." I sing-songed the beginning of the old childhood rhyme. "Babe taught me that one when I was around three. I think we were living in Mexico at the time."
    I smiled at the memory, one of the few I had left before Babe took me to Blood Ops. After my parents died, and with Marcello on the loose, it was too dangerous to stay in Rhode Island. So she tried to hide me with our family in Mexico. But when the witch-filled town in Catemaco figured out that I was part-vampire, a mob of witches tried to stake me. Rumor was my own grandfather, Babe and my mom's dad, was leading the charge. Babe never said one way or the other. We fled to the Blood Ops base in Nevada, where she left me in the hands of Dr. O.
    The machine finally perked out its last bit of coffee, and I grabbed the pot and poured it into my newly found mug. I drank it straight, too caffeine-deprived to bother with the half-and-half.
    "Why don't you go back to Babe's and crash for a while?" Darcy turned off the television.
    "Because we're in the shit, and Bertrand may have reversed the daywalking spell on Frankie. Plus Purefoy wanted to get away from his Number One Fan." I raised my eyebrows at that one. "I don't know that he'd want to escape a plain vanilla human so desperately that he'd risk sunlight."
    Darcy's eyes got wide. "Vampire?"
    I nodded, sipping my coffee.
    "Well I'll be damned." She waited a beat, and then her eyes lit up. "Wait, he's here? Matty Purefoy is here, in this building?"
    I nodded again.
    "Oh my god," she jumped up, suddenly flushed and breathless. "Will you introduce me? I have to meet him!"
    Before I could even answer her, she bolted for the door. Hastily, I topped off my coffee, stopping to add a splash of half and half, and followed behind her. When I reached the apartment door, I heard her shouting down to Frankie's lair. "Hey, Frankie! I hope you're decent! We're coming down!"
    She was halfway down the dark staircase when I started my descent. I could see the heat from her body glowing in the darkness, almost like built-in night vision except mine glowed red instead of green. It was a wild new ability, which I received courtesy of a wound from Marcello, done with a knife spelled to kill me. The knife was a "witch killer," and one that was not supposed to be wielded by vampires, only witches. Because I am both vampire and witch, it didn't kill me. It actually brought out long dormant witch powers and enhanced some of my vampire abilities. The night vision was vampire and, I have to admit, it was damn useful for stealth operations. The glow of a flashlight would never give me away again.
    To be honest, my vampire side totally kicked ass above and beyond my witchy ways. Casper said it was because I didn't practice enough, but since I was hopeless in the kitchen, I wasn't exactly a natural at the spell pot. Still, I didn't need to spell to use some of my