Unveiled

Chapter 1 The streets of downtown Chicago echoed with the wind’s shrieks, bouncing off windows gone dark, slamming into whatever hapless bodies were caught in the winter storm. Hunched against the gale, two figures darted between a pair of parked cars as they raced for safety. They passed from pools of light cast by the streetlamps to the pitch separating them, over and over until they reached the haven of the doorway they sought. Then they had to stop, pressing themselves to the walls, as one fought to catch his breath and the other scowled into the darkness. “As much as I love this town,” Gideon Keel muttered, “I hate the f*****g winters.” Jesse nodded, his teeth chattering. “Maybe we should migrate south for the winter. I hear Florida’s nice. A million senior citizens can’t be wrong, right?” A snort of laughter created a white plume in front of Gideon’s face that quickly dissipated in the night air. “Let’s just hope Rina’s not wrong about this party going down tonight,” he said. His ungloved hand found the doorknob at their backs, snapping it open, and he stepped out of the way, allowing Jesse to enter first. The wind and blowing snow were small annoyances for Gideon; for Jess, they could be deadly. Jess hurried inside, rubbing his hands together and stomping his feet. “Let’s hope if she’s right, they don’t have some sort of brute squad for security.” Silently, Gideon echoed his agreement, but now, with the door slipping shut behind them and the unknown looming ahead and above, conversation needed to cease. According to Rina, some soiree was supposed to take place in the apartment over the sporting goods store—out-of-towners who’d been bragging around town about showing off their “good taste.” She wasn’t the type of vampire who brought tips like this to Gideon, but when one of the college girls she hung out with disappeared, Rina took the right step and came to him. He credited part of it to her wanting to atone for attacking Jesse the previous summer when she’d been high on obsidian, too. But the why of it didn’t matter too much to him. All he cared about was making sure it wasn’t the m******e he feared it might be. One sniff of the stale stairwell air, however, told him they were too late. Holding his hand against Jesse’s chest, Gideon kept his partner behind him as he turned his attention to the narrow steps leading upstairs. His features shifted, his vampire visage coming to the fore, and he c****d his head as he strained to hear any sounds that might filter from the rooms above. Nothing came. Not the faint pulse of a human heartbeat, not a whisper of a breath. “Stay behind me,” he murmured. Jess nodded, falling in step. They climbed the steps quickly and silently—Jess was getting better at stealth. There was a single door at the top of the landing. Gideon tested the knob. Unlocked. He looked over his shoulder, and Jess had his crossbow at the ready. But Gideon knew before he pushed the door open there wasn’t going to be anybody there. The stench as they walked into the front room was overwhelming. Blood and semen and sheer, unadulterated terror lingered in the air, crawling under Gideon’s skin like an army of fire ants determined to eat him from the inside out. The wind made the glass rattle in the panes, but all the lights had long been extinguished. It didn’t make a difference to Gideon. He still saw everything perfectly. He saw everything too perfectly. “You can put it away,” he said without looking back. “We’re too late.” Jess dug through his bag. The click of a flashlight preceded the narrow beam of light flashing over the room, before falling on the body. The beam shook as it illuminated what remained of the party—the c*****e—before it snapped suddenly away. “Oh…Christ.” There were reasons why, even after nearly three years of working together, Gideon didn’t like Jesse coming out with him when he was on a case. It wasn’t just that he wanted to keep the man he loved from harm; Jesse had become quite adept with weapons in the time they’d worked together. There was also the overwhelming desire to keep the darker shadows from tainting Jess, shielding him from witnessing the evil Gideon attempted to keep at bay on a nightly basis. Some things were better left unseen. The body pinned to the wall was one of them. It had been female when it had been alive, and Gideon knew, as he closed the distance to Jesse’s side and rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder, it was better for the girl that she was now dead. Her wrists were fastened in place with heavy shackles, and her left hand had been posed with heavy wire to be extended, fingers crooked as if to beckon someone even closer. The same wire positioned the head and legs, but none of it was molded over the muscles. Instead, it had been threaded beneath the skin to act like a second skeleton, and the rivulets of dried blood left in the wire’s wake looked like open veins along her skin. Jesse turned his back to the sight, his light coming on again. He surveyed the room for several seconds before murmuring, “It was an actual party, Gideon. This isn’t the work of some sicko on his own. She was the entertainment for the night.” “I know.” Leaving him to examine the rest of the room, Gideon stepped up to the body, memorizing every detail so Jess wouldn’t have to do it later. It was difficult to tell, but the few distinguishing characteristics they hadn’t destroyed—the fall of black hair, blue eyes wired open to watch the debauchery taking place in front of her—matched those of Rina’s friend. Bite marks savaged her bared breasts, but the skin was clean. He could almost see the tongues licking the precious blood away. “There were at least five vampires,” he said. “There’s five distinct sets of fangs marking her.” “Not just vampires, unless they’re the sort of vamps with a taste for champagne, caviar and…” He paused and sniffed. “Oh, something very foul smelling. I don’t think it’s actually food. Hey, look at this. I think somebody dropped their invitation.” Gideon glanced back in time to see Jesse pick up a piece of black card from the heavy coffee table in the middle of the room. The flashlight shining across its surface illuminated careful white script, the reflection from which cast silver shards along the walls. “Is that engraved?” Gideon returned to Jesse’s side, taking the invitation to peer at it more closely. “This isn’t some home office job. The paper’s too expensive, and there’s a watermark imprinted in the weft.” “Everything’s too expensive. The only thing that doesn’t fit is the location. Why a tiny apartment above a sporting goods store?” He took out a pen and a small notepad. Gideon didn’t miss the slight tremor in Jesse’s fingers. “Got to follow up and find out who has the lease.” Gideon reached and closed his hand around Jesse’s, stopping the scratching across the paper. “We can do that back at the office.” Jess looked up. “I don’t want to forget anything.” He nodded at the remnants of the party. “This all could be a clue to…my God, who would do something like this?” “Someone very bored and very rich.” His gaze trailed back to the wall. “And more than a little unhinged.” “I have my camera, if you want to take some pictures of the…room. And we should probably turn on the light and see if there’s anything else,” Jess said, trying to sound normal, like this was any other case. But he refused to look to the end of the room, and he didn’t seem thrilled about turning on the lights. “Give it to me.” He held out his hand and waited while Jesse slipped the camera strap from around his shoulder and passed it over. “Why don’t you go sit on the stairs and write out what you can? I’ll get the pictures so we can get out of here as soon as possible. We need to call the police and report the scene anyway.” Jess nodded and turned to the door. Gideon waited until he was gone before he turned on the light for the photographs. The body was thrown into sharp contrast, each thin line of blood standing out like rubies against its white skin. There was blood on the wall behind her, on the floor, and signs of a struggle. They had threaded the wire through her skin after they hung her to the wall, but before she finally died. Her screams would have echoed through the small apartment for hours. Gideon snapped pictures of every inch of the room, not shying away from a single detail. When he took the entire roll of film, he ducked out of the room and found Jess sitting on the bottom step, furiously scrawling over a page already covered in notes. “Solved our case already?” he tried to joke. “They didn’t make any real effort to hide anything. Vampires normally don’t care what the authorities are doing, but there weren’t just vampires in that room. When the police discover her, it’s going to be a media circus. It’ll probably attract national attention. Her high school photo plastered across four twenty-four hour news channels. I doubt…well, I doubt she’s the first victim. Why flaunt her?” “Maybe they were interrupted.” But even as Gideon said it, he knew it wasn’t the case. There were no signs of a rushed exit, and though the scents were still strong, the blood had already started to cool. “But we should get out of here. The sooner the cops arrive, the sooner they can start gathering evidence that might lead them to the human half of this little bash.” Jess took Gideon’s hand and pulled himself to his feet, then carefully packed everything away and took his camera back. “What’s your plan for the rest of the night? I’m going to start some research, see if what we found is ritualistic.” “Find Rina. See what else she heard, if she knows anything about humans being invited to the party. Hell, to find out how she knew anything at all if there’s as much money behind this as I suspect there is.” They headed down the stairs, the whipping winds outside growing louder with every step. “I’ll call Derek and give him the tip-off about the scene. Then we don’t have to worry about being kept in the loop on what they find.” Jess pulled his coat tightly around his thin frame as they neared the door. He didn’t hesitate to step out into the driving wind, keeping his head down as he hurried back to the car. As they drove back to the office, Jess looked like he wanted to speak several times, even opening his mouth to let the words escape, but then he’d shake his head and shift his attention back to the window. When they reached the office, Jess went to his desk, and Gideon went to the phone. Jess didn’t speak, but Gideon recognized the tension in every line of his body and by the way he hunched over his books, almost defensively. * * * * The storm calmed sometime around dawn, but Gideon’s mood didn’t. Every passing hour led to further frustration. Rina was nowhere to be found. Derek was at the crime scene, but the extensive nature of the evidence meant forensics was taking its own sweet time collecting it. Every time Gideon called, he got the same old song and dance, was told to call back later, or better yet, to wait for Derek to call him. He debated going out again and showing up at the scene, but in the end, decided against it. He didn’t need to put Derek on the spot when the man didn’t know anything. Jesse never said a word. Gideon listened to him from his office, listened to the pages turning in the books, the scratching of his pen over paper, the tap of his fingers on his keyboard when he would get on the computer to check on something. He kept expecting Jess to come in with some grand clue that would give them a fresh lead, but it never happened. In fact, by the time Gideon broke down and ventured out to ask, he found Jesse with his cheek resting on an open book, his lashes dark against his cheeks as he slept at his desk. It was good one of them could sleep. Gideon only hoped Jesse wasn’t having nightmares about what they’d seen. With a mug of blood growing cold on his desk, Gideon stood in front of his map of Chicago, blind to the meandering streets. He had seen a lot of atrocities in his lifetime. Hell, he’d been the source of a lot of atrocities. Being around for over four hundred years meant bearing witness to too much human nature, too much demon nature. It should have meant losing a taste for it, or becoming inured, or at the very least, learning how not to let it get to him so badly. But it didn’t. Because every time he blinked, he saw the girl pinned to the wall. He saw the horror in Jesse’s eyes. Every time he blinked, he was reminded he’d been too late. Again. By the time he heard Jesse stir in the outer room, all Gideon wanted was to get the f**k out of the office. “So,” he said, leaning against the jamb as he watched Jesse rub the sleep from his eyes, “who wants to go to Sangre tonight?”