Tyler’s grip tightened on the pen in his hand, and he clenched his jaw.
“Tell me how it is that the same night we tell you about this case, you just happen to stumble across a fresh body on your block?”
“Good old-fashioned dumb luck, I guess. ”
He clicked the end of his pen and wrote something in the folder he had with him. I doubted it was anything important. I also doubted it was my name with little hearts floating around it.
“Tyler,” I said, my tone serious. “We didn’t find the body. About a hundred high-school students and their teacher did. ”
“I’m aware of that. ”
Holden was busy doing his impression of a gorgeous chair, his hand still on my knee, but he hadn’t spoken yet. Given his history with Tyler, I was thoroughly impressed with how well-behaved he was being.
“Can I ask you something?”
He looked surprised but nodded.
“Why are we here?”
“Standard procedure. ”
“No offense, Detective, but bullshit. The on-scene officer took our statements. We didn’t need to be here. ” Being snippy wasn’t always the best idea when it came to the police, but at least I wasn’t so jumpy anymore.
Tyler set his pen down, then took a long sip from his coffee. Whoever had brewed it made a strong pot because the smell of burnt roast filled my nostrils. Every time I swallowed I wanted to ask for extra sugar.
I leaned back in my own chair and waited. If we were going to have a staring contest, I wanted to be comfortable.
He placed his coffee on the table and began to speak, but I couldn’t hear a word he said. At my side, Holden went tense, and it wasn’t long before I understood why. The aroma of coffee vanished, replaced by something darker and unmistakable.
Blood.
It was the only scent that could overwhelm all else and drown out my other senses. My breath quivered, and I looked over to Holden. He was no longer pretending to breathe, and his expression was drawn and rigid with control. On my knee, his fingers were squeezing too hard. He was trying to fight back his fangs.
A hollow plop noise brought my attention back to Tyler, who was still speaking. The words came to an abrupt end when he caught my horrified expression and both of our gazes fixed on his coffee cup. Something thick and liquid fell into the cup, causing the black coffee to ripple.
Then came the sound of raindrops.
Only it wasn’t raining.
The table in front of us, once boring and beige, became dappled with spots of red. At first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, until a drop of blood landed on Tyler’s white dress shirt, and then another. One hit his eyebrow and dripped into his eyelashes, causing him to blink spasmodically.
All three of us looked up to the ceiling at the same time.
The ceiling tiles were stained a red so dark it looked black, but only in a small area right above Tyler.
His whole shirt was splattered with blood. We stood from our chairs and stepped back in time to see the tiles sag and the ceiling burst like a festering wound. The table was littered with pieces of broken tile, but among those was the source of the blood.
A Christmas stocking, now empty, with a collection of body parts scattered around it. And among them was the worst thing I had ever seen in all my years of hunting vampires and killing pseudo-demonic monsters.
The red-headed curls and freckled skin looked especially gruesome given the waxy gray pallor of her complexion, but I knew right away who it was. The image of her decapitated head, still wearing a rhinestone tiara, would haunt me all my life.
When Holden and I emerged in the lobby, Desmond and Nolan were waiting for us. One look at my blood-spattered tank top and they both rose to their feet with apprehensive expressions clouding their faces. No one but me looked at Holden, but if my countenance was half as grim as his, I could appreciate why my boys were so worried.
Having given my second police statement of the day, I was more than ready to be home. And if the weariness in my bones was any indication, sunlight wasn’t far off. I needed to be in bed and away from the sun before it rose.
I was ready for this night to be over.
“Are you okay?” Desmond asked, obviously trying not to sound too anxious.