Vampire's Hunger (2 page)

“Wh…where…”

When he didn’t go on, she figured he wanted to know where he was. “You’re at the County Medical Examiner’s office.”

His frown deepened. “H…how…”

She tightened her lips. He needed to remember how he got here, not have someone tell him. Otherwise he might not recall the details they were looking for.

“You were shot,” the M.E. volunteered.

“Doc,” she muttered. She looked at him and shook her head. This wasn’t their first dance with the dead. He should know better.

“He seems confused. More than normal,” he said. When she merely stared at him, he shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Sh…shot?” Richard struggled to sit up. Kimber helped him. When the sheet slid to his waist she gave silent thanks that it kept the important bits covered up. She wasn’t a prude, she’d seen naked man parts before, but she wasn’t particularly thrilled about seeing them on a dead guy.

“What do you remember?” she asked him.

He gave a slight shake of his head and raised a trembling hand to his face. When he felt the ruin on the right side, he let out a cry.

“Richard, you’re okay.” Kimber gave another gentle squeeze to his shoulder. “Look at me.” She repeated it until he turned his attention to her. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again, all right?”

He swallowed. “All right.” He looked down at his fingers and clenched them. “Feel…strange.”

She couldn’t even imagine how weird it was for him. She didn’t pretend to know. “Tell me what you remember about that night.” She glanced at the stenographer. The woman tipped her chin to acknowledge she was ready.

A low sigh, almost a moan, came from the zombie. “We fought. We were always fighting. I don’t think we knew how to do anything else.”

“Who’s we, Richard?” Kimber asked.

The click-clack of the steno’s keys sounded loud in the otherwise quiet room.

Kimber leaned closer to the zombie. “Who did you fight with?”

He looked up. His confusion and sadness twisted into anger. “She did this to me!” He swung his legs over the side of the gurney. “She killed me.”

It wasn’t out of the ordinary for a murdered person to be outraged upon realizing what had happened. It also wasn’t unusual for them to become physically agitated as a way to work off some of the mental and emotional anguish. Even so, Kimber wanted to keep him as calm as possible. A calm dead man was one who went back to being dead with little effort. “Richard, it’s all right. She can’t hurt you again.”

His one eye held dark rage. “I know she can’t hurt me anymore. But I sure as hell can fuck her up.”

Bishop took another step forward. “Kimber…”

She waved him off, never taking her gaze off Whitcomb. “Richard, I need you to pay attention.” When he ignored her, she lost the soothing tone and made her voice commanding. “Richard Whitcomb, look at me.”

He looked at her. She saw something move in his gaze, something that felt dark. Evil. Something she’d never seen or felt before at a reanimation. She tried to ignore the sensation that niggled at the back of her mind, that feeling that something was really, really wrong. She had a job to do; she could manage this.

To re-establish her magical connection, she placed her hand on his shoulder. His skin was still ice cold and dry to the touch. “Richard, who did you fight with? Who shot you?”

“My unfaithful slut of a wife.” His thin lips pulled back in a gruesome smile. He jumped down off the gurney.

She tried to ignore the flash of teeth through his ruined cheek as well as the dead man’s junk. “We’ll make sure she pays for her crime,” she promised him. “Now, get back on the gurney and we’ll let you rest.”

He gave a slow shake of his head. “No. I don’t want to rest. And I don’t need you to make sure of anything. Oh, no.” His chuckle came from a dry throat. “I’ll take care of her, don’t you worry.”

That response wasn’t all that unusual, either. The need for revenge was a common theme among murder victims.

Kimber drew upon the Unseen and felt her magic surge within her. “Richard Whitcomb, I command you to lie down.”

He stared at her. “No.” With a grimace he reached up and gripped her hand. He removed it from his shoulder but held onto it. He looked down at their fingers then began tightening his hand. His head came up and he stared at her from his one eye, malevolent pleasure shining there despite the film of death.

She winced at his hold. “Richard, let go.”

“Can you make me, necromancer?”

That was not his voice. Someone—or
something—
else spoke through him.

Bishop moved forward. As he reached for Whitcomb, the zombie released Kimber and pushed her into the detective. She and Bishop stumbled back. Richard headed for the door.

“Whoa, there!” The M.E. grabbed the zombie by one arm and yanked him to a stop. “You’re not goin’ anywhere but into the ground, my man.”

Whitcomb snarled. He struggled against the doctor’s hold, but the older, portly man clearly had some strength beneath the flab. The two security guards and Bishop jumped in, quickly manhandling the zombie onto the gurney. While they held him, the M.E. strapped him in with duct tape while the stenographer looked on.

Every once in a while the woman glanced at Kimber. Her eyes showed her fear and distaste over the situation, as well as a certain amount of distrust. Kimber couldn’t blame her—if she’d been at a reanimation and the zombie had run amok, she’d wonder about the necromancer’s skills, too.

“Kimber, what the hell?” Bishop faced her, his expression making the craggy lines of his face more pronounced. Rioting emotions enhanced the blue in his usually smoky gray eyes. “What just happened?”

Whitcomb started shouting obscenities and struggling against his bonds of tape. Even though the security guards remained beside him, Kimber kept an eye on him while she answered the detective. “I honestly don’t know. There’s something more inside him than just his soul.”

Whitcomb’s single-eyed gaze slid to her. “Wouldn’t you like to know what I am, necromancer?” His slow grin sent a shudder through her that she did her best to suppress. He must have seen something, though, because he chuckled. “Not as cool a cucumber as you’d like your friends to think you are, eh?”

“We have what we need,” Bishop said. “Finish it.”

“She can’t!” Whitcomb’s shrill laugh bounced off the walls. “Little bitch isn’t powerful enough.”

“Now, see here…” The M.E. moved closer. “You keep talking like that and I’ll duct tape your mouth.”

Whitcomb’s eyebrows climbed. He looked from the older man to Kimber and back again. “You got it for her bad, don’t you, doc? She is awfully juicy, I agree.” His gaze shifted to Kimber again. “Bet you’re a hot little slut in bed, aren’t you, necromancer?” He looked at her breasts and then lingered on the juncture of her thighs. “Yeah, baby. That’s one sweet pussy.”

“That’s it.” The M.E. tore off a piece of tape and reached for the dead man’s mouth.

Whitcomb lifted his head and sharp teeth snapped down onto the doctor’s hand. The M.E. cried out and jerked his hand away to the sound of the zombie’s maniacal laughter. Kimber saw the drip of blood before the doctor turned and hurried to the hand wash station.

Kimber put both hands on Whitcomb. Her palms tingled from the supernatural energy animating his body. It surged toward her like before. This time she was prepared and tamped it down with her own magic. She stared into his ruined face and intoned, “Richard Whitcomb, I consign you to the grave. Your soul is released once more to its everlasting journey.”

He continued to struggle and curse, but there didn’t seem to be as much strength behind his efforts as before.

“Go to your eternal rest, Richard.” Kimber ignored the curses he flung her way. She focused all her energy on him and felt the tingling in her hands begin to decrease. It was working. She caught sight of the fresh blood tingeing his mouth and realized she could use that. “By blood and magic, I consign you to eternity.”

The fight went out of him like the strings cut to a marionette. Kimber kept her hands on him a few seconds longer, just to be sure. Once she was certain there was no more magic flowing between them, she withdrew her hands and blew out a breath. Now that she was no longer a magical conduit, exhaustion dragged at her. All she wanted to do was go home and climb into bed. She knew, like always, she’d have nightmares after tapping into the Unseen. She just hoped this time they weren’t worse than normal.

She looked around the room, meeting the gaze of the other occupants. Forcing gaiety into her voice she said, “Phew! That was something, wasn’t it?”

The stenographer stared at her with accusation in her eyes then without a word gathered up her machine and left. The two security guards glanced at each other and followed her out. That left Kimber alone with the M.E., Detective Bishop, and the newly re-deceased Richard Whitcomb.

“That was
not
normal.” Bishop’s troubled eyes searched hers. “What the hell was that?”

She lifted her hands. “I don’t know.” At his skeptical expression, she insisted, “Bishop, seriously. I have no idea. I’ve never had that happen before.” She glanced at Whitcomb. “But it’s over now, so all’s right with the world. He told you who killed him, so…” She looked at Bishop again. “Go get ’er.”

He shook his head, but she saw a smile tug at one corner of his mouth. He looked over at the M.E. “Doc? You okay?”

The doctor waved at him without turning around. “I’m fine, though it’s the first time I’ve been bitten by one of my…patients.”

It wasn’t the first time a zombie had gone after someone like Whitcomb had the M.E., but it was certainly the first time she’d seen one take a bite out of anyone.

“Good. I’ll see you later.” Bishop looked down at Kimber. “You look tired. This one really took it out of you.”

“I’ll be all right.” He was a nice guy, the real deal. Why she couldn’t feel anything romantic for him was beyond her. But then, who had time for romance when there were the dead to raise and put back down? She sent him a smile. “Take care, Bishop.”

“You, too. Time to go save the world.” He gave her a jaunty two-fingered salute and sauntered out of the room.

Kimber walked over to the M.E. “Are you sure you’re okay?” She placed one hand on his upper arm.

He finished taping the gauze wrapped around his hand and held it up. “I’m good to go,” he said. He met her eyes. “This is my own damn fault for getting within biting distance. But, hell, girl, none of ’em’s ever done that before.”

She shook her head. “No, I’ve never seen it happen, either.” And it had never been as hard to put one back to rest. She needed to talk to another necromancer, or maybe a few, and see if they’d ever experienced something like this. Or was she the lucky one?

She made sure Whitcomb was really still dead and said her good-byes to the doctor. She grabbed her handbag from the chair by the door and left the room. As she exited the building, she saw a man sitting on the trunk of her twenty-year-old POS that still ran in spite of being held together by hope and rusted bits of metal. The illumination from the pole light she’d parked under gave a glossy sheen to his black hair. When he saw her he slid to his feet.

Duncan MacDonnough. Vampire prince-wannabe and royal pain in her ass. She’d known him for a couple of years. There’d been an initial, immediate attraction she’d done nothing to fight until the night she’d realized what he was and what that meant for her—that because of him she and her parents had come to the attention of the local vampire queen, and her parents had died.

After that she’d made sure to keep things friendly but not too friendly, but there had always been a sexual undercurrent flowing between them she couldn’t deny. She knew if she issued an invitation to her bed he’d take her up on it. She just wasn’t overly interested in a relationship where her lover could drain her dry. No matter how sexy he was.

“Duncan,” she greeted. After the night she’d had she was in no mood to put up with any of his crap.

“Kimber.” His deep, husky voice rasped across her ears. As usual, his demeanor was solemn. Somber. “I hear you had some trouble tonight.”

She stopped a few feet away from him and crossed her arms with a scowl. “And how did you hear that?”

“Bishop.” He rested a lean hip against the back fender of her vehicle. It creaked and she had the hope it wouldn’t fall off. How embarrassing would that be? Duncan added, “We talked briefly when he came out to his car.”

She frowned. “What, you’ve just been hanging out in the parking lot?”

One of his dark brows quirked. On anyone else she would have thought it to be a sign of humor. With Duncan… She didn’t think she’d seen him smile more than a handful of times over the years she’d known him. “As a matter of fact… I was not,” he said. “I came to see the doc, but when Bishop told me what happened and said you were on your way out, I thought I’d wait to talk to you out here.”

“Talk to me about what?”

“You know about what.”

She tightened her lips. She was not going to work for him or his queen. There was nothing in the world that would make her join forces with a bunch of bloodsuckers, even if she did regularly spill her own blood on the job. For one, she didn’t trust that none of them would bite her. Second, she didn’t trust that none of them would bite her. Yeah, that whole biting thing they had going on was the overriding reason she refused to work for them.