Page 110

Morley let out a faint snort.

That one had more humor in it.

“I’ve already been told to keep you off the streets for a while, Midnight,” he said wryly. “I’m thinking we should probably pay a visit to that nice lady in the River of Gold.”

Nick strongly agreed.

He felt his shoulders relax a little more.

Still squinting past the pain in his head and neck, he glanced warily around the room.

For the first time, he noted the blood on the wooden floors.

It struck him not all of it was Jordan’s.

Not all of it was his or the other vampire’s either.

That piece of shit really had drawn them into the room where he’d killed the rest of the Tanaka family. He really decided he needed to wipe every trace of his own damned bloodline completely off the map. Nick wondered why.

It still didn’t make any sense to him.

If he was leaving anyway, why kill his whole family? Hadn’t he already convinced himself it was Nick’s family anyway, not his? Why would the other vampire feel some compelling need to kill members of someone else’s family?

Especially if they supposedly “belonged” here, like the other vampire claimed?

The whole thing made Nick’s head hurt.

More, that is.

“I think we better go,” Morley said flatly.

Nick looked up. He followed the human detective’s eyes to the door.

Acharya was standing there now, scowling.

Luckily, that scowl didn’t seem to be aimed at them.

He scowled at Jordan first, visibly upset by what he saw. He looked at the bloody hole in the door next, then the broken spear on the ground. Finally, Nick followed Acharya’s gaze to two people he hadn’t noticed up until then.

Rob and Rick sat on plastic seat coverings on the mint-colored sofa shoved against one wall. Both had their wrists handcuffed behind their backs, and their ankles cuffed together with longer chains.

Both of them looked bloody and beat up as hell.

The smaller, younger one, Rick, presumably, with the black pompadour and the mean, close-set eyes, had a thickly bandaged shoulder.

Presumably that was from where Morley shot him.

“Glad you brought the gun,” Nick commented.

Morley grunted, giving him a faint sideways smile.

“Yeah,” he said, patting Nick on the shoulder. “Yeah, Midnight. Me too.”

CHAPTER24

THE GIFT

Nick satin the passenger seat of the same pool car they’d driven out in.