Page 83

“Mind if I stop in?”Valtu asks, pulling the car up alongside a wine store on Franklin. “Won’t be a minute. This the only wine store in town that carries anything older than ten years.”

“Sure,” I tell him, trying to give him an easy smile.

He squints at me. “Are you alright, kid?”

I put my hand on his arm. “I’m just a little shaken up, that’s all. But I’ll be fine. Go get your wine. Get me something sweet, while you’re at it.”

“Anything for you, love,” he says and exits the car. I watch as he strides gracefully into the store, then sit back in my seat and exhale loudly.

It all hits me at once. The chaos, the trauma, the exhaustion. The last twenty-four hours have been positively insane. It’s going to take a long time to wrap my head around any of it.

Callahan killed Marco.

Callahan is a vampire.

Callahan knowsI’ma vampire.

Cohen’s cronies threw fucking acid in my face.

And more of his cronies are dead, their remains in my freezer.

A light tap on my window startles me from my thoughts. I turn to see a striking blonde woman standing beside the car, her platinum hair styled in perfect waves, a wannabe Veronica Lake. Her smile is dazzling but doesn’t reach her eyes—cold, calculating eyes that lock onto mine with unsettling intensity.

Before I can react, a strange heaviness settles over my mind, like fog rolling across my thoughts. Her lips move, forming words I can barely comprehend, yet they resonate within me with undeniable authority.

“Get out of the car,” she says, her voice carrying a subtle European accent. “You want to help your friend, don’t you? We’ve been watching for a long time.”

Something washes over me like mud. With drowning thoughts I realize it’s compulsion, stronger than any I’ve encountered before, stronger than even Adonis. I find myself reaching for the door handle even as a distant part of my mind screams warnings.

As I step out onto the sidewalk, the woman takes my arm with cold fingers, her grip both gentle and inescapable, her nails painted purple and terribly sharp. “Come with me,” she murmurs, leading me toward a waiting black Cadillac. “We have so much to discuss about Victor Callahan.”

20

CALLAHAN

The Los Angeles Police Department smells like stale coffee, cigarettes, and desperation. I’ve spent enough time in these halls to know the rhythms—the way detectives hide their frustrations behind dark humor, the way the typewriters clack in mechanical symphony, the quiet sobs from the interview rooms where lives are unraveled question by question.

Today, though, everything is different.

Or rather, I am.

I catch fragments of whispered conversations from across the bullpen, detect the subtle scent of bourbon on Coleman’s breath from twenty feet away, hear the racing heartbeat of a suspect being questioned two rooms over. My senses have been dialed to eleven since yesterday’s revelation, and I still don’t know how to filter the onslaught of information.

Vampire.

The word still feels foreign, absurd. Like something from a dime-store novel or late-night horror picture.

Me, Victor Callahan.

A vampire.

A monster.

Your worst nightmare.

I leaf through the police reports at Coleman’s desk while he’s fetching coffee, keeping my movements casual despite the tension coiling in my gut. I nearly didn’t come today, too afraid that the cops would be looking for me for shooting those two men at the hotel last night. But I know staying away would only raise suspicions. Besides, I need more information, now that I know what I am. I’m looking for any unexplained deaths during my blackouts, any murders I might have committed while that…otherpart of me was in control.

A thin folder catches my eye. Jane Doe, found near Elysian Park three days ago. The same night I woke up on that park bench with blood in my mouth, dirt under my nails, and hours missing from my memory.