Page 73 of Inhuman Nature

Rake closed his eyes and pressed his own hand on top of DJ’s. “Do you think there are photos like that of Shaun?”

DJ swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I don’t want to find out.”

“What do wedohere, Deej? I hate being so useless.”

“How about we start by seeing if we can contact Christopher? He might help us if he’s still around.”

Rake cracked one eye open. “How do we go about trying to get in contact with a vampire we only have a name for? He could be five hundred years old for all we know. I doubt we’ll be able to find him on Facebook.”

DJ lifted one shoulder. “Itisall boomers on there these days. We might get lucky.”

Despite everything, he got a proper smile out of Rake for that. “So say we find him. What then?” Rake asked.

“Given what we saw in those photos, and from what Shaun told us, I doubt Christopher was with Lawrence by choice, either. If he’s still around, then he could speak to the other vampires for us.”

Rake wiped a hand over his face as he nodded.

“Let’s go back and see what else we can get off the laptop,” DJ said, holding his hand out. Rake took it, his hand warm in DJ’s.

They ended up combing through the rest of the photos, which yielded little in terms of additional information about Christopher, other than how badly Lawrence treated him. DJ’s heart was in his throat each time they moved to the next image, terrified that the face they’d see would be Shaun’s. But there weren’t any of him, not even one.

They moved on to the documents. Most were basic things like bills they scanned for any details that could be usable, but it appeared Lawrence was just a stickler for keeping records, no matter how pointless.

Next, they checked the browser for website history, clicking on the most recent links. Lawrence had a very conservative taste in newspapers, which wasn’t surprising. The other sites he visited most often were various banking and investment websites which DJ couldn’t make head nor tail of. They couldn’t get into half the sites without extra login details, so Rake navigated to the stored passwords to see if there was anything of use.

He scrolled until they stumbled upon something—one of the websites used a different email address from the others.

DJ pointed at the screen. “[email protected]. That has to be Christopher, right?”

“I would put money on it,” Rake said.

“Should we email?” DJ could barely contain his excitement. If this was Christopher’s contact, then they might just find themselves with a necessary ally.

“Let’s do it.” Rake pulled out his phone and copied the email address, then sat with the empty message, looking at DJ. “What do we say?”

“Ask if it’s Christopher and if he knows Lawrence.” DJ had no idea why Rake seemed to want him to take the lead on this, but he was more than happy to.

“That all?”

“For now. Until we know if it’s actually him.”

Rake sent the email off, and they sat there for a second before DJ laughed. “Are we just going to wait here in silence until we get a response?”

“Maybe.”

At least they didn’t get an undeliverable mail notification. DJ checked out some other sites on the laptop for a few minutes before Rake’s phone pinged with a reply.

Who is this?

“It has to be Christopher,” DJ said. “Anyone else would have ignored it, right?” He took the phone from Rake and typed out the situation, though avoided mentioning the whole vampire thing, just in case. After a quick read-over and approval from Rake, DJ pressed send and waited.

The ping of another response had his heart racing.

Meet me in Haywards Heath. Tomorrow. Midnight.

The following email had an address. DJ searched for it, finding out that it was a hotel car park.

“We have to go, right?” he asked.