Page 3 of The Mermaid's Bubble Lounge
I wanted to talk with Clive, but he’d be dead to the world for hours yet.
Wait. I knew who was up. I pulled out my phone and dialed Vlad.
“Missed me already?” he answered.
“No. I’m at Fisherman’s Wharf. There’s a dead woman on the ground with two bloody holes in her neck.”
I heard him move. “Get close. Do you scent a vampire? Anyone we know?”
“I can’t. The cops have her blocked off. We’ve already been told to move on. If the cop didn’t look so queasy, he’d probably be yelling at me for being this close.”
“Check her color,” he said. “Exsanguination will leave skin unnaturally pale, like a maggot’s, and she won’t have dark bluish or purple spots on the bottom of her body from normal blood settling.”
I grimaced. “As lovely as all that sounds, they’ve put a screen up around her.”
He cursed. “Just describe what you saw.”
I closed my eyes and brought it back. “She’s lying on the ground beside the Bubble Lounge’s outside wall. She’s wearing running gear like what you just saw me in. Her head’s at a weird angle. The bite mark’s obvious and prominent, on the side of her neck facing the street, not the building.”
He made an irritated sound. “Eyes open or closed?”
My focus had been on that bloody bite mark and what it meant. “Let me think.” I tried to see her in my mind’s eye. “Open, but not wide open, if that makes sense.”
“Yes.”
“From the scent, I’d say she was killed last night,” I told him. “And her clothes, they’re the kind that have a reflective stripe down the sides for people jogging at night.” I thought about that a moment. “Weird, though.”
“What is?” he asked.
“It’s just odd.” More emergency vehicles arrived, so I walked Fergus to the side, near the fresh fish stand. The workers there were watching the cops too. “Most women don’t go jogging late at night on their own.”
“Perhaps her running companion is the one who attacked her,” Vlad suggested.
I shrugged, not that he could see me. “I mean, anything’s possible since we have no idea what happened.”
“Or,” he continued, “she felt secure because, like you, she was jogging with a dog, one who ran off during the attack. Regardless, you should leave. They’ll start taking pictures of the crowd and it would be best if you weren’t in those pictures. I’d venture to guess that Russell, as Master of the City, has connections in the police department and the morgue. We’ll see what information he can get.”
“And in the meantime,” I said, “we’ll hope like hell that this doesn’t have anything to do with what it looks like.”
“The Guild is in shambles,” Vlad said. “We’re not prepared to deal with my kind trying to come out to the world, so, yes, let’s hope very hard that there is a mundane explanation for this woman’s death.”
THREE
Too Many Creeps
By the time we arrived home, Fergus was dragging and Vlad was gone. I ran upstairs to shower before I went to work. I flicked on the lights in the bedroom. Clive wouldn’t care. Seeing him, though, made me wish he was a day-walking vamp, like Vlad. I wanted to talk with him.
I leaned over the bed and gave him a kiss. “I need to talk with you when you wake up.”
Maybe it had been a run-of-the-mill creep with a strange weapon who’d killed her. Maybe. I was worried, though.
They’d talked in Budapest about a contingent of vampires who wanted to come out to the world. They wanted the power and the fear. They wanted to be at the top of the food chain, with humans cowering in subservience.
Yes, vampires were inhumanly strong and fast. Yes, they were undead killers, but there were a shit ton more humans in the world than vampires. Vampire hunting would become an overnight craze. Apps would be created to locate nocturnes and destroy vamps. Hell, a whole cottage industry would rise focused on exterminating vampires. Humans might not have super-human strength, but they had the numbers and could hunt around the clock.
I didn’t bother closing doors or trying to be quiet while Clive slept. If anything, he told me he enjoyed sometimes hearing me get ready. If his subconscious was close to the surface, he’d listen and feel like he was with me.
Wearing my usual jeans, running shoes, and a hoodie, I jogged downstairs to get breakfast for Fergus and me. Was it June? Yes, but it was also San Francisco. Today was cold and overcast.
