We've parked on a narrow dirt road and descended by foot through the forest. Now we stand beneath trees, our boots forming a crescent around the lifeless form. Santos hovers like a clenched fist over the corpse and Dana has gone snow white. A teenage girl lies before us, light blonde hair strewn about her round face in a gossamer halo. Dead. The flashing lights of Santos' cruiser seep through the forest. Soon deputies will begin showing up on scene.
A sacrilege. It is a sacrilege.
Santos stares grimly at the body. He has not made eye contact with me once. "I need you to confirm death," he says.
I look at him. The girl's death is painfully obvious but humans take comfort in protocol and apparently Santos is human after all. Dana doesn't move. She stands frozen and silent by my side. I have carried the monitor down with us and carefully I place an electrode above each plump wrist and ankle then turn the monitor on. Flat line.
"She's gone," I say.
"Any idea how long?"
"Rigor hasn't set in. There's still warmth to her. I'd say no more than twenty minutes."
"Son of a bitch. That fucker was right here." He gets on the radio and calls out a search, establishing perimeters, requesting dogs, but I know he doesn't have the resources to corner this predator. I turn to Dana. In our time together, she's seemed unnaturally resilient to the trauma of our profession, an advantage I've always suspected of scant empathy, but not tonight. Tonight, she's shaken.
"Are you okay?" I ask.
"She's dead," she says, sounding dazed. "I'll be in the truck."
I bend to take a closer look at the girl. She's dressed warmly in a bright red parka. A small gold cross lies against her cheek. Below it, her neck is sliced cleanly from one side of her jaw to the other. The snow is pure white, free of blood. How did Santos find her?
I edge a gloved finger beneath her collar and ease it open, leaning in for a closer look. Santos' gaze catches on me, his voice rising, telling me not to disturb the scene. Her throat is delicate. Tender. Her collar falls open letting out a warm pocket of scent and I recoil in horror, twisting, slipping in the snow, scrambling to my feet.
An Alpha! An Alpha did this. I lunge for the truck.
Santos grabs me by the arm, yanking me back. "Hey! What is it?"
"Nothing." I gasp, surprised at his strength.
He spins me to face him. "Bullshit. If you know something about this, you better tell me."
I yank my arm out of his grip. "Don't threaten me." My fear coalesces to anger. I'm sick of his hostility. Sick of brutal, violent men. "How did you find her? How is it you found both bodies?"
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Do you think I did this?"
"It seems odd you're always around when dead virgins show up."
"How do you know she's a virgin?"
"She has that look about her," I say lamely. The truth is I can smell it on her like an early spring.
"What look is that?"
"Young, country, religious."
"That don't mean shit. These country girls start fucking early."
I give him a disgusted look but he doesn't notice. He's staring intently at the body. "Someone killed her somewhere else and carried her body here." Without touching her, he crouches and peers at her hands. They are small, covered in handmade grey mittens. "Doesn't look like she put up a fight. All her clothes are intact."
"You never answered my question. How did you find her?"
"Her daddy's a hunting buddy. Said she was going out with a black boy tonight and he didn't like it. He tried to stop her, but she had a fit and ran out of the house. He asked me to keep an eye out for her, so I drove here to take a look around."
A black boy? Oh dear God.
"And you found her down here off the road?" I look at him in disbelief.
"Figured she couldn't go far on foot and was heading up the road to meet her date. I drove the roads but something didn't feel right." He stops short.
"What didn't feel right?"
He presses his lips together, squinting off into the forest.
"Tell me," I say, softening my voice. "I want to understand."
He takes a deep breath. "It's this feeling I get when there's killing going on. It puts out a vibration I sense under my skin. It's like a shock wave of evil or something. I don't know how to describe it."
Is that what he feels around me? Evil?
"Anyways, I had a hunch. This fucker's gonna be lucky if he don't get lynched."
"Wait a minute! You don't know he did this. Just because he's black—"
"They had a date. She didn't put up a fight, which suggests she was killed by someone she knows. Unless he has a rock solid alibi, he's a prime suspect."
"That's profiling."
"That's detective work. It'd be the same if he was white. Who else did she run off to see? Her grandmother? If so, the wolf got her first."
My hands clench with rage. I want to grab him by the throat and crush the light out of him. My hunger is rising, splintering into pieces like sharp teeth. I won't let him hurt innocent Lucien. He's off-limits.
Santos senses a change in me and tenses. His fingers twitch. We stare at each other across the snow. He is all lean, hard muscle I long to tear apart.
My phone rings, a blessed distraction. I answer it, expecting it to be Dana in the truck ready to leave, but it's not her.
It's Lucien.
"I'm on my way to Claire's and I saw your truck and the sheriff. Is everything okay?" His voice is small.
"Where are you now?"
"I pulled over. I can see your lights from here. Just got a bad feeling. 'Fraid her dad maybe went Appalachian on her ass."
"See where the truck is? There's a dirt path down the mountain just behind it. You'll see our footprints. I need you to come down here. But brace yourself. You're not going to like what you see."
I hate to thrust this upon him, but I'm sure his reaction will prove his innocence. And if Santos is going to interrogate him, I want to be there. I'm breaking my rules and getting involved, but Lucien is not equipped to handle Santos, a man who has spent a decade questioning insurgents.
"Lucien was this poor girl's date."
"Lucien?" Santos says, surprised. His eyes darken to black points. Already, he has convicted him. How can he not see the light coursing through that boy's veins? The pure shining potential in his eyes?
"He was arriving to pick her up when he saw our lights. He's heading this way now. Unless you're blind, I'm sure his innocence will be obvious."
"This is a crime scene. He can't come down here." Santos, impervious to his knee, stomps through the trees up the mountain to head him off. Reluctantly, I follow, leaving the fallen girl alone. It feels wrong to abandon her, but Lucien is alive and he's the one who needs protection now.
He appears as the darkest of shadows against the snow-dusted trees. He's wearing a black, puffy North Face parka that makes him look bigger than he really is. He halts when he sees the look on Santos' face. I pause, giving them space and watch while Lucien looks for me with a worried expression.
"Is someone hurt?" he asks.
"Fuck yeah, someone's hurt," Santos says. "Where were you 20 minutes ago?"
"On my way here."
"Do you have an alibi?"
"No. I was on my way here, by myself."
"You talk to anyone on the phone?"
"No. What's going on? Is it Claire? Is she okay?" He cranes his head to look past us. The whites of his eyes flash and I smell fear. He tries to walk by Santos, but Santos roughly blocks him. "Hey!" Lucien says. "What the fuck, man?"
In one deft move, Santos has Lucien's arm, twisting it behind his back to cuff him. Lucien spins like a running back, breaking out of the hold and Santos slams a fist into his stomach, then his temple, taking him down. With a savage kick, he knocks Lucien onto his back and falls on him, hitting hard and fast, pinning him to the ground with a laser-like ferocity.
I grab Santos and throw him off. He flies, slamming against a tree and landing on his knees. Stunned, he climbs to his feet and looks at me in recognition and fury. With a roar, he flies at me and I slam him back against the tree. I hold him by the throat and pin him there.
"Stop," I order. "Stop. He didn't do it. It wasn't him. You've got the wrong guy."
"Get off me, you fucking bitch," he shouts and tries to push me away, but I don't budge. I squeeze his throat tighter.
"Don't make me hurt you," I whisper. "I don't want to hurt you." My mouth is inches from his throat. His smooth brown skin smells like sun. And islands. I can smell the blood in him and feel it throb beneath my fingers. Hunger wrenches me. I want to sink my teeth into his neck. If he fights, I will take him.
Please fight. Please. Fight.
His eyes blaze but he freezes and very slowly I loosen my grip, keeping my hand around his throat, reluctant to relinquish him fully.
"I knew it. I fucking knew it," he spits.
"Pull yourself together," I hiss. "If you want to know who really did this, get your head together."
He falls silent and still. Carefully, I release him. He breaks away and looks at me in the half moonlight, breathing hard. My cap is lying in the snow and in frustration, I throw my glasses to the ground. I lift my face to the moonlight and close my eyes.
It's done. After all these years, I am exposed. It's a relief actually, to finally reveal myself to someone.
"You know who did this?" he asks, shaking out his fist.
"I know it wasn't him." I motion to Lucien, who is crawling to his knees, dazed, trying to wipe the blood from his face.
"How do you know?"
"Because I can smell it on her. And it isn't him."
"It?" Santos' voice comes out a hoarse rasp. "It's true. I'm not fucking crazy." He's whispering, his eyes glittering in the dark, glazing with tears. He begins to collapse on himself and grabs my shoulder to steady himself.
I look from Lucien to Santos, unsure who is most wounded.
Furiously, Santos swipes at his tears.
"I'm not crazy?" He grabs me close, boring into my eyes, down into the soft, wild parts of me. "You're . . . it . . . it's not normal, is it?"
"You're not crazy." I twist out of his grip, unable to bear it. I must leave, but I will tell him the truth. Ancient lies are driving him insane. "An Alpha did this. A Night Walker male. They are extremely dangerous. Whatever you think I am, he's nothing like me. The males are different. Dominant, vile, ruthless. They detest the weak and are far stronger than I can ever be."
"What are you?"
"I don't know." My voice cracks. "I have been asking myself that for a long time." I stare down at my boots, my voice dropping. "I don't know what I am or where I come from or why I'm here. All I know" —my voice is barely a whisper— "is that I'm a creature of the night and . . ." I take a great breath, "I need blood to survive."
I wait for Santos to reach for his gun. To hold it against my chest and pull the trigger. To feel the piercing relief of annihilation. I won't stop him.
Oh, Father! Father! Let me rest! And call my soul to thee!
"But the first girl was killed in daylight," he says, puzzling out our peculiar existence. I gaze at him. He appears utterly unfazed by my confession.
"I don't understand it," I admit. "I've never known any of my kind to live long in the light."
"To live long? But you have heard of them surviving?"
I think back to my early days after my first kill. A thirteen-year-old girl. She gave me such strength I lived for weeks in the sun, but in time the night wrapped its grip around me and gathered me back in. My sun-strength faded, never to return.
I do not wish to tell Santos about my first victim. "I know little of it. There are few of us and we don't compare notes."
A moan reaches my ears. Lucien is struggling to his feet. "Anne?" His left eye is closing and he holds snow to his face. I doubt he's heard our conversation, but if he has I will convince him he is confused from concussion.
"Go to the truck, Lucien," I say. "I'll meet you there in a minute."
"I knew that girl was trouble." He turns and makes his way slowly to the road.
I glare at Santos. "So much for innocent until proven guilty. This isn't Cuba. You just broke every law in the book."
"Fuck the law. Sometimes the law isn't enough. But you know all about that, don't you? You've been living outside the law for how long?"
"I've been running these mountains ten years, helping these people. And starving in the process," I mutter under my breath.
"You've got to find this guy and make him stop."
I look at him in shock. "I can no more stop him than Dana could stop you if you were a rampaging murderer. If he finds me, he will take me and keep me until my last days. Alphas collect females and hold them like slaves. Their appetites are strong and we don't break like human women. I'll go nowhere near him. No one can. He'll finish with this place and move on."
"When?"
"When he gets bored."
"How many girls will it take for that to happen?"
"I don't know. Not many more. He won't want to attract enormous attention. It makes survival difficult. None of us wants to fight a village."
Santos steps up to me with a hard look. "You're going to stand by and let this monster take down our girls? You're going to let innocent girls get drained by a psychopath and do nothing? You call yourself a paramedic? You're fucking pathetic."
I turn away, shaking my head. "There's nothing I can do. I wish it were different. I do. But it would be like you trying to take down the Taliban entirely on your own. It's not possible. You would be there if it were, but you're not, you're here. Because here you can make a difference. If I go after him, I'll end up dead or enslaved. I can't help anyone then."
"Then I would die. I would die before I turn my back on anyone too weak to protect themselves. You're like that murdering Alpha. An animal incapable of selfless courage."
Fear tightens my belly.
Fear for Santos.
"Let him be," I demand. "You can't stop him."
"Then I'll die trying."
"No!"
Sirens swell through the night. Officers are arriving. "What am I supposed to tell them?" he shouts.
"Tell them a psycho is loose. Tell them you questioned Lucien and he's not a suspect. Based on his injuries, he's coming with me."
I turn my back on him and stalk up the mountain, moving too fast for Santos to catch.