Angels of Darkness

distance, the Mississippi snaked southward. Pretty. When the bare trees dressed in their leaves for the summer and green covered the hills, it was probably gorgeous.

Maybe she’d have reason to come back again, and find out.

The vampire’s one-level house was situated among a small scattering of homes—mostly humans, Marc told her. Best not to let them see two winged people landing in Bronner’s backyard. To conceal their arrival, she concentrated on the illusion of complete invisibility: no sound, no evidence of their footsteps through the snow, no lingering scent of coconut from her mouth.

Another scent hit her almost immediately: blood. Not surprising, given that this was a vampire’s home and that they usually fed from each other just after waking—but, given that it smelled like human blood, disturbing.

And a moment later, another scent: human death.

Marc smelled it, too. His jaw tightened, gaze searching the windows of the house. “Can anyone see us?”

“No.”

He vanished his wings. A sword appeared in his left hand, called in from his cache of weapons. Radha brought her crossbow in from her own psychic storage. Their tips poisoned with hellhound venom, the crossbow bolts wouldn’t badly injure a demon, but the venom would paralyze one. It was a hell of a lot easier to decapitate a demon if it couldn’t run away.

They reached the back door. Marc cocked his head, listening for noises from inside.

“I’m concealing our voices, our footsteps,” she said. “And I’ll conceal the noise when you break open that door.”

He nodded, then glanced down at her feet. “Put your shoes on. Something that won’t leave a mark.”

“What?”

“If a human is dead, I have to call in the sheriff. They’ll look for prints. Unless your illusions can cover up real physical evidence, you can’t go in with bare feet.”

That made sense. In her own territory, she didn’t bother—but she also rarely worked with local law enforcement. This was Marc’s territory, though, so she’d follow his lead. A pair of flip-flops wouldn’t confine her toes. She hated shoes that did.

Marc picked the lock instead of breaking the door down. The scent of death intensified. Quietly, they slipped into a darkened mudroom, then a tiny, bare kitchen. A bucket of cleaning supplies sat on the counter. No plates, pans, or evidence of food. There never was in a vampire’s house. Marc’s psychic sweep pushed against her shields.

“Do you sense anyone?”

She sent out her own soft probe, searching for any sign of life. “Nothing.”

“They sleep in the basement.” He entered the hallway leading to the front of the home, passing a bathroom, an empty bedroom. He paused at the edge of the living room, vanished his sword. “God damn it.”

Oh. Radha stopped next to him, her breath escaping on a long, heavy sigh. A woman lay between the end of a sofa and the low coffee table, eyes open, her features already locked in the waxy rigidity of death. Middle-aged, dressed in khaki pants, tennis shoes, and yellow latex gloves, she looked like a housewife going about her daily routine. Blood stained the beige carpet beneath her head, a dark pool that must have been congealing for at least a few hours.

As Marc started toward the body, Radha glanced around the room. Nothing broken, nothing disturbed. The front door hadn’t been forced. The heavy drapes over the south-facing picture window were wide open. Strange, that. She didn’t know any vampires who weren’t careful about closing each curtain in the house every morning, even if they slept in a windowless room. Frowning, she walked around the sofa—stopped behind it. Oh, no.

“Marc.”

Crouched beside the woman, he looked up. “What did you find?”

“Vampire ash. Two piles, I think. Jewelry.” She bent, sifted through the sandy remains, selected a man’s signet ring and showed it to him. “Did Bronner wear this?”

Jaw clenching, Marc nodded.

“A woman’s ring is here, too. A set of earrings. No clothes.” Sick to her stomach, she glanced toward the center of the living room again. Hairs and blood clung to the nearest corner of the coffee table. “What happened here? Did this woman drag them up here into the sun, and then . . . trip? Hit her head?”

“I don’t think so.” He slid up the woman’s short sleeves, revealing the faint discoloration ringing her upper arms. “I think she was grabbed, pushed.”

Pushed. Not the most efficient way of killing someone. Her gaze settled on the woman’s gloves, and she recalled the cleaning supplies in the kitchen. “Maybe she was here to work and surprised someone. But when? A demon couldn’t have done this to her, not without Deacon and Rosalia being called to slay him—and you’d have sensed them coming.”

If not a demon, then a vampire or a human. Vampires didn’t have to follow the Rules forbidding demons from killing humans, though most knew better than to try. And in many vampire communities, leadership was determined by strength; Guardians didn’t interfere with vampire power struggles. If another vampire wanted to take Bronner’s place, no Guardian would slay the vampire for killing him. Marc and Radha would slay any vampire who killed a human, however.

But if she’d been killed after the sun had risen, a vampire couldn’t have done it.

Gently, Marc tested the woman’s joints. “She’s cold, and almost in full rigor. At least this morning, maybe earlier.”

So maybe a vampire, maybe not.

He rose to his feet. “Stay here, make sure no one sees anything through the windows. I’ll check out the basement.”

It only took him a few moments. Radha had time to vanish all of the ash and jewelry into her psychic storage before he returned, his mouth a tight line of frustration.

“Blood on the bed, the stairs. They were killed down there, dragged up here—the blood trail down the hall was ashed by the sun. The basement door locks from the inside. A reinforced door and lock, but it was bashed down. A human couldn’t have done that. Most vampires couldn’t. You or I could.”

“And a demon could,” Radha finished for him. When he nodded, she said, “Do we contact the other vampires in the community, tell them about Bronner?”

“Not yet. You vanished the ash?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I left the blood. There’s nothing in the DNA that looks different from a human’s, and if a human did this, maybe there’s a fingerprint, a hair, or something for the courts to nail them with. Did you touch anything?”

She mentally reviewed her steps. “The jewelry, but that’s in my cache now.”

“All right.” He called in a cell phone, began typing out a message. “I’m going through Special Investigations, asking them to leave an anonymous tip for the sheriff. I’ll call the county coroner myself. He knew Bronner, knew what he was and was able to keep quiet about it, so I’ll let him know I’ve got the ash, that I need to know the result of the exam as quickly as possible. The sheriff will probably list Bronner and his partner as missing, though.”

“You think a human did it,” Radha realized. “Despite the bashed-in lock.”

“I’m leaning that way. If he was awake, Bronner wouldn’t have still been in bed, naked, while someone broke into the basement. But we’ll have a better idea whether a vampire could have done it if the coroner can give us a time of death. That’ll take him a couple of hours tonight, so I’ll arrange to meet with him as soon as he’s done with the autopsy. The vampire community can wait until then.”

“Do you know the coroner?”

“No. But Bronner trusted him.”

“Do you?”

“No. I haven’t met him. And Bronner said he had the coroner in his pocket. That says‘payout’to me. How many demons with money have you known?”

“All of them,” Radha said. “You think they got together and did this?”

“No. But I do wonder about any man that can be bought, even if that money comes from a good man like