Ravenous

'What's going on?' she asked.

He turned and stopped as she spoke, his expression guarded. 'It's a crime scene.'

Holly folded her arms. 'Yeah, but who are you going to arrest? The house?'

Macmillan studied her, clearly making up his mind how much to say. 'You're going to need to answer some questions.'

'Okay.'

His gaze didn't waver, but kept watching, recording her every twitch. 'They found another body. She didn't die like the others.'

'What?'

'Her death was different. Murder, and not by real estate.'

Holly grabbed the sleeve of Macmillan's coat. 'How come I didn't see her? Where was she?'

He took a step back, giving her his X-ray look again. 'Where's your friend? Alessandro Caravelli? I'll need to speak with him.'

'He's gone.' Holly felt her stomach plummet to her feet. Alessandro had made an oblique reference to the campus murders. Told her to go home and lock the doors. He knew about the fourth body!

Macmillan's look grew cold, heavy with authority. 'Do you know where he went?'

Holly gulped back her shock. 'No.'

Not only did he fail to mention a body, Alessandro had skipped the scene, leaving her to explain his absence to the police. She could kick his butt.

Holly folded her arms, struggling to look Macmillan in the face. 'The law doesn't afford the supernatural community the same rights as it does humans. The trials are a joke. Even if I did know where he went, why should I turn him over to you?'

He looked disgusted. 'Legal obligation aside, because this latest victim was killed by a vampire.'

The words delivered a hard jolt. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

His eyes widened, a hint of temper. 'Loyalty is great, but how much do you really know about your fanged sidekick? Where—who—does he eat? Where does he go on a night-to-night basis? Who are his other friends? Just because he seems like a stand-up kinda vampire, that doesn't make him safe. Or innocent.'

Macmillan stepped closer, his hands on his hips, tie dangling inches away from her chest. The posture lifted the edges of his coat, and Holly could see the straps of his holster. It held the latest police sidearm—some new weapon that shot silver-alloy ammunition with enough power to stop a werewolf in midrampage. Sadly, the new models jammed a lot. Most cops still carried a second, garden-variety gun.

The night was cold enough that she could feel the faint envelope of heat radiating from Macmillan's body. His jaw bunched with temper. 'Now—why did Caravelli leave the scene of a vampire murder?'

The happy drugs left Holly's blood on a tide of adrenaline. Alessandro wasn't safe. He'd said so himself. Oh, crap.

No. She refused to believe the worst of him. 'He's a good guy. He pulled me out of that house of horrors tonight.'

'That doesn't mean he never gets peckish.'

'That doesn't mean he's a slob, leaving food all over the place.'

'Where is he?'

Holly barely stopped an eye roll. This was ridiculous. 'You should try some basic detective work.'

'Really?' The detective's eyebrows lifted.

'It's public record that Alessandro owns a collections agency. Check the yellow pages for an address. Vampires don't live in the sewers these days. They're employed. They have phones.'

Macmillan's mouth thinned. Holly braced herself for a snarling comeback, but a uniformed officer waved for Macmillan's attention. The detective shot her a hard glance. 'Wait here. I'll be back. We're not done.'

He started toward the gaggle of police milling on the porch. Holly folded her arms across her dread-sore stomach. Macmillan had gone straight to the truth: Outside of their working relationship, she knew almost nothing of Alessandro's life.

Fat, icy drops splashed Holly's face. It had started to rain.

Chapter 6

Alessandro turned into the garage at the rear of his downtown apartment, wipers gracefully arcing across the T-Bird's windshield. He had escaped for now, but unless the cops were idiots, they'd put it together that he had been alone in the building with a dead girl. Tedious questions would follow.

In his experience, cops were like cats: The more you tried to avoid them, the more they wanted to get to know you. Unless Alessandro wanted to dump his current life and run—which was not so easy to do these days— he would have to act quickly. The sooner he could point the police in the direction of the real killer, the sooner they would leave him alone.

This new hunter in Fairview was causing a great deal of inconvenience.

He parked the car but sat a moment, unmoving. Holly's scent lingered on his clothes, an intimate ghost of her hair, her skin, her life. The fleeting echo of her presence cut through the maelstrom of his thoughts, and he closed his eyes, dwelling in that instant when she had pressed herself to his lips.

Scent was the one way, the only way he could drink her in and still leave her unharmed. It was barely enough to keep a dream from starving, and yet it was all he could safely enjoy. Memory was sweeter, but more dangerous. Memory made him want more.

Details of the evening played over and over in Alessandro's mind: the curve of her knees, the brisk gestures of her hands. The images fanned the embers of smothered lust. As his blood heated, a savage pang of hunger rent him, twisting his gut and filling his mouth with saliva.

He drained the blood of those he caressed, destroying what he craved. Eroticism and appetite were inexorably linked, like thunder and lightning. Any dream of love was mere delusion. All a vampire had was hunger.

At that Alessandro's yearning fell to ash, leaving him empty. He got out of the car as if there were barely enough spirit left to propel his limbs, but the weather snapped him out of his reverie. The half dozen yards to his apartment block were a gauntlet of pelting rain. He took them at a run.

Once a Victorian-era warehouse, the building had been converted to a modern art gallery and a handful of suites. Alessandro entered at a rear door that led straight into his neglected kitchen.

Halfway over the threshold he stopped, suddenly alert. Nothing was out of place. The door had been locked. The security system was disarmed, but then he rarely set it.

What was wrong?

Rain pattered on the pavement behind him, gurgling down the drainpipes and over the lid of a Dumpster. He could smell the ocean in the heavy, moist breeze, as well as a whiff of restaurants and car exhaust.

That was all distraction. What had caught his attention was a subtle note behind the rest of the sensory noise.

Alessandro pulled the door closed, shutting out what little light came from outside. Water dripped in a steady beat from the hem of his coat to the tiles of the entry way. He shed the coat, throwing it over a chair, and glided noiselessly toward his living room. Tension prickled at the back of his neck, spilling down between his shoulders. He wasn't afraid, but he was wary.

What had been faint was growing stronger, unveiling itself. Now power hung in the air like pungent smoke. Pausing once, he drew a long knife from his boot sheath. From the feel of the energy, Alessandro's visitor was another of his kind.

The living room was pitch-black, the bare brick walls absorbing any ambient light. He didn't need much to see, but he needed some. With his left hand he found the light switch and flipped it, keeping his knife at the ready.

There was a flicker of movement behind him, too fast even for his quick reactions. In a blink, feminine arms