Judson
Was I p-whooped? I didn’t think so. “It’s more than that, Daniela. This thing between us… it’s come on so fast, but I’ve never felt a connection like this to anyone. I can’t begin to describe the relief I feel by just telling you the truth and you coming clean with me. I’ve been keeping my grief about Audrey’s death bottled up because I couldn’t tell anyone about the existence of vampires. I couldn’t express my rage and need for revenge against your kind. Everyone would think I’d gone crazy from grief.” I looked down at her bare leg. She was still naked and I loved how confident she was just sitting there, not attempting to cover up that beautiful body of hers. I looked into her eyes. “But with you, I can be free to talk about it. I knew you were a vampire the minute our eyes locked while I was onstage. Do you know that vampires’ eyes reflect a silver glint in certain light?”
Her eyebrows hit her hairline. “What? No. I didn’t know that. God damn that Ringo for not telling me shit like this.”
“Who’s Ringo?” I asked.
She sighed and got up from the bed. She went around to where my clothes were and slipped my Innubus T-shirt over her head. It was huge on her and she looked superhot wearing it. I was starting to get hard again.
“He’s my ‘boss’,” she replied, using air quotes.
“He’s… he’s the one who hired you to, ah, kill me?” I asked, hating the nervous laughter that followed.
She nodded. “Yeah, he’s a real ass, too. He’s also the one who turned me. Against my will, I need to add.”
“Wait,” I said, becoming confused. “He turned you and made you come work for him? And you didn’t just run away somewhere to get away from him?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” she replied on a sigh. “I’ll explain more later, but just know I don’t plan on working for him forever. In fact, I think I’m done with this bounty-hunting bullshit. I need to find a more legit job before I get myself killed.”
“You can say that again,” I murmured. Then, a thought hit me. “What happens if you don’t kill me? Will you just not get paid, or what?”
She snorted out a laugh that was completely devoid of humor. “Not only will I not get paid, Ringo will either torture me or kill me—hell, maybe both.”
Fuck. This girl was literally putting her life on the line for me. “So what are you going to do… I mean, what are we going to do?” I asked. There was no way I was letting her go down for any of this shit with me.
“Well,” she said, sitting down on the bed next to me and staring into my eyes. “The way I see it, we have three choices. Either we go on the run, we kill Ringo, or we find out who really killed those vampires and get you off the hook.”
I relaxed slightly. I had a friend who was a private eye and decided I should give him a call. “Well, obviously choice number three is what we need to start with.”
“Agreed, but we have a timeline. Like, I’m supposed to bring Ringo your body by Halloween.” She bit her lip and looked up at me.
I glanced at my watch: October 28th. “Well, we’ve got three days to figure out who’s doing it then. My first thought, when I’d come across the ashes, was that this was another human, like me, who’d fallen victim to a vamp and was killing them all. Do you have any, like, unsolved vampire murders?”
She snorted again. “Uh, yeah. It’s not like we have our own police force. We don’t even really police our own. We let the human cops do all the work, but of course, most, if not all, vampire murders end up as cold cases, or get classified as animal attacks.”
“Makes sense,” I said, nodding. “Well, I have a friend who’s a private investigator. I know he somehow has access to Denver PD case files. We could start there?”
Her eyes lit up. “Really? That would be awesome. But how are you going to explain why you’re looking?”
“Easy.” I smiled. “I’ll just ask him to pull up all the cold cases and animal attacks that were like Audrey’s. He won’t even question it. In fact, I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought to do this until now.”
“Because just being in my presence is making you smarter already.” She winked at me.
I wrapped my arms around her and said, “Is that so?”
She giggled when I ripped my shirt off over her head and tossed it to the floor. I pushed her back on the bed and began devouring her body once more.
“Dude, I know you’re busy as fuck, but I’ll pay you double to have this information to me by tonight. I need it.” I raked my fingers through my hair as I paced my apartment.
After sleeping a little, I woke to Daniela gone, a little note on my kitchen notepad about her needing to sleep in her own sunlight-proof bedroom for the day, and that she’d call me when she woke. It was currently 10:00 a.m. and this P.I., Kirk, was giving me the runaround.
“I don’t know, man. I’m hella swamped and have another deadline.”
Sighing in frustration, I said, “Look, why don’t you just start with the ones ruled as animal attacks. That should be quicker to run down, right?”
He was quiet for a minute and I looked at my phone to see if we were still connected. “Kirk, you there?”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. I’ll run those down through the Denver PD database. It’ll still take me a couple hours, but I’ll get them to you by this afternoon.”
I sighed in relief. “Thanks, man. I mean it.”
“You’re welcome, and Judson?”
“Yeah?”
“It really is gonna cost you double,” he replied with a laugh before hanging up.
Relieved he was helping me, I poured myself another cup of coffee
