An Apple for the Creature

It’s written in Romanian, which, as you know, is not a problem for the Bureau. The entire document has been translated. If what it says is true, Peter Anderson has had several dozen aliases, and he’s hundreds of years old.”

“I need a moment,” she said, feeling ill. “I need a bathroom.”

Jackson moved to help her up. She waved him away and pulled herself to her feet. Then she swayed out of the room and made it down the corridor to the bathroom. On her knees, she threw up. Then she tumbled against the cold metal of the stall and began to hyperventilate.

“Claire,” Jackson said, opening the door and hoisting her up. He wrapped his arms around her. “They’ve gone to get him.”

“Oh God, oh God,” she murmured against his chest.

“They recruited me a month ago,” he told her. “All they told me was that they thought your husband was involved in a crime, and that he was planting DNA evidence to make you look guilty. But they didn’t tell me it was murder, and they sure as hell didn’t tell me anything about goddamn vampires. If they had, I would have staked that son of a bitch first chance I got.”

She hitched a breath, and he leaned his cheek against the crown of her hair. He did not kiss her. “As soon as we arrived here at FSU, and I found out what exactly was going down, I pitched holy hell. Nash and DeWitt came down on me hard. You were under surveillance before we got here, and it’s been going on here, too. Hell, I’ve been standing outside your window at night myself, to protect you.”

“You faked me out,” she said accusingly, pulling out of his arms.

“I’m a hell of an FBI agent,” he affirmed, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “But I’m an even better . . . friend.”

“Did he kill someone tonight?” she asked. Her voice sounded as if it belonged to someone else. It sounded like someone who was about to completely lose it.

“An undercover cop has been posing as a coed at MIT,” he said. “She fits the resemblance pattern of his victims, and he moved in fast. She was supposed to go over there tonight. I’m guessing he made his move, and that’s why the team went out.”

Anger surged through her, burning away some of the trauma. “So, what, was he building up to murdering me?”

“Escalation is consistent with what we know about serial killers,” he said.

“Is it consistent with what we know about vampires?” she countered.

He held her. “I don’t know, Claire. Life was simpler when it was just basters.”

“I want to be there,” she said. She swallowed down all her emotions except for grim determination. “For the takedown. I have to be there.”

—

They got him.

They didn’t kill him.

They dragged him out of her condo in the pouring rain. He was hissing like a rattlesnake, his fangs protruding, hands cuffed, manacles and chains around his ankles, but otherwise he looked like Peter. Handsome, not evil, not a supernatural creature. MIT, red wine, and reading, and with a little cheating on the side.

“Murderer,” Claire said, keeping to the shadows beneath an eave as they fitted a hockey mask over his face and forced him into a van. The growing neighborhood crowd was being held back, prevented from seeing anything. Acting as a curtain, the rain aided and abetted. She was sick, and livid, and a tiny bit ashamed. It was because of her feelings for Jackson that he had been triggered. Triggered this time, Jackson had reminded her. They’d translated his entire diary. She was only one of many wives, and he had wound up murdering most of them.

“I’m sorry I had to lie to you,” Jackson said.

—

Half an hour later, when they brought Peter into an interview room at the Boston field office, Claire insisted on standing behind the one-way mirror as Jackson and Nash interrogated him. DeWitt was with the team. Jackson had asked to be there, and Nash and DeWitt had thought it was a good idea. See if they could shake up the enraged, jealous, psychotic husband.

Peter was no longer wearing his hockey mask. Claire was alarmed. She didn’t know why they’d removed it. Jackson had taken off his wet FBI raid jacket. Raindrops clung to his silvery blond hair.

Claire stood beside Lisa Shiflett, the undercover cop who had posed as Peter’s winsome Thanksgiving feast. Shiflett was trying very hard to appear unfazed, but it was clear her near-miss of dying at the hands of a vampire had unnerved her.

“Crosses don’t work on them,” she said quietly to Claire. “At least, they didn’t work on him.”

Claire remembered the iron cross in the ceiling above Vampire Number Two. Peter’s father. Maybe in the old days they had worked. When people had faith.

“Why were you planting evidence to frame your wife for murder?” Jackson asked Claire’s husband as Nash looked on, seemingly oblivious to the one-way mirror where Shiflett and Claire observed. Jackson leaned across the table and glared at Peter. Peter was still cuffed, his ankles still manacled.

“I want a lawyer,” Peter said to Nash. Ignoring Jackson.

“Dream on,” Nash said, moving toward him. “You’re not even human. You have no rights.”

“Escalation is consistent with serial murder,” Jackson said, still looming over the perp. “I would assume you were building up to killing Claire.”

Peter—the vampire—looked up at Jackson and smiled thinly, and Shiflett caught her breath.

“I can’t believe it’s the same guy,” she said. “He was so . . . elegant, you know. He just charmed me. Like in those Stookie Stackhouse books.”

“Sookie,” Claire said faintly, her eyes riveted on Jackson as he gazed levelly at Peter. He was too close. Being in the same room with Peter was too close.

“Maybe you were going to make it look like a suicide,” Jackson continued. Knowing him as well as she did, Claire detected the tremor of fury in his voice as it crackled through the interview room speaker. “She murders all those girls out of, say, jealousy, then takes her own life.”

Peter just chuckled. Then he said, “I could rip out your throat right now, if I wanted to.” He looked at Nash. “Both of you. You’d be dead before you knew I’d done it.”

Shiflett took an involuntary step backward, but Claire moved protectively toward the mirror.

“I don’t think you can,” Jackson retorted, remaining where he was. “I think that vampire super-strength thing is just a myth.”

“One way to find out,” Peter said, and Claire thought about her weapon. Nash and Jackson were unarmed. For obvious reasons, you didn’t take guns into interview rooms. But she could shoot Peter through the mirror.

And if it came to that, she would.

“Maybe younger vampires are stronger than older vampires,” Jackson said, still not backing down. Claire wanted to press the speaker button and tell him to move away. “You were pretty young when you staked your father. But it’s been a few centuries since then. Since you’re so old now yourself . . . maybe you don’t have it anymore, Count Dracula.”

Peter shifted in his chair, guilt and rage pouring off him. That was the crime he was upset about—killing his father. “My father? I don’t know what you’re—”

“We read your diary, scumbag,” Jackson said, holding up a photograph of the cover of a plain brown leather journal.

Peter quietly stared at the picture in Jackson’s hand. Claire considered that Peter’s prints on it probably glowed after an application of Luminol. The thought made her tremble.

“And we’ve got custody of Daddy Dearest in the Salem crypt,” Jackson said.

Peter visibly reacted, looking frightened.

“I’m so freaked out,” Shiflett muttered. She looked at Claire. “Not meaning to be rude, but was anything different . . . anatomically? I mean, was there anything about him that struck you as odd?”

Claire shook her head. That answered one question: The cop hadn’t slept with Peter. Claire was glad . . . for Shiflett’s sake.