Angel: Private Eye Book One

  Chapter 3

  “Sorry for dragging you down here while you’re busy,” Detective Cortez said as he leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.

  William smoothed a smile over his face and offered the detective a gracious nod. “I have told you before, I am always at the Hope City PD’s disposal. Especially when a crime is committed against a vampire.” Benson smiled and showed his teeth.

  Detective Cortez snorted. “I have no idea what the idiotic witch was thinking. Killing a vampire in one of the busiest nightclub districts of the city? She must have a death wish.”

  “Perhaps,” Benson agreed simply.

  “I’m already throwing the book at her. We’ve got more than enough evidence to prove that the witch murdered him in cold blood.”

  Benson didn’t twitch at that word. Many vampires less skilled would have. He did, however, narrow his gaze. “How are we so sure that she’s a witch? And do you have any idea how she murdered the victim?”

  Detective Cortez didn’t look particularly pleased by that question.

  “A taxi driver has come forward saying he saw Miss Luck running down that alleyway mere minutes before the crime was committed.”

  Benson nodded politely. “I see, but do we have any idea how this Miss Luck – is it? How she murdered him?”

  Cortez brought a hand up and grated his nails over the back of his head – a telling move. “She killed the guy – hexed him with her blood. I mean, all it took was one drink, and the guy turned to dust.”

  William didn’t react. He’d spent several lifetimes perfecting the ability to keep a completely neutral expression. “Indeed, but are we sure she hexed her blood? It takes a great deal of magic, patience, and some would say sheer stupidity to lace your own blood with a magical spell capable of killing a vampire. Let alone turning one to dust.”

  “What are you saying?” Cortez leaned back in his chair, the wooden legs groaning over the marked black-and-white linoleum of the floor.

  “That I need to look at the evidence. I assume you’ve removed the totality of the victim’s ashes from the scene. Have you also taken a sample of Miss Luck’s blood?” William kept his voice even. Dead even. He wasn’t like some of the newer vampires, like some of his crasser brethren. He could work in a pathology taking blood, and it wouldn’t send his hunger wild.

  He was in control of his passions, not the other way around.

  William was vaguely aware that much of the amorous affection for vampires came from their lust. To a certain subset of the human population, they were attracted to vampires’ raw, undiluted, almost unstoppable passion.

  Not William. He’d conquered his drive long ago. So it took no effort to control his expression whatsoever as he nodded at Cortez. “Do you have her bloods?”

  Cortez made an uncomfortable move, his muscles creaking as they stiffened. William could also smell the distinct scent of heightened stress as Cortez clearly battled with his conscience.

  It wasn’t that Cortez wouldn’t trust William – it was that Cortez would have heard the stories. Blood could send even the most gracious, courteous, polite vampire wild. Catch them on the wrong day, and a single drop of freely given blood could strip a vampire of every sentiment of reason, leaving only that pulsating, never-quenchable thirst instead.

  William kept his expression even.

  Cortez appeared to come to his decision. He shrugged, opened his desk, and tugged out two evidence bags. One held a vial of dust – presumably the victim’s ashes.

  The other held a perfect sample of ruby-red glistening blood.

  William reached out and plucked up the ash first. He pulled it from the Ziploc clear plastic bag and held it firmly in the palm of his hand.

  He quietened his mind and locked every scrap of his attention on the ash. On the life it had been.

  He looked for any trace of the spell that had killed the vampire. If he’d really been hexed, his ash would still be sparking with microscopic charges of ethema – the primary energy source for magic.

  … Nothing.

  The ash was clean.

  Finally, William Benson III reached forward and tenderly plucked up the blood.

  It sang to him. Reached out. Pushed through his mind and snagged a hold around his heart.

  … It was powerful. Extremely powerful stuff. So powerful, he almost considered dropping it.

  He didn’t, though. He wrapped his fingers harder around the vial, drawing it close to his face.

  Perhaps for half a second, he forgot to control his expression, because he looked up to see Cortez swallowing visibly.

  William cleared his throat. He ticked his head to the side, inserting a finger into his collar and neatening it.

  Finally, he concentrated on the blood – pushed past the insane hold it seemed to have over him.

  There was no doubting that human blood was attractive to vampires. The blood of certain other magical races, however, was much, much more potent.

  He suspected that’s what he was holding now.

  “So,” Cortez appeared to reluctantly break the eerie silence, “What are you detecting? Can you feel the hex she used to kill the guy?”

  “There’s no hex in this blood,” William managed, his voice not as even as he’d have liked.

  “What?” Cortez spluttered. “Well… there has to be something else.”

  “There is.” Reluctantly, though it felt like ripping off one of his arms, William handed the blood back to Cortez.

  Cortez looked at him questioningly. “What do you mean?”

  “I think it’s time I meet this Miss Luck,” her name rolled off William’s tongue with a pleasant tang.

  “She’s currently in one of the holding cells. I’ll arrange for her to be brought to my office—” Cortez grabbed his rumpled jacket from over the back of his chair.

  William brought a hand up, surprised at how quick the move was. “No. I’ll get her. It will give me a chance to size her up.”

  Cortez froze halfway through tugging his jacket on, brow crumpling to a thin line over his dark eyes. “What does that mean? What the hell is she, anyway?”

  “Oh, Hell is only one possibility, Detective Cortez. But there are many others,” William said cryptically as he stopped himself from giving the vial of Miss Luck’s blood one last longing look.

  “What the heck does that mean?”

  “That it’s time I find out what race Miss Luck comes from.” With that, Benson turned on his foot, a flicker of something igniting in his gut.

  It was a sensation he hadn’t felt for years. Interest. Curiosity.

  The feeling that something was about to begin. He curled his lips and savored the sensation as he strode forward, Italian loafers beating a solid drumbeat on the linoleum.