“My mother?” I prodded, unnerved all the sudden by how he smelled. There was something familiar about it. I wasn’t used to diagnosing things by scent, however, so I couldn’t quite place it.
“She’s our next stop,” was his reply. The nurse motioned him out of the way of my IV. Irritably I wondered what they were injecting me with now. I’d even been given a tetanus shot. “She and the other five girls they pulled out of that house are on the floor below you, since none of them have been arrested like you have. Tragic, isn’t it? How a young girl like you ran a human trafficking ring and even killed your grandparents to cover it up.”
That pissed me off. “You shouldn’t even be given the title detective, since obviously you’re a moron. My grandparents were killed right about the time you and Mansfield were chatting me up, as the medical examiner will soon confirm, and…”
His fingers were tapping impatiently on his leg as the nurse carefully stuck the needle into my catheter port. I watched his fingers, my gaze narrowing, and suddenly it all clicked into place. There was no way he could have such dexterity less than a day after being impaled through the tendons, and I knew what that smell was now. Vampire.
I ripped the IV out of my arm even as that bright pink liquid was snaking towards me. With all of my new speed, I catapulted out of bed, landing behind the two of them and throttling Black with one hand while I jammed the half-empty syringe into the nurse with the other.
The force of that action emptied it into her. I watched with harsh satisfaction as she dropped to the floor. Her heart had stopped before she even hit it.
“Well, now, Detective,” my grip tightened to prevent him from screaming. After all, a guard was stationed outside my room. “Looks like you brought me a female Dr. Kevorkian. My my, that stuff must have been potent. She’s as dead as Hennessey, or didn’t you know that? Vampires all do look the