Keri Arthur - Bound to Shadows (Riley Jenson, Guardian)

BoundTo Shadows

RileyJensen Guardian Book 8

ByKeri Arthur

Ive come to accept the fact that Im a guardian. Illeven admit that I enjoy hunting down those rogue supernatural elements who preyon humans and non-humans alike.

But that doesnt mean there still arent times when Iabsolutely hate my job.

Getting a call-out at three A.M. on a bitterly coldwinter night was definitely one of those times. Especially when the call sentme to an area rapidly gaining a reputation as the it spot for bloodwhoreswhich was the common term for humans hooked on the pleasures of avampires bite.

Normally I didnt have a problem with people gettingtheir kicks any damn way they pleased, but for humansand it only seemed toafflict humans, not the rest of usbecoming addicted to a vampires bite wasdefinitely one of the quicker ways to court death. They simply didnt have thestrength, the speed, or even the willpower to battle a vampire if things wentwrong. Hell, many supernaturals didnt, either.

And while most vampires were generally law-abiding andtook only enough and were gentle enough to give the addicted his or her hit,there were always some abusers who pushed for longer, stronger rushes, andthere were always vampires willing to oblige.

And sometimes that meant death.

It had become such a problem in recent months that thegovernment had set up a think tank to find ways of curtailing the growingnumbers flocking to the vampire bars. There were even calls to outlaw thepracticethough how the hell anyone was going to police that, I had no idea. Itwasnt like ordinary cops had much hope of tracking down and arresting vamps,and there simply werent enough of us guardians. Not if they wanted us to doour real job.

Personally, I think they had about as much hope ofstopping this craze as they did stopping all the designer drugs that wereconstantly hitting the streets. If a junkie wanted his fix, then hed find itno matter how difficult or how illegal the government made it. And at least allthe whores were of legal agethe vampire pushers were careful about that.They had to be, because otherwise they had to deal with the Directorate.Regular drug dealers just got jail time, at worst.

Of course, there was no proof that the murder Id beencalled to tonight was yet another pleasure seeker whod pushed too far. Jackhad simply told me to get my butt over there pronto, and the edge in his voicehad me scrambling for clothes and not taking the time for questions. But themurder had happened in the older section of Fitzroy, in a parking lot behindDantesand that club was a prime location for blood whores and their vampirejohns.

I slowed the car as I passed through the Smith Streetintersection, then turned left onto Budd Street. Several of the streetlightswere out, and darkness closed in around the car. The buildings here were mainlyold factories and warehouses, their brick walls grimy and covered withgraffiti. The few houses squeezed in between the larger buildings were darkandwith the graffiti on their walls and the filth littering their front fences, itwas hard to tell whether they were occupied or not. But I was a dhampirepartwerewolf, part vampireand had inherited many gifts from both parts of myheritage. The vampire part of my soul could see the blood heat within thosebuildingsalthough unlike my twin brother, I couldnt hear the siren call oftheir heartbeats.

And I was damn glad of that, because it meant Id alsomissed out on the vampires hunger for blood. Rhoan hadnt, but he had missedthe fangs, and his blood hunger rose in tandem only with the full moon.

The crime scene came into view and I pulled up behinda Directorate van. The winds icy fingers slapped across the back of my neck asI climbed out, and I hastily zipped up my jacket then pulled up the collar. Itdidnt help much. I might be a werewolf, and therefore supposedly immune to thewinter, but the cold and I had never been on friendly terms.

I shoved my hands into my pockets and walked towardthe parking lot. The rotating blue lights of the squad cars washed the nightand the few bystanders in a ghostly glow, but as far as I could see or feel,there were no actual ghosts in the area. And if this was just a feeding takentoo far, then there probably wouldnt be. As far as I knew, the souls that hungaround tended to be the ones whod met a violent end or who had something theyneeded to finish before they moved on. And blood whores didnt fit either ofthose categories, because theyd gone to their deaths knowing the dangers andnot caring one bit.

And thats probably what annoyed me most. These peoplewere knowingly flirting with death, yet when he answered, everyone gotrighteously moral and wanted the vamp responsible caught and killed. And theguardians were obliged to obey, because that was the law. But killing a bloodwhore wasnt a simple act of murder. It was consensual, and that raised a wholedifferent set of issues. And although I did believe the vamp involved needed tobe punished, I believed that killing him seemed a step too far. Most of thevampire community agreed.

Meaning that the worst part of the whole situation wasthe fact that our pursuit of these vamps was raising a lot of bad feeling inthe supernatural community. And having the citys vampires angry at us couldonly ever end badly. There were a whole lot more of them than us, and as welltrained as we guardians were, we didnt have a hope if the vamps decided wewere too much of a problem.

Of course, the two vampires who dominated mylifeQuinn, my lover, and Jack, my bossthought I was making too much of thesituation. Jack even kept trying to reassure me with the fact that the vampirecouncil had a handle on it. I didnt believe itor them. They werent out onthe street dealing with the ill feeling day in and day out. They simply didntunderstand how bad it was getting.

I did, and I didnt mind admitting that it scared me.

The parking lot had several cars in it. The mobilelight towers werent trained on any of them, but rather on the corner of thelot, where it intersected with Dantes back wall. There were severaloverall-clad men there, and relief slithered through me as I caught the glintof silver hair. Cole might be our top guy when it came to crime sceneforensics, but he also hated these early-morning call-outs as much as I did.That meant hed be doing his best to find the clues and get the hell home asquickly as possible.

As I ducked under the blue and white police tapelining the parking lot, one of the cops keeping an eye on the small crowdhuddled in the middle of the road took a step in my direction. I grabbed mybadge and flashed it his way, shivering a little as the wind hit my fingers andchilled them in an instant.

The cop gave me a nod and turned back. I stepped overthe gnarled roots of a small tree struggling to survive in a little corner ofbare ground then flared my nostrils, drawing in the flavors of the night.

Blood was the strongest scent, and that surprised me.Most vampires hated wasting their food, so maybe this murder wasnt asstraightforward as Id been presuming.

Cole looked up as I approached, his lined face wearyand dark shadows under his normally bright blue eyes. You took your time.

And you look like shit. I stopped beside him and stareddown at the victim.

He was male, probably in his mid to late forties ifhis worn features and gray-flecked hair were anything to go by. There were noobvious wounds on his body, and very little in the way of blood on the front ofhis clothes. His arms had been crossed over his chest, almost as if he wereasleep rather than dead. But someone had separated his head from his neck, andeven a vampire couldnt survive that.