Vamp HQ was lit up like a ballpark, lights in every bulletproof-glass window, humans and vamps patrolling the grounds. I pulled to the security gate and let my window slide down. “Jane Yellowrock to finish business and see Leo.” The words sounded harsh, half growl, and I felt Beast pad to the front of my brain, shoulders rolling with each step, sleek and predatory, and I wondered what the person on the far side of the security camera saw in my eyes.
Without an acknowledgment, the gate rolled open. I parked out front and strode up the steps two at a time, adjusting my bun stakes after the ride in the SUV. I pushed through the air lock doors and stared at the triplets standing there, waiting to take my weapons. They musta seen something because they looked at one another before speaking to me. I beat them to the punch and gave them a grin that couldn’t have been pretty. I said, “You can try. I’ll leave you all three bleeding on the nice slick marble.”
The three backed away, one of them speaking sotto voce into his mic. “Jane Yellowrock is on the premises. She is armed and dangerous.”
“Good call,” I said to them as I stalked through the building, heading for the prisoners. Wrassler was standing in the hallway when I got there, at parade rest, if parade rest meant looking relaxed, feet spread on the carpet, with two handguns drawn, held down beside his legs. “Did Edmund question the others from the security meeting?” I asked.
He nodded. “All but the one who actually attacked you. He saved that one for you.”
“What did you learn?”
“No one liked the two tattooed security men, especially the women.”
I narrowed my eyes, knowing what that likely meant. “Has Hawk Head given you any trouble?”
“Not a peep. We let the uninvolved ones go after Edmund fed on them, and vetted them. Edmund is looking pink and a little too happy, by the way.”
“Which warms my heart,” I snarked. But not hearing a peep from the prisoner was strange. Disquiet pattered down my back on sticky, padded feet, and I drummed my fingertips on my thighs before saying, “Okay. Open it.”
The smell of blood hit first, and I shoved Wrassler aside, stepping into the room. At some point in the last instant, I’d drawn my weapons, a nine-mil in one hand, a vamp-killer in the other. But I wouldn’t need them.
Hawk Head was dead. The hawk and scalp were on one side of the room, attached to his skull, which was sitting on the back of a chair like a stage prop. The rest of the body was on the other side of the room, on the floor, spread-eagle. Or spread-hawk. The body was posed like the raptor on the scalp. He’d been beheaded, like a vamp.
The room reeked with the stench of death. He’d lost control of bladder and bowels. Blood had sprayed over the ceiling and walls. Prey, Beast thought at me. Meat. I opened my mouth and sucked in the air over tongue and roof of mouth, through nose, in little spurts of breath. The blood smell was so strong I couldn’t get a taste of the killer.
Wrassler was behind me, on his mic. The hallway was filling up with people. Filling up with smells. Filling up with voices. I growled and the place went silent. I studied the blood spray on the wall in front of me. “The killer was between five-seven and five-ten.” Without turning around, I said, “Wrassler. Get on the cameras. I want to see every person who came and went down this hallway. And make a copy of the footage.” The cops would want to see it too. Dead humans meant human cops on the premises. “And call Jodi. Give her a heads-up before you call nine-one-one.”
I heard Wrassler move away and knew that Derek had taken his place. Didn’t smell him or hear him. Just knew it. Beast was high in my brain, studying with me, taking over, evaluating death the way only a true predator can. Closer, she demanded.