Chasing Shadows(41)

I felt heat burning my cheeks. “Yeah. This morning,” I mumbled.

Loch cautiously rotated his right shoulder, gritting his teeth as he did so. “Judging by the wholloping I just went through, dear sister, I’d guess you’ve had a little every day since you met him.”

The color staining my cheeks deepened as I heard Mark clear his throat. “Just about,” he confirmed.

Determined to regain control of the situation before Loch started in on the exact nature of my sex life, I rocked back on the balls of my feet and pushed myself to a standing position, then held a hand out to my brother. “Come on, let’s get you inside and cleaned up.”

Lochlan nodded and reached up to take my hand. I pulled him to his feet easily, though he staggered against me. “Damn it, Loch, you’re such an idiot,” I mused as I helped him up to the porch. “You knew I’d had his blood recently, and you antagonized me anyway? You got a death wish or something?”

He shook his head as he laughed. “I’m not dying until well after I’m bonded, and probably not even then,” he said.

Stopping to grab his jacket from the railing, we made our way back into the house. Juliette led us into the kitchen, and without my having to ask, she reached into the refrigerator for the bottle of blood I’d pulled from the deep freezer the night before last and set it on the table.

“Thank you, my lady,” Lochlan said to her, picking up the bottle and unscrewing the cap, and then tilting his head back to take a long drink of it.

“Lochlan, I can warm that up for you,” I said.

He shook his head before tilting it back for another swig. “Warm only makes it go down easier. This will do. In fact, I’m feeling better already.”

I looked him over to judge for myself, relieved to see that his right eye was no longer swollen shut. The bruising around it was fading at the same rate as the rest, but his nose was crooked. “You’re, um, you’re gonna have to reset your nose,” I pointed out sheepishly.

He reached up to feel it. “Bugger me,” he muttered, and setting the bottle on the table, put both hands alongside his nose, snapping it loudly and then giving it a slight adjustment. He held onto it for a moment to be sure it wouldn’t shift out of position, then sat back and reached for the bottle of blood again.

“Ugh, I have never seen anyone break their own nose before,” Juliette observed with a shiver. “Think I’ll go grab the egg skillet from the back yard.”

She walked out the back door as Mark and Loch both shook their heads and laughed, and after washing my hands I went back to the task of preparing breakfast. This time, of course, Mark didn’t protest—he helped without saying a word.

We were about midway through the meal when a car could be heard coming up the driveway. I reached out with my supe-sense and detected three humans, who were at that moment exiting their vehicle and headed toward my door. A glance at the clock showed me it was 9 a.m. Lt. Parks was right on time.

I looked over at Lochlan as a knock sounded at the front of the house, and silently thanked whoever had shut the front door. “Go upstairs and hide while the arson investigators are here,” I told him.

“Why? Are you afraid I’ll eat them?” he quipped lightly.

I groaned as Mark and Juliette laughed. “No, it’s probably because you still look like you just got your ass handed to you on a plate,” Juliette mentioned. “There’s blood all over your shirt.”

Loch looked down as the knock sounded again, and Parks’ voice called out, “Ms. Caldwell, it’s Lt. Parks.”

“Just a minute!” I called back.

“Well, isn’t this a sodding mess,” my brother said when he saw the ruination that was his shirt.

“Come on, man,” Mark said, gesturing for him to follow. “I’m sure I have something you can wear.”

The three of us headed into the living room, and I waited until Mark and Lochlan were on the second-floor landing before I opened the door. “Hello, Lieutenant.”

Parks nodded cordially. “Ms. Caldwell, good morning.”

I raised an eyebrow. “It is hardly that, Lieutenant,” I replied sardonically.

He nodded. “Of course. My apologies.” Turning to the man and woman behind him, he added, “These are my associates, Sgt. Trimble and Sgt. Withers. We’ll be going around to have a look at the wreckage, see if there’s any usable evidence.”

“But you doubt you’ll find anything,” I observed.

“Now, Ms. Caldwell, there’s always a chance—”

I waved his words away. “Don’t bother trying to patronize me, Lt. Parks. You already said as much when you called this morning, and I am well aware that with the extent of the damage, the chances of your finding evidence you can use in court—should it ever get that far—are virtually nonexistent. Still, you have a job to do. Why don’t I let you get to it?”

Parks nodded and then gestured to his associates. They headed back to the SUV they had arrived in and I turned around, heading back into the house and shutting the door behind me as Lochlan and Mark came back down the stairs. Mark had managed to find my brother a plain gray t-shirt to wear, which fit well and didn’t look too incongruous with the slacks he had put on earlier that morning. He also looked a lot better than he had when they’d gone upstairs—he’d cleaned himself up and the bruises were continuing to fade.

“You know, Loch, you really didn’t have to come out here,” I commented as we all walked back into the kitchen.

“Saphrona, you had something terrible happen to you,” Loch replied. “I came because I wanted to support my sister.”

I smiled. “And that’s all well and good, but there’s really nothing for you to do here,” I pointed out. “All you got for your trouble was a beating you didn’t deserve. You’d have been better off staying home, or going to work even though it’s Sunday.”

“Which reminds me, I’ve been wondering,” Mark broke in. “How is it that you manage to work during the day?”

Lochlan regarded him casually. “I suppose that Saphrona’s explained to you the true nature of vampire biology by now, correct?” he asked, and Mark nodded. “Then you also know that regular consumption of blood not only nourishes my kind, but gives us energy, enabling us to stay awake during daylight hours. The nature of my profession requires that I work the day shift, so I’ve no choice but to be a pretender.”

“A pretender?”

I looked over at Mark. “Pretenders are vampires who are, in essence, pretending to be human.”

“Okay,” he said slowly. “So Loch, if you don’t kill, like you said the other day, where do you get your blood from? Do you get it from Saphrona?”

Lochlan scoffed. “Egads, no. I’m of the opinion that I’ve been drinking human blood far too long to give it up completely. I only have animal when I visit my sister, otherwise I get it from where I work.”

“And where is that?”

“At a biomedical research facility, my dear brother. We’ve an attached blood bank.”

Mark raised an eyebrow. “And nobody notices when some of that goes missing?”

My brother shrugged. “The blood bank screens donations to make sure it is free of disease. Those samples which are deemed unsuitable for transfusion are then scheduled for disposal. I dispose of them.”

“You drink diseased blood? That sounds really gross. How can you do that without getting sick?” Mark’s tone was incredulous.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be diseased to be unsuitable, but yes, sometimes I do. Better that than killing someone or making some poor git into a vessel. Besides, human illness does not affect vampires,” Lochlan replied, “though I will say drugs and disease do affect the taste of the blood. Many of the harder narcotics like heroin and PCP make it very bitter. Mild viruses like the common cold are hardly a bother, but when you encounter blood that has a venereal disease…”

He shuddered and made a face, to which Mark shook his head. “So just like me, vampires never get sick?”

Lochlan and I looked at one another. “No. However, we can be poisoned,” Loch answered.

Mark’s gaze roamed between us. “How?” he asked.

“Dead blood,” I replied. “A vampire cannot drink the blood of the dead, because it no longer contains the essence of life.”

“And the blood I acquire from the bank is all from living donors, so I’ve nothing to worry about,” added Lochlan.

“How is the blood of the dead poisonous?”

“It acts in us much the same manner as tetrodotoxin does in humans—it’s a paralytic neurotoxin. Numbness, arrhythmia, shortness of breath… the list of symptoms goes on,” Loch explained. “And like tetrodox, its effects on the body vary with the level of toxicity—or rather, the amount of blood ingested or introduced to the bloodstream. Precisely how it enters the body is also a factor, in that ingestion lengthens the amount of time before one becomes symptomatic, though not by much. An introduction directly into the bloodstream, such as by injection, would produce faster results.”