"Once I examine the body, I'll explain."
The thought of touching the dead girl any further made Nikki's skin crawl. "What are you looking for?"
He gave her an enigmatic smile, shrugging one shoulder. "Odd marks. A recent knife wound."
She raised an eyebrow and made no comment. Michael brushed the teenager's long hair to one side and bent to study her neck. His frown suggested he wasn't happy with what he found.
She rubbed her arms. "Why are odd marks so important?"
"If I find them, I'll explain." He hesitated and glanced up. "It'll be done a lot quicker if you helped."
Though his tone was even, his irritation seared her mind. She bit her lip, then reached down, gingerly lifting Monica's right arm. The smooth flesh felt cool, like meat just taken out of the fridge. Her stomach turned. They shouldn't be doing this. It was a violation of the dead.
"If she's dead, she can't mind," Michael said.
"Keep out of my thoughts," she snapped, then frowned. "What do you mean, if she's dead?"
"Nothing yet. Keep checking."
"This is definitely not a sharing environment you're creating here, you know," she muttered.
"I never said it would be," he said. "I'm here to catch a killer, nothing more."
And she and Monica were merely the means to the end. The thought annoyed her more than it should have. Lowering Monica's arm to her side, she continued her examination.
No unusual marks appeared to mar the creamy perfection of the teenager's skin. Nikki sat back on her heels. While she would have loved to get out of this building and the death it held so peacefully, she owed it to Trevgard to find out the truth. If she couldn't have prevented Monica's death, she could at least find out why she died—and maybe bring her killer to justice.
The image of sapphire-ringed eyes rose in her mind, and she shivered. If Monica's killer and her own hunter were one and the same, what would she do?
"You'd better come around here and have a look at what I've found," Michael commented softly.
His face was emotionless, giving no indication of what to expect. She rose and walked around to his side. "Look at what?"
"Her wrist for starters."
He pointed to Monica's wrist; a two-inch cut marred her skin. But the pale color of the scar indicated the wound was at least a week old. She couldn't see how it was related to Monica's death. "And?"
"Now look at her neck."
She squatted by his side. Two small puncture wounds spoiled the white skin. Dried blood ran a dark trail from the wounds and disappeared behind Monica's pale blonde hair.
She froze.
Michael had commented earlier that Monica had died from blood loss, yet there was very little blood near the body and no other obvious sign of injury apart from the wrist and these two wounds. Wounds that looked an awful lot like bite marks. But not from an animal. Not from anything she knew.
She closed her eyes, unable to voice the fear in her mind.
"From a vampire," Michael finished for her.
A fear as ancient as time itself rose, threatening to overwhelm her. She took a deep breath and tried to control the turmoil running panicked circles in her mind. It couldn't be true. Vampires didn't exist, damn it! They were a product of fiction and imagination, not reality.
"Just as psychic powers don't exist?" Michael said, voice gentle.
She glanced at him sharply. There was an odd expression on his face, as if her reaction was important in some way. "That isn't the same thing!"
"Why? Many people believe psychic powers to be in the same reality as vampires. Does not believing in them make them any less real?"
"No. But vampires?"
"Look at her neck, Nikki. Remember the man she was with, remember his evil."
She didn't need to remember. All she had to do was close her eyes and his image was there. "Being evil doesn't necessarily make him a vampire."
"No. Drinking blood to survive does that."
She shuddered. Monica looked so young, so peaceful. So very dead. But if what Michael said was true, she would soon become a vampire. All it had taken was one little bite.
"Being the victim of a vampire doesn't mean you become one," he commented softly.
"It does in the movies." She rested back on her heels and rubbed her arms, wondering why the room had suddenly become so cold.
"In real life, one becomes a vampire by sharing the vampire's blood through a special ceremony."
Michael shrugged. "And only with consent on both sides."
"Are you saying Monica wanted to become a vampire?"
"To some, the lure of eternal life is powerful."
"Not powerful enough, thank you very much." Yet she remembered Jasper's mocking assessment of the rich, and wondered. "Besides, we can't be sure Monica went through this ceremony."
"No. But that cut on her wrist looks ominous."
She studied the half-healed wound. How could you tell an attempted suicide from an incision made during a special ceremony?
"You can't." Michael's voice was grim. "And that is why we must make sure she is dead."
She understood the intent behind his words well enough, even if he didn't come straight out and say it.
"Why?"
"If she shared blood, she merely rests, waiting while her body undergoes the transformation."
"And have the movies got the methods of killing a vampire wrong, as well?"
He hesitated fractionally, then shook his head. "No. A stake through the heart will usually kill, as will the midday sun. Decapitation is the best method, though."
She raised an eyebrow. "And this is what you intend for Monica?"
His gaze searched her face. She wondered why. If he read her mind so easily, surely he could taste her anger.
"It is for the best," he said after a moment.
Once again he wasn't telling her everything. "Best for whom? You, or Monica? What right have you to declare such a judgment on her?"
"I am a hunter of evil, Nikki. I track it and kill it, and in the process make the night a safer place for people like you to walk."
"Don't give me that sanctimonious crap. You haven't the right to touch Monica."
"I must, or she will rise to aid Jasper." This time a hint of impatience colored his quiet words.
Her anger rose another notch. "That is, I gather, the name of the man who is after me."
He hesitated again. She swore and pushed upright, moving to stand near the wall. Wintry air rushed through the shattered window above her head, but it failed to cool the anger heating her cheeks or the turmoil churning her stomach. Michael knew more than just her hunter's name, so why wouldn't he divulge what he knew? A lack of trust, or something more?
She studied Monica again. At rest, the teenager looked untouched by evil. It was easy to understand why Trevgard refused to see his daughter as anything more than innocent. What would she say to him?
Or to Jake? How could she face them if she allowed Monica to be mutilated? How could she face herself, in the long years of nightmares left ahead?
"I can't," she stated quietly, finally meeting Michael's watchful gaze.
His anger seared her mind.
"You can't stop me," he warned quietly.
The threat behind his soft words shook her. Though he hadn't moved a muscle, he suddenly seemed so much larger, more threatening. The shadows moved in around him, half hiding his form, making him one with the night and the sense of evil that still haunted the old warehouse. In the blink of an eye, death had stepped into the room and become her companion.
She clenched her fingers, felt energy tingle across her skin. Michael wasn't evil, not in the same sense as the man he'd called Jasper. Yet she couldn't escape the feeling he wasn't entirely on the side of the angels, either.
"Are you willing to kill me to get to Monica?" she said.
His eyes were chips of ebony ice. "Are you willing to die for the sake of evil?"