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Excerpt from Dead Sexy, Chapter 1
Chapter 1
They called it You Bet Your Life Park, because that's what you were doing if you lingered inside the park after sundown, betting your life that you'd get out again. It had been a nice quiet neighborhood once upon a time, and it still was, during the day. Modern, high rise condos enclosed the park on three sides. Visitors to the city often remarked on the fact that most of the buildings didn't have any windows. A large outdoor pool was located in the middle of the park. The local kids went swimming there in the summertime. There was also a pizza parlor, a video game arcade, and a couple of small stores that sold groceries, ice, and gas to those who had need of such things.
Large signs were posted at regular intervals throughout the park warning visitors to vacate the premises well before sunset. Smart people paid attention to the signs. Dumb ones were rarely heard from again, because the condos and apartments that encompassed You Bet Your Life Park were a sanctuary for the Undead. A supernaturally-charged force field surrounded the outer perimeter of the apartment complex and the park, thereby preventing the vampires from leaving the area and wandering through the city.
Regan Delaney didn't have any idea how the force field worked or what it was made of. All she knew was that it kept the vamps inside but had no negative effect on humans. It was against the law to destroy vampires these days, unless you found one outside the Park, but the force field made that impossible. Any vampire who wished to leave the Park and move to a protected area in another part of the country had to apply for a permit and be transported, by day, by a company equipped to handle that kind of thing. What Regan found the hardest to accept was that vampires were now considered an endangered species, like tigers, elephants, and marine turtles and as such, they had to be protected from human predators. The very thought was ludicrous!
It hadn't always been so, of course. In her grandfather's day, vampires had been looked upon as vermin, the scum of the earth. Bounties had been placed on them and they had been hunted ruthlessly. Many of the known vampires had been destroyed. Then, about five years ago, the bleeding hearts had started crying about how sad it was to kill all those poor misunderstood creatures of the night. After all, the bleeding hearts argued, even vampires had rights. Besides, they were also human beings and deserved to be treated with respect. To Regan's astonishment, sympathy for the vampires had grown and vampires had been given immunity, of a sort, and put into protective custody in places like You Bet Your Life Park. And since the Undead could no longer hunt in the city, the law had decided to put the vampires to good use. For a brief period of time, criminals sentenced to death had been given to the vampires.
The thought still made Regan cringe. Though she had no love for murderers, rapists, or child molesters, she couldn't, in good conscience, condone throwing them to the vamps. She didn't have to worry for long. In less than a year, the same bleeding heart liberals who had felt sorry for the poor, misunderstood vampires began feeling sorry for the poor unfortunate criminals who had become their prey, and so a new law had been passed and criminals were again disposed of more humanely, by lethal injection. Unfortunately, the new law had left the Undead with no ready food supply. In order to appease their hunger and keep them from killing each other, blood banks had agreed to donate whole blood to the vampire community until synthetic plasma could be developed. In a few months, Locke Pharmaceuticals invented something called Synthetic Type O that was reported to taste and smell the same as the real thing. A variety of blood types soon followed, though Type O remained the most popular.
Taking a deep breath, Regan shook off thoughts of the past and stared at the lifeless body sprawled at her feet. Apparently, one of the vampires had tired of surviving on Synthetic Type O. She felt a wave of pity for the dead man. In life, he had been a middle-aged man with sandy brown hair and a trim mustache. He might even have been handsome. Now his face was set in a rictus of horror. His heart, throat, and liver had been savagely ripped away, and there wasn't enough blood left in his body to fill an eye dropper. The corpse had been found under a bush by a couple who had been leaving the Park just before sunset. From the looks of it, the victim had been killed the night before.
"Hey, Reggie."
Regan looked away from the body and into the deep gray eyes of Sergeant Michael Flynn. Flynn was a good cop, honest, hard-working, and straight forward, a rarity in this day and age. He was a handsome man in his mid-thirties, with a shock of dark red hair and a dimple in his left cheek. She had gone out on a number of dates with Mike in the last few months. He was fun to be with and she enjoyed his company. She knew Mike was eager to take their relationship to the next level, but she wasn't ready for that, not yet. She cared for him. She admired him. She loved him, but she wasn't in love with him. It was because he was the best friend she had in the city that she didn't want to complicate their friendship, or worse, jeopardize it, by going to bed with him. She had seen it happen all too often, a perfectly good friendship ruined when two people decided to sleep together.
"So," Flynn said, "definitely a vampire kill, right?"
"Looks that way," Regan agreed. But she wasn't sure. She had seen vampire kills before. The complete lack of blood pointed to a vampire, but the fact that the victim's heart, throat and liver had been ripped out disturbed her. She had never known a vampire to take anything but blood from its prey.
"So, you about through here?" Flynn asked.
"What? Oh, sure." She wasn't a cop and she had no real authority on the scene, but in the past, whenever the Department received a call about a suspected vampire killing, they had asked her to come out and take a look. She had been a vampire hunter in those days, and a darn good one, but that been back in the good old days, before vampires became "protected" and put her out of a job. Fortunately, she had a tidy little inheritance from her grandfather, though it wouldn't last much longer if she didn't find another job soon.
"I'll call you next week," Flynn said with a wink. Regan nodded, then moved away from the scene so the
orensic boys could get to work. It gave her an edgy
feeling, being in the Park after the sun went down, though
she supposed there were enough cops in the area to keep
her reasonably safe from the monsters. At any rate, it felt
good to be part of a criminal investigation again, good to
feel needed. Still, she couldn't help feeling guilty that she
would be out of work in a heart beat as soon as they
caught the killer.
She remembered the first time the department had
requested her expertise. Even now, years later, the
thought made her wince with embarrassment. After all the
classes she had taken at the Police Academy, she had been
convinced she was prepared for anything. But no amount
of training could have prepared her for the reality of
seeing that first, fresh, vampire kill. At the Academy, the
bodies had been dummies and while they had been
realistic, they hadn't come close to the real thing. Regan
had turned away and covered her mouth, trying in vain to
keep her dinner down. It had been Michael who had come
to her aid, who had offered her a handkerchief and assured
her that it happened to everyone sooner or later. They had
been friends from that night forward.
Now, she stood in the shadows, watching two men
wearing masks and gloves slip the body into a black
plastic bag for the trip to the morgue while the forensic
team tagged and bagged possible evidence from the scene.
Maybe they would get lucky downtown, but she didn't
think so. She had a hunch that whoever had perpetrated
the crime knew exactly what he was doing and that
whatever evidence he had left behind, if any, would be
useless.
Regan watched the ambulance pull away from the curb.
Once the body had been thoroughly examined, the medical
examiner. would take the necessary steps to insure that the
corpse didn't rise as a new vampire tomorrow night. She
didn't envy him the job, but if there was one thing the city
didn't need, it was another vampire.
Regan was jotting down a few notes when she felt a shiver
run down her spine. Not the "gee, it's cold outside" kind
of shiver but the "you'd better be careful, there's a monster
close by" kind.
Making a slow turn, she peered into the darkness as every
instinct for self-preservation that she possessed screamed
a warning.
If he hadn't moved, she never would have seen him.
He emerged from the shadowy darkness on cat-silent feet.
"Do not be afraid," he said. "I mean you no harm."
His voice was like thick molasses covered in dark
chocolate, so deep and sinfully rich, she could feel herself
gaining weight just listening to him speak.
"Right." She slipped her hand into the pocket of her
jacket, her fingers curling around the trigger of a snub-
nosed pistol. She never left home without it. The gun was
loaded with five silver bullets that had been dipped in holy
water. The hammer rested on an empty chamber. "That's
why you're sneaking up on me."
The corner of his sensual mouth lifted in a lazy half-smile.
"If I wanted you dead, my lovely one, you would be dead."
Regan believed him. He spoke with the kind of calm
assurance that left no room for doubt.
Joaquin Santiago moved toward her like a sleek black
panther on the trail of fresh game. Supernatural power
radiated from him like heat from a blast furnace. He was
tall and well-muscled, with broad shoulders, strong arms,
and long, long legs. In movies, vampires were usually
depicted as pale and gaunt, with stringy hair and long
fingernails, but there was nothing pale or gaunt about
Santiago. His dusky skin and the contours of his face
proudly proclaimed his Native America heritage. He wore
snug black trousers, a black silk shirt, a long black coat
reminiscent of the kind cowboys had worn in the Old
West, and a pair of supple black leather boots.
He looked like the angel of death come to
call.
7:21 PM
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