I Am the Wild (The Night Firm #1)- Karpov Kinrade Page 0,39

gruesomeness of it startles me, and I study the faces of the men in the room, looking for emotional cues.

Dracula’s jaw is clenched. Liam is full of thinly veiled rage. Derek and Elijah are all business. Sebastian is… well, Sebastian. Brooding.

“You are being charged with two counts of murder, two counts of unlawful draining of blood, and two counts of violating the Non-Violent Vampire Act," Derek says.

I’m already rattled by my mental image of this crime, but then he pulls out a crystal and says something in Latin. Before my eyes, an image, like a holograph, appears and begins to move. It's a bedroom covered in blood, with the corpse of a woman and the beheaded infant she recently gave birth to laying in the center of it all.

I find the nearest trash bin and empty my stomach.

As if on cue, Matilda arrives with a cold washcloth and a new trash bin. I raise an eyebrow at her, and the men in the room are all locked in some kind of power play staring contest and don't even seem to notice I'm over here losing my breakfast.

"I'm going to ask you one more time, Vlad. Did you kill her?" Derek says.

"I did not kill my wife and child," he replies through gritted teeth, his eyes fixated on the projected image. "But I will make the person who did this pay. They will feel the wrath of Vlad the Impaler as no one has ever felt it, and they will know pain before I let them die. If I let them die."

There's a cruel gleam in his eyes that sends shivers up my spine. It's not hard to imagine him being responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, as history says he was in Romania in 1462. Whether he was defending his home region or a truly sadistic monster, history can't agree, but looking at him now, I can imagine both. He may have been fighting for a greater cause, but he also reveled in the bloodshed, savored ripping the heads off his enemies and drinking their blood as it poured out of their skulls. He enjoyed it, and still does.

"Then tell us what happened," Elijah says, flicking off the crystal. "How did someone manage to kill your family in your own home and leave without you knowing or seeing them?"

Dracula's spine stiffens. "The night that it happened, I had left to find someone to feed on—within the rules and bylaws established, of course—and when I returned, I found them dead. My butler didn't see or hear anything, and no leads have turned up since. I am the only suspect as far as I can tell."

"We will need a list of your enemies," Derek says, making a note on his legal pad.

Dracula laughs. "That's going to be a longer list than we have time to investigate," he says.

Derek sighs. "If you don't cooperate in your own defense, we can't help you. I need a list of anyone who might have such a grudge against you, or Mary, that they would do this. A list of anyone who worked for you at that time. Household staff. Anyone who had access to Mary or your home."

The count sighs and digs into the briefcase at his side. He hands Derek a file.

"That should have everything you need."

Derek flips it open and scans the contents, then nods and closes the file. "We will begin our investigation first by talking to the coroners and visiting the crime scene. We need the name and contact information of the person or persons you fed off of that night as well as anyone who can provide an alibi or character testimony on your behalf."

Dracula shakes his head. "I have no alibi, not anyone useful at any rate. I was hunting for blood. I didn't ask for their name and number. I fed, wiped their memory and left. They will be no help."

Sebastian shifts in his seat. "We still need to know where you were. An accounting of every minute. Other people could have seen you that night and they may be able to vouch for your whereabouts."

"Can you bring human witnesses into your courts?" I ask, speaking for the first time.

All eyes shift to me. Elijah answers. "Not specifically, no. But we can use a Memory Catcher—like the one you just saw—to capture their memory of the night in question, and that's admissible as eyewitness testimony."

I'm torn between being impressed and dismayed. "So you steal memories