see or feel, there were no actual ghosts in the area. And if this was just a feeding taken too far, then there probably wouldn't be. As far as I knew, the souls that hung around tended to be the ones who'd met a violent end or who had something they needed to finish before they moved on. And blood whores didn't fit either of those categories, because they'd gone to their deaths knowing the dangers and not caring one bit.
And that's probably what annoyed me most. These people were knowingly flirting with death, yet when he answered, everyone got righteously moral and wanted the vamp responsible caught and killed. And the guardians were obliged to obey, because that was the law. But killing a blood whore wasn't a simple act of murder. It was consensual, and that raised a whole different set of issues. And although I did believe the vamp involved needed to be punished, killing them seemed a step too far. And most of the vampire community agreed.
Meaning that the worst part of the whole situation was the fact that our pursuit of these vamps was raising a lot of bad feeling in the supernatural community. And having the city's vampires angry at us could only ever end badly. There were a whole lot more of them than us, and as well trained as we guardians were, we didn't have a hope if the vamps decided we were too much of a problem.
Of course, the two vampires who dominated my life - Quinn, my lover, and Jack, my boss - thought I was making too much of the situation. Jack even kept trying to reassure me with the fact that the vampire council had a handle on it. I didn't believe it - or them. They weren't out on the street dealing with the ill-feeling day in and day out. They simply didn't understand how bad it was getting.
I did, and I didn't mind admitting that it scared me.
The parking lot had several cars in it, but the mobile light towers weren't trained on any of them, but rather on the corner of the lot, where it intersected with Dante's back wall. There were several overall-clad men there, and relief slithered through me as I caught the glint of silver hair. Cole might be our top guy when it came to crime scene forensics, but he also hated these early morning call-outs as much as I did. That meant he'd be doing his best to find the clues and get the hell home as quickly as possible.
As I ducked under the blue and white police tape lining the parking lot, one of the cops keeping an eye on the small crowd huddled in the middle of the road took a step in my direction. I grabbed my badge and flashed it his way, shivering a little as the wind hit my fingers and chilled them in an instant.
The cop gave me a nod and turned back. I stepped over the gnarled roots of a small tree struggling to survive in a little corner of bare ground then flared my nostrils, drawing in the flavors of the night.
Blood was the strongest scent and that surprised me. Most vampires hated wasting their food, so maybe this murder wasn't as straight forward as I'd been presuming.
Cole looked up as I approached, his lined face weary and dark shadows under his normally bright blue eyes. "You took your time."
"And you look like shit." I stopped beside him and stared down at the victim.
He was male, probably in his mid-to-late forties if his worn features and grey-flecked hair were anything to go by. There were no obvious wounds on his body, and very little in the way of blood on the front of his clothes. His arms had been crossed over his chest, almost as if he were asleep rather than dead. But someone had separated his head from his neck, and even a vampire couldn't survive that.
The blood that was missing from his clothes formed a lake around the area where his head should have been.
"Have you bothered looking in the mirror lately?" Cole snapped off his bloody gloves and tossed them into a nearby contamination bin.
"I'm trying to avoid them. Between working day shifts and getting call-outs at night, the bags under my eyes feel large enough to pack a lunch in. Who's our victim?"
"Grant Haven, a local vampire who owned a cafe up on Smith Street." Cole handed me