Bound to Shadows Page 0,62

something that was little more than a nebulous foulness that tickled the back of my throat and made me want to cough.

"There is something odd here." I took a deeper breath but the scent remained annoyingly elusive and undefined. The room itself held no hints as to what it might be. My gaze fell on the light layer of dust sitting behind the bedside lamp. "You might want to get some dust samples from the room, just in case."

"I already have." He paused, picking up what looked like a piece of lint and putting it into a plastic bag. "This odd scent you mentioned - did you smell it at either of the other murders?"

I frowned, thinking back. I had smelled something odd at Gateways - something just as nebulous and out of place. But Kye had arrived not long after I'd scented it, and had basically blown any memory of it out of the water.

Until now.

"There was a similar scent at Gateway's."

"Why didn't you mention it in your report?"

"Because I couldn't be sure that it wasn't just due to the mold in the bathroom."

And if I had gone back into the bathroom, it probably wouldn't have sparked any memories anyway, because it just didn't smell the same as the other witch dust.

I glanced around the room again. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed. There was a huge gold watch and a wallet filled with cash on the dresser, and several expensively framed paintings on the walls. The only link between the three - now four - beheaded men seemed to be the fact that they were all on the Melbourne council.

So what I need to find out was who, exactly, the council had pissed off lately. And I very much doubted that it was going to be an easy task. I had no idea who the members were - besides Dante, that is, and I really didn't want to go talk to that man again - and Jack had showed no inclination to share information about the rest of them. Maybe he figured I didn't need to know any more than I already did, or maybe it was just the simple fact that he wasn't allowed to tell me. He was an advisor, after all. Maybe he had to get permission from the greater council before he could reveal that sort of information. After all, ruling bodies the world over never made it easy for anyone to get to them.

Although killers never seemed to have a problem.

My only real option was talking to Quinn. He might not have told me much about the councils, but he'd said a whole lot more than Jack, so he just might be persuaded to give me another name. If I could talk to someone - someone who wasn't sex on legs - I might just have a real chance of cracking this damn case.

I returned my attention to Cole. "Any indication on how our killer got into the house?"

"Back door was jimmied. The killer must have moved extraordinarily fast, because it appeared Bastiel had gotten no further than flipping the sheet off his face."

I frowned. "The only race who can move that fast is another vampire."

"There are several shifters who can move almost as quickly as a vampire, and almost would be fast enough in this case. A vampire's reactions tend to be slightly slower when they're waking from daytime slumber."

Which was why, throughout human history, those suspected of being vampires were staked during the daylight hours. If the staker was human, it gave them a fighting chance. Of course, opening any younger vamp's den to sunlight would have done just as good a job, but humans seemed to prefer the one-two punch, just to be sure.

"It doesn't explain how the other two were caught, though. They both awake and aware."

Cole grimaced. "You've seen the witch dust in action, so you tell me - does it act fast enough to stop a vampire reacting against an attack?"

I wrinkled my nose, remembering the zombie throwing the dust in my face and just how quickly it sucked away resistance. I'd been lucky - that lot of dust had been targeted towards vamps, not dhampires, and my werewolf blood had saved me. "Yeah, it does."

"Then that's your answer. We just have to pin down the ingredients for future reference." He gave me a weary smile. "If you could remember to grab a sample when you catch the killer, that would be of great help."

I snorted softly,