information.”
A bushy eyebrow went up. “Pushy, aren’t you? All right, but only because you brought cupcakes. First thing is, none of what Fergus and I tell you goes any further. I drove all the way over here from the morgue to talk to him because we can’t have a paper trail or an e-trail, because none of this goes into the official report. So if what you’re about to hear gets out, I’ll know who to blame. You. Fergus knows if he talks I won’t just kill him, I’ll fire him. So that’s the first thing. Tell nobody.”
“Except my cousins, of course.”
“Here we go,” Tony said, exasperated.
“And Declan Wainwright, with whom I’m working. But only if it’s absolutely—”
“Oh, the hell with it!” Tony threw up his hands. “Tell the whole world.” He lowered his voice, even though the three of them were alone in the lab. “Cause of death was exsanguination. Each girl bled out, the first one from a cut that wouldn’t have required more than a bandage in the normal course of events. The underlying cause, of course, was the Scarlet Pathogen. Because the blood wouldn’t clot, minor cuts proved lethal. It’s possible, too, that the blood flowed unnaturally fast. In case you’re wondering about your own health, your blood’s clotting, so you’re not dead. Congratulations.”
“Were each of the cuts the same kind?” Sailor asked.
“No. Charlotte Messenger’s was no more than a paper cut, source unknown. If we knew where she’d been killed before she got dumped on the beach, we might be able to tell, but then again, we might not.”
Sailor shuddered. “I knew she wasn’t on that beach by choice.” Her own fear of water was bad, and Charlotte had all her sympathy.
“She wasn’t. That’s where they found her, but that’s not where she died. Cops are still looking for the primary crime scene. The scratch, I’m guessing, was accidental, maybe self-inflicted. Second victim, though, Gina Santoro, bite mark on the shoulder.”
“A bite sharp enough to break the skin?” Sailor asked.
He nodded. “It gets worse. The killer was rougher with Gina than with Charlotte, and he didn’t move the body this time. Still no indication he forced her to have sex, though. No drugs or sedatives, only the pathogen. No ligature marks, no restraints of any kind, which would be the first thing you’d do to an unwilling Elven.”
Sailor nodded. Tying up an Elven prevented them from teleporting.
“Also,” Tony went on, “there were signs of romance at the scene of the Santoro murder. Mood music on the CD player and wine, that kind of thing. The next one, the bites were on her breasts. That was Kelly Ellory. The last one, he bit her all over.”
Sailor winced. “Can you match the bite marks? Are they the same for all the victims?”
Tony nodded. “Working on it.”
“Fingerprints?”
“Lots of them, but nothing to match them to. The guy has no record. Nothing in the databases we have, anyway. So there you go. No sign of a struggle with any of them, beyond what might be consistent with active sex. What’s clear is that the perpetrator became increasingly violent. My guess is, death aroused him. One theory is that he didn’t know the first one would die, but when it happened, that became part of his thrill with the subsequent victims. In each case there was blood all over, beds, floors—in the case of the last one, outside on the ground.”
“Wait,” Sailor said. “The victims were actually having sex as they died?”
“Yes, or close enough. The blood evidence suggests intercourse was under way and continued even as the bleeding progressed.”
“If there was that much blood,” Sailor said, “the sexual partner couldn’t be a vampire, right? Because it would be hard not to feed on the woman if she was bleeding.”
“In the throes of sexual arousal?” Tony growled. “I’d say damn near impossible. And no one fed on those women. I know the difference between human teeth and fangs.”
“So they weren’t sleeping with a vamp,” Sailor said. “How long until you determine what kind of Other the partner was?”
“First of all,” Tony said, “it could still be a vampire Keeper, who might be turned on by the blood without needing to drain her. Second, we only know that Messenger and Santoro had a common partner. We’re waiting for test results on the other two. Fergus, how long on that turnaround?”
Fergus took out his cell phone and hit some buttons. “All right, here we go. Hot off the presses. The DNA matches.