to roll with the punches that came at you. Still, being roped into a police investigation was a bit unexpected and, in this case, not something she was looking forward to since it involved a crispy critter. Her nose wrinkled at the term they had used on the force to describe murder victims whose remains had been burned. They’d had lots of nicknames for victims. Civilians probably would have thought them heartless and cruel for the most part, but when you investigated the atrocities people committed on each other, you had to find a way to separate yourself from it emotionally or it would tear you apart. Nicknames were just one of the ways they did that.
Sandford was a relatively small town of 12,000 people. That might not seem small to some. There were much smaller towns, but 12,000 was small for having its own police department. Most towns in Ontario that were that size, and some with even larger populations, had given up the expense of running their own department in favor of contracting out to the Ontario Provincial Police. Sandford had avoided that so far. But while the town wasn’t all that large when it came to population, it was much larger in physical size thanks to being a farming town and it took nearly twenty minutes to reach the address the chief had given her, which ended up being on a rural route lined with large fields and the occasional farmhouse.
CJ was able to see the house from several minutes away, or at least the fire raging through it. The building was an old brick farmhouse and the fire was still roaring, despite two fire trucks and more than a dozen men fighting valiantly to put it out. CJ pulled in behind a long line of pickups—volunteer firemen was her guess—parked on the grassy verge of the extremely long driveway and made her way up the gravel drive toward the chaos of bodies moving around the blaze. She was about halfway up the driveway when she heard the “whup whup” of the ambulance and saw it heading toward her. CJ had to step onto the grass to make way for it to leave, but then continued forward, heading for the only man in the mass of people ahead who was wearing a police uniform.
Pain, pain, pain. That’s what woke Mac. Every bit of his body was in agony, from the tips of his toes, to the top of his head, and every inch of his skin felt like it was afire. A scream of agony was rising up in his throat when voices pierced the cloud of suffering, distracting him.
“My God.”
“What is it, Sylvie? Is he dead? Should I turn the lights and siren off?”
“No, Artie. He’s still alive, but he’s—well, he’s healing.”
“What?” Artie asked. “What do you mean, healing?”
“He’s healing,” Sylvie said with something like awe. “The blisters are— You need to see this, Artie. This isn’t normal. Pull over and—”
The woman’s words died when Mac finally managed to push his eyes open.
“Your eyes,” she breathed with amazement as the ambulance began to slow. “They’re silver.”
“What was that?” Artie asked from the front of what Mac now realized was an ambulance. The woman’s uniform and the gurney he was lying on gave that away.
Which meant he was on his way to the hospital, Mac realized, and knew that couldn’t happen. Rising up on the gurney, he sunk his fangs into the female EMT’s neck, and began to drink.
“I think that’s it,” CJ said as she watched the officer bag the cigarette butts she’d spotted. They’d started the search over an hour ago, using a grid-work pattern to cover the outer edges of the property first, and then moving slowly inward. Fortunately, by the time they’d reached the area around the house itself the fire had been all but out, the firemen concentrating on the interior.
“Yeah. I think we’ve covered everything outside,” Officer Simpson agreed, closing the evidence bag and straightening next to her.
CJ nodded absently, her attention on the farmhouse. They couldn’t look inside yet, but she doubted that would be necessary anyway. Gasoline had been used for the accelerant. She’d been able to smell it as she approached. That and the melted remains of three empty gas cans that they’d found on the edge of the fire had given it away. Two of the three plastic cans had just been melted lumps, but the third one had only been partially melted, and the handle and