Crimson Vengeance Read Online Free PDF Page A

nothing.” She picked up one of his hands and showed his smooth palm to Riah. “It’s like this guy let the vamp kill him. At least the last victim tried to fight. Why wouldn’t he put up a fight?”

    The unmarred skin didn’t surprise her. It was so easy to lure a willing victim, though not one of the secrets of her past she’d shared with Ivy. She wasn’t about to now either. Instead she said, “Let’s see what this guy can tell us.” She moved to the other side of the table.
    “Hey.” Adriana spoke from behind Ivy. “I’m going to my lab.
    I’ll call you later.” Adriana touched Riah lightly on the shoulder as she passed. Her fingers were warm even through the protective garment.
    Riah nodded and forced her focus to the body. Adriana had plenty to do with her samples, and she needed to do her work here.
    On the table, his chest was opened, the heart exposed. The damage that the small wooden spike had inflicted was clearly evident under the harsh fluorescent lights. “We’ll need to camou-flage that.” Riah pointed to the ragged edges of the hole caused by the stake.
    “You got it,” Ivy said, and picked up a scalpel to begin the work of making this body appear to be a run-of-the-mill homicide victim.
    The autopsy was completed, notes made, and the victim once more secured in the back of Ivy’s van and on his way back to Moses Lake by a little past ten. Riah shrugged out of her bloody scrubs, washed up, then slipped on a soft leather jacket. She turned out the lights in the autopsy suite and walked down the hall.
    Brett was busy in the main control room making his report to the uniformed police officer, and while she’d also been questioned about the intruder, she’d successfully pled ignorance. She should have told everyone about the tall stranger who barged into the autopsy room. She could have given a very accurate description.
    That she didn’t wasn’t only out of character, it was potentially dangerous. She didn’t choose to explore her reasons too deeply.
    In her car, Riah reached into a cooler and pulled out a small, thick plastic bag. She sighed and accepted the inevitable. She needed the blood, and if she didn’t take it this way, her cravings would rule her. If she allowed that to happen…well, she didn’t want to think about how it would end.
    She started the car and turned the heat on high. For a few minutes, she let the container rest on top of the heater vent. Taking it from a bag was bad enough. Ice-cold from the cooler was unbearable.
    Even a vampire had her limits.
    Once the blood was gone and she felt refreshed and sated, she turned the heat down, put the car in Drive, and pulled through the security gate onto the city street. She intended to go directly home. Instead, she found herself heading north. Ten minutes later, she pulled off Northwest Boulevard and into the driveway of a tidy one-story house along the ridge of the hill overlooking the river.
    Adriana’s house. So much for good intentions.
    For a long time, she sat in the car. Really, she should go home.
    Adriana would let her know tomorrow what, if anything, she’d learned. Except she didn’t want to go home. Not tonight. It might have been the visit by the strange man that had her so disquieted now. Maybe. Maybe not.
    In all honesty, she’d been unsettled lately, as if something in her life was amiss. Perhaps it was anxiety over not making ground on her search for a cure. Again—maybe. Maybe not.
    It still didn’t explain why she was sitting in Adriana’s driveway like some kind of stalker. Or perhaps it did. It’d be stupid to pretend she didn’t know Adriana was attracted to her. Christ almighty, she was over five hundred years old. She knew what attraction was when she saw it. She was also exceptionally good at deflecting it.
    Practice did make perfect after all.
    Right now, she tried to tell herself she came to check on Adriana’s progress with the samples collected earlier. If it meant she’d have to