Down These Strange Streets Read Online Free PDF Page B

Though he may have been choked before that. Without the excised material it’s hard to say.”
    “It’s over here.” Katamori pointed to a grisly little mound of skin and bone half-hidden under a chair.
    Dahlia squatted to peer at the discarded handful. “This is so mangled, I still can’t say whether he was choked. This tissue was tossed aside, not consumed.”
    Katamori made a moue of distaste.
    Dahlia said, “I was thinking of the trace of werewolf, and all that that implies.” Werewolves would eat human flesh, at least when they were in their wolf forms.
    “Do you think we’ve seen everything there is to see, smelled everything there is to smell?” Katamori asked, tactfully bypassing the werewolf issue.
    “Let’s go through the human’s pockets,” Dahlia suggested, and Katamori squatted on the other side of the body. Dahlia had quick, light fingers, and she was thorough. Folded and stuck in a pocket on her side of the corpse, she found a sheet from the donor bureau containing a rendezvous point and a scheduled donation time for tonight. Just as Gerhard had said, the donors were to be picked up at eight, then returned to the pickup point at ten.
    Dahlia wondered if Gerhard had told Arthur to make sure he was included on the donor list. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Gerhard’s favorite banger had been included in the donor party. In the last four years it had become a regular practice for the hosts of parties to which vampires had been invited to hire donors from a registered donor bureau, so they could be sure that all the human snacks on offer had been examined for blood-borne diseases and psychoses. There was a disease vampires could catch from humans (Sino-AIDS), and donors had been checked for hidden agendas ever since a donor in Memphis brought a gun and opened fire on the assembled partygoers.
    Dahlia opened Arthur Allthorp’s wallet to get his donation card, which was perforated with seven holes. The card was punched every time the agency sent him out. After Dahlia had turned over the body to go through the other pants pocket, Katamori patted down Arthur’s legs. To their surprise, he found a knife in an ankle sheath. Very careless. Gerhard’s inefficiency was now a mountain rather than a molehill.
    After a glance of silent agreement, the two stood, having gotten all the information from the body. They looked all around the vast kitchen for any clue they might have missed. The blackness continued to stare in through the big windows. The blood continued to cling wetly to the stainless steel surfaces. Arthur Allthorp, fangbanger, continued to be dead.
    After Katamori deadbolted the outside door, he and Dahlia left the kitchen. Rachel had resumed her post in the hall, and Dahlia asked her to keep guard over the swinging door. “Let no one into the kitchen until we’re sure we don’t need it anymore,” she said. “No one will be able to enter from the outside.”
    Rachel nodded, her expression intense. She was still proving herself as a vampire, and Dahlia felt sure Rachel would stand her ground against anyone who wanted to see the body.
    Back in the reception room, Joaquin had resumed his seat in the thronelike chair reserved for the sheriff. His ascension party had taken a definite downturn in tone. The festive atmosphere had degenerated to uneasy apprehension. The partygoers were milling around anxiously. The demons and part-demons had established a tight knot in one corner with Diantha in its center, and the fae (an oread, a rare nix, and an elf) clustered close to them.
    Bernie Feldman, Don’s enforcer, was watching the French doors with unmistakable worry. Bernie was standing oddly, as if nursing a hurt in his stomach. Dahlia followed his eyes. Approaching, obviously disheveled, were Taffy and Don. Taffy had her shoes in her free hand. The other hand was holding Don’s, and the two were looking at each other with what Dahlia could only describe as goo-goo