Meat

Chapter Eighteen

Carson parked two blocks away from the house Spencer had taken them to. He walked a block further than he needed and doubled back, stopping in two different shops for good measure. He knew that the vampires wouldn't be able to follow him in the middle of the day but Kaleb and the other wolves wouldn't have the same problem, and Carson didn't want to make things too easy on them if they came looking.

The building looked like it should have been knocked to the ground six months earlier. It also smelled like a dozen people had died in the various rooms and left to rot. Truthfully, he didn't doubt that it had happened a couple of times. The neighbourhood had a reputation and he'd been down here on various calls at least once a month since he joined the police force. If someone had died, people didn't want to get involved. They'd rather get high with a body in the next room than risk the police taking their stash.

Luckily, like the vampires, the people in the building were dead to the world at this time of day. They had boarded up the windows, shoved doors closed, and the sound of damaged-lung snoring emanated along the corridor. The moon had heightened his senses and it took one sniff, one moment of listening, to know that they were safe. So far, at least, nobody had followed them here.

Returning to the room at the back of the building, Carson knocked twice and waited until the chair was taken out from beneath the handle and the door swung open. Spencer ruffled his hand through his hair and gave him a grin. He replaced the chair against the door the moment Carson was inside. Like Carson, the vampire didn't need to listen for long to know that they were safe enough.

Carson glanced around. There was little to see in the back room. A few crappy pieces of furniture had been pushed up against the walls and a battered mattress lay in the corner, currently half-hidden beneath his nephew, sprawled on his back, his mouth open as a sound resembling a quiet tractor rumbled in the back of his sinus. Carson raised an eyebrow and Spencer shrugged.

"What'd you find?"

He crossed the room in three strides, turning and sinking to sit against the wall. Spencer followed him, sitting with a foot between them. Swinging the bag around his side, Carson tore it open and pulled out a notepad.

"I found what we need," he said.

"Which is?"

Carson glanced at the vampire and rolled his eyes. The guy had a curiosity that bordered on annoying. Leaning forwards over his knees, Spencer rubbed the back of his neck and watched him, his hazel eyes as bright and alert as they had been back on the farm. He was a pale guy, unsurprising for a vampire, but unlike Carson had assumed, he wasn't sallow and drawn. In fact, Spencer looked the picture of health. He glanced back at the notebook in his lap.

"Kaleb kept names of important people, just in case," Carson said. "While I can't get a beat on those, I was able to track down one of their younger ones."

"One of these 'others', right?"

"Yeah."

"Don't they have a name? It feels weird calling them that."

"Call them gifted, call them witches, I don't give a shit," Carson said. "Just as long as they help Vince."

Glancing past him to look at Vince asleep on the mattress, Spencer shuffled closer.

"Why are you doing this for him?" he asked.

"He's my nephew."

"Yeah, but to turn him into this? Into what we are?"

Carson leaned away from him and gave him a hard glare.

"Let's get something straight, drainer. What you are and what I am are two completely different things."