BloodStone: Ice (Book 1)(Completed)

Chapter 18

Titus grudgingly drove Ella's small black sports car while Quintus rode in Phillipe's Jeep. She had insisted that they would leave straight from Dallas on to the next master, and she needed her car for that. They had risen as early as possible that evening so they could leave as soon as they were packed. After they finished filling the backseats of both vehicles with gear, he agreed that two vehicles were indeed needed. Phillipe had an entire barrel of holy water riding in half of his back seat alone. Quintus and he never traveled with such equipment, but then again, they slept underground and did not require food or changes of clothing.

He watched her out of the corner of his eye as she kept looking at the map of Dallas she had. She had a pad of paper and pen on her lap and was just pulling out her phone when it began to ring. She looked at it for at minute. Glanced down at the papers she had in front of her and frowned.

"Who is it?" Titus asked her, watching her face intently as she flicked her eyes back and forth across the paper.

"Dallas area code, but not a number on my list." She hit a button and put her it to her ear. "Hello?" She said curtly, as if aggravated at the caller.

"Hello. Is this Ella Decor?" the male voice responded.

"Who is this?" Her voice held no trace of accent or emotion. Titus would have never been able to tell who she was by the sound of her voice.

"Um," the caller paused for a moment. "This is Dr. Perez. I'm the county coroner in Dallas. Stephen in Houston gave me this number and said I should speak to Ella Decor. Do you know her, or do I have the wrong number?" He was very hesitant. Titus could hear the man carefully gauging his words.

"This is Ella." She sounded normal again. "Sorry about that Dr. Perez. I didn't recognize the number and it wasn't on the list Stephen gave me."

"No, no. Not at all. You can never be too careful in situations like this. I don't usually deal with him, but I called him a few moments ago to discuss the situation up here and he said there was an excellent hunter bringing a whole team up here to clean up our problem. So I thought it might be better if I give the information directly to you." Ella started smiling.

"I would be thrilled to have any information you can give me. Particularly where the bodies were found, what type of damage has been done to them, anything peculiar you might have found on them or around them, and anything else you might think important. Give me just a minute to put this on speakerphone." She held the phone out and pushed a button, then leaned in close to Titus' ear. "Can you pass this on to Quintus so he can share with Phillipe in case they think of anything we might have missed?" Titus smiled at her and nodded. Her eyes were shining with excitement. Of course he would do whatever she asked. It made good sense what she was asking anyway. He found himself pleased that she was involving them in the conversation. "Go ahead Dr. Perez. I'm ready."

"Well, most of the bodies have been found all over the city. There's no discernible pattern to them. Except to those of us who know what a vampire attack looks like. So far we've been putting them down as animal attacks, a couple of suicides, domestic battery gone bad, and only ten have been put down as actual homicide. We've been making those out to be gang wars. They started about three months ago." Ella nodded at this information, and Titus found himself wondering if she knew the master had moved there at that time.