Sweeter than Blood

Chapter Six

"What is this for?" I stared eagerly at the bottle of Spellbound Petite Sirah that Garnet held out to me and my fingers twitched to free it from its cork.

"Oh please, I saw the lustful look you gave the bottle in your apartment before we left tonight," she laughed. "What I don't understand is why you would want that poor excuse for wine so badly."

"Not all of us can afford hundred-dollar wine," I said, but took the bottle from her before she changed her mind. "You just keep wine in your car for the hell of it?"

"That is a one hundred and eighty-nine dollar bottle, to be exact, and you never know when a good bottle of red might come in handy." She gave me a look of pure pride as I pulled my little metal corkscrew from its designated drawer and released the bottle's contents into two long-stemmed glasses. Garnet took one of the glasses from the countertop and swirled the wine, examining the legs, before taking a sip.

"You know, I've always loved wine," she admitted, taking another, longer drink.

"Not as much as blood, though, I bet."

"Not even close," she sighed and pursed her lips. "Nothing can truly compare to the taste of blood. Not just because of the flavor, but the overwhelming sensuality of drinking it. Feeling the warmth across your tongue and down your throat, smelling the metallic sweetness against the saltiness of flesh." She shivered noticeably before her lustful eyes met mine, and I felt a chill go down my spine.

"Don't worry," she purred, "I won't hurt you." Her lips curled into a smile so sweet it was hard to imagine this woman could be considered dangerous to anyone, but even the most deadly species could be beautiful.

I managed a weak smile and temporarily focused my attention on the next few sips from my glass. The wine was delicious, to be sure, but my nerves were now on full alert and I refused to allow myself to lose any coherency around this woman, no matter how expensive it was. The moment I stopped thinking clearly would be the moment I would become prey.

"You humans really are adorable," she said, but there was no humor in her voice now. "I wish you would stop seeing me as a threat. I meant what I said. I will not hurt you. Ever."

I tried to believe her, but the image of Finlay's mutilated body invaded my thoughts, causing me to recoil from the hand she stretched toward my arm.

"I understand if that will take some time," she said. Something that almost resembled sadness crept into her eyes, and I barely resisted the urge to wrap my arms around her.

My concern wasn't so much because of the possibility of a vampire being at fault for the professor's murder, but more generally because of my area of work. I was constantly reminded with every new case of how vicious the world could be and what unsuspecting people are capable of doing. Circumstances like that made it hard to trust anyone at their word, no matter how much I wanted to.

"Let's change the subject," I offered and pulled the folders out of Finlay's bag. "It still feels like there is a piece missing from this case; something just feels off." I slid the pages of research across the counter in front of us; newspaper clippings, journal articles, and various printouts of our town's history and the relationship with the vampires filled the surface. "If this had been a calculated attack, then the killer would want to hide any evidence that would lead us to them. At first, we thought that was this bag, right?" I hesitated, looking back at the files.

Hesitantly, she placed her glass on the counter and joined my speculations. "Maybe they were trying to get more information out of him while he was still alive? And if so, what information would he have that was not in that canvas bag?"

"Or maybe," I suggested, "they were trying to keep him from giving more information."

Garnet looked at me, confused.

"How do you figure?"

"Well, whoever did this left the bag behind, but made sure he never said a word again," I explained. "Maybe it wasn't about the research at all, or maybe they didn't think anything useful was in there until after the fact. Maybe all of this was just to keep him from finding something important."

"Or keep him from sharing something he just discovered."

"Right, his killer could have been someone he knew, someone who knew what he was working on and maybe someone who knew he'd just found something major. The bag wasn't important at all, and might have been taken just to clean their tracks or..."

"Or give us a lead to nowhere."

We stood in silence, staring at the photos and not wanting to say what was on both of our minds.

But if Finlay had found some major piece of information that put his killer at risk, and he unwittingly divulged that information to them, all of this could be over something he knew but hadn't yet recorded in his findings.

There were only two people who knew exactly what his findings were at any given time.

And one of them was currently in lockup.