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By Root 6667 0

into the sensation of being held between them. I’d slept with Micah pressed naked to my back, but never Nathaniel. I’d had his ass pressed into the curve of my stomach and groin for months, but never without clothes, never just skin-to-skin. I pressed my breasts against the warmth of his back, one arm up and over his head so I could touch his hair. My other hand went around his waist. In his sleep, he pulled my hand closer to his body, lower, so that my fingers brushed areas I’d made very sure stayed covered.

“What’s wrong?” Micah whispered, as if he’d felt some tension in me.

I touched the silky warmth of the skin just inside Nathaniel’s hip, that soft pocket of flesh that frames the groin. Nathaniel’s hand on mine, holding me close to him, as his breathing evened back into deep sleep. I snuggled in against him, until my breath danced along his neck, and he snuggled harder against me. “Nothing,” I whispered, “nothing at all.”

Micah spooned himself in at my back. His arm going underneath my pillow, and a little under Nathaniel’s. Micah’s other arm went over my waist, and because Nathaniel was so close to me, his hand ended up resting on Nathaniel’s hip. “Ah,” he whispered, “no clothes.”

“No clothes,” I said.

He whispered against the back of my neck, and it half-tickled. “That a problem?”

“No,” I said, and moved my head a fraction down my pillow so I could breathe in the scent of Nathaniel’s neck.

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” And I was, because it felt too right to be wrong.

82

THE RAID ON the vampire condo got national attention. A mixed blessing. Headlines ranged from “Condo of Death,” to “Police Raid Ends Vampire Serial Killer’s Rampage,” or the most popular, “Vampires turned serial killers, next on Channel . . .” The reports were so similar it didn’t much matter what local channel it was on. I just stopped answering my phone for a few days. The interview requests were national, and a few international. I wondered if anyone on Mobile Reserve was getting this much attention. If they were, I hoped they were enjoying it more than I was.

DNA came back, and my worst fears were confirmed. Three of the vamps killed matched the earlier victims’ bites, but that left us with five unaccounted for. Five serial killers still at large. Serial killers don’t stop killing, not unless they’re locked up, or permanently dead.

They’d fled St. Louis, the way they fled New Orleans, and Pittsburgh before that. They’d killed policemen in all three towns. Their kill count was more than twenty, and they were still out there.

There’d been a gap of of nearly three months between the killings in Pittsburgh and the killings in New Orleans. Barely a month between New Orleans and St. Louis. They were escalating, less time between killing sprees, more victims of choice, though St. Louis had managed to get away with the fewest dead among our police. How did we get so lucky? Jean-Claude got a letter.

The writing was beautiful, calligraphy, on heavy vellum paper with a watermark. The note was from Vittorio’s Gwennie:

Jean-Claude, Master of the City of St. Louis,

I have left Vittorio. His madness has grown beyond anything that I can excuse or take part in. I cannot live as he lives anymore. If he finds me, he will kill me. I have fled with another younger vampire of our kiss, Myron, and Vittorio will not forgive the betrayal. Vittorio is seeking another city now. You have driven him out, but he will find another hunting ground. His madness does not let him rest for long now. His only release seems to come when he kills the people that he sees as taunting him. I saw your Asher at Belle’s Court after the church was done with him; let me say only that Vittorio was not so lucky. He is a ruin of a man now. No, he is a monster. He has let the holy water that ate his body eat his mind, as well. Everything I loved in him is gone, lost to this mind sickness.

I hope you found the little that Myron and I could do to assist the police, helpful. We moved the bodies so that they would be found sooner. It was all we could do with Vittorio so close. Myron