Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [11]
As he set about cleaning the area of all traces of the killing, Lucan’s thoughts kept returning to the woman with the sunlit hair and sweet, alabaster beauty.
How was it she had been able to find the Rogues in the alley?
Although it was widely held among human folklore that vampires could disappear at will, the truth was only slightly less remarkable. Gifted with great agility and speed, they could simply move faster than human eyes could register, an ability that was augmented by the vampires’ advanced hypnotic power over the minds of lesser beings. Oddly, this woman seemed immune to both.
Lucan had seen her in the club, he realized now. His gaze had been drawn away from his quarry by a pair of soulful eyes and a spirit that seemed nearly as lost as his own. She had noticed him, too, staring at him from where she sat with her friends. Even through the crowd and the stale odor of the club, Lucan had scented the trace notes of perfume on her skin—something exotic, rare.
He smelled it now as well, a delicate note that clung to the night, teasing his senses and calling to something primitive within him. His gums ached with the sudden stretching of his fangs, a physical reaction to need—carnal, or otherwise—that he was powerless to curb. He scented her, and he hungered, little better than his Rogue brethren.
Lucan tipped his head back and dragged the essence of the woman deeper into his lungs, tracking her across the city with his keen sense of smell. The sole witness to the Rogues’ attack, it was more than unwise to let her keep the memory of what she had seen. Lucan would find the female and take whatever measures were necessary to ensure the protection of the Breed.
And in the back of his mind, an ancient conscience whispered that whoever she was, she already belonged to him.
“I’m telling you, I saw the whole thing. There were six of them, and they were tearing at the guy with their hands and teeth—like animals. They killed him!”
“Miss Maxwell, we’ve been over this numerous times already tonight. Now, we’re all tired and the night is only getting longer.”
Gabrielle had been at the police station for more than three hours, trying to give her account of the horror she witnessed outside La Notte. The two officers she spoke with had been skeptical at first, but now they were getting impatient, almost adversarial. Soon after she had arrived, the cops had sent a squad car around to the club to check out the situation and recover the body Gabrielle had reported seeing. The call had come up empty. No reports of a gang altercation and no evidence whatsoever of anyone having met with foul play. It was as if the entire incident had never happened—or had been miraculously swept clean.
“If you would just listen to me…if you would just look at the pictures I took—”
“We’ve seen them, Miss Maxwell. Several times already. Frankly, nothing you’ve said tonight checks out—not your statement, and not these grainy, unreadable images from your cell phone.”
“I’m sorry if the quality is lacking,” Gabrielle replied, acidly. “The next time I’m witnessing a bloody slaughter by a gang of psychos, I’ll have to remember to bring my Leica and a few extra lenses.”
“Maybe you want to rethink your statement,” suggested the elder of the two officers, his Boston accent tinged with the Irish brogue of a youth spent in Southie. He stroked a chubby hand over his thinning brow, then slid her cell phone back across the desk. “You should be aware that filing a false police report is a crime, Miss Maxwell.”
“This is not a false report,” she insisted, frustrated and not a little angry that she was being treated like the criminal here. “I stand by everything I’ve said tonight. Why would I make this up?”
“That’s something only you can answer, Miss Maxwell.”
“This is unbelievable. You have my 911 call.”
“Yes,” agreed the officer. “You did, indeed, make a call to emergency dispatch. Unfortunately, all we have is static