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CHAPTER EIGHT 
BENTLEY
The moment I arrive at work, Marcus calls the five of us immediately into a room to talk. When I walk inside the room, I’m surprised to find the chief of police sitting in the corner. He generally has little to do with the VRC since his job is to oversee all of us and not at an intimate level.
As soon as we’re seated, he takes the front with Finn seated just to the side. With Finn’s prosthetic leg, I do notice when he has the option to sit he does. Although he’d never mention it and probably refuse to even acknowledge it because he’s one of the most stubborn humans I’ve met.
“Chief Bowman was stopping by the department and asked to sit in,” Marcus says as he nods at the man.
I’ve only been around him a few times, but he’s a nice man who always wears a smile. “Good morning. You might say that I have a bit of a personal interest in this case with Governor White being pulled in.”
White was one of Bowman’s “children.” He’d changed White into a vampire back before it was made illegal, so it’s reasonable that he’d be here, trying to pin down who’d be interested in killing one of his.
“It’s good to have you,” Finn says with a smile.
He smiles back at him then settles in to listen.
Marcus starts, as he usually does. “Finn and I have been talking to Eric, the medical examiner, this morning. And we’ve made some extremely interesting discoveries. They’ve identified two out of five of the victims and are still working on the other three. All female, all between the ages of twenty and thirty. All died of exsanguination, or more precisely from being drained, presumedly by Huang. Victim one, the oldest, died between two and three years ago. It almost seems like he kills one or two each year. We can tell that he had bitten them repeatedly during different stages. In the basement of his house is a room set up for holding the women. There’s a bed, toilet, and other necessities.”
Finn turns to us as he takes a turn speaking. “The most recent of the five victims, Pear Hess, had run away from home at age fifteen and was never heard from again. But what was most interesting is the second victim identified, Molly Harper. She died in a car accident six months ago. She was pronounced dead on scene but according to her autopsy she’s only been dead about sixty days.”
“Was she a vampire?” I ask curiously.
Marcus shakes his head. “No. She was still human at time of death.”
“We’re working on the other two,” Finn says.
Alexei shifts his attention off his laptop and back to Marcus at the front of the room. “So we need to figure out who pronounced her dead. In this day and age, you don’t mistakenly announce that someone is dead,” he says.
Marcus nods. “Can you look into that and see what you can find? DeGray, help Karsyn out. Briar, can you help us out for a minute, and then I have something else you can do.”
“Of course,” she says.
Alexei and I are left hunting for the person, presumedly a doctor, who was able to claim she was dead; but then how did he get her out of the hospital? How did her family not realize she’d still been alive? How awful to think your child was dead, only to find out later she’d been abused by a vampire and killed months after.
“This whole thing is strange,” I tell Alexei.
“Tell me about it. And like you said, are the others in on it too? Does the man behind the mask know something we don’t? But then why not expose the truth? Bring it to the VRC instead of this… fucking game he’s playing.”
“Some people’s minds work in strange ways,” I remind him.
He glances at Finn and Marcus. “That’s horrifyingly true. Look at the people we work with.”
I grin at him. “You better not let Finn hear you.”
“Ehh… I fear no human,” he says before doing a fake shudder, and my mind drifts to River. What is it about him that draws me to him?
At one point, I had a sliver of interest in Alexei, but there’s also something about him where he refuses to want anything romantic and I’ve never tried hard enough to pull him out of that. When we first met, I’d considered something more and even implied it, but the moment I did, he threw up a wall between us, confusing me greatly when I thought he was interested in me. He’s handsome, and under that snark he’s generally a pretty nice guy, but nothing’s ever come from it.
Yet with River, I find myself thinking about him when he’s not around, wondering what he’s doing and why he doesn’t want anything more.
I shake my head because I need to focus on the case. So I push all of that back and slide into my chair so I can start making some phone calls. The worst of all is going to be visiting the parents of the deceased. I hope I don’t get put on that task.
OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER NINE 
RIVER
Dr. Vick Dansby.
I wonder if he knows that he’s next. I wonder if he knows I’m coming for him. Probably not. These vampire types seem to think they’re invincible. Too often they only care about themselves.
For now, I’m just watching him from my car, waiting for him to be alone so I can step in. That’s when my phone rings. I hesitate, but the only person who calls me is Bentley and right now… I need something to calm me. I just want to hear his voice.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” he says, voice soft and gentle.
“Hey. How are you?” I ask.
“I’m okay,” he says, sounding a bit down.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Ran out of porn books to read.”
I smile as I sink back into my seat. “Oh no. That sounds awful. But really. You can talk to me.”
He takes a deep breath, making me realize that something bad really must be going on as he says, “Family stuff. My great-niece has kidney failure and isn’t doing well. She’s ninety-six, though. So it’s kind of foolish of me to be so upset because she’s lived such a long life. But she’s progressively getting worse, so I don’t know if I have days, weeks, or months with her and then I feel like I won’t have anyone.”
Oh, dear god. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I don’t know if I’m apologizing about the potential loss of his family, or what I’m doing to him. I’ve never felt so awful in my life as I do at this moment. Why does he have to be so kind and why do I have to be doing this to him?
“It’s okay. Like I said, she’s older and it’s to be expected. I wanted to turn her when she was younger so she’d never leave me, but it was her wish to be with the man she loved who wanted to remain human.”
I sink against my steering wheel, clutching hard onto it. Why do I even care? Why do I care what I’ve done to this man I barely know? “Yeah… but it has to be hard. Seeing someone you love slowly die in front of you.”
“It is. But talking to you has helped. I’m friends with the guys at work, but sometimes I feel like I need to just cut it off and step away from work and then when I do, I find myself alone. I’m sorry. I’m being all weird and shit, and you don’t need to hear about my issues.”
“No, it’s fine, I promise. You can talk to me.”
“Let’s talk about something else. I’m supposed to be working, not moping or on the phone, but Finn is talking about how he’s superior to vampires and humans, and once he gets on one of his tangents, you just have to let him ride that wave.”
“He sounds like a fun guy.”
“How’s your day going?”
“Well, Banshee got out through the window today and I panicked and thought she ran away, and she returned half an hour later with a dead bird that she deposited on my dresser. So that was nice.”
“What a kind and thoughtful cat,” Bentley jokes.
“Ah yes. So kind and thoughtful. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to look at my dresser the same way.”
He laughs and it’s such a good sound. So much happiness in an otherwise bleak world. “Ah, I need to go. Marcus is barking orders at us. I’ll call you later and we can maybe set up a night to meet?”
“I’d like that,” I say. And I really would, but I know it can’t happen no matter how much I wish it could.
“Bye, River.”
“Goodbye, Bentley,” I say, knowing that it’s more of a farewell than he realizes.
I have to end this.
      
Let me start from the beginning. I don’t even know if anyone will ever read this. Maybe I’ll die with it still on my computer, but if there’s a chance I can get this out, I’m going to do it. My name is River Garza. I am twenty-eight years old and this is the story of my death, my rebirth, and my upcoming death.
You see, I have about two months left to live. Maybe less, maybe more. So I need to finish all of this before I die.
I grew up in a town that was very supportive of vampire-human relations. We tried hard to keep everything equal and I even had friends who were vampires. Some of my parents’ closest friends were vampires and they were always just a part of my life. I never realized that vampires would one day ruin my entire life.
During the next month, I’m going to stop or kill multiple vampires who have each played a part in ruining my life and the lives of so many others. And you are going to stop pitying them because you don’t truly understand what kind of monster hides inside them.
When I was twenty-seven, I started having horrible headaches that led to nausea. It took a while before I thought they were anything beyond migraines that I would try to sate with pills and caffeine while huddled in a dark room waiting for them to pass. My mom eventually persuaded me to see a doctor where I was diagnosed with a benign tumor. Fantastic, right? At least it’s not cancer… is what I thought. Well, it was in a place that none of the doctors felt safe operating on and I was shipped from doctor to doctor until I found the one man willing to take the chance. My likelihood of surviving wasn’t as high as my family hoped, but without the operation, he predicted the tumor would grow enough that it’d kill me within six months.
So we took the risk.
It was hard realizing that I could die. That the day I went in for the operation could be my last. I felt fine, so how could I just die? How could it possibly be my last day? It wasn’t like I was lying on death’s door where death was an obvious next step. All I had was the occasional headache.
But he said that every week we waited would make the possibility of a successful outcome drop more and more.
So I agreed. What I didn’t realize was that I would go under and when I’d wake up, I wouldn’t be on a bed surrounded by my family. Instead, I woke up confused as I was ripped away from everything I’d ever known.
OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER TEN 
BENTLEY
River hasn’t replied in three days and I can’t help but wonder what I did wrong. Did I say something I shouldn’t have? Was I too pushy when he kept saying he didn’t want it to become anything?
“DeGray, what’s going on?” Finn asks as he slides into Briar’s chair and pushes over to me.
Everything. My niece is dying, the one person I felt was making this hell mean something has decided to ghost me… but I say none of it. Instead, I shake my head and continue pretending like everything is fine. What’s the sense in fixating on it? “Nothing. Just busy with work.”
He stares at me because that damn human knows everything. He’s the most observant creature alive. And he’s persistent. While most would just pass it off, he doesn’t want to. “Don’t lie to me. If you lie to me, I’ll have to sic Marcus on you, and we all know no one wants that to happen.”
I smile at him. “Please don’t let that happen. I promise that I’m fine. Just stuff outside of work not going smoothly with my family, but we’re good.”
“Okay. If you ever need to get your mind off something, say something mean to me in front of Marcus. It’ll entertain you for quite a while.”
This crazy little human. “You mean cleaning my blood off the walls and desks will entertain me for a while?”
Finn just gives me one of his evil grins. “Thoughts of it distracted you, though, didn’t it?”
I can’t help but grin in return. “I suppose it did.” I glance up to see Alexei heading toward us. “Looks like Karsyn’s back. We’re going to go see if we can get some information out of some hospital staff. Wish us luck.”
“Good luck. Ask Karsyn to cheer you up. I bet he will. Just look at his cheerful face.”
We both look at Alexei who notices us staring and immediately narrows his eyes. There is no sign of cheer anywhere to be found as he scowls at us. “Don’t be so creepy,” he growls. “DeGray, come on. Stop letting yourself get influenced by that demon.”
I shake my head because I know Alexei likes “that demon” more than he lets on.
      
RIVER
My head aches as I watch Dansby leave the hospital and head out to his car. Once he’s pulling his car out of the hospital parking lot, I follow after him. He’s not the doctor who was supposed to perform the surgery on me, but I can’t find him yet. I would absolutely love to expose him and ruin his life, but he seems to have become a “traveling doctor” according to his previous department. Yet when I ask for information on him, no one has any to give.
I turn the radio down lower, hoping the quiet will help my headache. I’ve already wasted so many days on this man because he’s never alone. He seems to bring women back to his apartment every moment he’s free and I’m stuck questioning what I’ll do if he’s never alone. He lives in an apartment, which will make it even trickier to pin him down without being caught. I decide that’ll be worst-case scenario and wait for him to leave. When he finally does alone, I follow him in my car.
As he pulls up to a strip club, I park my car and decide that I need to make my move now if I’m planning on doing it while he’s alone. Once he gets in the club, he’ll probably find someone to take home with him and I’ll be stuck dealing with another person.
I get out of my car and shut the door, and the noise of it is like a stab right into my head as my headache rages on, making black spots dance in my peripheral vision. I start walking after him, really hoping I don’t need to go into the strip club where the music is pounding. I’m honestly not sure I could at this point.
When I catch the briefest glimpse of a vaguely familiar face, I stop, startled. It takes me a moment to realize it’s the Russian guy from the VRC who is hanging out in front of the strip club, clearly trying to blend in. He looks casual enough, like he’s supposed to be there, but if they’re here… are they on to me? Have they figured this out already?
I need to get out. I’ll worry about stopping Dansby when shit has cooled down and there’s no risk of Bentley figuring out what I’m doing. I have my mask on since I’d planned on pulling him into the alleyway out of sight and I’m not sure if I should take it off. It makes me appear more suspicious but if anyone from the VRC sees me, they might find it suspicious that I’ve now been at two different scenes they were investigating.
So I throw my hood up and turn around. From my back, he won’t be able to tell I have the mask on and should just assume I’m someone with their hood up. I hurry, trying my hardest to remain calm as I walk back toward my car.
“Police. Put your hands up and turn to face me,” a familiar voice says.
I stop, startled and devastated that it’s Bentley that has to find me. How I wanted that last goodbye to be it between us. To be the end of it so he wasn’t left suffering by my hand and here he is… here he gets to find out that I not only kept the truth from him but I deceived him. I suppose if he hates me it’ll be better for when I die. But why? Out of all of them, why does it have to be him? I’d rather have him shoot me in the back than face him and tell him what I’ve done.
“Turn around,” he orders.
I should have taken the fucking mask off. If I had the mask off, I could just be me. I could tell him some stupid lie, but I’m coated in this awful-smelling cologne that he’d recognize instantly, since I rarely wear any smells that could worsen my headaches.
I slowly turn to him with my hands in the air as I think. Do I reveal myself and plead my way out of it? Beg him to understand? Pretend I have no idea what he’s doing or why I’m wearing a mask?
He puts a thumb on his transceiver. “I need—”
“Wait!” I say before he can call for backup.
He hesitates and I wonder if he recognizes my voice as well. He must because he seems to forget his procedure and reaches out and tears the mask off me, pulling some hair with it. “River?” he asks, the look on his face gutting me.
“I can explain, I swear I can explain,” I say before shoving him and running for my car. It’s not the smartest of moves but I’m blind in this moment because all I can think of is the way he said my name and the look on his face. All I can think about is how much I betrayed him. How much I ruined everything. I’m filled with this ridiculous notion that if I just get away, it’ll all be okay. When I reach the car, he seems to have snapped out of it and grabs me, pinning me against the side of the vehicle.
“River, tell me what the fuck is happening. Have you been using me? Did you think you could get info from me or something?”
I shake my head, devastated he’d think I was using him. Honestly, I didn’t even realize he’d come to that conclusion and it guts me. “No! Of course not! I didn’t know you were part of the VRC. I can explain. Please!”
His face tightens and I can tell he’s shutting me out. “No,” he says. “Stop talking. You’re under arrest.”
He’s unfocused, unraveled, and it shows when he doesn’t manage to stop me as I pull the needle I’d drawn up for Dansby out of my pocket and slam it into his side, pushing the plunger down. “What the hell did you do?” he asks as he jerks back. It’s like it wasn’t enough for me to deceive him, now I’m doing this too.
“It’ll just make you sleep,” I say. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I know it can’t make up for any of this, but there’s a reason. I swear there’s a reason to all of this.”
He slumps against the car as he watches me with clear devastation on his face.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper as I pull the car door open and shove him inside, quickly shutting off his body cam and removing his phone and radio and tossing them into the ditch. The moment his body is crammed into the back seat, I throw the car in drive and hurry off, questioning what I’m doing. I’m so stupid. Why did I take him with me? Why didn’t I leave him and go into hiding?
What have I done?
I’m going to be in so much trouble when Corbyn finds out.