Angels of Darkness

tiny, bare kitchen. A bucket of cleaning supplies sat on the counter. No plates, pans, or evidence of food. There never was in a vampire’s house. Marc’s psychic sweep pushed against her shields.
    â€œDo you sense anyone?”
    She sent out her own soft probe, searching for any sign of life. “Nothing.”
    â€œThey sleep in the basement.” He entered the hallway leading to the front of the home, passing a bathroom, an empty bedroom. He paused at the edge of the living room, vanished his sword. “God damn it.”
    Oh. Radha stopped next to him, her breath escaping on a long, heavy sigh. A woman lay between the end of a sofa and the low coffee table, eyes open, her features already locked in the waxy rigidity of death. Middle-aged, dressed in khaki pants, tennis shoes, and yellow latex gloves, she looked like a housewife going about her daily routine. Blood stained the beige carpet beneath her head, a dark pool that must have been congealing for at least a few hours.
    As Marc started toward the body, Radha glanced around the room. Nothing broken, nothing disturbed. The front door hadn’t been forced. The heavy drapes over the south-facing picture window were wide open. Strange, that. She didn’t know any vampires who weren’t careful about closing each curtain in the house every morning, even if they slept in a windowless room. Frowning, she walked around the sofa—stopped behind it. Oh, no.
    â€œMarc.”
    Crouched beside the woman, he looked up. “What did you find?”
    â€œVampire ash. Two piles, I think. Jewelry.” She bent, sifted through the sandy remains, selected a man’s signet ring and showed it to him. “Did Bronner wear this?”
    Jaw clenching, Marc nodded.
    â€œA woman’s ring is here, too. A set of earrings. No clothes.” Sick to her stomach, she glanced toward the center of the living room again. Hairs and blood clung to the nearest corner of the coffee table. “What happened here? Did this woman drag them up here into the sun, and then . . . trip? Hit her head?”
    â€œI don’t think so.” He slid up the woman’s short sleeves, revealing the faint discoloration ringing her upper arms. “I think she was grabbed, pushed.”
    Pushed. Not the most efficient way of killing someone. Her gaze settled on the woman’s gloves, and she recalled the cleaning supplies in the kitchen. “Maybe she was here to work and surprised someone. But when? A demon couldn’t have done this to her, not without Deacon and Rosalia being called to slay him—and you’d have sensed them coming.”
    If not a demon, then a vampire or a human. Vampires didn’t have to follow the Rules forbidding demons from killing humans, though most knew better than to try. And in many vampire communities, leadership was determined by strength; Guardians didn’t interfere with vampire power struggles. If another vampire wanted to take Bronner’s place, no Guardian would slay the vampire for killing him. Marc and Radha would slay any vampire who killed a human, however.
    But if she’d been killed after the sun had risen, a vampire couldn’t have done it.
    Gently, Marc tested the woman’s joints. “She’s cold, and almost in full rigor. At least this morning, maybe earlier.”
    So maybe a vampire, maybe not.
    He rose to his feet. “Stay here, make sure no one sees anything through the windows. I’ll check out the basement.”
    It only took him a few moments. Radha had time to vanish all of the ash and jewelry into her psychic storage before he returned, his mouth a tight line of frustration.
    â€œBlood on the bed, the stairs. They were killed down there, dragged up here—the blood trail down the hall was ashed by the sun. The basement door locks from the inside. A reinforced door and lock, but it was bashed down. A human couldn’t have done that. Most vampires couldn’t. You or I could.”
    â€œAnd a demon could,” Radha finished for him. When he nodded, she said, “Do we contact the other vampires in the community, tell them about Bronner?”
    â€œNot yet. You vanished the ash?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œGood. I left the blood. There’s nothing in the DNA that looks different from a human’s, and if a human did this, maybe there’s a fingerprint, a hair, or something for the courts to nail them with. Did you touch