Elemental Assassin 01 - Spider's Bite

bodies inside the nightclub.
    “This way,” I said.
    The detective fell in step beside me. He’d dampened down his earlier anger at Stephenson, although his mouth was set into a hard, determined line. He reached behind him, drew his gun from the small of his back, and held the weapon down by his side. “How do you want to do this?”
    “No need for a gun yet, detective. You and Finn hang back,” I replied. “I’ll approach Carlyle and subdue him. That way, he only sees me if something untoward should happen.”
    Donovan nodded. “All right.”
    The BMW was parked right where Finn said it would be. Hard to miss, really, since the vanity plate on the front read CHUCKEC. Donovan ducked down in the shadows behind a car a few feet over. I slid behind an SUV on the other side of the BMW and peered through the driver’s side window.
    Getting close to midnight now, and the air had taken on the sharp chill of fall. The music of the club pulsated outside, and I could hear the vibrations whispering in the concrete under my boots. Classic murmurs of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. A few smokers stood in a cluster two hundred feet away, puffing on who knew what. But other than that, the parking lot was deserted. Everybody was still inside, getting their groove on for the evening.
    I palmed one of my knives, hilt out, and started counting off seconds in my head. Ten … twenty … forty-five …
    Two minutes later, Charles Carlyle strolled around the side of the building. He walked with quick, purposeful steps. The confident stride of a man who thinks he’s got everything figured out. That the world was his cherry to pop. Still, he cast a cursory look around, the way anyone would when walking through a dark area at night.
    But he didn’t see me. They never did, until it was too late. I smiled. Poor Chuck. I almost felt sorry for him. Until I thought about Fletcher.
    I looked, but I didn’t see Finn trailing the vampire. Finn could blend in with the shadows too, when he put his mind to it.
    Carlyle walked closer, passing the car Donovan Caine crouched behind. The vampire whistled a soft tune and jingled his car keys in his fingers. He hit a button, and the lights on the BMW flashed once, disabling the alarm and unlocking the doors. Time for me to make my move.
    I tiptoed out from behind the back of the SUV and approached Carlyle. The vampire had just hooked his fingers underneath the door handle to pull it open when I called out to him.
    “Excuse me, sugar,” I drawled in a soft voice. “Do you have a light? I seem to have misplaced mine. Can’t put a damn thing in the pockets of this miniskirt.”
    Carlyle turned toward the sound of my voice, a smile already forming on his face. I quickened my steps, getting into position. I didn’t look like he expected me to, and he frowned, suddenly suspicious.
    “Who the hell are you—”
    I might have been concerned, if I hadn’t already used the hilt of my knife to coldcock him. The vampire blinked once before his eyes rolled up into the back of his head, and he pitched face-first onto the concrete. To my right, Donovan Caine stepped out from the shadows. Finn appeared from my left.
    “Come on.” I leaned down and grabbed the vampire under his arms. “Help me get this blood-sucking bastard into the trunk.”
    An hour later, I threw a pitcher of ice water onto Charles Carlyle’s face. The cold shocked the vampire back into consciousness. So did the two hard slaps I laid across his cheeks. The stinging sensation in my palm felt good. Finally, I was doing something about Fletcher’s murder, taking the initiative, instead of reacting to others.
    “Wakey, wakey, Chuck,” I said. “Time to rise and shine and spill your guts.”
    The vampire’s eyes blinked several times in rapid succession before focusing on me and his surroundings. After loading Chuck into the trunk of our stolen car, we’d driven to the vampire’s home in one of the suburbs on the edge of Northtown, the address Finn had found while digging for info. Nice place. Split-level ranch house, big yard, pool in the back. Being an executive vice president at Halo Industries, even in name only, paid better than I’d thought. So did being the Air elemental’s right-hand man.
    Finn, Donovan, and I had let ourselves into the house and dragged Carlyle along with us. Now the three of us stood in what passed for a game room—plasma television bolted to one wall, pool table in the corner, stacks of porn