Violets Are Blue

start.”
    “That’s excellent,” Michael said, and he smiled. “I enjoyed what went down there very much. Who are these people, the ones in the big fancy house up there?”
    William shrugged. “Just prey. They’re nobody.”
    Michael pouted. “Why won’t you tell me who they are?”
    “The Sire said not to talk, and not to bring the cat.”
    Michael asked no further questions. His obedience to the Sire was complete.
    The Sire told you how to think, feel, and act.
    The Sire was accountable to no one, to no other authority.
    The Sire despised the straight world, as did they.
    This definitely looked like the “straight world” up ahead. The large house had all the trappings: gardens tended and watered daily, a small pond filled with koi, several layers of terraces leading up to a large house with more than a dozen rooms — for just two people. How obnoxious could anyone be?
    William walked right in the front door, and Michael followed. The foyer had twenty-foot ceilings, a ridiculous crystal chandelier, a spiral staircase to heaven.
    They found the couple in the kitchen, making a late meal, both of them sharing the preparations like the goody-goodies that they were.
    “Yuppies at play,” William said, and smiled.
    “Whoa!” the male said, and threw up both of his hands. He was close to six-four and well built. He was working like kitchen help at the vegetable sink.
    “What the hell do you guys think you’re doing? Let’s take it outside.”
    “
You’re
the troublemaking lawyer,” William said, and pointed at the female. She was early thirties, short blond hair, high cheekbones, slender, with small breasts. “We came for supper.”
    “I’m a lawyer too,” the domineering male said. “I don’t think you two were invited. I’m sure of it. Get out! You hear me? Hey, you assholes, hit the road.”
    “You threatened the Sire.” William continued to talk to the female. “So he sent us here.”
    “Arthur, I’m going to call the police,” the woman finally said. She was upset now, the nubs of her breasts rising and falling against her shirt. She had a small cell phone in her hand, and William wondered if she had pulled it out of her ass. The thought made him smile.
    He was on her in an instant, and Michael took down the husband almost as easily. The brothers were incredibly fast and strong, and they knew it.
    They growled loudly, but that was only a scare tactic.
    “We have money in the house. My God, don’t hurt us,” the male shrieked loudly, almost like a woman.
    “We’re not after your obscene money — we have no use for it. And we’re not serial killers or anything common like that,” William told them.
    He bit down into the struggling woman’s luscious pink neck — and she stopped fighting. Just like that, she was his. She gazed into his eyes and she swooned. A tear ran down her cheek.
    William didn’t look up again until he had fed. “We’re vampires,” he finally whispered to the murdered couple.

Chapter 12

    ON MY second day in San Francisco, I worked out of a small cubicle near Jamilla Hughes’s desk at the Hall of Justice. I attended a couple of her briefings on the Golden Gate Park murders, which were thorough and highly professional. She was impressive.
    Everything about the murder case was weird and wrong-headed, though. No one had a fix on it yet; no one had a good idea, at least none that I’d heard so far. The only thing we knew for sure was that people were being murdered in particularly horrible ways. It happens more and more frequently these days.
    Around noon, I got a call on my cell phone. “Just checking in,” the Mastermind said. “How is San Francisco, Alex? Lovely city. Will you leave your heart there? Do you think it’s a good place to die?
    “Or how about Inspector Hughes? Do you like her? She’s very pretty, isn’t she? Just your type. Are you going to fuck Jamilla? Better
hurry
, then.
Tempus fugit
.” He hung up.
    I went back to work. Lost myself for a couple of hours. Began to make some minor progress.
    Around four o’clock, I was staring out at the start of rush hour, San Francisco style — pretty mild, actually — while I talked to Kyle Craig. He was still at Quantico, but he was definitely heavily involved in the case.
    Kyle was in a position to choose the cases he became personally connected with, and he told me this was going to be one of them. We’d be working together again. I looked forward to it.
    I caught a movement out of