Release Me When the Sun Goes Down Read online

  “Yes, miss,” Rob replied, absolutely straight faced. I stuck my tongue out at him. It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter Seven

  “So, all you gotta do is go up to the duty officer and ask to see the detective in charge of the case.” Mason dug around in the back of the van and came up with a couple of earpieces for us. The tiny comm device was small enough to fit completely into my ear, real spy stuff. How spiffy was that?

  He leaned over and slipped a necklace around my neck, the heart shaped pendant liberally coated with rhinestones and falling to rest right over my heart. “Here, with this I’ll be able to see everything you do as long as you don’t cross your arms.”

  “Thanks, it’s pretty.”

  “Don’t get too attached to it, I’ll need it back at the end of the night.” He switched on a monitor that showed the darkened van from the vantage point of my boobs. “Alrighty, I think we’re all set. Why don’t you kids hop outside and we’ll test the audio.”

  Rob had remained fairly quiet, and I got the feeling he still wasn’t too happy about my undertaking the mission myself, but he kept it to himself. We climbed out into the parking lot across the street from the police station, and I gave his hand a squeeze.

  “It’ll be alright,” I said softly.

  “Of course it will. You’re not going into enemy territory, it’s a police station for fuck’s sake,” Mason replied in our ears.

  “I understand that, but how are we supposed to find the specific detective we need? Go up and start asking about the recent murders?”

  “Pretty much. Go talk to the duty officer and tell him you have some juicy intel and they’ll put you right in touch with him. It’s as easy as lying.”

  “I’m a terrible liar,” I frowned, switching the comm to the left ear, which felt a lot more comfortable.

  “Pssht, no you’re not, you’ve been lying since the day you were turned. Now nut up and put your game face on and whatever you do…” Mason’s voice cut out, static making me wince.

  “What? What did you say?” Halfway across the street, I wasn’t sure if I should go back and find out what his important piece of information was or keep going. Either way, it didn’t bode well for the quality of the tech if it cut out so easily.

  Mason’s chuckle came through loud and clear. “Nothing, I’m just fucking with you. Trust me, most of these guys have more on their mind than trying to figure out if you’re supposed to be there or not.”

  “Wanker…” Rob muttered under his breath.

  “I heard that,” Mason replied, but Rob wasn’t the least bit sorry.

  “Good.”

  “Cut it out you two,” I intervened before they started bickering like kids. “This is serious business.”

  Striding in through the double doors like I had every right to be there, I bellied up to the counter where a uniformed cop sat typing into a computer, his head at an awkward angle as he balanced the handset of the phone on his shoulder. He barely glanced in our direction, ignoring my polite smile completely. Rob’s shoulders were bunched and tense, but I didn’t dare ask him what was up with Mason listening in.

  Finally, the duty officer looked up at us and I fixed him with my best smile. “Um, hi. We’re looking for the detective in charge of the recent killings in SoMa. We have some information for him.”

  The cop slid a dirty clipboard across the counter in my direction. “Sign in here and have a seat over there. I’ll put a call in to Detective Mathis and see if he’s available.”

  So far, so good. He hadn’t given us a second look and at least we knew the name of the detective in charge in case we had to track him down later. We took a seat and I resisted the urge to reach for Rob’s hand when I addressed him. “Actually, this is a good opportunity for us to work on your compulsion skills,” I said softly. “Why don’t you take over trying to get this Detective Mathis to cooperate with us?”

  Rob shifted in his chair. “You sure now’s the time for that?”

  “Sure it is. Better to try it now than when you’ve got someone bleeding in an alley. And I’ll be right here for back up if you completely blow it.”

  “Thanks,” he said dryly.

  “You know what I mean. Listen, it’s easy. Just focus on what you want. Catch his eyes and project it, it’s as simple as that. Don’t overthink it.”

  “Easy for you to say,” he muttered, hands rubbing against the tops of his thighs as if they’d grown clammy.

  “I know you’ll be great. I started doing it without even realizing it at first. It’s one of the easiest skills to master.”

  “She’s not wrong, buddy,” Mason echoed. “There’s nothing to it.”

  The door to the right of the counter opened, and I sat up straighter, my hands clenching into fists as I recognized Detective Lucas. What were the odds he’d show up right at the exact moment we happened to be there? Regardless of my instructions for Rob to take the lead, I was ready and primed to compel him if he showed the slightest flicker of recognition, but he kept on stepping, barely giving us a glance.

  Right on his heels came a smaller guy, a couple of inches taller than me with curly brown hair and deep set brown eyes. His posture wasn’t great, his back bowed slightly, which maybe lent to the idea that he wasn’t very tall. He wore a tan blazer over a green polo shirt with jeans, not very dressy, but then again, Detective Lucas had never dressed very formally either. His eyes darted everywhere at once until they came to a rest on me and then Rob respectively. He sniffed a couple of times before wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve. Super sexy.

  “Which one of you is Anja?” he said with a nervous titter, almost a giggle which felt completely out of place for a police station. He pronounced my name wrong with a hard J sound.

  Rob rose to his feet beside me, his face intently focused on the detective. “She is, but that ain’t your concern. You’ll be talking to me.”

  “Is that so?” Detective Mathis sounded dubious at best, the undercurrent of amusement still crinkling his eyes. “And who are you then?”

  “Not important,” Rob tried again. “Just need a moment of your time, mate. Take us on back where we can have a chat, yeah?”

  It wasn’t working, I could see that right off the bat and Rob’s jaw tightened with the effort of concentration. I stood to try and salvage the conversation, only then getting a whiff of what the problem was. “Oh hey… it’s no good,” I said, laying a hand on Rob’s arm before he lost his temper and tried smacking the guy.

  “I’m shit at this,” Rob growled, his nerves strung tight as a bow as the detective shook his head.

  “Jeez, it’s not that hard,” Mason butted in.

  “No, he’s a shifter,” I said quietly, even as Mathis let out a string of giggles.

  “You bloodsuckers never stop, do you? I mean, did it ever occur to you to just ask?”

  I kept my hand on Rob’s arm, tight enough to keep him from doing something risky. There was a good chance the waiting room we sat in was under video surveillance and popping a cop in the jaw wasn’t the right way to start the night. “I’m sorry, really I am. We wouldn’t even have tried it if it wasn’t a super big emergency.”

  Mathis stopped laughing, but the amusement lurked around his dark eyes as they swung to me. “I’m surprised to see you down here doing your own dirty work.”

  “You know me?” My brows rose in surprise.

  “Yeah, I tend to take notice of anyone in town who could squash my nuts in a vice if they decided to.”

  “I’m not all that into nut squashing…”

  “Usually you have your goons do the squashing to save the manicure, huh?” That tickled him enough to unleash more giggles, which was seriously starting to annoy me enough to think about letting Rob get in one pop.

  “I’m not sure you actually know who I am after all. I don’t have people squashed as a rule.”

  He leaned in closer, his voice dropping even though the duty officer continued to ignore us. “You�
�re the Elder, right? The Ellri’s favorite? I heard he sacrificed a dozen humans at your inauguration in your honor.”

  “It was only three people and I didn’t want him to sacrifice anybody, I swear. Okay, I feel like we’re getting off topic here.” I tried to take control of the conversation again. “Is there someplace more private we can continue this discussion at?”

  “That depends, do you actually have information on the deaths in SoMa?”

  “Yes, we do.” Not a lie… we did have an idea who was behind them, but that was about it. Nevertheless, it was enough to get us into the precinct and past the warren of desks to a corner of the office, where he dragged over a couple of metal chairs. Only a few of the desks in the bullpen were occupied at that hour, and thankfully, none of them too close.

  “So, what’s the deelio, yo?” Mathis asked, kicking back with his feet on the edge of the desk.

  Rob took a seat beside me, content to be the strong and silent type after the sting of failure over the compulsion. I ignored his bruised feelings for the moment, there would be time to soothe them later. “If you thought having an Ellri in town was bad, try two, both hell-bent on destroying each other and not giving a damn about collateral damage. That’s what this mess in SoMa is about. They got into a big old grudge match and had to recharge between bouts.”

  His feet came down from the desk as he leaned forward. “Two Ellri? Shit, a month ago I thought they were nothing more than bullshit campfire stories and now we’ve got two of them running loose in the city? You really are bad news.”

  “Me?” I squeaked. “How is this my fault?”

  “Before you came along, this was a pretty quiet town vamp-wise. You guys stayed in your haunts, we stayed in ours. Now we got the council relocating up here, vampires blowing shit up and calling it gang violence, the Order’s suddenly got their thumbs up their asses…”

  “I put a stop to that.”

  “Which part, the violence or the thumbs up their asses?” he giggled, and I didn’t even bother to answer beyond a roll of the eyes. “Yeah still, it’s getting so a shifter can’t scratch his balls without attracting the wrong kind of attention.”

  “Then maybe you should think about scratching your balls in private.” My nose wrinkled with distaste at that mental image. “Look, the point is, there is another Ellri in town and that means we’re dealing with twice the trouble.”

  “Okay, so what do you need from me?”

  “A couple of things, actually. We need to know as much information as possible about these recent deaths in particular to try and extrapolate where they might be holed up.”

  “Then you’re not here just to cover it up?”

  “No, that’s part of it, of course, but mostly we need to track them down.”

  “I thought you were Jakob’s pet. How come you don’t know where he is?”

  I ignored the dig, he raised a valid point. “I’m not sure. He might be lying low because he’s wounded, or he’s trying to keep me safe… or he might be dead.”

  “So that would mean your problem’s cut in half. What’s the big deal then?”

  “Because that would mean that Lodinn is still in the area and that’s a bad thing, trust me.”

  “I make it a point not to trust vamps in general.”

  “Fine then, don’t trust me, but like you said, things have gotten more out of control since one Ellri showed up. With Lodinn on the scene, it’s only going to get worse.”

  “One original bloodsucker is as bad as the other to me,” Mathis said. “Why do you need to find this Lodinn so bad?

  I exchanged looks with Rob and he gave a slight nod, just as Mason said in my ear, “I think you should tell him. Family’s a big thing to the pack.”

  “Because Lodinn’s got my sister and I want her back.”

  Instead Mathis merely shrugged. “I think it’s already too late for your sister if she’s caught an Ellri’s eye.”

  “No, see, he’s only got her as a hold over me, which in turn is to piss off Jakob.”

  “Which is exactly why I stay out of this shit. This isn’t the old country, we’re not bound to you in servitude. You guys can kill each other off for all I care, leave me out of it.”

  He had a point. It wasn’t like Vetis where they pressed the weres into service, but I also knew we hired them as trackers from time to time, so relations between shifters and vamps couldn’t be all that bad. Maybe he had his own prejudices? I had to try to appeal to his sense of decency and justice. He was a cop after all, he had to care about something.

  “But it’s the humans that suffer, don’t you care about them? My sister’s human too, just like all the people he’s burning through like they’re nothing. Lodinn has to be stopped.”

  Mathis hesitated, the plea to end human suffering obviously striking a chord with him, but in the end he shook his head. “I don’t know anyone nuts enough to go after an Ellri, shifter or vamp.”

  “Come on, no one would ever know you helped us. Ask yourself, what would you do if it was your sister? What if Lodinn took one of your pack?” I was prepared to compel him if I had to, but I could see him thinking about it.

  Mason must’ve been thinking the same thing as his voice came over the comm. “Oh, would you just compel him already and be done with it, sis? You’re wasting time.”

  “That won’t work on me, you can tell your buddy that,” Mathis replied with a smug smile.

  “You heard that?” My brows rose in respect for the heightened senses that rivaled our own. “He’s right though, I could compel you at any time.”

  “You can’t compel shifters, everyone knows that.”

  “She can,” Rob chipped in with a smug smile of his own. “Want her to prove it?”

  “That’s not true, is it?” His eyes darted nervously back to me.

  “Yep, I’m afraid so. It’s one of the perks of having an Ellri for a Sire. If you want to talk about trust, we should start with that. I could’ve bulldozed my way in here and made you dance a jig if I’d wanted to. Instead I did you the courtesy of discussing this like adults.”

  He mulled that over, trying to decide if he could take me at my word and I decided to push a little. “You can call Brody at the Vetis House and ask him if you don’t believe me, or I could always give you a personal demonstration if you’d rather.”

  “Yeah, alright, alright, what do you need to know?” Mathis scowled, leaning back in his chair again.

  We spent the next half hour poring over a map as he went through the bare bones of the cases reported in the past twenty-four hours. There were a couple of hot spots where multiple bodies were found, but there were also several other deaths that might be ascribed to either Ellri, spread out enough to muddy the waters. Mason’s voice in my ear made it hard to concentrate sometimes, but he did help steer us in the right direction, asking questions that never would’ve occurred to me.

  One disturbing fact surfaced, a majority of the deaths featured complete or partial decapitation. Not by a blade or discernable weapon, but as if they’d been torn free. On the one hand, it obscured the cause of death from the traditional fang marks at the throat, but it did garner a lot of attention, which was bad, very bad.

  So far Mathis had done his best to keep any supernatural theories from surfacing, fearing involvement from the shifter community. But it was only a matter of time before it got escalated out of his hands unless they brought the killer to justice or the killings stopped. I didn’t know enough about police procedure to offer any suggestions, but Mason had enough feedback for me to hand over the ear piece, content to let him talk to Mathis directly while I figured out our next move with Rob.

  If we divided up the area and combined resources with the Order, we might be able to find one or both of them. I only hoped the decapitations were Lodinn’s doing and the pattern led us to him and Hanna. But how well did I truly know Jakob? He was capable of sacrificing human life for nothing more than a show of power. Wasn’t it possible he’d react with
extreme violence when in a rage? Didn’t he view people as little more than cattle?

  After brainstorming for a while, Rob offered to call in a few favors to increase the area we could search before sunrise and excused himself to make a few phone calls.

  Mathis laughed on his end of the conversation with Mason. “Maybe we should grab a beer sometime and you can show me,” he said before giggling again. “Eat me. Yeah, well, I don’t drink with bloodsuckers either.”

  “Ah, excuse me, Detective?” I interrupted before it disintegrated into little more than name calling and insults. “I know you guys are having fun hitting it off, but there’s this one teency other thing I need to ask you for.”

  Mathis sobered, his mouth falling open in a snort. “Why do I get the feeling you’re about to squash my nuts for reals?”

  What was with his obsession with squashed nuts? “I need my earpiece back and access to your server room for like ten minutes.”

  “What do you need to get in there for?” he asked, instantly suspicious. Mason must have said something in his ear because he spoke again before I could reply. “I don’t know about that, the door logs every entry and I have no reason to go in there.”

  “But how often are those logs even reviewed?” I asked. “It’s not like I’m sabotaging anything, no one will even know I was in there.”

  “Jeez, I don’t know. I could get into serious trouble for this,” he hesitated, scratching at the scruff on his jaw.

  “If you do, give me a call and I’ll smooth it over.” I gave him my best smile until I saw his shoulders slump in defeat.

  “Yeah, okay, give it to me, but you stay here. No one’s likely to check the log, but they might notice if I take you back to a restricted area.”

  I handed over the piece of tech Mason had given me, trusting him to walk the detective through what needed to be done. Rob came back a minute later and I filled him in on Mathis’ part in the rest of our mission.

  “I don’t trust that man,” Rob said with a scowl, shifting on the uncomfortable metal chair. “He sounds like a bloody hyena half the time.”