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  Until Lucius asked permission a few days ago to check it for long-forgotten treasure, she thought.

  She tried a new line of questioning on the elderly couple. Had the Luslows seen anyone in their yard or in the woods behind their house this spring?

  Chester gave her the kind of snort that old people did so well. It was the kind of sound that implied you hadn’t lived on this earth very long. “Well, sure, Sheriff. They’re always folks in the woods. People looking for mushrooms, wildflowers, hunters, kids with their dogs, all sorts.”

  Shelby ignored the mild censure. She asked about construction or repairs on the house. Had any workmen been out lately?

  “Well, let’s see . . .” said Chester, rubbing his chin.

  His wife spoke up. “We had the roof repaired on the back porch. You know, with the winter we had and all the snow . . .”

  Chester interrupted. “The sheriff doesn’t care about the snow, Lattie. Tuxbridge Construction came out to do the roof in May. We also had a new well put in. Weldon Pump and Well Service.”

  Shelby made some notes in her memo book and glanced at the doctor. He was staring at her. At least she thought he was staring. With the dark glasses it was hard to be sure. How can he see what he’s doing in the dark with those glasses? “Excuse me, folks.”

  She strode over to the doctor. “Well? Got anything for me?”

  He shook his head. He had stripped off the protective suit and gloves and swept a hand over his head, trying to brush the loose hair out of his face. It flopped back. “Not yet. Have a look.”

  She crouched and shined her light on the body, but the features were long past being recognizable.

  The doctor squatted next to her, too close for comfort. “Hasn’t been here very long. With this heat, not more than two or three weeks. No ID. Somebody was thorough and cleaned out all his pockets before dumping him in the hole. Male Caucasian, fairly young, five-seven, about one hundred thirty pounds. No visible trauma. Do you have some sort of transfer company to transport the body?”

  She nodded and looked at the doctor’s face, but he was still gazing at the corpse. The doctor’s skin looked dreadfully pallid by the light of the lantern and flashlights. Surely a medical examiner wouldn’t be bothered by a sight like this? But if he was any more pale, he’d be green. Maybe it was just a trick of the lantern light. A drop of sweat gathered at one temple and crept down the side of his face. He didn’t bother to wipe it away.

  She had to remind herself he had asked her a question. “Yeah. They should be here any minute now. Did you get everything you need?”

  Finally he looked at her.

  He might be white as a sail, but she felt her face flush. “The victim information, I mean.”

  It bothered her that she couldn’t see his eyes. Using dark glasses to hide their eyes was an old cop trick, but even cops didn’t normally wear tinted lenses at night. She didn’t like having the tables turned on her, not even by a citizen on her side of the law. She felt a trickle of sweat run down her spine, and she had the equally uncomfortable sensation that his gaze was likewise crawling down her body.

  “For now.” His throaty voice was soft, making his answer more a sound than words. He unfolded to his full height with the ease of one who had never known knee problems. Yet the doctor had an athlete’s body. Either he didn’t go in for sports, or he was lucky and had never been injured. Shelby was jealous. Her own knees ached like the devil when she squatted.

  She stood up and stepped back from the body, drawing a deep lungful of air with the realization that she had hardly breathed at all while hunkered down on the ground. “Good. You know the body’ll go to Maritime. There’s no mortuary in Shadow Bay. Maritime County has the closest facilities.”

  He nodded, still gazing at her. She couldn’t see behind the glinting gray lenses, but the goose bumps on her arms told her in no uncertain terms that his eyes were still on her.

  He cleared his throat. “So I’ve been told. It’s no problem. It’s what, a thirty-mile drive?” His voice was still husky.

  “Thirty-five. Excuse me. I need to interview our friend Digger.” She strode to where Lucius waited patiently, glad to get away from the doctor’s unnerving presence.

  Lucius was in his forties, but reminded Shelby of a kid who refused to grow up. He wore glasses, a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, and long hair that covered the back of his shirt collar. Hardly Indiana Jones, but she knew Digger was just as passionate about his digs and proud of his finds.

  “Okay, Lucius, tell me what happened tonight.”

  “Well, when I talked to Chester he told me there was a hole by the woods. I didn’t see no hole, but what looked like a newly filled hole. My probe showed soft ground, but I could tell something was in there, and it weren’t no rocks or bottles.”

  She nodded absently to encourage him further. “What time did you get here this evening?”

  “About eight thirty. All I was gonna do today was locate the hole. I was gonna come back tomorrow morning to do the digging. But when the probe found something, I got curious.” Lucius shook his head. “I’ve found animal skeletons before, but I never thought to find no human corpse.”

  “Then what did you do, Lucius?”

  “I went and told Chester, but he didn’t believe me. He came to take a look-see for himself. When he saw I wasn’t making up a story, he called for you guys.”

  She heard a car engine on the road below. “That should be the transfer boys. I’ll be back.” She jogged down the driveway to direct them to the body. She greeted them as they drew a portable gurney from the rear of their hearse.

  “Hey, guys. The body’s in the back yard. The new ME, Dr. De Chaux, is up there waiting.”

  Not prone to small talk, they saluted as they extended the legs on the gurney and maneuvered it up the drive.

  Shelby stepped over to Marc Montoya, who was standing next to the red motorcycle. Marc was tall, muscular, and his dark hair was worn longer than that of any of her other deputies. Swept behind his ears, it fingered the collar of his uniform shirt. It was quite a bit cleaner-looking and neater than Digger’s hair, but too long for regulations. Shelby forced herself to ignore how good he looked, and instead lodged a mental reminder to tell him later he would have to get it trimmed soon.

  He tilted his chin toward the house. “So who’s dead?”

  She raised her brows. “It’s a John Doe. Male, short and slight. Any local missings ring a bell with that?”

  “Nope.”

  She sighed. “We’ll check statewide. Someone’ll match. The body isn’t more than a month old.”

  Marc nodded, then cocked his head at the motorcycle. “Whose bike?”

  “Our new ME, Dr. De Chaux.”

  Marc laughed. “You’re kidding. This is a Peugeot, at least forty years old, I figure. I’ve never seen one like it. Quite a restoration job.”

  She peered at the bike. It had wide flared red fenders, a small gray leather seat, and gray and chrome trim. “Forty years old? Christ, the doctor isn’t even that old.”

  Marc snorted. “Really? Think he’s ever seen a dead body before?”

  Of that she had no doubt. Shelby thought about the doctor’s pale complexion and the sweat that had trailed down his face and knew those had nothing to do with either lack of experience or squeamishness. In spite of the doctor’s youth, there was a strange aura of age clinging to him. Maybe it was the confident stride or the coolness in his throaty voice, but Shelby had the distinct feeling that the doctor knew his business. “Yeah, I think he knows what he’s doing.”

  “I hear a ‘but’ in there. So what do you think of him?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. He’s . . .” She hesitated, unable to think of the right word. “. . . strange.”

  Marc shrugged. “He works with dead bodie
s. What do you expect? As long as he knows his job. You going to be all right?”

  “Sure.” But she didn’t feel the confidence of the assurance. An unsolved homicide would bring not only negative publicity, but pressure on her and her whole department. Cristallia County was a modest resort area, but fishing, boating, skiing, and the natural beauty of the land were drawing more and more seasonal and full-time residents.

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “No. We don’t exactly have a hot trail to follow. Unfortunately, it’s going to be up to Dr. De Chaux to come up with something for us to use.”

  “De Chaux? French?”

  She rolled a shoulder, trying to relax the tired kinks in her muscles. “I don’t know. I suppose so.”

  “Peugeot. French bike.”

  She stared at the rearing lion logo on the bike’s gas tank. Shelby fervently hoped that Doc French was up to helping her solve what she was sure the news media would quickly dub the “privy hole murder.”

  RICARD DE CHAUX followed the red taillights of the hearse as it wove northward over the two-lane highway to the city of Maritime. In spite of his modest speed on the winding, hilly road, the warm wind buffeted him, whipping his hair behind him and stinging his face. He was used to riding the bike at night though, and neither the breeze nor the snaking road bothered him in the least. He had bigger problems to worry about.

  The last thing that Ric had expected when he had answered his phone this evening was to be called to a homicide.

  The small community of Cristallia County had had lots of enticements for an Undead creature like himself. He had been searching for a tiny, out-of-the-way corner of the world to test the waters of human interaction. Shadow Bay was indeed small, but the big lure with the shiny hook had been the postcard tranquility of the town and the surrounding countryside. It wasn’t the kind of tourist trap that drew huge crowds, yet the beauty of the forests, dunes, lakes, and rivers attracted the well-to-do, and a variety of recreational activities kept the town alive. Ric wasn’t quite ready to resign himself to spending eternity in some forgotten backwater settlement on the verge of becoming a ghost town, but neither had he expected to be thrown into the human spotlight his very first week on the job. Not in so tiny a town. The population of Shadow Bay hovered around 420. The official Undead community had just increased from six to seven. And the newly dead numbered one.

  He had petitioned for the appointment of medical examiner mostly to keep his credentials up-to-date, but also to bring in a little extra money. He didn’t need money himself, but it always befitted a good Overlord to have an emergency fund for his charges. Easy money, he had thought. No homicides and only the occasional simple death-from-natural-causes of an elderly resident. It wasn’t that he lacked the experience to deal with the uncommon. On the contrary. He had four lifetimes of knowledge, skill, and practice to draw from.

  No, the unpleasant surprise was only at being drawn into the glare of public scrutiny. It was the one thing that the Undead strove to avoid above all else.

  The second surprise in a small town of sportsmen and retirees was a tall, slim, very female sheriff with hair that vied with the scent of her blood for richness and intensity. At first he had thought her to be a brunette, but under the brilliance of the backyard floodlights he had seen that her hair was red—not a coppery tiger-red, but a deep auburn like the finest Bordeaux from his homeland. Her hair was pulled into a twist at the back of her head, but long bangs and strays at her temples framed features that were fine but not fragile, delicate but not dainty.

  Ric didn’t often pursue human females. Given his own way, he wouldn’t have anything to do with humans at all beyond that which was necessary for his survival. It wasn’t that he had the typical vampiric disdain for creatures that the Undead considered as lesser beings. Quite the contrary. He saw humans as more than just victims. They were cohabitants of the Earth and the majority in number, if not in power and strength.

  No, his aversion to humans had more to do with his final days among their number and the memories those days still wrought. As a result, he had spent almost his entire existence away from mortals and the haunting images they triggered. But, safe as he had been in France, being buried forever with the dead and the Undead had been slowly killing him. His kind, like it or not, needed life to survive. And life meant humans. So, however reluctantly, he had accepted the fact not so very long ago that the only way to endure was to shed his alter ego le docteur la mort, Doctor Death, and venture back into the world of the living.

  And females, he had found, were the most difficult to deal with, as well as having the most to offer. The game of seduction was one he had relatively little experience with, yet to play a role based more on reality than fantasy was dangerous. Reality meant running the risk of revealing his true self, and with revelation came fear, hatred, and persecution. And whichever side of the coin he flipped—fantasy or reality—there was always the danger of stirring those memories from two centuries ago that were better left undisturbed.

  The only problem with his self-imposed abstinence was that when he did meet a female who attracted him, the beast deep within him, so long denied, rose with a vengeance. When he had crouched beside the sheriff to view the corpse, it had been all he could do to keep his mind, if not his body, from reaching out to touch her. Loose strands of garnet-red hair were lifted by the breeze and wafted toward him, and the thin sheen of sweat on her face made her features glow with life, but those were nothing compared to the scent and beat of her blood. The heat of the evening air, as with perfume, enhanced the fragrance of her lifeblood and freed it, so that it not only filled his nostrils and throat with its unique tang of sweetness and purity, but crawled over his skin like a thing alive.

  He had quickly risen to try to distance himself from her, and she had backed away from him as well, seemingly as uncomfortable with him as he was with her. He hadn’t been surprised at her reaction to him. As much as he tried to disguise what he was behind a mild manner and tinted glasses, perceptive humans who got too physically close to him usually felt something they couldn’t identify, but which nevertheless made them feel uneasy. He was glad the sheriff had felt it. Perhaps it would discourage more contact than was absolutely necessary for the execution of their respective jobs. He didn’t need the spider web he’d surely be venturing into if he became involved in a relationship with Shelby Cort.

  He was already courting far too much danger and trouble in dealing with this homicide.

  SEVEN HOURS LATER Ric was back home, his hair loose and his glasses off, slumped in a chair amongst the unpacked boxes like just another inanimate object requiring attention. He was tired, but his enervation was more from his disturbing finds than from the long hours. He had taken x-rays and performed chemical tests on the remaining soft tissue of the body. Luckily the x-rays showed a blunt trauma to the skull, a convincing and true enough cause of death for the official reports. Not so lucky was his second major finding. Chemical analysis showed that the body had been drained of blood at the time of death.

  Any other doctor might have been puzzled by this finding, but not Ric. Still, understanding made it no less easier to bear. He would have to call his adjutant, Judson Tuxbridge, and arrange for an emergency council meeting for the following evening. It would be far from the typical first meeting a new Overlord might expect, full of welcomes, introductions, and promises for the future. No, this was going to be a hell of a first meeting for the new Overlord of Cristallia County, for there was a very good chance that one of his new charges was not playing by the rules.

  For it was clear to Ric that the privy hole killer was, like himself, one of the Undead.

  Two

  RIC KNEW A GOOD second-in-command was a boon to an Overlord. The position was a combination of administrative assistant, Girl Friday, and sergeant at arms. The best were prompt, accurate, efficient, and above all, always back
ed their Overlord regardless of personal feelings. These were the true adjutants. The worst were no better than lackeys driven by baseness and greed. Such assistants often found themselves referred to as jackals by a local council’s members. In a society where deception and dissimulation ruled all, to be labeled with such honest disregard was a true insult.

  Ric didn’t yet know which category Judson Tuxbridge fell into. He had met the man only once during the past week, and though Ric had been favorably impressed, he knew better than to be swayed by a first impression. He had had lots of adjutants during his stint as Coterie Paramount in France, ruling all the Undead in the region of Champagne-Ardenne, but he hadn’t trusted any of them.

  Trust was as dangerous to his kind as a kiss of silver. Alliances and vows of loyalty, sealed with toasts of blood in lead crystal goblets, were all well and good, but his survival, as well as that of his charges, depended solely on Ric’s leadership. And leadership meant he had to establish his base of power right away.

  He called Tuxbridge. The sun was just readying its launch into the new day, but Ric knew that Judson Tuxbridge, like himself, was a day vampire. He got an answering machine. It wasn’t unexpected. Even a day vamp had to sleep sometime, and early morning was normally the time that Ric himself slept. Even so, the knowledge failed to take the edge off Ric’s voice as he left his message.

  “Tuxbridge, it’s De Chaux. If you listen to the news or read the paper you’ll know what happened last night. Call me as soon as you get this message. I’m calling an emergency council meeting for tonight. Everyone attends—no exceptions.” He left his cell phone number then disconnected.

  Tuxbridge operated a construction company, so Ric anticipated getting the return call well before noon. Getting a few hours of sleep himself would be a good idea. He had reports to finish, his autopsy to complete, and he’d have to meet with the sheriff to relay his findings regarding the homicide. Lying to humans in one form or another was as natural to the Undead as taking their blood for sustenance. Whether it was outright lies or merely allowing humans to see what they wanted to see, whether for purposes of entertainment or survival, it was always the same. Like the lion and gazelle that share the savanna, humans and the Undead coexisted, but there was an order to things, and humans, when needed, were to be used.