Blood Flame Read online

  Crescent Territory was home to the alter vampires, which meant all Crescent Border Patrol officers were vampires.

  Iris chuckled. She liked Faith. “You’re not being very politically correct. We’re supposed to honor all five species. Didn’t you get the memo?”

  “What-the-fuck-evuh. Do us proud. Got another call.”

  Iris put her phone back and started stripping off her smock. With her Sig Sauer clipped to her belt, she headed to her garage and revved up her TPS motorcycle. It was a big, heavy Harley-Davidson police cruiser, a bike fit for carting her around all five territories, including No Man’s Land. She wished she could fly like some of the more powerful vampire officers and a couple of the witches who served in Elegance’s Border Patrol. She didn’t have the gift of levitation, at least not yet. Maybe one day, if she lived long enough.

  But she liked the bike, even though it was more machine than she needed. Although, it worked well for the bigger male bodies on the TPS force.

  As she headed out, taking her quiet street at a low rumble, she wondered why she’d been called to Amado Bridge when there were at least a dozen witches and wizards on duty right now at the Trib station.

  ~ ~ ~

  Connor had a flame-runner in his sights, an emaciated female with the telltale marks of drug-use blazing on her neck. He could see the tattoo-like flames. Hers were dark red, so he knew which cocktail she’d been using to get her head swimming: blood flame.

  Because she was drug-running, he had every right as a Border Patrol officer to put a bullet in the back of her head. All three drug-lords preferred it as well. Prevented snitching.

  But he never pulled the trigger unless he knew exactly what he was dealing with. He’d learned his lesson the hard way. Guilt still clawed at him, ripping him apart on a nightly basis, even though the incident was over nine-years-old now. He shuddered as the memory tried to push to the front of his head, but he shoved it back.

  He levitated with long practice, his head bent slightly, arm raised as he gazed down his sights. Jesus, the woman was clawing her way up the steep side of the wash, weighed down by a loaded runner jacket. She must not have known the area.

  So what was she doing out here? Runners by occupation were sneaky bastards, using tunnels that often collapsed on them to get from the cordoned off area of Five Bridges to Phoenix. The flame drugs, as well as the alter serums that could be added to the drugs, had transformed a fifteen square mile section of North Phoenix into five territories, each partitioned from the next with barbed wire then separated from Phoenix in the same way. The National Guard patrolled the external border of the entire circumference of Five Bridges.

  He worked the internal border of Crescent Territory, trying to keep any of the numerous flame drugs from leaving Five Bridges.

  That same sick feeling crawled through his stomach again.

  He touched his shoulder com. “I’ve got eyes on the runner at Amado Bridge, but she’s a pretty weak female. Shall I bring her in?” Maybe Easton would want a say in this tonight.

  When he got no answer on his shoulder com, he tried again.

  And again.

  He’d been disconnected.

  Yeah. Something was off.

  The runner was the key. And like hell he was going to serve as some asshole’s assassin, even if it was Easton himself who wanted the woman dead.

  He holstered his gun and cursed. He needed to have a talk with her.

  Levitating swiftly, he shot through the air. Gauging the distance, he caught her jacket at the back of the neck and lifted her up. She screamed as he carried her flailing to the upper edge of the wash and flung her into the dirt.

  “What are you doing out here, runner?”

  The woman didn’t move. She lay face down, one hand digging into the weeds. Her head was inches away from a stand of prickly pear.

  She mumbled something, but he couldn’t hear her.

  “Say again? You sound like you have rocks in your mouth.”

  She lifted her head up. “Just kill us. We’ll both be better off.”

  “Us?” He drew his gun again, holding it in both hands. He bent his knees and pivoted in a 360. Nothing. Except a witch on the bridge watching him. He stopped the moment he saw the woman. Why was she there?

  Then he recognized the familiar dark ponytail. Holy fuck, it was Iris, but what was she doing on Amado Bridge?

  He turned his attention back to the runner. “I don’t see anyone else. Who’s ‘us’, Ma’am? You got someone out here running with you?”

  “Yes, but you’re looking in the wrong place.”

  She wasn’t making sense. Blood flame had no doubt screwed with her mind.

  “I’ll ask again; where’s your friend?”

  “Here.”

  Glancing down, he watched her turn on her side. She held her arm at the bottom of the coat, pressing it against her body.

  When he saw the bulge of her stomach, his mind flipped over several times. The memory he’d been trying to suppress shot forward once more of another woman running flame.

  Connor had killed her, shot her in the chest as she turned, gun in hand and pointed straight at him. He hadn’t hesitated.

  But the gun had been taped to her wrist and she couldn’t have fired it if she’d wanted to. A set-up.

  She’d also been pregnant, just like this one.

  Darkness swirled through his head, a familiar creeping of more regrets than any man should have to bear. He’d killed her and others equally as innocent over the years until his soul was as dark as night. The flame drugs had been at the bottom of it all. He’d gone through the change and become something he despised.

  “You gonna shoot, or what?”

  Coming back to himself, he shook his head then holstered his Glock.

  Five Bridges had worn him down to the marrow. But right now he knew something sinister was going on, directed at him and involving a drug addict lying in the dirt.

  He shifted toward Iris. Was she involved in some way? Had she set him up? As a TPS officer, she had access to a lot of important people. The Tribunal was the combined government for all five species and held sway over each of the five separate territories as well as their individual border patrols.

  It wasn’t a question he could answer right now, so he shifted back to the runner and extended a hand down to her. She eyed it as though it would turn into a snake any second.

  “Come on. I haven’t got all night. Let’s get you out of here. You’re not dying on my watch.”

  He didn’t kill women, at least not on purpose, and he definitely didn’t take out a woman with a belly full of child.

  “I can’t move.” She tried to sit up, but flopped back in the dirt.

  Whatever energy she’d possessed had been used up trying to scale the fairly steep side of the wash.

  He dipped down and picked her up in his arms, cradling her. She weighed next to nothing. “What’s your name?”

  “Tammy. Where are you taking me?”

  “The clinic.”

  She turned her face against his chest and damn him if she didn’t start weeping against his tank.

  But as he rose into the air, he glanced once more at Iris. She had her pistol pointed at him, head bent slightly, probably checking her sights.

  Though the clinic was the opposite direction, he flew toward her. She slowly lowered her gun.

  By the time he reached the bridge, her eyes were wide, her lips parted. “Officer Connor.”

  “Officer Meldeere. What the fuck are you doing out here?” He might be obsessed with her and he’d definitely engaged in way too many fantasies about her, but she was still a witch with a gun.

  “Got a call that some Border Patrol officer was out of control near Amado Bridge.”

  “Do I look out of control?”

  Her gaze fell to the woman. “No. You don’t.”

  “Guess you won’t be shooting me, then.”

  She shook her head. She looked amazing, a flush on her cheeks. H
er eyes glittered as she stared at him.

  If he didn’t know better …

  Fuck this. He whipped around and flew swiftly toward the clinic. He had to find some damn way of getting Iris out of his head.

  He just didn’t know how.

  He also needed to find out who had sent Tammy drug-running in the western sector of his territory.

  ~ ~ ~

  Iris holstered her Sig. Her arms and legs trembled but it wasn’t from fear. Damn Connor. He’d just proven himself all over again, helping a woman like that.

  And she’d forgotten how blue his eyes were.

  She could hardly breathe and all she’d done was look at him and exchange about a half-dozen words. He wore the usual black tank, so his tattoos stood out like beacons. He was heavily muscled like all the Border Patrol men. How many times had she wondered if both hands together would fit around one of his biceps?

  Fortunately, now that he was no longer next to her, she could think again. She looked around. On Trib orders, she’d left her garden, her owl and the potions she needed to make to fill her orders, but for what? She didn’t get it. Why had Donaldson wanted her witnessing Connor’s supposed crime?

  The situation was just weird enough to force her to ask the harder questions: Who had really sent her out to Amado Bridge? And if the purpose had been to kill Connor, then why? And why her?

  She turned the key in her bike and revved up her Harley once more. She took off, loving the strong vibrations on her bottom as she swept onto the street, heading toward Del Muerto Bridge. Del Muerto was one of the five main bridges of her world and connected Crescent with the dead-talker province of Shadow Territory.

  With her long hair in a ponytail, she enjoyed the feel of the night wind as she moved along. She only had to head over to the Tribunal building and fill out a report, then she could return to her workroom.

  In the meantime, she loved riding.

  When she was well into the land of dead-talkers, whipping through some backstreets and racing over several smaller bridges, her com buzzed. She pressed her shoulder transmitter. “Meldeere.”

  She heard Faith’s voice. “We’ve got a … out on Sentinel Bridge. The … Donal … wants you … now.”

  She repressed a sigh. The Tribunal meant well, but dammit, couldn’t they invest in a decent com system? “Say again?”

  After three more repeated requests, she finally got the gist. There was some kind of incident on Sentinel Bridge which connected Connor’s Territory and hers.

  And once more, the chief wanted her out there. She almost asked Faith why, but figured she’d get the same response.

  “On my way.”

  “Say …” More static then a lot of broken up words.

  Iris shut off her com with a heavy eye-roll and put on some speed.

  “Well, Violet, what do you think?” She tended to talk to her sister when she was out on patrol.

  But the spontaneous question, took her straight back to the wind that had blown through her workroom and hearing Violet’s voice in her head. Tears burned her eyes. Violet had been buried a long time ago, but for Iris, the memory was as sharp as yesterday.

  Thinking about her sister, however, brought the past surging forward. Several months after their shared alter, Violet had gone to work at a sandwich shop in downtown Elegance. Without warning, she and a dozen other witches had been abducted by a number of drugged out vampires. They’d been hauled out to a place called No Man’s Land, also known as the Graveyard.

  The vampires had been out of control and hyped up on blood flame. The witches’ hands had been bound to prevent the witch death touch. The women had been stabbed, choked, raped and drained to death.

  The Tribunal investigation had gone on for years but died its own death some time later. It had been buried in the Trib’s paperwork morgue, no doubt at the request of one of the drug-lords.

  No closure for nine years, just pain.

  She traversed yet another small bridge, the bike thump-thumping at the entrance and exit.

  The world of Five Bridges had about a hundred bridges scattered throughout the ripped up territory of north-central Phoenix, most of them short and only one lane wide. Long ditches crisscrossed the land, a final containment solution to the ongoing drug and human trafficking problem that had accompanied the flame revolution. The hundreds of ditches were as difficult to traverse as they were completely ineffective in stemming the export of flame drugs to the human world.

  Many of the original homes in this part of Phoenix now served the citizens of Five Bridges. But at least half had been blasted away and the pits left to grow whatever the desert could manage. Or they’d been dozed out even more to create rows of ditches hard to navigate on foot. A lot of cactus took root in these places. Rattlesnakes and vermin set up camp in droves. Coyotes, too. More bridges were built, some as short as seven feet.

  Five Bridges essentially had the look of a war zone, especially with barbed wire separating each of the five territories from each other as well as from Phoenix. There were a few beauty spots in some of the renovated areas or in backyards like her own. Otherwise, it was a place that looked like bombs were detonated on a regular basis and the rubble left to sprout any weed or grass that would survive without much water.

  There were, however, five main bridges, hence the name for the cesspool she lived in. Sentinel was one of them, the bridge she was headed to now. It was the long, main bridge connecting Crescent with her witch world of Elegance. It also intersected with the human world as all five bridges did, in a T layout. It still amazed Iris that any human would want to come to Five Bridges. But then most who did were looking for drugs or sex, the latter the second most important source of revenue for the poorer residents.

  Now there was an unspecified incident on Sentinel Bridge.

  So much for being off duty.

  ~ ~ ~

  At the clinic, Connor leaned over Tammy, who proved to be an un-altered human female, working the sex trade in Five Bridges. He was trying to catch her words. She mumbled a lot and slipped in and out of consciousness since she was still tangled up with blood flame.

  “What were you doing out there, Tammy? I could tell you had no idea where you were going.”

  “He told me to go out there or he’d kill me.”

  “Who?”

  “The man who gave me the drugs. I owed him.”

  The baby was hooked up to a fetal heart monitor and its heart beat fast and steady. The nurse stood nearby and scowled. Working in a clinic like this, she’d no doubt seen it all. The baby, if it survived, would have to go through withdrawal.

  “Tammy, focus. What did the man look like?”

  She lifted a weak hand to her right shoulder. “Skull tattoo, here, the kind with the mouth wide open like it’s screaming.”

  “Bald head with tats?”

  “Yes. And a really big nose. And super tight pants.”

  Connor held back a curse. He knew the small-time player. His name was Gary Smith and he owned the House of Big Sex in Rotten Row. Connor and his crew called him Big Nuts because he wore tight pants to display an oversized scrotum, an unfortunate look on any man.

  But why had the owner of a sex club sent a woman out in a fake runner jacket? What game was he playing at?

  “You need to leave.” The nurse’s voice blasted through the room like it came out of a sawed off shotgun. “We’re going to put her under. There’s too much stress on her heart because of the drug. The baby’s at risk.”

  Connor dipped his chin in response. He had what he needed anyway, the name of the man who’d set him up. He picked up the runner jacket loaded with nothing but fake bricks and vials, another indication someone was messing with him.

  When he reached the admitting desk, he talked to a lovely vampire he knew well, a woman he’d slept with a few months ago. She’d already touched his hand a couple of times and had a look in her eye he knew well. His gaze slipped to her throat where she was not-so-subtly stroking her fingers ove
r her vein.

  Because of his constant lust for Iris, his groin lit up with sudden need. He almost asked where they could go to have a private chat.

  But his com buzzed, the connection finally restored. He hit the button. “Connor.”

  Lily’s voice came on. “How did things go out at Amado?”

  He explained about the young woman and that he’d brought her to the clinic.

  Lily was silent for a moment. “You know, you stand taller than every other man I know.” She cleared her voice and hurried on. “But I guess this is your lucky night. We’ve got an incident out at Sentinel Bridge. A homicide, and yes, Chief wants you out there, as well. Pronto.”

  He never worked Sentinel either.

  What the fuck was going on?

  ~ ~ ~

  Iris stood over not one, but two bodies on Sentinel Bridge, a man and a woman. Over the years, she’d seen a lot of corpses, but nothing quite as bad as the cuts, bruises, and burns on this pair. She forced herself to swallow and keep swallowing.

  Despite the extensive damage, she recognized the female. She knew her, though not well, a witch by the name of Sadie Thompson. Her throat had been cut, and except for the severe bruising, her skin was the color of white marble.

  The man was a vampire, something she knew by instinct though on the surface he looked like any other man, no matter the species. The alter had given her discernment as it did all Five Bridges citizens. She always knew what was what.

  She had no idea who he was, though. His dark hair was fanned over the side of his face. He wore the leather pants the Border Patrol men wore, so there was a good chance he served on the Crescent force. He had burns all down his arms and chest, along with severe bruising, and enough cuts to finally bleed him out.

  Her stomach knotted up. She had to look away, regroup.

  She focused on the tri-part bridge itself and each of three sets of entrance-exist gates. A ‘T’ formation occurred in the center of the bridge and led to east Phoenix. This part was guarded by the US Border Patrol. The main bridge itself served to connect Elegance Territory with Crescent.