Bloodhound
I walked slowly through the remains of the burned building. Breathing deeply through my mouth and nose, I was on the alert for anything unusual. The smell of burned wood was strong, pungent. The added scents of fresh paint and varnish that mixed with warped metal and melted plastic were all to be expected from such a new building. A chemical smell, sharp and caustic: gasoline. As I looked at the bones of the building, exposed as they were without the walls or roof, I could tell that the structure was different from the last time.
At last, when I reached the middle of the main room, I caught a whiff of something else. It was an icy, toxic smell, like something poisonous was frozen in the ashes. I knelt down and brushed my fingers through the charred bits of wood. The remains were unmistakable. A vampire had died here. And it wasn't James. This was from the burning of three weeks ago. Did she come here with another vampire? Or was it Victoria herself?
Finally leaving the interior, I drifted around the outside of the building, both smelling and tasting the air, trying to catch a hint of Victoria's scent. There! A trace of a half-remembered scent, but there and recognizable. Victoria had been here. I was certain of it. I started to walk down the street, still tracing the elusive scent when I wondered if I was following her scent as she went to the studio, or from. I noted where I had first found her scent and continued to circle the building, seeing if I could find a second trail. I was looking for either another of Victoria – one should be her path there and the other her path away – or a second vampire.
Finally, at the rear of the building, I found what I'd been looking for. Victoria and another vampire. Or was it two others? The scents were complicated, confusing, and at over three weeks old barely perceptible. The humans had been all over the area; their scents were newer and disturbed the ones I was searching for. I squatted down and ran my fingers through the grass, trying to bring any traces into the air.
As I worked my way through the area, I began to get a clearer picture of the occurrences. When I found another trail, not Victoria this time, I felt certain that she and two others had come here together, then killed one and burned the studio down. She went one way and the other vampire went another. The other vampire wasn't important. It was Victoria I was chasing.
I returned to the first trail I had found and started to follow it down the street. I had followed her for several blocks when the scent disappeared. It didn't fade away, it was just gone, vanished. I walked slowly around the area, touching the sidewalk and the brick walls, tasting the air, but there was nothing. I looked up at the buildings, thinking, trying to figure out where she could have gone. I glanced around to see if anyone was watching, listening with my mind for anyone I might not be able to see, then scaled the building up to the rooftop.
Hah! I thought triumphantly, Found her! She had left the street and was using the roofs to travel on. Her scent was no longer alone, though, as I detected a human with her. I guessed that was why she had left the street; if she had grabbed a human to kill and was hauling him off to feed in private, the street was not a good place for her to travel. I followed her over several miles, jumping from roof to roof, when her scent went inside of an old, abandoned office building. The door leading inside had been pulled off of its hinges and hung askew. I went inside warily, certain based on the age of the scent that she hadn't been here recently, but feeling a bit of caution was a good thing nonetheless.
I trailed her to a room where it was evident that she had spent several days. Touching the floor and reading the patterns in the disturbed dust, I saw what looked like a human outline. Breathing deeply, I tried to make sense of the conflicting odors. Victoria had been here, along with the human and… yet another vampire? Or, had she brought the human here, not to feed, but to change? The predator in Seattle had said she was looking for vampires to help her. She had been at the studio with another vampire that was now dead, and here I had found evidence that she'd created yet another vampire.
I crouched in the middle of the room for a long time, trying to see a pattern or a sense of reason out of what my senses were telling me. Maybe she wasn't mourning James, maybe she sought to replace him? Perhaps the one she killed was not suitable to her for some reason, so she disposed of them. Whatever the case, she and the new vampire had left the building together, so I continued to follow her, back out to the street level this time. Frustrated by the lightening of the sky that indicated sunrise was not far off, I ran back to my car and drove back to the hotel.
Once there, I used the business center's internet to look for any unsolved homicides or disappearances in Phoenix over the past year. There were far too many. I cringed thinking of the trouble Bella could have gotten in to, wondering how she had managed to survive seventeen years in this city. Well, she was in Forks now, alive and… well maybe not happy yet, but alive, and she had promised to keep herself safe.
I narrowed my search to the past two months, noticing that the frequency of the deaths increased with her arrival in the city. Newborns had to feed often, and if she had a newborn with her, it only made sense that there would be many more deaths. I nearly crushed the mouse thinking about this. What it would have meant if I had given into Bella's requests to be changed. These deaths would have been her doing. No, they would have been mine for allowing it to happen. I shook my head furiously.
Why had she been so unwilling to see? To understand? She knew how close I had come to killing her on more than one occasion. Did she think that she would be able to resist? Had she thought it was really so easy? I'd tried to make it clear just how difficult it had been.
Angry, I pushed myself away from the computer and began pacing the hotel again, thinking, waiting impatiently for night to come.
When at last I could make my way back to where I had stopped tracking Victoria that morning, I was determined not to allow myself to be distracted by the lure of Bella's past again. I had to find Victoria. My misery was nothing compared to Bella's safety and her future was in danger. Victoria was the key and I was only a few weeks behind her. I had to be quick and only had the limited night to search in.
I found where I had left off easily, using my own scent as much as Victoria and the newborn's. I continued to follow their trail, pausing when I detected the trace of blood on the sidewalk. I guessed the newborn had made his first kill here and tried to match the time and location to the list of missing and dead I had gathered from the internet during my day of research. They continued on, heading in an almost straight line through the city. I found several more places where I thought they had killed before their scents disappeared suddenly.
Remembering the last time I had lost her, I tried the rooftop again and was rewarded with two distinct trails. One went inside and another crossed to the edge of the roof. I hesitated, then followed the trail inside, finding a room where I guessed they had spent the day. Then I hurried back to the edge where I jumped to the next roof, finding her there again. Pleased with my success, I trailed them across the roofs, then lost the trail abruptly. I circled until I found where they had left the roof to travel on the street, discovering more traces of blood.
I traced them through the city, noting that their nearly straight path never deviated except to kill. When I reached the edge of the city I stopped, surprised that their path continued on into the desert. The sun was coming up and I hesitated to continue. Newborns needed to feed. Why were they leaving a city full of people to go into the sparsely populated desert? Considering the path they had taken, I thought she must be going someplace specific. She'd headed in a southeasterly direction with almost single minded focus. Tracking her scent through the city was one thing. Finding her in the ever shifting desert sands was another.
Running at top speed back to my car, I kept alert for any humans along the way. The sun was up and I would attract far too much attention if anyone were able to see me. When I got back to the hotel, I immediately went to the business center to do some more research. I brought up a map of Phoenix and marked all of the places where they had killed, tracing their path along the map. When I got to the edge of Phoenix, where their paths had taken them out of the city, I brought up a map of the surrounding area and extended the line from Phoenix out across the neighboring states.
Next I used what I knew of newborns and the dates I had as a reference and searched for any deaths or disappearances along the line I had drawn. Almost like an arrow, they popped up. Two hikers disappeared in Superstition Mountains. Three people outside of San Carlos that same day, murdered in what was believed to be a gang related issue. No new leads. A couple discovered dead inside of their home two days later in Three Way. Five dead outside of a Silver City bar the next day. The following week saw a spike in homicides in El Paso.
I followed their bloody trail across the map until I reached Houston. I searched the records for any unexplained deaths or disappearances into Louisiana, south into Mexico, north to Dallas. Though there were some deaths – people died every day, it was to be expected – there was nothing that seemed to match her pattern. I stared for a minute at the map. If I was right, she had gone to Houston. Maybe she was still there, but if not, I had gone as far as Phoenix was going to take me. It was time to move on.
I paced the hotel and considered the problem Texas presented. I happened to know of a vampire who claimed the state as her own private hunting grounds. One who would not appreciate poachers. Maria, the vampire who had created Jasper. She was not happy with his defection from her family. She had come to visit us once when we'd lived in Calgary. We'd had to leave the city quickly; it hadn't been pretty.
The records of deaths I'd found online had helped me track Victoria through Phoenix and into Houston. I decided I should be able to do the same thing to narrow down where Maria's coven could be found. The humans kept such meticulous records of their lives and deaths. Maria had held Texas and much of Mexico for so long that it was essential for her to keep moving to avoid them detecting her presence. I returned to the business center to look up the death and disappearance records of Houston and the surrounding cities.
Ignoring the humans who were already using the small room, I began my search using our move from Calgary as my starting point. I spent several hours printing out the records of all the big cities Maria had been known to hunt. One thing about those who killed humans, there was no escaping the evidence of their presence if they stayed in one place for any length of time. For this reason, most vampires were nomads. Continually moving around, spreading their kills all over would hide their activities, making the deaths seem like the work of random human killers, rather than the feeding habits of a single monster. Or group of monsters, as in the case of Maria's coven.
Keeping a large group fed and keeping those feeding habits from human notice was harder than hiding a single hunter's habits, but keeping a coven allowed Maria to claim the territory for herself. On her own, it would be too easy for another ambitious vampire to covet her cities and take them from her.
One of the humans using the business center alongside me had been printing as well. When he stopped to retrieve his papers, he also picked up some of mine. I had dismissed the humans from my thoughts as soon as I sat down, but was suddenly aware of his scrutiny. Taking my eyes from the screen I had been focused on, I met his gaze, my dark gold eyes boring into his pale brown ones. With a shaky hand, he held out the papers showing newspaper clippings of the deaths I'd been tracking, words like 'murder', 'killing', and 'deaths' seeming to jump out from the page. I hid my smile, enjoying the fact that he was frightened of me, and took my papers from him.
"Thanks," I said, casually, and returned my gaze to the screen. He continued to watch me and was pondering calling the authorities. I turned back to him and faked a smile, hiding my teeth. "College project," I explained. "Criminal justice is fascinating, don't you agree?"
He nodded and decided to accept my explanation, whether he believed it or not. In a hurry, he gathered his papers and left the room, glancing over his shoulder at me, relieved to see me still sitting in the same place.
I chuckled to myself.
Once I was done with the research, it was time to piece together the puzzle. With two years worth of death records covering most of Texas, I decided I needed more space than the business center, or even my room, could provide. I went to the front desk and forced my face to form a polite smile. Remembering how Bella had accused me of dazzling people, I pitched my voice low and spoke to the front desk worker.
"Hello, I wonder if you could do me a favor?"
Um, wow. Oh, wow. "Sure," she giggled.
"I have some research I'm doing and I wondered if I could use a conference room." I held up the large stack of papers in my hands.
"Well, they usually require advanced booking," she demurred. "And they're for groups..."
Frowning, I pressed her, "I promise not to disturb anything, and of course I'll pay for the time I'm there." Trying to will her into allowing me to use the space, I stared hard into her shallow blue eyes as they widened and her heart sped up.
"Um…" oh my gosh ohmygoshohmygosh "Let me, um…" She looked away from me and I felt myself almost grin. She began typing on her computer, glancing up at me occasionally.
I had found long ago that people were easy to manipulate, if I tried not to be scary. Before Bella, I had never given it much thought, but in trying to dazzle her, I'd learned just how to use my vampire beauty to my advantage. The humans were attracted to us, but after that initial attraction, their feelings usually morphed into an unnamed fear. In seeming more human for Bella, I had lost the atmosphere of menace that usually surrounded me. It had been annoying. All of the females I had interacted with had dismissed her immediately, incapable of seeing the soft perfection of the angel I was with. The women were mesmerized by my beauty without any of the fear I was used to them feeling. They had fantasized about me and wondered how they might replace her. As if any of them could.
Now though, my long months away from her had given me a new edge. I looked dangerous again, my misery making me seem fierce, my foul mood warning people to keep their distance. The woman from the lounge had been seduced by my music and the loss of her son had given her the courage to approach me, but the majority of humans avoided me. Like the woman in the bird store and the man in the business center, they feared me, and rightly so. I had unleashed the full power of my persuasiveness along with the force of my menacing demeanor on the clerk. I had no doubt that she would find a place for me to work.
She handed me a key card. "Conference room three is available." She was blushing, her thoughts still whirling and her pulse racing.
"Thanks," I said, smirking in satisfaction, and picked the location of the room from her mind.
A mature vampire's kills were not as easy to identify as a newborn's. They were able to hide their victims easier, making them look less like kills and more like accidents or illness. An otherwise healthy young man died of a heart attack. Campers drown while swimming in a lake. Or they disappeared altogether. A car crashed into a tree at midnight. Did the driver fall asleep, or had they been attacked by a vampire? There was no way to be sure.
After their transformation, a newborn vampire was ravenous, with an insatiable need for blood. Their bodies were suddenly infused with immeasurable strength and speed. This, combined with a lack of self control, would often lead to more flagrant deaths. Someone stabbed dozens of times while being mugged in a park. Multiple violent deaths often blamed on gang activity or drugs. A convenience store robbery turned fatal, with the clerks and patrons alike being killed. Or they would blame the attacks on animals.
Spreading all of my papers out on the long tables, I organized my findings, grouping the deaths by location, time, and cause of death. Eventually, I was able to piece together her movements. Maria had spent a few months in Dallas, then she'd moved to Fort Worth. She'd spent half a year in San Antonio before moving back to Dallas, and then on to Houston. There were gaps in the pattern I'd found and I guessed she had left Texas for Mexico, or spread her kills among smaller cities and towns. Due to the recent increase of deaths in Houston over the past two months, I felt certain that she was indeed using that city as her current home.
With Maria's activities, I couldn't be sure any deaths were specifically Victoria's kills, but her path had led her straight there. My mind made up, I went back to my room to gather my things.
After I finished packing, I sat on the bed and turned my phone around and around in my hands. It had been almost two months since I'd left Alaska and I hadn't spoken with any of my family since, though they continued to call nearly every day. I was loathe to call them, but I felt I needed Jasper's advice. I remembered what Carlisle had said about Jasper and knew he'd been right; it would make Jasper feel better if I let him help me.
I dialed his number, held my breath and hit send. He answered on the first ring.
"Edward?"
"Hey, Jazz." I managed to keep my voice steady.
Astonished silence.
"How – ah – where are you? Have you had any luck with Victoria?"
"Has Alice?" I countered before I could stop myself. "Has she seen any changes? In her visions of – of Victoria?"
We both knew what I was really asking.
"No," he said softly. "She still sees her future disappearing."
I paused a moment to let that sink in. I considered running my theories past him, but couldn't bring myself to say Bella's name.
"I think I've tracked her as far as Houston." I said abruptly.
"Houston?" he asked, surprised. And then, "Maria."
"Yeah," I sighed. "As far as I can tell, Maria is in Houston, too. She would know if Victoria was hunting there."
"Without a doubt. And I don't think she'd take too kindly to it."
No, I didn't think so, either.
"Do you know where I could find her?" I asked him.
"Edward, I haven't been in touch with Maria since we left Calgary."
"No, I know that, but…" I wasn't sure how to phrase my question. "I'm going to go to Houston. If Victoria is there, and Maria knows about it, she could help me find her."
"If she were willing," he said, hesitantly. "She's probably not going to be cooperative. You're my brother and… well. She's got quite a temper. She'd be as likely to outright attack you just for being associated with me as she would be to stop and answer your questions."
I sighed, remembering Calgary, and was sure he was right. Well, I didn't necessarily have to contact her to get what I wanted. If I knew where she was, I could always just watch and listen.
"She's stealthy, Edward. I know what you're thinking. You don't have much chance of sneaking up on her. Maria will see you coming and your attempt at subterfuge will only infuriate her."
I ground my teeth together and growled, forcing myself to admit he was right again. Maria was several hundred years old, older even than Carlisle. She had held a large area of the human population as her own hunting grounds for a very long time, defending them from other vampires with much success. Jasper had been instrumental to her victories, but she had been the one calling the shots. Maria was a skilled strategist and a fierce fighter. Unlike the predator I had killed in Seattle, I had little chance of winning a fight against her. Much less her entire coven.
"Well, what do you suggest, then?"
He was silent for a minute. I waited, trying to contain my patience while he thought the problem over.
"I think your only real chance," he finally said, "is to be up front with her. If she catches you sneaking around the city, she'll have you torn apart before you hear her coming. She knows you, Edward, so she knows you can read minds and will act to disguise her thoughts. However, she also knows you don't drink human blood, so she might not be as… territorial as she would be otherwise. She still has a coven at her disposal, so you are more likely to run into one of them than you are to her.
"I can give you the details of places she's stayed in the past," he continued. "Hunt before you get anywhere near the city. When you get there, don't delay, head right to seek her out. If you do run across her coven, you could try talking to them instead. In fact you'd probably be better off asking them for information. But stay alert; if you detect any signs of hostility, run. I know how fast you are. You won't be able to take her coven down, but you should be able to outrun them."
I nodded, glad I'd called him.
Then he gave me the details of the places where she'd frequented in the past. He included every place he'd known her to use, describing what signs to look for, the average size of her coven when he'd known her, and any hunting patterns she'd followed. He ended by cautioning me to be extremely careful.
"Thanks, Jasper," I said, quietly.
"Anytime, Edward," he returned.
I opened my mouth to say goodbye, but he stopped me by asking, "Listen, I have a question I need to ask you."
"Yeah?" I asked, warily.
"While you've been tracking Victoria, have you run into Laurent?"
"Laurent?" I repeated, surprised.
"Yes. Irina said he had some business to take care of a couple weeks back and hasn't heard from him since. I thought… since you've been looking for Victoria, maybe…"
"No," I cut him off. "I haven't seen him, myself. I did run into a vampire in Seattle who had, but he said he'd seen him with Irina, so she probably has more recent knowledge of him than I do."
"Hmm. Seattle. Hmm." He paused for a moment, then spoke again, "It's really good to hear from you."
I grimaced, "Yeah. You, too."
I could tell he wanted to say something else, so I closed the phone, ending the conversation. I sat on the bed for an hour, going over all the details Jasper had shared with me, considering how Victoria would have dealt with Maria and her coven, especially with a newborn in tow.
Then I returned to the front desk to check out.
Although I had hunted a couple of nights previous, I had not even come close to making up for the months I had gone without feeding. Keeping in mind Jasper's advice, I drove into Superstition Mountains to hunt. I spent two days gorging myself on every large animal I could find. I killed deer, big horn sheep, coyotes, and even a mountain lion I was lucky enough to catch as he was stalking his own prey. Swimming with blood, my eyes now a very light gold, I drove out of the mountains and sped toward Houston.
