Yay! Chapter 21! :P

I walked alongside Josef as we approached a rather large house where Hayley Collins's parents were murdered and she was kidnapped. Mick and I were walking to his car earlier to come here when Josef drove up. He insisted on tagging along saying he was bored and had nothing to do. Mick was reluctant at first, thinking Josef would be a distraction, but he eventually gave in.

Josef wrapped his arm tightly around my waist pulling me closer to him as we walked. I looked over at him and smiled and he grinned brightly back. From behind us, Mick coughed loudly. We stopped walking and glared at him.

"Something you need to tell me?" He questioned raising his eyebrows.

"We don't need to tell you anything," Josef replied, his arm was still firmly attached to my waist. I leaned into him more comfortably and he smirked.

Mick walked past us, "We'll talk about this later."

"OK, Dad," I muttered. Josef laughed and Mick ignored it.

When we reached the front door we had to duck under the yellow crime scene tape, Josef let go of me reluctantly to do so, but immediately placed his arm back where it was once we were inside. The police were done investigating the scene, so no one was here today. Which made it a lot easier for us. Suddenly a totally irrelevant thought occurred to me.

"Mick," I said pausing for him to turn around, "You never told me where Beth was."

He quirked an eyebrow, "Is that really relevant to the situation at hand?"

"No..."

He sighed, "She's at a birthday party for one of her friends. It's at some mansion, her friend is pretty rich."

"How come you're not with her?" I asked as we walked further into the abandoned home.

"I...um, didn't want to go," He replied slowly.

"No really, Mick. Why aren't you there with her? You go everywhere with her, you're so overprotective" I said staring at him. Did he just blush? ...Yep. What's so embarrassing?

"Well, it's a big party... a lot people are there. Lots of Beth's friends. Beth's girl friends..."

Josef laughed out loud, "Mick, are you afraid of women?"

"No!" He replied hotly, "It's just... when I'm with Beth around her friends, they always stare at me. They start talking about me, saying things I would rather not hear."

I laughed, "What do they say?"

"Nothing I would like to repeat," Mick grumbled.

"Just tell us one thing," I said smiling.

"No," He said in a final tone, "Let's go, we have a job to do."

"Aw, you suck the fun out everything!" I pouted.

"Let's go." He demanded. With that he turned and walked into the living room.

"Fun sucker," I mumbled following him. Josef laughed at my choice of words.

The living room was a mess. Blood everywhere: the floor, walls, chair, and couch. Somebody was being a messy eater. Surprisingly, the bodies hadn't been removed yet. Instead, they were covered with tarp, probably still in the same place they were killed. Mick walked to the nearest body and carefully removed the tarp and set it to the side, then did the same with the other one. They were both pretty messed up, their necks were completely ripped up, like the vampire feeding from them was ravenous. I would have said he was feral, but the cuts weren't ragged enough. I breathed in deeply through my nose. I felt my fangs cut into my bottom lip as I smelled all the blood. Surprisingly, the blood that covered everything wasn't the man and woman's blood. Don't worry, it's not Hayley's blood either. It was vampire blood.

"Wow, how did they manage to do that?" I wondered aloud.

Mick shook his head, "I don't know, but they really cut him up."

I began walking around the room. Josef stood in the doorway, watching me. I looked up at him and grinned and he gave a brilliant answering smile. I resumed looking around and came upon a table covered in some more tarp. Curiously, I pulled away the tarp and it fell slowly to the ground. On the table was a sword, it looked like one of those one's that people buy on ebay to keep in a collection. It was covered in blood, I wasn't surprised to smell it as the vampire's.

"I bet my life – or, uh, death – that they used this," I said holding up the sword for them to see.

Josef and Mick simultaneously raised their eyebrows, "You'd have to be pretty skilled to be able to slice a vampire up like he apparently was," Josef commented, now leaning on the door frame with his arms crossed.

I shrugged, "Maybe they do fencing or something..."

Something was bothering me. I'm not sure what it was, but... this all seemed so familiar. I turned, the sword still in my hand, and walked over to the doorway where Josef was. I examined the scene carefully and suddenly realization hit me like a ton of bricks. This scene was identical to what I saw all those years ago when my parents were murdered. A man and a woman, parents, laying slaughtered on their living room floor. The image of my mother and father flashed through my mind and I grimaced. But this couldn't have been committed by the same vampire! He's dead, right? He could've escaped the fire... he could be alive! And here in L.A., committing the same crime all over again.

"No!" I denied my thoughts vehemently.

"What's wrong?" Josef asked suddenly, and I realized I had said that out loud.

"Nothing," I said turning to smile at him, but it didn't quite reach my eyes.

Unconvinced he asked me again, "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing really," I reassured him.

Suddenly, I realized something. Why was all this stuff still here? The bodies and the sword... shouldn't the police have put the bodies in the morgue and taken the sword in as evidence?

I got my answer when suddenly something was shoved into my back, feeling suspiciously like a gun barrel.

"What are you doing here? This is a crime scene," A deep male voice said behind me.

Mick answered for me, "I'm a private investigator, and that's my assistant. Oh, and he's my friend," He holding up his credentials.

I wondered why he still had a gun sticking into my back, when I realized it must be because I'm holding a bloody sword in my hand.

"Oh, I promise I didn't murder anyone, this is just evidence," I said with a smirk and setting the sword on the ground.

He pulled the gun away, and I turned around to look at him. He looked like he was in his early twenties and no later than that. He was a tall man, about a head taller than me, but that's not saying much, I'm kinda short. He has messy dark brown hair - not the bad kind of messy, the cool looking kind - and beautiful green eyes. He wasn't that bad looking, pretty hot actually, but don't tell Josef I said that.

He smiled at me with perfect white teeth when I turned and faced him and held out his hand, "Hi, I'm Eric McKarthy, part of the CSI team."

Josef growled, only audible to vampires. I guess he didn't like the way Eric was looking at me. I shook his hand briefly. Now I know why the evidence and bodies are still here, apparently the CSI haven't checked it out yet.

"Nice to meet you Eric, I'm Kate." I said with a polite smile, "that's my boyfriend Josef."

Eric's smile faltered a little when I identified Josef as my boyfriend. Josef smiled wider though. He came over and put his arm around me again.

Mick coughed, getting Eric's attention, "I guess we'll go then, let you guys do your job."

"Right," Eric nodded and walked past me and Josef, bending down to pick up the sword. He turned to me again, "Try not to leave your fingerprints on anymore of the evidence again, please," He said grinning.

"I'll keep that in mind," I replied with a quick smile.

Suddenly 3 other people entered the room and started looking around and conversing with each other. The rest of the CSI team I presumed.

We left quickly, getting out of the professionals' way. I wished them good luck with the case on my way out. They would need a lot of that to solve this case. I doubt they would, the only possible thing that could have killed them would be a vampire or a big dog, but they would soon come to the conclusion that the teeth marks weren't right for a dog, and then they'd be left with a vampire. And they would add it to a stack of unsolved cases, because there's no such thing as vampires, is there?

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