"Sizemore,.Susan.-.Forever.Knight.1.-.A.Stirring.of.Dust.e-txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sizemore Susan)

Glowing eyes? Fangs?
She wasn't sure. It happened too quickly. Maybe he hadn't even been naked. Just a trick of the light. She was tired, susceptible. She'd just spent the evening watching a werewolf movie with a vampire. Her mind was on monsters after listening to LaCroix.
It must have been her imagination.
Natalie drove cautiously toward home.
2
Tracy Vetter tucked a strand of her chin-length blonde hair behind her ear and glanced calmly down at the body. The head was on the other side of the room, having its picture taken by a forensic technician. The coroner hadn't arrived yet, so Tracy had only the visual evidence of a headless corpse to guess the cause of death. It was a gruesome, bloody sight, but she made herself take a good, long look.
She only looked calm; inside, her emotions were roiling. She didn't let anything show, though. She was young, relatively new to the homicide detail, female, and, worst of all, an assistant police commissioner's daughter. Her squad was supportive, maybe even overprotective; everyone kept telling her she was a good cop. That didn't mean they didn't think she had plenty to prove. Tracy agreed with them. She liked to think that she'd gotten the job on merit, but she didn't rule out that a certain amount of nepotism had been involved in her rapid rise. So she worked hard, not just to prove herself but because she loved her job.
Along with the crime scene crew there were quite a
few uniformed officers in the shop, but she was the first homicide detective on the scene. This left her nominally in charge of the investigation while waiting for her partner to arrive. The fact that there were several civilians peering past the official yellow tape strung across the shop entrance gave her an excuse to walk away from the body. She hadn't paid much attention to them on her way in. Now she turned to the officer who'd been the first on the scene.
"Who are those people, Lord? Gawkers or witnesses?"
"Neighbors."
Tracy nodded. This area was the sort of Eastern European enclave where shopkeepers lived over their stores and everyone knew everyone else's business. All very colorful and quaint, and hopefully useful for a homicide investigation. "Anyone see anything?"
Lorri chuckled. "We're not that lucky on this one."
"Too bad."
"That doesn't mean they don't all have opinions."
"I'll see if anybody at least heard anything."
Her partner arrived just as Tracy started toward the door. She watched Nick slip under the tape barrier, his pale hair and skin emphasized by the clothes he wore. He was dressed all in black, including a widely cut, long black jacket. She supposed he was a handsome man, for someone in his thirties. His skin was too colorless from a sun allergy that forced him to work nights exclusively; he was too mysterious about his private life. Not her type, though she liked and trusted him as a partner.
Not her type. Too old. Mysterious. She couldn't help but smile at herself at her assessment of Nick Knight as a male rather than as a coworker. As if the person she was interested in wasn't a great deal older and more mysterious than Nick Knight could ever be. Pale, too. And as
for Javier Vachon being her type, actually it was probably the other way aroundЧbut there were some things about him she didn't want to think about too closely.
So Tracy got her mind back on business, and glanced once again at Nick. They nodded to each other, then he turned his attention to the crime scene, leaving her to get statements from the bystanders.
Nick didn't speak to any of the busy technicians when he came in. He left Tracy to deal with the civilians for now. He looked around, noted details, absorbed the atmosphere. He glanced at the body, noted the spatter pattern of blood where the corpse had landed, but his attention was drawn to a number of objects on a desk near the large window. He wondered if the scent of blood was as strong to the others as it was to him as he crossed to the desk. Did it disgust them or bring their senses to life? Did they even notice? Or was it part of the background noise of what they did, a scent that would be conspicuous only if it were absent? Should he point out that there wasn't enough blood, and that more than one person had died here tonight?
He almost turned to speak to one of the lab people. If the moon hadn't been so brilliant tonight, so potent, he wouldn't have been so tempted to start an impossible conversation. He was feeling more alive than he had in a long time, more reckless. It made him curious to talk about the wrong subjects with the wrong people.
Instead he kept his mind on the job and looked down at the desk. It was the glitter of silver and the sheen of marble that had caught his attention from the doorway. The statue he ignored after a cursory glance. He reached out for the silver box.
"That hasn't been dusted yet," the fingerprint techni-
cian warned before Nick's fingers came in contact with the box.
"Then do it, Paul." He gave the young man an annoyed look, then took a careful step back to avoid temptation, and to get out of the tech's way. He turned and motioned Tracy over. "What have we got?"
"Antique dealer named Adre Matescu. No priors, but suspected of dealing in stolen art treasures."
Nick gestured at the objects on the desk. "Like those?"
Tracy gave the statue and box a cursory glance. "Probably. Want me to check those out?"
A surprising wave of possessiveness came over Nick. "No. I'll take care of that." He pointed at the body, then the head. "How did that get detached from that?" Tracy didn't look at either. He noticed that Natalie had arrived and was kneeling beside the corpse. "Never mind, I'll let the coroner fill me in on the gory details. What do the neighbors have to say?"
"That Constantine Drezerdic is responsible for the murder."
"Who?"
She gave him a wry look. "That's something I suppose I'm going to have to find out. The neighbors claim he's a crazed killerЧwhen he isn't a mild-mannered store clerk. Everybody wants to talk about him, and how he must be responsible, but I got a lot of mixed signals. Apparently he found his wife with a lover, accidentally killed her in an argument, then cut off her head as some kind of trophy. Neighbors don't think he was wrong to kill his adulterous wife, but the decapitation thing disgusts them. He just got out of prison."
"How does that connect him to our victim?"
"Don't know if it does. No one heard or saw anything. They just don't think it's a coincidence that a man who
beheaded someone lives in the same area as someone who got beheaded."
"So they've handed you a lead but not a real suspect." She nodded. "At least that's something." "Find out about this Drezerdic. Fancy meeting you here," he said to Natalie as she came up to him. He didn't need vampire senses to detect that she was tired and irritated, but also more troubled than usual by this crime scene. The question was, Why?
"Beepers," Natalie said, "are the spawn of the devil. If I hadn't answered mine, I could be in bed right now." "And miss the pleasure of my company?" "I've already had that pleasure this evening." She nodded toward the corpse. "Anything I should know before I get to work?"
Not wanting to be overheard, Nick took Natalie by the elbow and moved her to a quieter part of the room, by the desk. He looked at the box again. There was something that attracted him to it, something . . . familiar.
The castle hall was something out of the thirteenth century, lit by a giant fireplace and dozens of branches of candles. The floor was rush-covered, and Nicholas could sense the scurry and squeak of mice near his feet. Two of the walls were hung with tapestries in dark colors that depicted even darker deeds. The furniture was sparse, made of heavy, ornately carved dark wood. The large room held one long dining table, a few high-backed chairs, and a cabinet where the light gleamed off a large collection of silver plate and utensils. The mantel and walls beside the fireplace were ornamented with ancient weaponry. There were enough swords and spears to supply a small armyЧone that could easily be blown away with a few well-placed rounds of cannon fire.
As he looked around, Nicholas murmured, "This is ridiculous."
"What is?" LaCroix asked. As he followed Nicholas's gaze around the large room, he murmured, "Ah, the decor offends you, Nicholas." The elder vampire put a hand on his arm. "Radu's the sort who finds a style he likes, then stays with it."
"It's primitive."
"Does it matter? Luxury is pleasant, but hardly required for our kind."
"I prefer living in luxury myself," Janette contributed.
"As do I," LaCroix conceded.
"I prefer progress," Nicholas said.
"For Radu this is progress. When I first met him, he lived in a skin tent; a young vampire who'd barely made the transition from drinking mare's milk to mare's blood. We must give him time."
"That time appears to be 1200," Nicholas said.
Janette laughed, drawing Nicholas's attention away from LaCroix. Candlelight and blood from fresh feeding gave Janette's skin a warm glow, her dark eyes held both the glint of merriment and the predator's sharp look. She was lovely, dressed in midnight blue and stiff, pure white lace, her shining dark hair elaborately dressed in the latest curled style. She looked as out of place in this medieval setting as Nicholas felt.