Natural Consequences (2 page)

Amber glanced around at the others
: one woman, two men, plus Hauser and Keeley, all staring at her. “That’s a bit more of an introduction than I usually get,” she said. Five minutes from now, she’d come up with something much wittier.

“Everyone here has at least ten years on you, Amber,” Hauser explained. “I don’t want anyone wondering why you’re here, least of all you. You’ve kicked a lot of ass to be here.” He paused. “Plus I needed to see if you’d blush.”

“Did I?”

“No. Have a seat, everyone.”

Amber felt many eyes still upon her as she took up an empty chair. “I only did the honors program in chemistry,” she confessed. “Physics is hard.”

“Amber,
these are Agents Doug Bridger, Matt Lanier and Colleen Nguyen,” Hauser began as the lights went down and the projector mounted in the ceiling flickered to life. “They’ve all been on the task force for several years. You’ll be working with us for the foreseeable future in your hometown of Seattle.”

Amber blinked.
She knew relocation was a potential factor in this transfer, but thought that train had left the station. “I’m not staying with the LA office?”

“No,” Hauser said. “No, that was just your audition. We had to make sure you wouldn’t freak out at the first encounter with a supernatural. Some people don’t take too well to seeing those kinds of abilities.” He paused, offering up a wry smirk. “Most people don’t respond by tackling the perp
to the ground.”

She
felt grateful the lights had gone down. It was a pretty sure bet she’d be blushing by now. She paid attention to the map of the west coast on the screen and its red, blue and green circles here and there.

“
The west coast is something of a hotbed of organized supernatural activity. We’ve got large vampire societies in LA and San Fran and a couple of distinct werewolf packs spread out across the southwest. The vampires organize themselves in a somewhat feudal structure. There’s no discernible consistency of who claims what titles, but there are chains of allegiance. Many of those chains lead to this woman, Lady Anastacia Illyana Kanatova of Seattle.”

The slide changed, offering up a detailed sketch of a thin woman of regal beauty. She was blonde, with Eastern European features and a haughty, elegant look. “We have no idea of her original name or how old she might be, but she clearly dates back centuries.
As far as we can tell, she’s the best-connected vampire on the west coast, with allies across the country. She’s in charge of a group of at least sixty other vampires in the Seattle area, which is one of the largest populations we’ve identified.

“
They all vanished last month. We haven’t picked up a trace of them since.”

Amber blinked. Hauser shifted to the next slide, which showed multiple views of what must have been a large house—perhaps a mansion, judging by its footprint—that had burned down to the
foundation. She had to wonder how long it had been burning before the firefighters in the pictures arrived. Even much of the grass had burned within an acre of the house, maybe more.

“We know that in mid-September,
Kanatova held some sort of major party at this house in one of Seattle’s northern suburbs. We don’t know what the hell happened at that party. The fire burned so hot we can’t really piece together any physical evidence. Property records are suspiciously sketchy. We’ve matched several abandoned vehicles nearby to known vampires in the Seattle metro area. We’re sure at least some of the vampires survived, but they’ve gone to ground.

“
Local authorities found one still-unidentified woman in the tree line with her head twisted almost in a full turn, and ashes from two vampires, along with their dresses,” Hauser said, clicking the slideshow along, “but that’s pretty much it. No human remains. No shell casings. Nothing.

“We’ve got wire-taps on vampires from here to New York and Miami
, and everything indicates they haven’t a clue what happened, but they’re extremely concerned. They suspect it was a hit by another supernatural faction, but hits this size don’t happen.

“About a week before this incident
, a similar fire destroyed a cemetery chapel in Seattle,” Hauser continued, shifting to a new spread of pictures. “Again, cause undetermined. Someone inside called 911, but left the phone off the hook without giving any info. No human remains were found. Nothing but ash.”

Hauser leaned forward on the table. His voice held steady, but
his frustration couldn’t be missed. “Years of investigations. Thousands of hours of surveillance. Research. Solid cases, just waiting for a safe moment to nab the suspects. All gone up in smoke, without an explanation. And now we have vampires all across the country and probably beyond on a hair-trigger to retaliate.”

Amber glanced around the table. The expressions worn by her fellow agents confirmed that they all knew the whole story already. This briefing was specifically for her. “So we don’t have any leads at all?”

“One,” Hauser grunted. He clicked to the next picture.

She saw a typical
cell phone self-portrait: bathroom mirror, sink in the foreground, towels on a rack on the wall behind the subject. The guy in the picture might barely be old enough to drink. He was skinny, with short, wet brown hair, a pale, mostly hairless chest and a towel wrapped around his waist. His thug-life posture looked so comical that he couldn’t possibly have taken himself seriously. In one hand, he held his cell phone. In the other, he held what appeared to be a wooden stake and a necklace of fangs.

An inset photo beside the youth’s face provided a blow-up of the fangs, with markings to denote their likely legitimacy.

“His name is Jason Cohen.”

“This picture’s all over the place,” Alex teased. He held his phone in one hand, both his elbows on the restaurant table. “I mean, you’ve got fangs in your hand, posing like you’re about to bust out some terrible nerdcore rap, but all this lens flare makes it look like you’ve just joined Starfleet… I don’t know if I’m supposed to think you got these fangs from vampire Klingons or vampire Tupac, y’know?”

“Oh, like you’re the guy to critique anyone’s photography,” retorted Jason. Baskets of half-finished gyros and Greek fries sat between the
pair. “Didn’t you burn down a church the last time you busted out your camera?”

Alex cringed. “
I’ve taken pictures since then,” he said, his voice dropping. He wore a blue dress shirt and black slacks, having come over for lunch from work. “And it was just a funeral chapel. Anyway, you know we didn’t take out all the bad guys that night. Why would you want to ask for more trouble?”

“
Dude, nobody’s listening to us. It ain’t like any of ‘em are gonna eavesdrop on us at this hour,” Jason said, jerking his thumb toward the window. Though Seattle’s skies were as overcast and its streets as wet as any other October, it wasn’t exactly dark. “Lorelei said those guys are like supernatural bottom feeders, right? So what’s the big deal?”

“
They aren’t a big deal to her or to Rachel,” Alex corrected, “or to Molly and Onyx. But I—“

“Yeah, have you called them lately?” interrupted
Jason.

Alex winced. “No.”

“Why not? They seem awesome.”

“They are, I’m just… can we stay on topic? Look, there are more of those guys out there
. They knew my name and how to find me, so they must know how to use computers. I deleted all my social media shit, but we both know all that stuff stays out there anyway. How hard do you think it’d be for them to figure out who my friends are?”

Jason gave a bit of a scowl. “You’re that freaked out about it?”

“
We
are, yeah,” Alex nodded. “Jason, I’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for you. Twice, at least. And I don’t want to think about what would’ve happened to Lorelei. She almost pulled out of her thing with the conservatory board today to come talk to you about this. I don’t think you know how much you mean to her, man.”

Sighing, Jason pulled out his phone. H
is fingers tapped through his password and called up the web page out of muscle memory. Jason barely had to look. “I was just fucking around anyway,” he muttered. “Not like I thought anyone other than you two and the guys would get what’s in that picture.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured at first. Lorelei convinced me otherwise. She’s dealt with these assholes before. She says they’re hard-core about their secrecy stuff and so it stands to reason that they pay people to cruise the Internet and check for anything that might be about them. Even dorky bathroom cell phone pics.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “It’s gone, okay? Already off my profile pic. I’m deleting it from my pictures, see?” He tilted his phone to show the webpage. “Wasn’t even up all that long.”

“Thank you,” Alex said. “Although that brings up the other question—where in the hell did you get those, anyway? Those were real fangs?”

“Yeah, they’re real,” Jason said. “I picked ‘em up just after the fight. They were just sitting there in the piles of ashes. I guess not all of them crumble up all the way. We wanted to pick up all the incriminating evidence, right?”

“So you could post it on your profile page?” asked Alex.

“Hey, it’s gone, alright? It’s gone.”

“
Thank you,” Alex sighed. “And you won’t show those to anyone, right?”

Jason sighed
back, more dramatically than before. “No,” he grumbled. “Nobody’d know what they really were, anyway.”

“
Hopefully.”

“Unless
Lorelei knows any demon girls who are single,” he added. “If that sort of stuff impresses them.”

“I kinda doubt it
. What about Britney and Brittany? How’s that going?”

“Uh. Well, that wasn’t ever gonna work out anyway,” Jason said, scratching the back of his neck. “I mean, I don’t think I’m ready to settle down yet, y’know?”

“Fucked it up?” Alex asked.

“You might be right about me blabbing too much online,” Jason confessed. “Less said about all that, the better.
Anyway, I’m back on the market.”

“
Don’t worry about it. Just give it some time. You’ll find someone new, or she’ll find you.”

“Easy for you to say. You’ve had women hanging all over you ever since all the crazy started.”

“That’s not all a good thing,” frowned Alex.

“Oh, whatever. It’s only not a good thing for you because you’re…” Words failed him. He waved his hand at Alex. “You’re
you
.”

“Jason, the one thing that I learned from all the crazy was that I wasn’t getting anywhere with girls because I wore all my angst and loneliness like a neon t-shirt. Nobody wants to get with that. Fact is, you’re a good catch, and
you know why. Just relax and don’t worry about it.”

“Is that how you work it?” Jason said, trying not to sound sullen.

His friend grunted, wanting to avoid that topic entirely. “Hey, I gotta head back to work,” Alex said.

“Yeah, I’ve got another class soon myself. Should pr
obably get going.”

“I’ve got the bill,” said
Alex, leaving cash on the table. He stood as Jason stepped out of his seat. “Everybody still on for pool tomorrow night? I’m gonna be late, but I’ll be there.”

“Sure,” Jason said.
“See you then.” With that, he headed out the door.

Before he left, Alex pulled out his phone and sent out a text message: “Mission accomplished. Everything’s cool.” He didn’t expect a response from Lorelei anytime soon. Fundraising for the arts required a lot of schmoozing and charm, neither of which would be helped by poor cell phone etiquette.

He looked up from his phone to find one of the restaurant’s servers standing in front of him at his table. “You know you don’t have to hurry out of here, right?” she asked, smiling up at him with dark eyes and darker hair. She gestured to the mostly empty tables beyond his. “You kinda came in after the lunch rush was over, anyway. If you want to hang out, it’s not like we need the table…?”

Alex smiled back reflexively, and then saw from her stance that she read it as an encouraging sign. He realized then that perhaps he shouldn’t have let his eyes drift over to her so many times while he and Jason ate, and that he’d gone out of his way to be polite and friendly… perhaps too far out.

“Sorry,” he said, “I’ve gotta get back to work. Going to lunch this late was an exception as it is.”

The waitress just shrugged. “Come back anytime.”

He felt her eyes on him as he passed. His strongest urges made it difficult to walk out the door, but his willpower won out in the end. Tempting as it was to stay and flirt, Alex preferred instead to keep his job—which presented plenty of its own similar challenges.

*   *   *

Some days were easier than others.

This afternoon would be
tough. He could feel it in the elevator. He had only three hours to go after his late lunch, and knew he’d tremble through probably half of them.

Half of him hoped he would find Kat filling in at reception in her tight sweater, or perhaps Stephanie and her white, form-hugging dress shirt with the top buttons ever so innocently popped open when Alex came around. The other half of him told him to keep it in his pants, to avoid
Stephanie entirely this afternoon, to stop thinking about sex and to focus on his work. He had a lot of filing ahead of him. Three hours of decent, reliable, utterly chaste filing.

Alex couldn’t claim his hair-trigger arousal didn’t feel good. Allowing himself even harmless fantasies made
real opportunities hard to resist, though—and living under the “curse” of a succubus seemed to ensure those opportunities would come his way. Moreover, his natural charm and confidence seemed to grow in leaps and bounds under Lorelei’s influence. Once shy and wary of coming off as a creep, Alex now had to make an effort
not
to flirt.

At least he had no issues working beside Kat, despite her perfume and her eye-catching figure
. The work dynamic between Alex and Kat was rife with innuendo, but there was never any chance she’d cheat on her boyfriend, or that Alex would tempt her toward that. No matter how much they teased, Kat served as a reality check on his magnetism. Not every woman was interested. Kat was safe. She was great eye-candy and great company, but no one’s self-control seemed ready to crumble there.

Stephanie was another matter entirely. Alex’s attraction to the party-girl copy room clerk had originally been one-sided, but as his confidence and experience grew, so did her interest. He didn’t know if he could deny another overt advance from her today.

He stepped off the elevator to find Shirley back from her lunch break and at the front desk once more. He smiled and waved at the grey-haired receptionist. No temptation to be faced there. Just a warm greeting and a wave on through into the law offices of Keating & Rose.

Alex
took the long way around to the file room so he wouldn’t have to pass by the copy room. He turned the corner, and found two of the company’s sharpest attorneys in an office doorway. Whatever conversation Susan had been having with Trinh stopped immediately. His stride faltered. Both women glowered at him, then stepped inside Susan’s office and shut the door.

Oh no
, he thought. The last time he’d been in that office, Susan threw him up against a wall, kissed him hard… and wasn’t happy at all to hear that he was seeing someone.

Alex scratched his head and wondered how he could mend th
at fence as he wandered to the file room. Kat wasn’t back from lunch yet. He sat at his desk and rolled the mouse to bring his monitor out of screen saver mode. He entered his login and password, found it rejected and tried again. No luck. He wondered what he was doing wrong. Was the caps lock on?

“Alex?” asked a cool, confident female voice. He looked up to see
Olivia—pretty, older, dark-haired office manager Olivia—standing in the doorway. “Could I talk to you in my office, please?”

“Uh, sure,
Olivia,” Alex shrugged. He rose from his seat to follow and found he couldn’t help but look at the sway in her hips as she walked. That skirt wasn’t too short to be professional, but wasn’t long enough to be conservative, either. He liked the stockings, too. And the woman wearing them.

Stop it
, he reminded himself.
Stop thinking about that. Try something else. Think about math. Motorcycle maintenance. No, baseball! Baseball isn’t sexy! Except for all the innuendos about getting to bases. Dammit!

Olivia shut and locked the door behind him. Her hand came to
his chest, gently pushing him backward. The smoldering look in her eyes made her intentions plain.

Aw hell. Not again. Not today. I can’t handle this today.

“Olivia, what—wait, what’s going on?” he asked. The couch snuck up on him, taking his legs out from under him at the knees. He fell back into a seat.

“I think
you know,” she murmured. Olivia sat sideways in his lap, bringing her legs across his, not waiting for anything resembling permission. She kissed him hotly, slipping one hand behind his neck and up to grab a little of his short black hair. “I’m all about grabbing opportunities while they last.”

He was stronger some days than others.

When she kissed him again, he didn’t resist. He couldn’t. Justifications filled his mind: She was an adult. She knew what she was doing. This was completely within the bounds of his relationship rules. Somewhere out there, a demon who loved him silently urged Alex to tear Olivia’s clothes off. At least one angel probably had similar wishes with more vulgar expressions for them.

Olivia
looked great with her hair down like this. Felt good up against him. Alex’s hands roamed up her sides, leaving him curious about the lacy bra he felt underneath her top.

He didn’t initiate this. He never did.
Alex hadn’t even ever flirted with his boss like he had with Stephanie, or Susan…

Wait. No. Susan. Stop.
“Stop,” Alex managed to say in the middle of their kiss, then repeated, “Wait, Olivia. Stop for a second.”

Olivia
’s hand in his hair took a firmer grip, tilting his head back so she could lick his neck. “Can’t it wait?”

“Did Susan say anything to you today?”

She pulled back. His shirt was already half unbuttoned. Her blazer was off. “You really want to do this now?” Frustration and annoyance replaced the tone of lust in her voice.

“Do what now? What happened?”

“What happened? Oh, nothing, except that Susan found out that you’ve been fooling around with Stephanie.”

“What?” Alex blinked.