We reached the bottom step. I pressed my back against the wall, noting the glass littering the hallway. Someone had thrown a mirror - it lay in broken pieces near the front door.
Goosebumps fled up my arms as I stared at the broken shards. Two women had been killed by something that had probably come through their mirrors, I'd been visited in my sleep, and now we had a broken mirror here. Coincidence? More than likely not.
A quick scan of the front two rooms didn't reveal anything out of the ordinary. We turned and made our down the hall, our footsteps as silent as the house.
But as we neared the back room, the sensation hit me - an uncomfortable and all too familiar wash of heat. The sort of heat that came from lust. The sort of heat I'd felt when I'd followed the man who'd come out of Vinny's building last night.
I stopped abruptly. Rhoan glanced at me, one eyebrow raised in question. I signaled that I could sense someone inside and he shook his head, meaning he couldn't. Which was odd, but it didn't make me doubt what I was sensing. I learned long ago to trust what I felt. It might never have gotten me into less trouble, but at least it did give me a heads-up.
He raised his hand again and began to count down. When the last finger fell, I went in low and fast, slapping down on one knee as I scanned the room with the laser at the ready.
I had one brief glimpse of a man - the man Kye had identified as Carlos Martez - then he was gone, his body exploding into a mass of writhing, boiling black smoke that fled sideways. I followed with the laser, saw the mirror. Fired.
But I was too late.
The smoke that had been a man hit it a fraction of a second before the laser beam, the last of him disappearing into the confines of the mirror just before it shattered. I rose and ran over, but the glass was empty of anything but my reflection.
"What the fuck was that?" Rhoan said.
I glanced at him. He stood near the doorway, his gaze sweeping the room and his gun still held at the ready. "That," I said heavily, "was probably the vampire responsible for murdering two women. He's possibly also the vampire behind our beheadings."
"Vampires can't just up and disappear into smoke." He scanned the room a final time, then relaxed a little and lowered his weapon. "And they certainly can't disappear into mirrors."
"I don't think we're dealing with an ordinary vampire here."
"But even if he's an emo vamp, the same still applies. They just can't fade into mirrors."
"Unless they were something that could before they became a vampire." I pocketed my laser and began picking up the pieces of glass. If he could disappear through a mirror then he could reappear too, and I wasn't about to chance an ambush.
"So, what was he looking at so intensely?" Rhoan said, walking lightly across the room.
"I don't know." I rose and walked back down the hallway, opening the front door and tossing the mirror's remains out into the garden. Hopefully the bright sunshine would stop him using the shards as an avenue of return. I did the same to the mirror that had been smashed in the hall, then on the way back to the kitchen, I checked the other rooms. I found a mirror in what looked to be the main bedroom, and dumped it whole and intact outside. It looked old and may have well been an heirloom. And while I enjoyed baiting Sal, I wasn't about to destroy something she held dear.
Rhoan was kneeling where our vamp had been, but glanced up as I entered. "It's a trap door."
I raised my eyebrows. "Sal has a panic room."
"Pretty sensible thing for a vampire to do," he commented. "Especially given the human history of distrust when it comes to vampires."
"It's generally not that bad these days." The door itself wasn't large - it was big enough for a body to slip down into but little else. It was also metal, and looked strong enough to withstand a bomb.
"Tell that to the vampires who have lost their heads," Rhoan said, voice wry. "Or to the humans that wanted to belt your lights out."
"That's different." I knelt down beside him and ran my fingers across the cool metal, looking for something that might act as a lock or a switch to get into the thing. "Besides, it's not humans decapitating the vamps. How we supposed to open this sucker?"
As far as I could see, there was no damn lock. There wasn't even enough of a gap between the door and the metal frame around it to squeeze fingers in and rip it open.
"I don't think anyone is meant to." He raised a fist and pounded heavily on the door. The sound echoed through the stillness, and from what seemed a long way away, a dog yapped.
I grinned. I knew that bark. And if the little terrier I'd rescued was alive down there, then surely Sal was, too.
"Sal," I shouted, leaning forward a little, "it's Riley and Rhoan. The threat is gone. It's safe to come out."
"God," Rhoan said, wincing as he wiggled the ear lobe nearest me with one hand. "Give a warning next time you're going to do that."
There was no immediate answer from the room below us, but the excited barking got louder. Two seconds later, there was a hiss of air - similar to that of an air lock opening - then the lid popped upwards and slowly opened to reveal a ladder.
"Riley?" Sal almost sounded relieved, which definitely meant the situation had been bad.
"Yeah," I said. "The house is clear. It's safe to come out. "
"Good." The sound of steps on metal rungs echoed, then she appeared, looking more than a little disheveled and wearing a white satin night dress that showed off her curvaceous figure to perfection. The little terrier was tucked safely under her arm, though he was wriggling for all he was worth and giving everyone a silly doggy grin.
She set him down once they were both out, then met my gaze squarely. "Thank you."
I raised an eyebrow. "We were only doing our job. And Jack sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to lose the second-best liaison he's ever had."
A wry smile touched the corners of her mouth. "No, I mean thank you for giving me the dog. He saved my life."
"How?" I glanced down at the mutt in question. He was running excitedly around Rhoan's legs, yipping for all he was worth, stopping only when Rhoan bent down to give him a pat. "I mean, he's a great dog and all, but he's not really a threat, and he certainly wasn't much help to his first master."
Sal smiled and scooped up the little, dog as he ran back to her. "I was woken up by his barking. When I went down to investigate, he was frantic. The beat of life was strong on the other side of the front door, and whoever it was wore a very powerful nanowire that I couldn't get past. He scampered the minute I neared the door, but he left a miniature camera sticking through the key hole. I destroyed it, but it was too late."
I raised my eyebrows. "Too late for what?"
"To stop it." She gave the little dog another scratch. "Fred gave me the heads up when he started barking at the mirror. That's when I noticed the smoke forming."
She'd called him Fred? A woman with no imagination when it came to decent dog names, obviously. "And you knew what it was?""Yes. I've come across mirror wraiths before and have seen what they can do."
"So you smashed the mirror and ran for the safe room?"
"Yes." She smiled, though it held little in the way of amusement. "They can only travel through reflective surfaces, so unpolished steel is a perfect foil for them."
"So why not just destroy the rest of the mirrors in the house?"
"Because I had no idea how long the man at the door had been using the camera or how much of the house he might have seen." She shrugged. "It was safer to hide."
"If these things can come through mirrors," Rhoan asked. "Why would he be using someone to take images through a keyhole?"
"Because they cannot come through unknown mirrors. They have to physically see them before they can use them."
Which explained the housekeeper's observation that the second man had carried a camera but wasn't using it. It also suggested our two female victims had a tryst with the wraith before he'd started visiting them nightly.
Yet their friends and families had claimed that neither women had lovers. And while you mightn't tell your family that sort of stuff, most women did gossip to friends.
"How come you know about these things and Jack doesn't?"
"Because we come from two very different parts of the world. There are always regional evolutionary differences in species." She shrugged. "The question is, why would the wraith come after me?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Don't suppose you've been having seriously sexual dreams of late, have you?"
She glanced at me. "This is the first time the wraith has attempted to get into my house. So, no, I haven't."
"What about the Melbourne vamp council? Are you on that?" Rhoan asked, moving to the nearest window and looking out. He still held the gun ready, too, though I doubted our felons would risk coming back so quickly. Then I noticed his hand was still near his ear and realized he was in contact with Jack.
"No, I'm not." She frowned. "Although I did a short stint a while ago, when a friend of mine went overseas. And I have to say, most of the councilors are arrogant jerks."
Coming from Sal - who could be as arrogant as the best of them - that was saying a lot. I leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed my arms. "Those jerks are currently being murdered."
She nodded. "I'd heard, but I really didn't think it would involve me, given that my tenure was only brief."
"How come Jack didn't know?" He mustn't have; otherwise he would have mentioned it. Jack was many things, but he wasn't cavalier with the lives of his people, and he would have at least arranged protection for her.
"Because I only attended a few meetings, and my name never actually went onto the permanent roster."
"And how long ago did you stand in for your friend?"
"Nearly six months ago." She let the little dog down again then moved across to the percolator and began lining up cups. "As I said, it was mostly boring, everyday stuff. You know, someone wanting permission to set up a nest, someone else wanting help with a fledgling - " She paused and frowned as she pressed a button on the percolator. The machine began to spit and hiss, and the rich aroma of coffee filled the air. "There was one request the council refused. A man came to them requesting their help with several fledglings that were having trouble with coping with the turn. As it happens, he hadn't actually asked the council's permission to set up a nest, so he was punished. He was severely reprimanded, and the nest was destroyed."
"And how are nests usually destroyed?" The answer was pretty obvious given the method being used on the councilors, but it was a question that still had to be asked.
"Beheading, then the bodies left to burn in sunlight."
"That would certainly be enough to piss someone off."
"Yeah." She handed me a coffee, then walked over to the window and gave the other to Rhoan. "But it was six months ago. Surely if he was going to seek revenge, he would have done so before now?"
"If I've learned one thing in this job, it's that the bad guys never do what you expect," Rhoan said. "And six months isn't a long time when you basically live forever."
"Point taken," she agreed, and took a sip of her own coffee. "He didn't seem particularly angry at the council's decision, though. And he stood by and watched the destruction without saying a word."
"Maybe he was so damn angry he just wasn't able to react." I breathed deeply, savoring the divine smell emanating from my coffee cup, then took a sip. It lived up to the promise of its aroma. I might even be tempted to say the fresh fruitiness and creamy coconut flavor was every bit as good as my old favorite, hazelnut. "What happened to him after that?"
"I don't know. He just disappeared off the radar."
"And the council didn't find that alarming?" Rhoan asked.
Sal's smile was wry. "If the council got alarmed every time a vampire decided to make himself scarce, they would very quickly become nervous wrecks."
"I thought vamps tended to stick to their own territories?"
She arched an eyebrow. "If we did that, then there would be none of us in Australia, would there?"
That was certainly true. Australia didn't have the same history as England, Europe, or even the U.S. And when it came to white settlement - and the subsequent inflow of supernaturals - it was certainly one of the last places to be populated.
"So," I said, after taking another drink. "This man that went before the council, what sort of vamp was he?"
She shrugged. "I have to admit, I was bored and wasn't really taking that much notice of proceedings. But his name was Ammon. Ammon Nasser, I think."
It was a start, at least. I pulled out the photo taken from Kye's computer from my pocket and showed it to her. "Is this Nasser?"
She frowned at the printout, then shook her head. "Nasser is tall, with spikey brown hair and odd colored eyes."
"Odd how?"
She hesitated. "It's almost like the color is unstable. It shifts hue constantly. It's very weird."
It sounded it. "Are mirror wraiths vampires?"
"Generally no, but like any other person born to this world, they can chose to become one." She took a sip of coffee, her expression considering. "And he uses the mirrors extremely well, so I'd say he was a fairly old wraith when he changed."