She left us there, and Eli pulled his cell, punched a button, and waited. I heard Alex answer, and Eli said, “Silent mode. Sync and record.” He said nothing else, and a moment later Jodi returned with a laptop, an older model, that she opened and booted up.
Eli and I leaned over the table, braced on our hands, watching, as she brought up video and fast-forwarded through it. A dance bar, people having fun, a lot of hip shimmies, a little line-dance twerking, all looking silly in fast mode, some making out at the bar, a lot of drinking and eating. And then Jodi hit a button and the vid slowed down. The people moved at a normal pace now, dancing and laughing, juking and jiving, cuddling and kissing. It was silent, no audio, and the view felt odd with the lack of music and voices. People having fun are loud. Raucous.
A shadow entered the bar, moving fast, and reached the center of the room. The video stopped, and Jodi tapped some more keys, bringing the face into better focus, then tapping until we had two blurred close-ups of the man on the screen, side by side, the bar visible around him.
I had never seen him before, yet I knew who he was. I did.
His complexion was pale and scummy, with deep frown wrinkles at eyes and mouth. Tangled black hair reached his hips in tattered knots. His eyes were scarlet and black, vamped-out, glowing reddish from the lights in the room. His nose was proud, a Roman nose, half-formed but with no nostrils yet, just black holes to either side of the arching bone. He was gaunt, a scarecrow caricature of a man, an illustration from a grisly fairy tale. His beard was thin and scraggly, yet he wore clean, neat clothing, black from head to toe—dress slacks, shirt, and a black iridescent tie that caught the light. I remembered that he had killed humans and drained the young vamps, Liam and Vivian. The clothes looked like something Liam might wear. With my left hand, I pressed deep into the burning between my ribs.
“Do you know him?” Jodi asked, her voice sounding less cold, more worried. More something. “Does he have anything to do with your guys and Leo’s muscle chasing a smoking human-shaped figure down the street today?”
I shook my head. “Yes. Maybe. What . . .” I stopped and swallowed down bile. “What does he look like? After.”
The close-up disappeared and the video started.
The vamp raised his arms and the people all stopped. Just stopped. Skirts and big hair waved, slowing, as the people halted. Only the vamp still moved. The vamp walked to the nearest man and bent him back, over his arm. He opened his mouth, his jaw dropping, angling wide, the way older vamps’ mouths did, like a snake’s jaws, to allow the fangs to click down and up. These were five inches long on top and at least three on the bottom. Like a sabertooth cat. He thrust them into the man’s throat. He drank. And drank. And when he was done, he dropped the man on the floor and moved on to the next person, a woman stopped in the midst of a dance move, her pelvis rocked forward. He pulled the woman to him and seemed to breathe in her scent. He took her head in his hands, and with a move so fast that the cameras couldn’t capture it, he broke her neck and lay her on the floor. On and on he moved through the crowd. Drinking a few, breaking the necks of most. And as he moved, the camera began to pixel out, more and more. And he started to change.
His magic was growing as he drank. His magic was strong enough to create an EM resonance or something similar. The screen was pixelating out in broad, fluctuating blocks. But enough was left. Too much. Joses Bar-Judas—the assumption had to be correct—was healing. His olive complexion now glowed with blood-flush. Luxurious black hair reached his hips in rippling waves, and when it slid forward, it moved like silk. His eyes now looked human, light colored, maybe green, or maybe they glowed greenish from the lights in the room; I couldn’t tell. His nose was proud and his beard was thick and full, with glints that might have been stray white hairs at his chin. Eyebrows like ravens’ wings. He was slender and elegant and utterly gorgeous. If a fallen angel had mated with a raptor and a siren and the three had produced a son, he might be this beautiful. Even in the pixelated photos he was stunning. Magnificent. He’d stop people in their tracks wherever he went, even without vamp compulsion.
When the vamp was done with the dance floor, he stroked his luxurious beard, sliding it through his hand, thoughtfully, as he stepped up to the band. He drained and killed his way through them, one by one, until he reached the drummer; the camera caught his face as he bent over her and inhaled. He closed his eyes, liking how she smelled. I turned away. I didn’t need to see more.
“Yeah,” Jodi said bitterly, her gaze on me. “He’s a piece of work. All that in front of the cameras. As if he doesn’t care he’s on camera.”
Or as if he doesn’t know what a camera is, I thought. “He’s old. Very old. Five-inch upper fangs mean he’s ancient. The way the jaw unhinged means ancient. Bottom fangs only make him older. The way he held the victims still with his mind means ancient, ancient, ancient. Print me a photo or send it to my cell. I’ll do—” I stopped, my throat so dry I could barely swallow. “I’ll get you a name.”
“Leo had a problem at the Mithran Council Chambers,” Jodi said, with the kind of formality she used when talking to a suspect or a person of interest. “We have reports of a human figure running through the streets, smoking and on fire, chased by a bunch of men who sound a lot like Leo’s people and yours. Was it related to this situation?”
I picked through my possible responses and jutted my chin at the screen. “Probably. I could just say yes, but I never saw him in either form, not hungry and not blood-flushed and healthy.”
“So what did he look like when you saw him?” Jodi asked.
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. I want confirmation from someone who knew him. Knows him. I need to show this to Leo.”
“No. No way this leaves this room.”
I didn’t look at Eli. He had synced his phone. We had it already. I shrugged, one shouldered.
“Leo needs to call me,” Jodi said, the calm in her voice beginning to crack. “And before you say anything, yes, I know it’s never convenient to drop by and visit with the cops. But if I don’t get a call from him within one hour, I’ll start the paperwork on getting a warrant and haul him in to NOPD. In the sunlight, in the trunk of my car, if necessary. I imagine he would find that extremely undignified. Or you can wait until PsyLED is here and they’ll haul him down. You don’t have many choices.”