Page 5 of Be Still My Unbeating Heart

The world scrambled to deal with them. In Europe, laws were quickly passed to help prosecute “postmortem criminals,” while “stake on sight” orders in other territories empowered police to slay any vampire witnessed attacking a human. The Accords protected all European tourist destinations from vampires.

So far, only one case had made it to trial in the UK, after a vampire professed innocence in the murder of a female jogger. The jury never got to deliver its verdict as the vampire in question was burned and staked by a vigilante mob, closing the case with immediate effect. Needless to say, no proceedings were brought against the mob.

Even now, in the eyes of most humans,corpseplusvampireequaled one thing.

But Bastian had done nothing wrong.

He wasn’t a killer. Not anymore. Leaving Vernazza would be as good as admitting guilt, but he hadn’t sweated and suffered through five years of getting clean just to take the fall for another vampire.

“What’s this?” Whitby said. She prodded an object in the sand. It caught the moonlight, gleaming silver. Though he knew they’d been on the beach for too long already, Bastian went over and picked up the object, brushing sand from a pin badge shaped like a number eight. It took him a moment to realize the two loops didn’t form a number, but something more unsettling.

“It’s an infinity pin,” he said, nearly dropping it in surprise. He had seen Londoners wearing exactly that kind of badge. It was a symbol of allyship favored by vampire advocates—humans who campaigned for undead rights, arguing that vampires deserved as much empathy, love, and respect as any living thing.

“Was she wearing it?” Whitby asked. “The girl?”

Bastian pouted in thought. “It could have come loose in the struggle. It’s made of steel, not silver.”

“So, she was a vampire ally,” Whitby said. “Could be why she’s dead. She trusted the wrong set of fangs.”

Bastian studied the object in his hand. “Or she was targeted for supporting vampire rights.”

“You mean somebody wanted it tolooklike she was killed by a vampire?” Whitby said.

Bastian nodded slowly. It was an out-there theory, but plenty of killers had blamed vampires for their handiwork. They were a convenient scapegoat.

“Don’t move!” A gruff voice echoed across the beach behind him.

Bastian hadn’t heard the man approach. He’d been too distracted by the body. He smelled him now, though. Perspiration and a whiff of salami. The command in his voice told Bastian one thing:poliziotto.

Bastian started to turn, but the officer shouted again, in Italian.

“Put your hands up!”

“Run, Bastian!” Whitby cried.

“Who said that?” the poliziotto shouted. “If somebody else is there, I order you to show yourself!”

Bastian slipped the infinity pin into his pocket and raised his hands.

“We found her, Signore,” he called out in English. “She was like this when we got here.”

He heard the poliziotto wheeze as he approached and calculated that the man was in his fifties. Heavy footed, the sand compacting under his weight. He resisted the urge to turn and face the poliziotto, not wanting to alarm him. The last thing Bastian needed was a bullet in him. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would hurt. A lot.

“I’ll distract him,” Whitby said, standing on the path by the beach, eyes flashing like mirrors in the dusk.

“No,” Bastian said. “I’ll handle this.”

“Show yourself!” the poliziotto yelled again, and he must have meant Whitby, because at the same time, Bastian’s hands were yanked behind his back. The poliziotto gasped at the contact. He hadn’t expected Bastian’s skin to feel so cold.

“Should’ve known,” the man spat, and the smell of cured meat flooded Bastian’s nostrils.

“Just run!” Whitby yowled, pacing back and forth, her tail whipping like an angry cobra.

“That won’t help—”

Bastian felt cold metal at his wrists and was about to tell the poliziotto that he needn’t bother cuffing him, he wasn’t going to put up a fight, he just wanted to explain, but then the coldness intensified. It became searing against his skin. His wrists itched and burned, as if the cuffs were fresh from the blacksmith’s forge.

Silver.