Page 9 of Secrets in the Dark
“Looks are like names. They can all be changed.”
“Yes, but there’s only one look that’s real. You know, like you look now.”
He shrugged. “Who knows what I saw. Again, I’m resting now.”
“You’re incarcerated awaiting trial.”
“Right. Taking a little rest.” He gave her his most charming smile. “But I’ll rest and get my strength back and...”
He paused, leaning as close to her as the cuffs would allow.
“I will let you have fun before I drink your blood, and for me, it will be so delicious, I will drink, and drink, and drink, and lick my lips!”
“Yeah. Whatever. You do remember people. You could have forensic artists do sketches.”
“Ah, but you know that we’re all chameleons!”
“But there is that one look. I saw a guy. Is this one of your friends?”
She’d given her best memory of the man with the young blond woman in Brixton to one of the Krewe’s best artists and she was sure she had a good likeness.
She pressed it toward him on the table and watched his reaction.
Did his lips tighten just a bit?
He stared at the picture and shrugged. “Could be anybody.”
“You know him.”
“Hey, I know nothing!”
“All right, let’s try this. Who provides you all your false passports?”
Dante started to laugh. “Seriously? What do you think? They go by their real names? They report their earnings to the IRS?”
She smiled sweetly. “All right. Well,” she said, starting to rise, “you haven’t cooperated with anyone—”
“I have cooperated. I gave that psychiatrist dude all kinds of helpful information.”
“Not enough. And you haven’t helped me in the least. Have a nice afterlife.”
“You don’t listen. They won’t get me. And that’s it? You’re not going to sit here and try harder? I mean, hmm, you really don’t know half of it, though I guess you... I told you! I have helped. I talked to that other guy. Well, in truth, he’s not bad. That special agent who is a psychiatrist or whatever who comes in here is all right and I look at him sometimes and think that he’s reading my mind—”
“Special Agent—and Doctor—Philip Law, and yes, he’s read a lot in your mind. He told me that you honestly believe that whether as a criminal or creature, you do see yourself as the king of vampires—or the ultimate in talent for vampire killing, and thus, until you magically free yourself—such killings have ended.”
Dante leaned back, smiling broadly. “Ah, the king is dead, long live the king! Yet each king is different, and each claims different prowess, and different ways to rise to power. No. There will never be another me, and I will reign again one day, mark my words. Poetry! The vampire rests, yet other nobility will come to the tests, for each man will rise to the beat of his own drum.”
“Ah, but that’s the future. We know one thing. As you suggested, we visited Bram Castle. I believe that you suckered in a co-killer in England by finding a man who had lost his wife to suicide—perhaps she did the unthinkable rather than face life with him, as Vlad the Impaler’s wife supposedly did when the Ottomans under Radu attacked. You do like to give clues. But sometimes, I think you’re telling the truth. You just don’t have the answers.”
“Well, stay near me, my lovely. You could have ruled with me. Now, of course, when I make my way out of here, well... I’m sure your blood is going to be delicious—hot and spicy.” He finished speaking and laughed. “He’s going crazy out there, beyond the glass, right? He is with you, I know. Good old Special Agent Mason Carter. Watching. Wishing he could come in and shoot me.”
“Hmm. No, in truth, Mason doesn’t like killing—he only kills if he has no choice when it comes to saving an innocent life. But you wouldn’t begin to understand that, so... Well, it’s been dull and tedious, but gotta go.”
She stood, aware that he would do something, say something, to draw her back.
“That’s it? Oh, come on.”
“Well, I think I’ve got all you’re going to give me,” she said, leaning on the table for just a minute and smiling at him. “When we find our suspects, we’re going to be looking for someone who lost someone they loved to suicide. And, when we go through the files, he could be someone police have interviewed already. And each king reigns on his own. Jack is back, eh?”
