No Place to Hyde

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

KARENA HAHN STOOD under the heavy branches of a massive cypress as she stared out at Crabgrass Creek, her arms over her chest as she watched a pelican float along the glassy surface. The water seemed darker these days, not as crystal blue as it was back when the logging industry thrived in the area. The sun was high overhead still, which is why she remained in the shadows of the tree. Vampires were fatally allergic to the sun, after all.

Bull Creek had changed a lot since she moved here back before Hopkins had bought it around nineteen hundred. He had even built a small railroad he used to haul cypress to Melbourne in the east, which he did until about the year 1928. By then several vampires had joined her, and they made their home near Crabgrass Creek, building small homes for themselves. Nothing elaborate, just simple structures back in the woods that would keep them out of the sun and protected them from vampire hunters. They counted on the fact that most of the land was too wet as well as too far away from the main road for anyone to come and disturb them.

Of course, the land hadn’t always been treated fairly nor were the people who trusted those in government. Back in the 1960s, corrupt county officials allowed remote swampland bordered on both sides by the Wildlife Management Area to be divided up into a paper subdivision, which was a subdivision in name only, and then they mass-marketed it nationwide to unsuspecting buyers as an investment. It didn’t take long for those buyers to realize they had been tricked, and they retaliated by simply not paying their property taxes. That allowed others to come in and buy it up, making it their homes, some using it merely for hunting camps when they wanted to escape the city while others made it their permanent home. When the other shifters started to move into the area, the vampires remained in the background, choosing not to associate with them or get involved in their politics. That was before the Paranormal Council from Draven Falls bought the land and turned it into a safe haven for paranormals. A few times since then, Karena had participated in Dimitri’s quests for peace in the area, helping to toss out the riffraff who would choose to ruin their perfect hideaway.

She took a deep breath as she shifted her gaze from the water to the cypress and oaks along the shore, the birds building nests in the highest branches as they prepared for winter, not that it got cold much in Florida, and rarely before January. The breeze rustled the branches but did nothing to disturb the birds that made their homes there or the squirrels that hoarded their winter supply of food. She loved this time of year. While the Florida temperatures didn’t really cool off enough to call it fall or winter, the nights were longer, allowing her and her coven to roam about more without worrying about turning into a chunk of ash on the ground. Turning her gaze up into the burning sky once more, she started to count the hours before she could scour Bull Creek for whoever dragged trouble to her coven’s doorstep. She didn’t need the other factions turning on them.

The rustling of someone walking behind her caught her attention, causing her to c**k her head to the side slightly so she could hear better. It was one of hers, Antonio Foster, and he wasn’t alone. She could hear another set of footsteps, heavier this time. A smile creased her face. Russell Mackey, the newest member and youngest vampire among them. He had only been turned about ten years ago and was still getting used to his hunger pains. He was learning, though.

She turned, her eyes going wide as she noticed the body draped in Russell’s arms. By the troubled expression on Antonio’s face, she wondered if perhaps she had praised Russell too soon. She glanced at Russell, feeling her brows pinched in confusion, but she said nothing.

“It’s not—” Russell started, but Karena held up a hand, silencing him.

She walked over to where Russell stood and examined the body in his arms. She recognized the dead man, a David Potts, one of Dimitri Everest’s shifters, a gorilla if she remembered correctly. She ran her hand over her short, dark hair, which she kept cut close to her scalp, as she took a deep breath. This would not go over well. The shifters and vampires had a longstanding truce for the past few years, ever since the Paranormal Council of Draven Falls bought the area actually. Glancing up at Antonio, she asked, “Okay, what happened?”

“We don’t know,” Antonio said, gesturing for Russell to put the body on the ground. “But, you better take a closer look, especially around the neck.”

She didn’t need to look. She could smell the blood and knew what she would find, two puncture holes at his jugular, just like the fangs of a vampire. “Drained of blood. I assume?” she asked as she watched Russell stand back up.

The two men nodded.

She glanced at Russell, not wanting to ask the next question but knowing she had to anyway. “And this wasn’t you? You swear it?”

Russell nodded, his dark blond bangs sliding across his forehead and into his eyes. “No, I promise. I’ve been controlling the urge with small animals.”

She nodded, her lips pressed together as she studied the young kid’s eyes for any duplicity. “Sorry,” she said finally. “I had to ask so I knew how to handle this.”

“We found the body in the woods on the edge of our camp, however,” Antonio said, his thick arms over his chest. “If that Alpha discovered the body before we did, he would assume it was us who did it. This is the third body we’ve found like this. Someone is setting us up.”

“It would seem so, wouldn’t it?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips. “The question is, who would even want to do something so devious? We’ve been at peace with the shifters for years now. We need to find out who did this before that peace gets shot to hell.”

“I hate to ask this but could it be one of the shifters?” Antonio asked. “I mean, they have had their fair share of trouble over the past couple of years. Remember that coyote Alpha who tried to drive out the humans and witches? I could see someone like him doing it just to drive a wedge between us and the shifters.”

She thought about what he said for a moment, seeing the logic in Antonio’s statement. There had even been some organization, The Order of Wardens, who came in wanting to destroy all paranormals. Perhaps they were back. Still, it wouldn’t do well to open a can of worms she couldn’t shove back into the can if things went south. “Let’s do some investigating of our own first,” she said. “I want to be able to offer up a suspect before talking to Dimitri. We don’t need people getting the wrong idea and then try to throw their weight around. We’ve done things our way for too long to have that stripped away from us now.”

“So, what do we do with him?” Russell asked, pointing to the corpse. “We can’t preserve him, and if we drop him where someone will find him, they’ll notice the marks on the neck and come to the same conclusions you did at first; that it was a vampire.”

As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. “Do we know if he had a family?” she asked. She dreaded the idea of someone simply vanishing on their loved ones. She saw the damage something like that did to people.

Antonio shrugged. “No clue. I could ask around, but it’s not like we hang around the shifters much. It might look suspicious.”

She nodded. “That might be something we need to fix if we’re to figure this out.” But what should she do with the body until she figured out what to do about the whole mess? She pressed her lips together, hating the spot she found herself in at the moment. Glancing around at the others, she made her decision. “Let’s wrap him in a tarp and bury him somewhere the animals won’t find him. We can return him to his family once we know who did it. Or, we can dispose of the body, like we did the others, depending on what we find. Either way, I don’t want anything to happen to the corpse until I’m ready. We might need it to prove we didn’t do it.”

Russell nodded and then bent down to scoop up the body once more.

Antonio dipped his head once to Karena. “I’ll find a spot; don’t worry.”

And then she watched as the two walked off, her arms over her small chest. She needed to talk to Dimitri without the Alpha knowing she was on a fishing expedition. That wouldn’t be easy, of course. She could understand why the Paranormal Council chose Dimitri Everest. He was sharper than the first Alpha they sent out to lead the small community. Dimitri would know he was being questioned. She could do it, she knew; she would just need to be cautious not to give herself away. The question was figuring out what she needed to ask. It wasn’t like she could simply ask if shifters had been vanishing from Bull Creek.

She glanced back out at the creek, rubbing her upper arms as she debated the course before her. She could handle everything herself, of course, leave Dimitri and his friends out of it as she solved the problem on her own, which might be the safest thing for everyone involved. She didn’t need her vampires getting angry when the accusations flew, and they would fly. The puncture marks in the man’s neck shouted vampire. She squinted her eyes, staring at the water but only seeing the mystery in front of her. What if it were a vampire? Not one of hers, but a rogue come into Bull Creek to stir up trouble. They wouldn’t know of the pact, even though they should have checked in with the coven and told her they were in the area. They could have fed on the man not knowing they were about to break a peace that kept everyone safe.

Or, it could be a shifter wanting to stir up a fight between the factions, of which at the moment, there were only two: shifters and vampires. The humans, the few that there were, didn’t count as they were so small in number, and there was only one—correction, now two—witches in the area, both mated to shifters, one to the Alpha himself. Karena remembered the time when the humans ruled the area and the witches were in greater numbers. That time was long ago, however.

Turning, she headed deeper into the shadows of the forest, moving to the homes the vampires had made when they first arrived in Bull Creek. It seemed she needed to get ready for a night out. It was time to get closer to the shifters, and the best way to do that was to get a drink at Everglades, the local paranormal bar. It would be out of the norm for her, or any vampire for that matter, but she felt she had helped the shifters enough over the past two years that they wouldn’t think too much about it. She could simply play it off as wanting to build a stronger bridge between the two factions, a bridge that could very well be demolished if Dimitri ever discovered the truth of why she was there. Hopefully, she could figure things out before anything revealed her subterfuge. She supposed she’d find out at the bar whenever she went. The more bodies dropped, the greater the danger to all of them. She enjoyed her peace and quiet too much to allow that to happen. The irony wasn’t lost on her, however. She used to love a good, bloody fight. God, I’m getting old.