Tainted Night, Tainted Blood - By E. S. Moore Page 0,2

hadn’t expected to find bodies lying around with blood splattered all over the walls.

I fought the urge to feed, pushed it as deep as I could. The blood was probably tainted anyway. To taste it would be to risk contaminating myself further.

I slipped past the window to the door. I still had yet to see any movement from within. It was entirely possible Countess Telia had been attacked by a rogue wolf or two and was out chasing down the last of them. She could return at any time.

Or she could be inside, bathing in the blood of her victims. It was hard to tell with vamps, especially ones like her.

I stepped around the corner and into the house, my gun leading the way.

There was blood on the floor just inside the door, but there were no bodies. One of the dead outside could have been wounded here before staggering out into the driveway to die.

Either that or whoever had been injured here was somewhere farther in the house, wounded and angry.

I worked my way deeper, checking each room as I passed. The living room I had seen from the window was to my left, and I paid it only a casual glance as I passed by. The dining room and kitchen were likewise empty, though I did find what looked to be an ear lying on the kitchen counter. Whomever it belonged to wasn’t anywhere to be found.

There were two other rooms on the ground floor, but I had yet to come across any sign that anyone was alive inside. I still had the basement and the upstairs to canvas, yet something told me I wouldn’t find anyone in the house. For whatever reason, Countess Telia wasn’t home.

Still, I headed for the stairs. I would check over the place first, freeing any Purebloods I found, and then would wait for Telia to return. I couldn’t let her continue her torturous ways. Not in my town.

From the bottom of the stairs, I could see what appeared to be a man’s boot resting beside a bloody wall. I slowly made my way up the stairs sideways, keeping my gun trained just above the boot in case the guy sat up.

I needn’t have bothered. The boot turned out not to be connected to anyone. The hallway behind it was empty of everything but blood. I stepped around the boot and just happened to glance back at it as I passed.

There was a foot inside.

The alarm bells in my head weren’t just ringing now. They were clanging so loudly my ears rang with the phantom sound. Something was definitely wrong here.

The first room on my right turned out to be a bathroom. The owner of the foot was inside, lying on the floor, a bloody mess. His head lay in the tub, severed from his body much like the wolf ’s had been. The job had been sloppy, most likely performed with a dull blade. The dead man’s mouth was wide, exposing two extended fangs. Vampires don’t turn to dust when killed like they do in the movies.

I looked around the bathroom in the hopes of finding something that would identify the victim. I didn’t know what Telia’s lone vampire minion looked like. If this was him, then something truly bad had happened here, and by the smell, it hadn’t happened too long ago.

I left the bathroom, my body thrumming with excitement. Had the Major House come down on Telia after all? Or was it someone else? Could another House have decided they’d had enough of the Fledgling vamp and her torturous ways? Or another Fledgling House could have come after her, looking to make themselves stronger.

A surge of anger coursed through my body. If Mikael held out on me because he knew Telia’s old House was coming after her, I was going to be pissed. What if I had shown up while the killing was going on? I might have been caught in the middle of a fight between vamps and wolves from a Major House and Telia’s own. I could have been killed.

I wasn’t positive that was what happened. Most vampires didn’t fight with swords, let alone dull ones. They would have sent werewolves to finish the job. A few well-placed bullets would have wounded Telia and her minions; then the wolves could have torn them apart at their leisure.

This was different somehow. I wasn’t quite sure how, but I knew something else was going on. Had Telia tired of her