Bad Vampire by Lauren Dawes (read aloud books txt) 📕

His statement seemed to be a signal to the rest of the room, because along with the plunge in temperature, there was a rise in hostility. Cops who lost partners because of their own negligence were never trusted.

“Yes, the same one.” I was glad my voice stayed steady. “You have something to say about it?”

Sawyer stepped closer, putting himself into my personal space. His face was so close that I felt the heat beading off his body, and his chocolate and whisky scent got tangled in my nose. I shouldn’t have been enjoying this, but I was. Against my chest, my necklace heated in warning.

“Listen. I don’t need a partner. You’re only here as a fucking favor, and the minute you fuck it up, I’ll be shipping you back for Wolfe to deal with. In pieces.”

“Well, aren’t you just rainbows and unicorn farts in the morning,” I drawled. “Look, Sawyer, is it? I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to be here, but I have no choice. I’m still a cop, and this is what I have to do to get back on the job. So you do what you’ve got to, but we have to work together.”

He grunted, running his eyes over me. “Human liaison, huh?” he spat, then turned on his heel, stalking farther into the room. I kept my breathing steady, even though my heart was racing. Sawyer moved to one of the desks in the back, and I followed him.

“Where do I sit?”

He waved his hand, indicating an empty desk to the left. “There.”

With a nod, I put my bag down, shoved it under the desk with my foot, then sat in the office chair. Swiveling it around, I asked, “What kind of supe are you anyway? Fae? Demon? Nymph?”

He didn’t reply, but the muscle in his jaw jumped.

When it became clear he wasn’t going to give me an answer, I did a full revolution of my chair and asked, “So, what are we doing?”

He tapped angrily at his keyboard for a moment. Leaning over, I peered at his screen.

“Buxton Elementary School. You have kids that go there? I thought it was a human-only school.”

Sawyer ground his teeth but didn’t say anything more. Okay, he was the strong silent type. He continued to tap away, navigating his way to the ‘staff’ tab and scrolling through the faces of the teachers and aides. Eventually, he got to the end, then scrolled right back up again.

“You know, it might be more productive to slow down so you can actually read their names.”

“I don’t need to read their names,” he said bluntly. “I just need to see their faces. Names are irrelevant right now.”

I leaned back in my chair. “You are just so pleasant, aren’t you?”

He rounded on me. “You want to see pleasant?” he snarled, his gray eyes darkening ever so slightly. “Keep asking me asinine questions, and I’ll show you how pleasant I can be.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, then shrugged. “Well sure, if you want me to keep going—”

“I don’t!”

I peered around the room to find everyone watching us. I scratched my chin absently. “You know, I’m getting a lot of mixed signals from you here.”

Sawyer’s glare didn’t ease up. If anything, it got a whole lot frostier. Abruptly, he stood up and said, “Come on. We have a case to work on.”

I jumped up from my chair. “Oh, a case? What is it? Diamond heist? Corporate espionage? Sex club?”

That last one got me a raised eyebrow. What could I say? I had a healthy and curious sex life.

“We’re going to the elementary school.”

“I knew it.”

Sawyer Taylor, meet sarcasm.

He rolled his eyes. “There was a report overnight of a baby vampire terrorizing some students backstage at a Thanksgiving concert.”

I blinked. “I don’t even know where to start with that one. There was a Thanksgiving concert last night, and I didn’t know about it?”

Sawyer gave me another one of those sexy growls. “Let’s go.”

I expected him to lead the way out of the station, but he exited the office and hung a left instead. Producing a key from the inside of his pants pocket, he opened up a door in the long hall and stepped inside. As soon as he flicked on the light, I gasped. I couldn’t look at just one thing, I wanted to look at everything.

“This is amazing,” I breathed, reaching out to touch one of the sidearms nestled in its egg crate foam casing.

“Don’t touch that!” Sawyer snarled.

I retracted my hand quickly. “Why?”

He snatched the weapon from where it was lying. “Because you have no idea what this weapon does.” He swept his arm wide. “What any of these weapons do.”

I tried not to pout. Really, I did. “Let me guess, you aren’t going to tell me either, because I’m some poor rookie cop who messed up like a puppy peeing on the rug.”

“As much as that analogy fits you, no. The reason you can’t touch any of these weapons is because they’ve been calibrated to specific species.”

My brows rose. Wow. That was a new bit of information. I wondered whether Wolfe knew about all this tech. The room was literally stuffed with it.

“Okaaaay, so what can I touch?” I ran my gaze down his body until it settled on his ass, which was looking fiiiiinnnne in those tight slacks of his.

“No,” he said, but without any conviction.

“No? No to what?”

A small smile pulled at the side of his mouth. “No to whatever you’re thinking right now.”

Around my neck, the necklace warmed. I popped my hip out and folded my arms across my chest. “How do you know what I was thinking about?”

“I can smell it.”

I straightened, then looked away. Okay, that was straight up weird. What kind of supe was this guy? Clearing my throat, I wandered farther into the room, bending down to get a closer look at the weapons I couldn’t touch. The technological evolution was maddeningly unfair.