Page 3 of Cooper’s Passion

2

One week later

“Where’s the body?” Cooper asked as he rushed into the small command center on the first level of Scanguards’ headquarters in the Mission. Inside the room, monitors were mounted on one wall, and a large desk stood in the center, Nicholas, a twenty-nine-year-old vampire hybrid, the son of Zane, one of the meanest vampires Cooper had ever met, looked up. It was Nicholas’s week to staff the command center, which handled all incoming emergencies dealing with vampires and vampire-related crimes.

“They already removed it from the crime scene and brought it here.”

“Without doing forensics on scene? Who the fuck ordered that?”

“I figured you’d want the body removed as quickly as possible so nobody sees what state it’s in.” Nicholas thrust his chin up, now in defensive mode.

“Have I taught you nothing?” Frustrated, Cooper grunted. “Did you at least have them take photos of the crime scene?”

Nicholas shifted and clenched his jaw. “I’m not an idiot. Of course, I had them take photos. But it’s not the crime scene anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The body was dumped there. There was no blood anywhere. He must have sucked her dry somewhere else and then tossed her in that alley.”

“Who knows about this?”

“The human who found her.” Nicholas looked on a notepad on the desk. “Michael Lavine. He was on his way to a restaurant and cut through the alley. He called 9-1-1. They sent out two unis. By the time they cordoned off the scene and reported that the body was bloodless, Donnelly made sure to keep SFPD’s forensics team away from the scene, and contacted us.”

This news made him feel somewhat better. At least there were only a few people who knew about it, and with some luck they could keep this out of the newspapers. The discovery of an exsanguinated body would spark all kinds of speculations.

“Good. Is Maya already examining the body?”

Nicholas nodded. “Yes. Buffy is helping her.”

“I’ll go see them shortly. What do we know about the victim?”

Nicholas shrugged. “Not much. No ID, no jewelry, no clothes.”

Surprised, Cooper snapped his gaze back to the younger hybrid. “She was found naked?”

“Yep.”

Cooper ran a hand through his short hair. “That’ll make it harder to identify her. As soon as Maya has DNA, let’s run it through CODIS. Do you already have the fingerprints?”

“I was about to get those so I can run them through AFIS,” Nicholas said hastily. “Ahm, let me find the scanner.” He jumped up and walked to the opposite wall. He opened several drawers of the large cupboard, rummaging through them.

Cooper rolled his eyes. Nicholas still needed a lot of supervision, even though he was only three years his junior.

“I’ll be in the med center with Maya,” Cooper announced, not willing to wait until Nicholas got his act together.

“I’ll be down there in a sec,” he promised without looking over his shoulder.

Cooper left the room. He hadn’t seen Nicholas that nervous before. He knew what it meant to have to prove himself, and with a father like Zane it probably wasn’t easy for a guy like Nicholas to distinguish himself and forge his own path. Having Zane’s shadow loom over him would make anybody nervous. This was the first time Nicholas was running the command center by himself. Cooper and the older hybrids had done it many times before, but now it was time to train the younger ones so they were ready to lead when the time came.

Cooper thrived on pressure like this. Nicholas clearly didn’t. At least not yet. He needed a few more years to grow into his role, whereas Cooper knew he was ready to lead, which was also the reason why anybody working in the command center reported to him. He’d fought long and hard for this position. Samson, the founder and owner of Scanguards, a three-hundred-something-year-old pure-blooded vampire had promoted him soon after he’d been instrumental in saving Isabelle, Samson’s daughter, from an evil and demented vampire.

Instead of waiting for the elevator, Cooper took the stairs to get down to the underground level where the medical center was located. It was run by Dr. Maya Giles, the vampire female blood-bonded to Gabriel Giles, the second-in-command at Scanguards.

Cooper marched along the corridor that led to the medical center, but stopped before he reached the double doors leading into the reception area. Instead, he briefly knocked at the door to his right and swiped his access card. He heard a faint beep, then pushed the door open and entered.

Maya, the dark-haired beauty who’d been a human physician at UCSF before she’d been turned into a vampire against her will, stood bent over the body of a woman. She glanced up briefly.

“Hey, Coop.”