Page 5 of Cooper’s Passion

Cooper grinned and held the elevator door open. “Did somebody relegate you to delivery boy?”

Sebastian reached him and rolled the boxes into the elevator. “Far from it. This is the first batch of my latest invention.”

Cooper stepped into the elevator and pressed the button to the parking garage, while he looked into the top box. “Bottled blood? Hardly the latest invention.”

Scanguards had started bottling human blood several decades earlier to make it more convenient for their vampire and vampire hybrid staff to feed without having to use unsuspecting humans. Cooper, his sister, and friends had all grown up on bottled human blood, though of course, they’d all at one time or another bitten humans to drink blood straight from the source.

“Not just any bottled blood. It’s carbonated. You know, fizzy.” Sebastian beamed. “You should try it. I’m calling it Blood Splatter.” He pulled a bottle from the case and handed it to Cooper. “Cool name, right?”

“Blood Splatter? You’re killing me.” But he had to hand it to Sebastian: he had interesting ideas and the technical knowledge to turn them into reality. Whether this type of bottled blood would catch on, however, was anybody’s guess. The blood didn’t come in the usual glass bottle with the Scanguards label indicating what blood type it was, but in a light-weight silver-colored aluminum bottle hiding its contents. “All right. I’ll try it.”

“Great!” Sebastian slapped him on the shoulder, clearly happy. “Let me know if you like it, okay? But be honest. If it doesn’t taste right, just let me know, and I’ll refine the recipe. I’m still in the testing phase.”

The elevator doors opened.

“You bet.” Cooper left and headed for his SUV.

He made his way through heavy evening traffic to North Beach, the San Francisco neighborhood known for its vibrant restaurant scene. It bordered on Telegraph Hill, where he, Lydia, and their parents lived—though in separate homes. Since his condo was being repaired due to water damage caused by his upstairs neighbor, Cooper currently stayed with his Uncle Wesley, an accomplished witch, and his wife, Virginia, a Stealth Guardian, a preternatural creature able to make herself invisible and walk through solid matter.

Cooper finally found a parking spot on a side street, in between Washington Square and the alley where the body of the naked woman had been found only a few hours earlier. His stomach growled. He’d rushed to Scanguards the moment he’d been notified about the exsanguinated body and had forgotten to eat. As a vampire hybrid he could supplement human blood with regular human food if he wanted to, but like many of his friends, he almost exclusively drank blood. Drinking human blood was as essential to a vampire hybrid as to a pure-blooded vampire. It made him strong and gave him endurance, keeping his senses sharp.

It was best if he fed right now, so he’d be sharp when he visited the crime scene. He opened the compartment between the two front seats of the SUV and pulled out the bottle Sebastian had given him a little while earlier. He read the label and chuckled. Sebastian had indeed named the brew Blood Splatter.

Cooper unscrewed the top of it. Like a geyser, the red liquid spewed from the narrow bottleneck, splashing his face and neck.

“Fuck!”

He held the bottle over to the passenger side of the car, away from him, to prevent more carbonated blood from soaking him. But the damage was already done. The collar and upper part of his white shirt was splattered with blood.

Cooper reached for the box of Kleenex behind his seat to wipe the blood off his face and neck. But there wasn’t anything he could do about his shirt. He looked down his front. He looked like he’d just slaughtered a pig.

“Sebastian, I’m gonna throttle you!”

As soon as he was done checking out the alley where the dead woman had been dumped.