Free Hunting the Dark by Karen Mahoney

first-floor window was locked up tight behind a screen.
Who had screens over their windows in the center of Boston?
Maybe they were meant to keep out larger bloodsuckers than mosquitoes. I removed the screen with a quick tug and rested it against the wall, then forced the window by jerking hard and sharp with my vamp-strength. The dull
crack
seemed to echo through the night air like a gunshot. I cringed as glass fell.
    ‘Oops,’ I whispered.
    Luckily the glass shards hit soft carpet, but still  . . . Probably better just to get this over with in case Quinn
was
asleep inside. I didn’t think he was, though. The house felt quiet and empty.
    I paused for a moment before climbing inside, just to make certain. Nothing stirred. Knowing my luck, the hunter would have a particularly vicious guard dog, but that didn’t appear to be the case so I soldiered on. Dogs liked me, anyway. The O’Neal family dog, Oscar, hadn’t treated me any different since I was Made, a fact I took great comfort from. Maybe I didn’t smell dead, after all.
    I jumped into the darkened room beyond, getting tangled in moth-eaten (ha!) velvet curtains and almost tripping over as I landed softly on the carpeted floor of a living room. Righting myself just in time, I scanned my surroundings. Everything was eerily visible in the pre-dawn grayness that streaked the sky and filtered through the gaps in the curtain. Even if it had been pitch dark, I would still have been able to see pretty clearly with my enhanced sight.
    Now to check the place really was as empty as it seemed. Never take things at face value, I reminded myself. Remember what Kyle – God rot his soul – taught you. He might have turned out to be a back-stabbing traitor, but Theo’s old Enforcer had known a thing or two about stealth missions.
    I let my eyes adjust to the half-darkness of the room, sniffing the air and wondering what the smell was that made my nose wrinkle and my stomach contract. It was a strange and familiar combination of scents. Complicated, and yet also simple: hot and cold at the same time. Thick and cloying and metallic.
    Blood.
    I could smell blood in the home of my number one lead in Nicole’s murder. My admittedly rather hopeful shot at clearing Jace’s name.
    The enticing scent surrounded me, intoxicating.
    I trotted out of the room and headed for the stairs. The blood called to me, leading me in the direction that I needed to go.
    The kitchen was on the way, so I made myself stop and poke my head inside. An old-fashioned wall oven and stove took up one corner, while a small refrigerator hummed in another. I could detect the faint whiff of garlic and chilli, meaning that someone had most likely been cooking recently. It smelled good – the whole garlic thing is a myth, in case you were wondering.
    Sighing, I headed back to the staircase and crept to the landing above, to the source of the blood. The house was a double-decker, so there were only two levels to worry about in my search. I counted three bedrooms in all, one with the door ajar so that I could see it had been converted into an office. The bathroom door was wide open, a towel discarded in the center of the white-tiled floor. The towel was a dark color that I couldn’t quite make out in the gloom, but it looked creepily like a pool of blood. I turned away and kept moving.
    The thick coppery smell I’d been following filled my nostrils once more, hitting me so hard it felt like someone had slapped me in the face. Hunger twisted through me, hot and violent and demanding.
Crap.
I should have fed before traveling here, but I had no idea that I’d find something like this. Whatever
this
turned out to be.
    I opened door number two, my nose leading the way.
    The monster inside me licked her lips, making my stomach churn. I shivered, denying the urge. Grabbed hold of it and pushed it down, deep down into the very bottom of my being where I hoped it would stay put. Of course, that didn’t mean
she
– the