Free InsistentHunger by Lyn Gala Page B

don’t understand.”
    “I have backup and training and a whole community to call on
if I need help.”
    “So do I,” he said without explaining exactly who he had in
his corner. Paige nodded and backed up onto the porch.
    “I appreciate this.” She held up the beads and garlic, but
she really meant the information. She wasn’t sure it was much help because
Brady wasn’t the monster Jim described, but it gave her a place to start. At
least she wasn’t going to be out there looking for victims with barbecue fork
injuries to the neck disappearing from the morgue. Sadly, that probably would
have been her first stop without his help.
    “Just don’t count on those to help you in every situation,”
he said with a gesture toward the beads. She looked at how they flashed and
sparkled, even in the shadows. “They wouldn’t have stopped this one. They might
have distracted him for a second, but he wasn’t one of the zombie boys. He
still had a brain in there.”
    “Just not a good one,” Paige pointed out. The vamp might
have taken Jim if he’d waited in ambush, especially if he was as strong as
Brady.
    “No, not a good one, but some of these mid-level vamps can
be smart. And worse, some vamps obsess over someone they knew in life. Your
partner could come after you, and if he does, that means that he’s not some
mindless foot soldier to get distracted by a little bit of flash,” Jim warned
her.
    “He might remember me?” This sounded more promising.
    “He might remember something. Those sorts go after anyone
who reminds them of something or someone. Some of the older hunters call them
Lamias.”
    “Lamias?” Paige felt an urge to start taking notes.
    “It’s just another name for a vamp. She was a blood-drinker
from mythology. Apparently she lost her kids, and after she turned demonic, she
got obsessed with drinking the blood of everyone else’s kids. Vamps that get
focused on killing one sort of human, that’s what we call Lamias.”
    “I call people like that serial killers.”
    “Undead serial killers,” he agreed.
    “But if that’s the case, then something of the person is
left. They wouldn’t feel anger, they wouldn’t be driven by memories unless they
had memories.”
    “Memories, maybe,” he agreed with a shrug. “They can talk
and walk and pretend to be human if you don’t stand downwind. But they aren’t
the person. If your Brady is a vamp, he’ll know your name, but he won’t give a
shit about whatever relationship he had with you before.”
    Paige nodded. She didn’t agree for one second, but she
nodded before she headed out into the yard, looking for her cell phone, and Jim
just stood in the door watching her without trying to follow.

Chapter Seven
     
    Paige had no idea where the day had gone, but the sun was
starting to sink low when she pulled up into her driveway and hit the garage
door opener. The thing clanked ominously, but then again, it’d been threatening
to die for at least a year.
    Inside, Paige dropped her cell phone on the table and stared
at the two black and white feathers on the carpet, the sharp shafts tipped with
red. Pulling her weapon, she inched around the corner to the living room.
Nothing looked out of place. She moved to the basement door and the padlock
still hung from the mangled hasp.
    Inching down the stairs, Paige called out in a whisper,
“Brady?” The basement was silent, a long slant of light cutting through the
air. “Brady?” Paige moved to the bottom step and trained her gun toward the
dark corner that had been the laundry room. She was starting to feel like one
of those women from a horror movie. However, the alternative included calling
for backup and she wasn’t prepared to do that.
    When she got close enough, Paige could see Brady huddled in
the corner where the mold crept up the cinderblock wall. “Brady?” She looked
around, but nothing else seemed out of place. The Christmas decorations had
been picked up and the box sat next to