Free Crimson Dawn by Ronnie Massey Page B

necessarily a healthy thing. A bunch of half-cocked Sentinels emotionally charged over the loss of a fellow officer wasn't going to do this hunt any good.
     
    I kept my opinions to myself. Descantes didn't need his line of thinking questioned right now. A quick look at what lay on the bed and his brow came together with a deep furrow. "While I may not believe he is personally responsible for these deaths, I do believe whoever did this act on his orders."
     
    "You find out anything, I want to be the first to know. Do you understand?” He waited for my answer, but I wasn't ready to commit to his command. I had a C.O., and, damn it, I was already wearing the locator. He looked down at me with sparks dancing in his eyes, "I'm dead serious, Ms. Trumaine. You will not engage him without a complete contingency of Sentinels at your back. It that clear?"
     
    I looked past his shoulder to the carnage on the bed and quietly conceded. My cell went off in my pocket giving me the out I needed to leave the room. I moved down the hall and read the text from Irulan. They had the name of a possible informant at a club called Crimson Dawn that was clear across town. She wanted me to meet up with them as soon as I could. Gladly, anything to take me away from here.
     
    I mapped the club on my phone and headed for the closest stairway. I thought I'd made a clean exit when Descantes solidified in front of me. "Leaving in such a hurry? Anything you'd like to share?” He glared at my phone as if he could read the text through the darkened screen. For all I know, he could, but that didn't stop me from lying.
     
    "It's 3:30 in the morning Descantes and, so far, my first night in Charleston has been a bust. I got nothing from either officer that helps me in any way, and, on top of that, I just watched two women, one of them one of those officers, roasted alive.” I waved my phone in front of his face, "That was one of my partners asking if I'd had any better luck than they had. I told her no. So now I'm going to have a few drinks to try and get the sight of that room out of my head.” I ran a finger across my lips and felt a jab of hunger in my stomach. "I also need to feed before the night is out, if that's alright with you."
     
    The look on his face was one of disbelief, but he let me go without any further questions. Once I hit the street level, I checked my directions, memorized them, and headed out. I ran faster than the phone could keep up, so using GPS was out if I was really in a hurry, and I was definitely in a hurry. Running at top speed it only took me five minutes to reach the Crimson Dawn. To give you an idea of how fast I was moving, if I had been in a vehicle doing forty, even with no stops for red lights or stop signs, it would have taken me about fifteen minutes to get there.
     
    The Crimson Dawn didn't look like much from the outside, just a red door under a small, black awning in the side of a dumpy building that looked every bit abandoned. There were no neon signs advertising its existence. That’s what the red moon stitched into the awning was for.
     
    Most Extras clubs were like that. Although the government made us legal and forced the masses to accept us as a whole, the individual mindset was something altogether different. There are now units in traditional police stations designed specifically for catching Humans that hunted us illegally.
     
    The only thing out of place was the bouncer standing outside the door. The bouncer was a Deadborn built like a brick house. He was a little short for my taste, only standing around five six, but he more than made up for it in the looks department. My hyped up senses needed release after all the excitement at the hospital, and he would certainly qualify. Sex was just as good as fighting if you could find the right person. While the Deadborn wasn't quite the right person, he would do to get my blood pumping. I twisted my ring around, so the signet wouldn't show, and sauntered up