Sweet Last Drop by Melody Johnson Page A

tonight.”
    “And maybe they’re both vampire attacks.”
    Walker leveled his gaze on me. “We won’t know ‘till we examine the Dunbars. You ready?”
    I shook my head. “If country vampires are anything like city vampires, my vote’s with Ronnie. We should wait until sunrise. There’s nothing we can do now that we can’t do in daylight.”
    “Berry, Keith, and Riley are expecting me,” Walker said, exasperated. “I’m tracking the animal on this case, remember?”
    “I don’t care about Berry, Keith, and Riley,” Ronnie whispered, still sniffing. “I care about you.”
    “Berry, Keith, and Riley?” I asked.
    “You just met Berry, the coroner. Sheriff Keith Pitston and his deputy, Officer Riley Montgomery, will be at the scene and expecting me,” Walker explained. To Ronnie he said gently, “Bex won’t kill me. You know as well as I do that I’m less at risk than anyone else out after dark.”
    “No, she’ll turn you, and then you’ll be as good as dead anyway. Isn’t that what you always say, Ian? That you’d be dead to us?”
    “I’ll be fine. I’ll have DiRocco with me,” Walker assured her. “I’ve seen her entrance a vampire as easily and completely as they entrance us. She’s better equipped to protect us than all of my weaponry combined.”
    I shook my finger at him. “Don’t put this on me. I came here with specific goals in mind, and none of them involved protecting your coven of night bloods. I’m here to find the facts, not to save lives, and the facts can wait until sunrise.”
    “Will they?” Walker stepped closer and tipped his voice in a deep, taunting whisper. “If you don’t come with me tonight to interview witnesses and report tonight’s murders, you know damn well someone else will. You’ll be out-scooped.”
    Rage swept like a backdraft through my veins, and I opened my mouth to blast him with its heat. Before I could articulate my anger, he turned his back on me, opened the front door, and left the house.
    Since discovering the existence of vampires and my own identity as a night blood, I’d struggled to balance my career and survival, but as Walker had just so accurately stated, I couldn’t interview witnesses and out-scoop my competition while hiding in my apartment. This crime fluctuation feature, in addition to being an excuse to visit Walker, allowed me to trick my boss, Carter Bellisimo, into thinking I was still in the game as a competitive crime reporter. In reality, I was swiftly becoming a hermit obsessed with the sunrise/sunset calendar.
    I watched Walker’s back as he strode across the yard, confident and empowered and purposeful, and I ached inside. This was what my experience with vampires had done to me. They’d stripped my ability to live according to my own terms. They’d confined my life according to their schedule, and they’d compromised my abilities as a reporter.
    My rage switched targets, and I stepped out of the house into the night.
    “You’re going with him?” Ronnie asked, shocked.
    I looked back at her. “Did he leave me much choice?”
    Ronnie pursed her lips. “Don’t let his demands become your only choices. His goals and intentions are very important, but that doesn’t make yours any less important. I have to remind myself of that every day.”
    I considered her words carefully before I spoke. “You didn’t know that Bex could survive in daylight, did you?”
    Ronnie shook her head. “I don’t get out much.”
    “She just needs to stay confined to the shadows,” I said, “but otherwise, she doesn’t need to wait for sunset to leave her coven.”
    “So in the hours between sunrise and sunset, we’re still not entirely safe.”
    I opened my mouth, but Ronnie had already turned her back and walked into the house, leaving me on the porch between the two of them, my head safely inside with her and my heart torn somewhere between Walker’s pickup truck and common sense.
    * * * *
     
    John Dunbar and his wife,