* * *
"I'm almost certain that this guy was killed by a vampire."
"Almost certain, huh?" Nikolas stepped up to the exam table and yanked the sheet off of Ricky's body, exposing his pale, nude form. "Either he was or he wasn't."
Cecil, the physician that Doc and Daniel had sent to work for the coven, frowned and picked the sheet up off the floor. He half-ass folded it and laid it at the foot of the table, then grabbed a clipboard from the counter a few feet away. Nikolas' presence seemed to make the good ol. doctor a little nervous.
The man had been hand-picked for the position of coven physician a year ago, but I still hadn't grown comfortable with him. Not like I had with Doc.or Markus, as he was called by Lucien. Cecil was&well, just strange, sometimes.
He gave me that mad-scientist vibe, even though he wasn't all that creepy looking and his features were that of a young, twenty-something man with brown hair, brown eyes, and a slight frame. He was a little plain and unremarkable, maybe, but wasn't the evil doctor with the freakishly long eyebrows and the Romanian accent out of an old cartoon.
Even if he could patch up injured members of our team like an expert, I still didn't count him as our official doctor. That was Doc, and I hoped a day would come when Doc himself might become a part of the coven.
"There are a number of bites present," Cecil said in his usual quiet manner. He gestured to both wrists, the groin . which was where I'd fed . and to both sides of Ricky's neck. "Most of them are vampire, but there's one bite in particular that seems to be more canine in nature. If you'll look closely at the bites on his neck, you'll see that instead of two punctures, there are four. The pattern of the bite is much larger than a vampire's."
I moved to the head of the table and examined both bite marks. "That doesn't make sense. If it was a werewolf, there wouldn't be much left of the body at all."
"I agree," Nikolas said. "Why leave the meat behind?"
"I can't say." Cecil walked to the counter behind me and grabbed a piece of paper from the printer. "There was some blood and junk beneath the victim's fingernails and I ran a few preliminary tests. They were both positive for vampire and Lycan cells."
That didn't make sense. "Anything else besides the bites?"
Cecil nodded. "There was a pooling of blood in the back of his throat.positive for vampire."
"So let me get this straight. He was fed on by me, then was lured out and fed on by another vampire and a werewolf?" When Cecil nodded, I shook my head. "Wolves don't feed like that."
"No, they don't," Nikolas added. "Unless they're trying to make it seem like a vampire was responsible."
"The blood in the back of the throat&do you think that means the vamp wanted to turn him?" Nikolas and Cecil both looked at me, frowning. "What?"
"He wouldn't have left him." Nikolas sighed. "They only leave behind revenants."
"Which would explain the level of decay," Cecil said. "It's rare to have a potential vampire decomp so fast. And, if that's the case, then."
"The body needs to be disposed of immediately." Lucien's voice from the doorway drew our attention. "It could be used as a beacon for the vampire to find out our location, and that's trouble we do not need."
"How long have you been standing there?"
I hadn't heard or felt him and that was just&odd. I looked to Nikolas to see if he'd heard or felt Lucien, but he just shrugged and shook his head.
"Long enough to find out what I needed to know." His words felt like a punch to the gut and I couldn't figure out why. "You will dispose of him, Peter."
"I can't do that!"
Lucien's brow furrowed in confusion. "And why is that?"
"I& He just&"
"Maybe he feels a bit of responsibility as to what happened to this guy," Nikolas said. "I really think that we need to keep him around a little longer to get as much evidence off him as possible."
"Not in my house."
"Then we'll take him somewhere else," I snapped.
"You will do no such thing."
Lucien stalked toward the table and pushed me out of the way. He reached out and held his hand over the body, and I felt that cold, familiar power of his turn hot. The body began to smoke, and within seconds erupted into a fiery mass. Unable to move, I watched in horror as the body burned to ash right before my eyes.
The door to the room flew open and Sabaan ran in, a stricken look on his face. "Lucien, no!"
As the fire began to dissipate, Lucien rubbed his hands together as if dusting them off. I gaped at him and this show of power that I didn't have a clue he even had.