THERE'S A STORM COMING. The sky is dark through the many windows that have been left open to allow distant noises of the police lingering outside and the soughing of the ever-growing violent wind rustling the surrounding trees that make the property secluded to waft inside.

There's one road that leads to the building off a busy street, which is curving, and the long drive is flanked by wild forestry. The building has been aired out for an entire night and the early hours of the morning. Still, whatever poison has left three vampires varnishing the white tiling with their blood lingers.

Kiernan can smell its presence even through the pinching mask he's been forced to adorn. It's annoyingly heavy and covers the entirety of his face. But, despite his irritation, he's grateful that the human police aren't cretins and are taking precautions. He's even more grateful that the lingering presence of the poison means they've minimized who is inside at any given time.

Right now, it's only him and Alexander.

He'd forgone the parking lot that was filled with police vehicles and parked his car on the side of the muddy road. So he won't be boxed in. He's aware that others would call him paranoid. He's not. He's simply wary and knows what men are capable of, especially in secluded areas with good reason to hate his kind.

And he's glad that he made the choice because he's been receiving nasty looks from the uniformed officers. They don't trust him, and the only reason he's not more bothered by this is that they don't trust Alexander either.

Alexander barked out orders and obviously held the highest authority, but he did not have respect. No one had spoken impudence outright, but Kiernan could see it in their untrusting expressions and their slanted glances at each other. They fear Alexander, however. That truth spiced the air whenever he held someone's gaze and directed them personally.

He could practically feel the collective relief when Alexander gestured for him to follow the man inside the quiet building.

Now he's not sure how to proceed. This is not his expertise. He's spent decades ending strife with his fists. He's never had to look at a crime scene and make a sound hypothesis.

Kiernan carefully looks at the carnage. The upstairs area is a clinic for blood donations, and they're in the large, tiled room at the back of the building with private booths. 

Bodies are strewn throughout.

There's a woman in a white doctor's coat who is nearest to them, and her face is unrecognizable, having been shot in the head more than once. Not far away, a man lies slumped behind a small desk with blood-splattered paperwork. Another man has fallen behind a partition; only his awkwardly angled legs, clad in scrubs, and his running shoes, can be seen.

If he angles his head around a privacy wall, he'd be able to see the reception area that they entered through. Fake planters and a large, curved desk. The receptionist met her end in an adjacent hallway, shot to death after presumably succumbing to the poison.

He's been told the last victims were killed in the blood bank downstairs.

Alexander doesn't give the bodies more than a cursory glance. He has a shake to his leg that he seems to take on when standing still for longer than a minute. It's not drugs. Kiernan suspected such, but the man doesn't have any other tellings. Alexander is muscular and appears healthy.

Right now, Alexander looks to be thinking of a song, tapping his fingers against his thigh, and doesn't pay mind that he's being stared at or that they're standing in the aftermath of a massacre.

Kiernan crouches. He snatches the dangling laminated square of bright orange on an irritatingly long lanyard that Alexander tossed over his neck before it grazes the floor. The pass is necessary and shows that he's meant to be here, but it's been annoying him to no end. Admittedly, it would not be quite so long for a towering man like Alexander, but despite its importance, he's ready to chuck it out a window.

The smell of poison lingers near the tiles. That means there's a good chance it was administered in gas form. He cannot place its origin just that the poison holds a bitter scent of stale almonds and there's a floral undertone that makes his nose twitch.

"So, what do you think, partner?" Alexander's voice is slightly muffled by his mask. His black hair is mussed from the tight strapping. He's giving Kiernan an unreadable look from above that has his heart hastening.

This man is impossible for him to read, and it's growing maddening. It's almost as if Alexander Cross wants nothing, but he's no fool to believe that childishness. All men want something. Some are simply better at hiding their desires.

He hasn't felt so uncomfortable in someone's presence since his brother. Dante would give him a pensive look that made him feel as if his every lie was bared.

He rises from his crouch and feigns thinking deeply about his reply. He finds his body shifting nearer to Alexander without consulting his mind, which is screaming for him to be wary.

He can smell the minty gum that Alexander has been chewing obsessively, even through his mask. The man smokes. The aroma of tobacco faintly clings to his clothing beneath the dark blue police windbreaker he'd put on before entering.

Kiernan is familiar with the aversion he has to holding someone's gaze longer than necessary, but when he averts his eyes, it's to escape the inarguable fact that he doesn't feel that prickling sensation with Alexander.

"They put the poison through the vents." Kiernan points to the metal grating on the ceiling above. "Then they killed them while they were weakened. Simple. I don't know what you hope to find here. Your men have already combed through."

"Vents. Yeah, we figured that out. There's a central air system that the killer used to their advantage."

Kiernan narrows his eyes. "If you already knew..."

Alexander shrugs. "I was wondering if you saw what I did."

"And what is that?"

"Look at the victims again." Alexander nears, and the fact Kiernan doesn't have a gut reaction to flinch away unsettles him deeply. The man lays a palm on Kiernan's shoulder and gently pushes him a few steps to the side, and it's clear why, so he has a better view of the bodies. "Do you notice anything?"

Kiernan looks and looks. They're shot, and they're dead. All he sees are sprawled limbs and thick strains of coagulated blood.

He looks at Alexander's expectant expression and feels a flush creep up his neck to his face when he has to shake his head.

For some inane reason, he really doesn't want to disappoint this man, and he's once again unsettled. This is not his brother. He needs to drink another bottle of scotch and hope that it cures him of this foolishness.

Alexander points at the dead woman close by. "She was shot four times." He gestures to the sprawled man near the small desk. "He was shot in the stomach. Then, when he didn't die, the chest, three times before his head. And the last guy was shot in the spine, then his neck. The techs said that they were all killed in a span of a few hours, at different times. This wasn't fast. It was slow. Methodical."

Kiernan's blood runs cold. He puts it together and nearly wishes he hadn't. "They were testing what kills vampires faster."

"That's my theory." Alexander shrugs. "Looks like it's a shot to the head that's most efficient." He looks off at the man who's half-hidden by the partition. "That guy who was shot in the back. He didn't die for hours."

There's not much that causes a shiver to ascend his spine, but the thought of being tortured until his heightened healing could work no longer is high on his list of experiences he'd rather avoid. "Downstairs?"

Alexander looks at him for a long moment and then says gently, "Just as bad." He's hiding something. He's nervous. His body sways slightly, and there's a quick flicker of his gaze to the way they came. "Best we leave and go over the details somewhere... that's not here."

Kiernan starts forward, keeping far from the bodies and the pooling blood. He ignores Alexander calling after him, and then, after a breathy curse, the man's heavy footfalls follow. 

Down a hallway where the wind rustles fallen papers that he carefully steps over and past an upended metal table of medical equipment, he finds a door that's been propped open with a brick.

Before he can descend the staircase leading to a room of fluorescent lights and white tile below, Alexander grasps his arm loosely. The man tugs just enough for Kiernan to face him with slow blinks that have sent weaker vampires running.

"You don't want to go down there."

Telling him this is counterintuitive because saying so makes him want to see what's down there even more. "Why? What's down there?"

"Fucked up shit. That's what."

Kiernan shivers as a chilly draft wafts up from below to mingle with the cold, whooshing wind blowing through the building. "I can handle seeing fucked-up shit." 

He turns and takes the first step, only for the hold on his arm to tighten. He yanks himself from the man's loose hold with little effort. 

The wooden staircase creaks and groans.

He ignores the apprehension that rises when Alexander doesn't follow and shouts from the doorway above, "Don't say I didn't warn you. I'll wait for you outside." 

Alexander's walking away, so he doesn't see the moment of hesitation Kiernan has at the bottom of the stairs when he nearly steps into a thick pooling of blood.

The lights are bright. There's a loud clicking down one end of the corridor he's stepped into, but he goes the other way, carefully following the trail of blood. And the stale smell of death and poison, which is heavier here from a lack of air circulation.

There are smears and splatters of blood on a pair of metal doors that have been left slightly ajar. It's the origin of all the blood in the corridor. 

He's careful not to step in any evidence. He's not wearing gloves, so he touches as little of the door as possible, pushing it open with his fingertips. The creak of its hinges echoes in the dead silence of the basement.

It's a storage room. Humming freezers line the walls that are darkened, but he assumes they're stocked with blood. He doesn't see anything else because his gaze falls on the dead body on a metal table.

Even from afar, he can see that the body's open chest cavity has had its organs removed. There are two other bodies, male and female, piled on top of each other, naked, and shoved to the ground near the table.

Even from afar, he can see that the open chest cavity has had its organs removed. There are two other bodies, male and female, piled on top of each other, naked, and shoved to the ground near the table. 

He's seen death. Many times. But this horror has his mind sluggish to react to what he's seeing.

He stares, unmoving, in the doorway.

There's a constant dripping of blood from the metal table to the crimson-smeared tiling below. It's not the sight of the bodies ripped apart that has bile rising in this throat. It's their faces.

The agony they endured is forever etched in their expressions.

They were alive when whoever did this cut them open. They were alive when whoever tortured them began taking out their innards. Not for long because death would've taken them quickly, but they were aware until then.

He's vaguely aware that he's stopped gawking at the horror and has begun ascending the stairs, breathing past the burn in his throat. 

He's practically running through the crime scene, forgoing the way he entered, where he can hear a collective of heartbeats and murmured conversation.

There has to be a back door somewhere.

And there is, at the end of a long corridor, past untouched, shadowed rooms. He fumbles with the knob of the metal door and stumbles outside. Before his feet hit the asphalt, he's tugging and ripping the mask off his head. It's tight and strapped, pulling at his hair.

He hunches, holding the dangling mask against his thigh with shaking fingers, and vomits.

It's disgusting. And the fact that it's mostly blood and scotch makes his stomach heave again and again.

He's not shaken to the point of sickness from what he saw. He doesn't think so, anyway. He's never had this reaction to death before. It's a deep instinct to survive awakening that's rebelling and telling him he's just seen hell. He's met sadists, and they'd pale in comparison to whoever was capable of that savagery.

"Told you."

Kiernan slants his watering gaze. Alexander is leaning against the brick of the building, his mask gone, with a burning cigarette between his fingers.

He'd been so focused on not throwing up in his mask that he'd not sensed the man's presence.

Alexander gives him a sympathetic smile. "I don't blame you."

Kiernan stays hunched and stares at the swaying trees, then focuses on a large green dumpster with black garbage bags piled high on one side. His stomach churns, and his nostrils flare.

"It's fucked that the killer cut out their bowels."

Kiernan shuts his eyes, trying to resist the bile rising.

"Even more fucked that we haven't found any of their organs."

"Shut—"

Kiernan cuts off his growl by vomiting again. His shoes are ruined. He's just dry-heaving at this point, nothing is left in his stomach. The noises he's making are raw and humiliating. After he's finished, he's going to walk off and drown himself in the creek. He can hear slow-moving water past the line of trees.

"Nasty," Alexander mutters.

Still heaving, Kiernan gives him a shaky middle finger.

Alexander laughs.

No. After he's finished, he's going to drown Alexander Cross, then himself.